a fine balance; At Phi, a designer makes clothes with equal measures of dazzling innovation and everyday desirability.(Andreas Melbostad)

Byline: Sally Singer

Some fashion labels steer clear of noisy self-promotion, preferring to dawn quietly on their public. Phi, the New York-based collection helmed by Susan Dell and designed by Andreas Melbostad, is three years old, but only now has it occurred to fashion insiders that a shining new force has risen. In mathematics, Phi (pronounced "fee") refers to the golden ratio that over the centuries has influenced ideas of proportion; it's a perfect name for a line that's all about striking a subtle balance between strict tailoring and very feminine, almost fragile layering, and between the whimsical and the functional. "I look at the clothes and try to break down the boundaries," mulls Melbostad, a genial, low-key Norwegian in his mid-30s. "What is a shirt? What is a dress?"

In design terms, these are not loud questions, but they're fundamental ones. Melbostad's answers are always original, wearable, and beautiful. This fall, when he decided to rethink "real clothes with real values," he made a skinny thigh-skimming coat of quilted satin, quilted leather, and shearling that references an army trench coat turned inside out. He's also made a duffle coat without sleeves, enabling the arms to show off his slim knitwear, and a series of tank dresses that are part men's athletic underpinning, part embroidered and appliqued cocktail sheath. "The point is to look at someone's wardrobe and revisit staples that have emotional value," he says.

What makes this approach so inspiring to fashion folk-in Milan, in particular, echoes of Phi have sounded on the catwalks-is that Melbostad is taking utilitarian classics and, rather than (as is often the case with designers) simply rendering them in luxurious versions, is exploring the properties that make the garments essential in the first place: It's an intellectual approach to an emotional mystery, one that produces amazingly hip clothes that are fun to wear. And as befits a collection named for a ratio, the proportions of Melbostad's clothes are utterly brilliant: He favors wide belts, narrow shoulders, weighty boots, and short, ...