I learned a new word backstage before the show: diagetics. It's a filmmaking term that, when applied to sound, describes a "sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film." In other words, a union of sound and vision.

We were invited to join Brooklyn-based designer Amanda Phelan and crew during rehearsal for her show, which was set to include a dance ensemble, and as she described how the performance and sound accompaniment would underscore the actual collection for spring '17, her partner, music designer Mike Dragovic, dropped the word on me as a way of explaining how the dancers and his soundtrack would double and juxtapose to suggest a sort of real and extra-real or hyperreal experience.

Designer Amanda Phelan and choreographer Shannon Gillen watch dancers rehearse before the Phelan show on Thursday night.
All images byCarmen Daneshmandi

It takes a brave emerging designer toshow an important collection inside a heady, mesmerizingtheater concept. Most would fear the distraction and avoid the possibility of the audience focusing on anything other than the clothing. Butas she's shared with us in past seasons , Amanda is committed to forgoing a traditional runway in favor of performative presentations.

Phelan's trademark is intricate, textural knits and as we saw backstage, the next season consists of conceptual jacquards and printed silk that's literally painterly. Amanda told us the collection builds off the idea of the nightgown-that icon of feminine wardrobes-and is further informed by traditionally female crafts like basket-weaving and knitting.

The pieces also come together because of three key women: the artist Caitlin Macbride, whose paintings of folded fabric inspired the color palette and became the silk textiles; SPACE jewelry designer of, whose team handcrafted extraordinary one-of-a-kind folded and crumpled metal accessories;and longtime collaborator choreographer Shannon Gillen of Vim Vigor Dance Company.

And then there were the models, of course, and the dancers. It was a show about, for, and by women.

After combing through the pieces with Amanda, we stayed with the models backstage until they were dressed in their first looks for the show and then we slipped out into the theater to watch it all come together.

As the audience filedinto a concrete-floor event space in the Chelsea neighborhood, seated dancers in nightgown-like dresses dyed to match their specific skin tones took up the middle of the floor while a cacophony of chairs lined the room. The affect was that of an attic-but an industrial one. Or a literary one. The backroom of an old library, say, or union headquarters at a factory.

When the soundscape began, the dancers' movements were both swift and smooth and sudden and jerky. We heard the women's breath, their movements, the slap of their skin and the scrape and creak of their chairs.

And then in walked the models. Styled by Dazed Digital's Robbie Spencer, they wore silhouettes both structured and loose-all accented by conceptual elements that underscore the ideas at play here: Staple-like metal details at the shoulder of a black dress whose diagonal pleats come apart at the hemline. Knitted straps that fall like minimal fringe at the waist. Grommets, threaded with a knitted strap, dot the bottom of a jacket.

The last thing Amanda told us when we were backstage was that the process of looping back and folding-those layers of sound, of fabric, of our daily lives-is something she's dedicated to. Her brand isn't just about beautiful clothing, but a beautiful context, too.

Will the wearer feel these themes and sense the meaning and webs of thought that make up the individual pieces? In the effable way that the most heartfelt concepts actually do influence the most open and accepting minds, yes. But if all the wearer experiences is the quiet swish, swish of artful silk and the enveloping structure of highly technological knits made by someone who understands the movement of the human body, that's a victory, too.

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-Laura Cassidy