Write an article with the title: "At Thom Browne, a Challenge From the Fringe"

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American fashion, like American politics, may be a discipline won by moving toward the middle, but the most riveting action often takes place on the sides. It is the extremists on the edges who make the clothes that are the most fun to see, and provocative to consider.

So while it may be tempting to hear a description of the set that greeted attendees at the Thom Browne show — a Victorian operating theater of wooden pews surrounding an arena in which white-clad, white-haired angels/undertakers tended to an equally white-clad woman laid out motionless on a gurney, until a dusting a snow heralded her passage into, well, not heaven, exactly, but backstage and dismiss it with a roll of the eyes, to do so would be a mistake. This particular passion play came with a point.

As the ensuing parade of black-clad women in quasi-Victorian mourning gear (plus a few miniskirts) revealed.

Challenging both stereotype and texture, and sticking within a specific silhouette — small shouldered, long waisted, midcalf or midthigh — Mr. Browne produced a vision that was entirely modern: layering boleros over long jackets over culotte trousers; shaping dresses to the waist; and dropping shoulders to frame collarbones. The artistry was in the dazzling workmanship and the discipline that kept it within clearly defined bounds.

Zippers were spliced into seams, transforming the prim and proper into the vaguely perverse and promissory, mink intarsia embedded in moiré, and satin and raffia and bugle beads and beaver layered one upon the other in three-dimensional trompe l’oeil. Though whale appliqués swimming across princess coats were a winking suggestion not to take it too seriously after all (along with a whale-shaped leather handbag, which by all rights should be a candidate for It bag of the season).

The last look, a cropped motorcycle jacket and matching bumster skirt in metallic embroidered “Thom Browne” tartan, nodded to the late Alexander McQueen, a designer to whom Mr. Browne is most often compared, thanks to his ability to use showmanship to contextualize clothing. He is nothing if not self-aware. Or ambitious.

Whether or not the collection had its roots in the recent Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute show, “Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire,” as many viewers thought, was beside the point. It had resonance far beyond any references, redefining the stuff of sadness into something worth celebrating.

Because of the extravagance — and, presumably, the cost — of the labor involved, Mr. Browne’s women’s wear is hard to scale, and often hard to find post-fashion week. It’s too bad, because this is a message everyone should hear.

Coincidentally (or not, depending on the gloominess of your worldview), black is having something of a renaissance this season, even among more-mainstream fashion names.

Donna Karan, for example, which is owned by LVMH, the luxury group that practically defines the power structure, also riffed on the color in egg-shaped brocade coats, classic belted gabardine blazers, flippy skirts paneled in sheer organza, and bustiers over leotard tops over origami-folded waistlines, citing the city after dark as her inspiration and balancing her tendency toward indulgent artiness with some calculated, and commercial, accessibility.

As for Vera Wang, she likewise went dark (black is her signature ready-to-wear color, perhaps as an antidote to her life in the world of weddings), mixing oversize men’s wear pieces (drawstring trousers, jackets with the shoulders sliced out) with crisp white shirting, cinching taffeta gowns with trench-coat belts, and sprinkling cobweb dresses with leather blooms.

It was Maria Cornejo, however, offering her own intelligently idiosyncratic take on the topic in her Zero & Maria Cornejo collection via oversize mohair ponchos, dual-texture deep-pile shearlings and a terrific curving cross-body shrug over a leather T-shirt over loose trousers, who came closest to articulating the situation: “In an age of sameness, it’s luxurious to be a true independent.”

This is true of not only her and Mr. Browne, but also Rodarte, where Kate and Laura Mulleavy have carved an aesthetic out of being at play in the fields of their own imagination. It’s fertile, if singular, territory.

So this season they mixed leather, in leggings so tight they looked like spandex or lightning-bolt skirts, with New Romantic lace and showgirl diamanté sparkle; tossed on gentle-farmer tweed jackets with generous fur collars or Pink Lady patent bombers; paired it all with over-the-knee alligator pirate boots; and then capped it off with a series of feather and fringed and floral (and crystal) evening gowns like something out of a Venice Beach fairy tale.

It was a riposte to minimalism and something of a hot mess (speaking of which, there were hot pants in there, too), but it was also entirely committed to its own ideas. On that catwalk, at least, compromise is not really an option.

Interested in Fashion Week? Follow the conversation at nytimes.com/insidefashionweek.

The New York Collections: Donna Karan, Maria Cornejo, Rodarte, Thom Browne, Vera Wang

A version of this article appears in print on February 18, 2015, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: A Challenge From the Fringe. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe