The Most Fair

Bryce Dallas Howard doesn’t pretend to know much about clothes, at least not in the fashionista sense. “I was never really obsessed with fashion,” she says. “At school I was always extremely frumpy.”

She isn’t now. With her incandescent skin, soft red hair and graceful limbs, the 24-year-old has a stylish Old World air. But Howard, the daughter of director Ron Howard and writer Cheryl Howard--and the star of the upcoming M. Night Shyamalan film “Lady in the Water”--prefers Edwardian and Victorian gowns with an edge. “I’ve always been into that because I learned how to read when I was living in the UK, and the first books I read always took place in Victorian England.”

The high-waisted, flowing gowns that dominate the runways this spring go back another hundred years or so to the Empire dresses of the Napoleonic era, a look that’s never lost its romance. On these pages, the flame-haired actress is ice-cool in the latest take on the empire’s imprint.

-- Elizabeth Khuri