Katie Holmes—a lady who first thawed the chilly coronary heart of America as a fresh-faced 19-year-old in Dawson’s Creek—has, for the most effective a part of three many years, been an emblem of the archetypal woman subsequent door: pure, modest, and easy. Within the 12 months 2000, a biography of the actor—“with eight pages of shade images!”—was revealed beneath that exact description, and a few 20 years later, vogue magazines—like this one—had been operating listicles that continued to place Holmes as a healthful icon.

And with good cause: the actor’s wardrobe is direct and approachable—not often straying from straight-leg denims, short-sleeved shirts, and square-toed ballet sneakers—that are nothing if not the results of an everywoman with sufficient delicate energy to persuade a complete technology of ladies to put on cork wedges, once more. Holmes is, in different phrases, a uncommon instance of a well-known one who wears “garments,” versus items, clothes and essentially the most dreaded time period of all… “vogue.”

However I’m wondering if there is perhaps extra to Katie Holmes than an ineffable, Midwestern relatability. That’s as a result of, final night time—when she was attending the ultimate night time of Alan Cumming Is Not Performing His Age on Broadway—Holmes wearing a denim trench coat which had been strewn with metallic eyelets, and a pair of patent and studded flats. That is about as mad, dangerous and harmful as this superstar will get, a departure from the tomboyish, girl-next-door components that has, maybe, been 30 years within the making.