By ERICA M. BLUMENTHALAPRIL 9, 2014  Music festival season kicks off this weekend with the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. And even though the haters are huffing, and the hoopla around “festival fashion” is excessive, there are good reasons to be excited this year. For one, Outkast is headlining many of the festivals. For another, assembling your rock-fest look will be a piece of cake. Free-floating dresses, folky prints, fringe, tie-dye — a Coachella undercurrent so infected the spring collections that, come festival time, you’re already there. No need to head to the shops; just come as you are.  Let Them Think You Just Threw It All Together  Designers like Isabel Marant and Raquel Allegra and labels like Electric Feathers and Reformation have perfected boho-in-the-city dressing, that polished look that pretends to shrug off effort. On a cool desert night, you might wear one of their long breezy styles with an oversize denim shirt. Back home, you’d sharpen it up with a leather jacket or mannish blazer.  Pharrell Williams sure raised the ante in the hat game this year. Gone are the fedora days; we’ve entered the era of tall-crown headwear. This tall one from Creatures of Comfort would protect your skin on a scorching desert day, and it has a festival-appropriate indigo-dyed band.  Glittery Links To Days Gone By  Little friendship bracelets, hung with ethnic trinkets, are practically an ode to summers past. Now, for the gilded bohemian, jewelers like Aurélie Bidermann, Alyssa Norton, Venessa Arizaga and Dezso by Sara Beltrán are doing them in elevated styles. Stack a bunch casually on your wrist, and they’ll remind you of your soulfulness.  Forget the Crown; Who Wears the Tee?  If Kanye West is “the No. 1 rock star on the planet,” as he has famously asserted, Drake is somewhere among the biggest rock stars in the world. During his North American tour last fall, he wore a succession of Calvin Klein Collection shirts that incorporated photographic prints of blue skies and seascapes. The prints, the designer Italo Zucchelli’s salute to summer, were inspired by Fire Island, California and the work of James Turrell (and akin to the artwork on Drake’s “Nothing Was the Same” album). When the T-shirt hits stores this month (there is a waiting list of more than 30 at the Madison Avenue store), you may want to scoop it up for the New York Governor’s Ball, or Drake’s own OVO Fest in Toronto in August.  The Right Steps on Foot Fanciness  Birkenstocks cast off their crunchy past around the time high-end fashion labels like Céline, Givenchy and Isabel Marant began sending out their own inspired variations. For festival season, leave your designer pair at home and go with the real thing. These days they come looking fresh and on trend, in florals and stripes.
Pharrell Williams ignites the high-hat look, Drake inspired T-shirts and glamorous friendship bracelets that would look good in the desert.