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Infos von den Fashion Shows

• Louis Vuitton
  On the final day of Paris, Marc Jacobs rounded off the Fall collections in more ways than one. Not to put too fine a point on it, this was one fashion show heterosexual men are going to understand. Breast-wise, it put it all on a plate—or rather a corseted, cantilevered, frill-edged balcony. “And God Created Woman” announced the program, bringing up thoughts of the era of the young Bardot, of fifties-sixties wasp waists, and circle skirts. And, inevitably, Miuccia Prada, who first broached the comeback of the curvy silhouette earlier in the season in Milan.
  
  

  It takes a different casting approach to do justice to the refocusing of all eyes away from legs to the plentiful bosom. Thus, Jacobs had called on Laetitia Casta, Bar Refaeli, Catherine McNeil, Karolina Kurkova, and finally Elle Macpherson, all women whose physical attributes have acted as a disqualification for fashion show participation for so long. Not that the rehabilitation of the embonpoint was vulgarly done. Jacobs framed it more as a fresh, feminine, ingenue look, with hair scraped back into high, bouncy B.B. ponytails; clean makeup; and square-toed, block-heeled pumps trimmed with flat bows—another angle on the Mad Men era but this time with a charming Frenchified accent. The show swung along prettily as a fountain sprayed and jolly fifties movie music played in the middle of the tented courtyard, creating that quintessentially Parisian atmosphere, a sense of all being right in the best of all possible cities to be appreciated as a woman.
  
  

  If there was little to zero variety in silhouette—and the dirndl-esque petticoated skirt can’t be for the many—the items and trimmings exemplified the Vuitton knack for classy detail, as in fur buttons and collars and glittery heels. And above all, this Louis Vuitton show provided a charming backdrop to display the bags. This season, it’s a zillion mignonne reinterpretations of the classic Speedy. Here, that functional shape, designed in the 1930’s, came flocked and sequined, smothered in guipure lace over satin, or woven in metallic thread and done up in fox.
  —Sarah Mower

  

  

 

• Talbot Runhof
  Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof’s experience designing ballet costumes for the Dortmund Opera House last summer clearly had a huge effect on them. Their Fall presentation was dance-inspired, from the tip of its ballerina topknots to the toe of its pointe slipper-influenced heels. Dress after dress exploded at the hem into tutus of tulle, and the finale featured a solo by Lisa-Maree Cullum, prima ballerina of the Bayerisches Staatsballett. Talbot name-checked Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Red Shoes” as direct inspiration, while heaping scorn on the classic Powell-Pressburger film of the same name. Both spin a dramatic story of destructive obsession, which is scarcely what you’d expect to see reflected in the controlled cocktailwear that is Talbot Runhof’s core business, but in fact a little more emotion would have been welcome in a tightly edited show that struck one note and stayed there.
  
  
  Dark fabrics were draped and swagged for an effect that was anything but balletically airy, especially one floral print that looked like les fleurs du mal. The less said about the red propylene “legwarmers” the better. What levity there was came from the froths of tulle. Two gowns at the end featured a technique called “aluminum steaming,” which loaned an elusive metallic shimmer to a floating floral print. They could almost have been the most glamorous shower curtains you ever did see. Following Cullum’s solo (in red pointe slippers), the designers took their bow in red kicks. Cute.
  —Tim Blanks
  

  

 

• Hermès
  Lily Cole as a black-leather catsuit-ed Emma Peel in the Hermès remake of the sixties British TV series The Avengers. Pourquoi? Actually, in a tongue-in-cheek way, it made a kind of sense for this bastion of French values. First, it gave Jean Paul Gaultier the license to hook in a spoofy power-woman stereotype for the season (a character fashion’s toying with now). Second, it brought in masculine tailoring by way of Savile Row (the bowler hats and furled umbrellas were clearly the accoutrements of Peel’s partner-in-sleuthing John Steed, or the Whitehall Spymaster out of James Bond). This apparent Anglophilia might have been expected to cause an international incident, given the Franco-British rivalry that’s existed since Agincourt. Somehow, though, Gaultier managed to swing the whole thing around to end up as a pretty effective demonstration of classic Hermès values.
  
  

  Having established his references, clever old Gaultier was, first of all, able to make sly fun of the kinky-fetish aspects of so much black leather-wearing—something that has indeed crossed the mind as a slight issue of taste in many a show this season. When Gaultier sets about using napa leather at Hermès, however, his real concern is to cut a regular and discreet jacket or coat, the likes of which is one of the foundations of the house ready-to-wear. The saddlelike epaulets with dangling vestigial stirrups may be discounted as a prank—get past them and the bowlers and the umbrellas, and what you begin to see is impeccable tailoring, with no egregious extras as far as trendiness is concerned.
  
  

  That settled, Gaultier was free to use the remainder of the collection to sneak in such fare as casual-deluxe duffels, parkas, and sporty vests, along with the superb knitwear of the house. Still, he was stumped on eveningwear. He’s not alone in that, this being the season of the comeback of day. But fringed mohair blankets arranged in tiers, as evening skirts? That was a joke that was just a joke.
  —Sarah Mower

  

  

 

• Elie Saab
  Elie Saab scored some major red-carpet coups at the Oscars on Sunday, putting nominee Anna Kendrick in a blush pink gown and Rachel McAdams in a pastel floral number—both dresses from his January couture collection and both unapologetically pretty. For Fall, he took a much darker view, focusing primarily on black, with hits of burgundy, teal, and midnight blue for evening. His message would’ve been more powerful and effective had he edited down the 60-look show and eliminated the clingy tree-motif jerseys, but his sleek hourglass sheaths and flirty, full-skirted pieced lace cocktail dresses will appeal to more than just Hollywood starlets.
  
  

  Zeroing in on real-world clothes rather than his usual event-dress-heavy lineup was a prescient move in a season when designers en masse have been rediscovering the power of plain. You couldn’t call all of his eveningwear restrained, though: There were some see-through ombré net and peekaboo lace styles that, as any celebrity stylist could tell you, will never fly with the fashion police. But when Saab tamped down the excess in favor of understated goddess gowns and just-revealing-enough jewel-tone sequined columns, it was easy to picture the results on a red carpet sometime soon.
  —Nicole Phelps

  

  

 

• Wunderkind
  It’s ironic that Wolfgang Joop, who once made his living putting men and women in power suits, has become such a maximalist. For Fall, he appeared to have looked to Spain or perhaps the Argentine pampas for inspiration. The first outfit featured a striped and fringed horse blanket tossed over the shoulders, and from there Joop went on to turn those blankets into all manner of blazers and trenchcoats, with leather buckle closures and fringe lining the arm seams. But as strange as they sound, they worked; he can still cut a mean jacket. There was also a good-looking shearling aviator and cool leather perfectos cropped high underneath the armholes.
  
  
  On the more feminine side of the story, the designer showed draped scarf-print dresses trimmed with fur in a manner that echoed what Galliano had done earlier in the week. Other frocks came with large, multilayered accordion-pleated ruffs at the shoulders or heavily scalloped yokes, which gave them a costume-y sensibility out of step with the season. There were some decent outerwear pieces here, but now would’ve been an opportune moment for Joop to have fully re-engaged with the tailoring that was once such an integral part of his oeuvre.
  —Nicole Phelps
  

  

 

• Miu Miu
  If her Prada collection, with its emphasis on the bust, was a sexual come-on, Miuccia Prada’s Miu Miu show was about romance—at least on its pre-Summer of Love sixties surface. The narrow, short silhouette made an erogenous zone of twiggy legs elongated by square-toed pumps. Sleeveless shifts came with high, chin-scraping collars, some accented with thin, floppy bows; other dresses blossomed below the waist and were cinched with large turnkey closures (the better to preserve the innocence of the girls who wore them, perhaps). An abundance of silver rosettes dotting the front and circling the hem of coats added to the sweet Mary Quant-ish vibe.
  
  
  But this wouldn’t be a Miu Miu show without a little—or a lot of—provocation. Pinafore dresses with plunging U-fronts were worn with bandeaux that exposed the flesh under the breasts; shifts had cutouts at the ribs; and miniskirts flipped up suggestively at the outer thighs. All of this was done in fabrics that had an odd, incongruous solidity.
  
  

  The linear, Edie Sedgwick, pre-hippie sixties have been popping up with increasing frequency as the Fall season comes to a close. This collection put Prada squarely in the center of things, but, as usual, with her signature perverse twist.
  —Nicole Phelps

  

  

 

• Cerruti
  Cerruti, the French tailoring label, hasn’t had much of a profile in womenswear for several seasons, but on October 1 last year, the company signed the London-based Australian designer Richard Nicoll to revive its credibility. In the short time he’s been there (while shuttling to and fro on Eurostar), Nicoll has identified the house strength in daywear and set about recasting it for a modern woman’s working life. One of the ways he does that is through tonal color, matching cranberry shades in a single look, then grays; moving into a strong passage of petrol, teal blue, and navy; and then into unconventional pastel tones of apricot and beige-pink.
  
  
  Yet being allocated the last-but-one slot in four weeks of shows didn’t do the management any favors. While scores of editors were streaming home after Hermès, or struggling in traffic across town to make Miu Miu, Cerruti had chosen to show in the bleak, out-of-town cluster of abandoned warehouses the Chambre Syndicale of Paris has christened “Halle Freyssinet”—and which some international fashion professionals have taken to calling “Hell.”
  
  
  Overall, there was not enough here to make a fair evaluation of the soundness of Nicoll’s ideas about dressing working women. His mohair knits certainly have a fluffy appeal, as does the windowpane check tailoring, but notions like pants in see-through perforated fabric and latex skirts and leggings aren’t going to fly. Next season, Cerruti would be better off taking their presentation back home to their classy, light-filled showroom in the center of Paris, walking distance from where their customers live, work, and stay on business.
  —Sarah Mower
  

  

 

• Requiem
  The last several seasons have been challenging for small brands like Raffaele Borriello’s Requiem. But according to the designer, business is picking up. Credit that to his timely introduction of lower-priced elements like embellished knits, coupled, on the other side of the coin, with a stubborn refusal to skimp on luxe fabrics or his preferred way of piecing them together into one frock. Predictable little black dresses aren’t Borriello’s cup of tea. Instead, a Fall cocktail number might come with gazar sleeves, a charmeuse bodice overlaid with mesh, and a skirt made from a leather look-alike wool. Other designers may be editing out long evening dresses from their shows, but not Borriello, who describes his label as “an end of the afternoon-into-evening collection.” His most charming floor-grazer was a feminine take on the tuxedo.
  —Nicole Phelps
  

  

 

• Chloé
  Beige, beige, and more beige. It’s no news by now that the paler shade of brown, and the grown-up daywear it connotes, have become mainstays of the season. It’s the route Chloé has taken for Fall, with such thorough commitment that until halfway through, it almost seemed Hannah MacGibbon was reluctant to offer anything else.
  
  

  From the outset, she whittled the look down to its clearest components: a long-sleeved silk blouse and high-waist flared trousers, and the bouncy, blown-out Charlie girl hair that captures the seventies American sportswear attitude this trend is all about. Next up, MacGibbon introduced knitwear, classic menswear overcoats, and an early-Armani-like jacket that might have jumped out of Vogue’s pages in the post-women’s lib era—when dashing to work while looking enthusiastically businesslike was the thing.
  
  

  It’s a feeling, of course, that MacGibbon shares with her British female designer peers Phoebe Philo and Stella McCartney, who both passed through the Chloé studio some while back. They left the label with a reputation for girly dressing, jingly-jangly It bags, and statement shoes, but now that they’re all into their thirties, these young professionals are leading a different life.
  
  

  MacGibbon’s house-cleaning instinct has thrown out the all the frills, prints, funny bags, and chunky clogs and platform shoes that last made Chloé hot. The bags have been stripped of hardware and logos, and the footwear renovated as sidewalk-friendly caramel riding boots and springy-soled wedges. The flirty, blowy dresses, once the Chloé signature, have been axed. The hip-girl, slightly streetwise element that used to be part of the personality here was this season reduced to a mild play on western styling—a minor outbreak of leather fringing and one pair of velvet, gold-embroidered jeans that turned up in the second half.
  
  

  In terms of brand differentiation, though, that leaves a conundrum for buyers. Chloé’s offering for Fall puts the label in direct competition with what so many others are producing now. It left some puzzlement over whether leaving the house’s youth behind is such a wise move.
  —Sarah Mower

  

  

 

• Chanel
  Freja Beha Erichsen and three bears on an ice floe. This was the arctic scene at Chanel, where giant chunks of bona fide iceberg, specially transported from Scandinavia, formed the frozen landscape around which models solemnly splashed through a sea of ‘berg-melt in shaggy snow boots with ice-block heels.
  
  

  The Karl conceit of the season, no surprises, was an in-every-way extravagant play on Coco in cold weather. Using more fur than he’d even flung at Fendi—the twist being that here the fur was fake—Lagerfeld steered this collection nearer to couture than ready-to-wear than ever. Fur was woven into brown tweeds; formed deep pelmets on the lower half of leather jackets; became almost igloo-shaped capes, bonnets, even—for goodness’ sake—furry trousers. Meanwhile, the suit and coat combinations also had a level of lavish elaboration usually reserved for haute eveningwear. Fur-fringed embroideries and ice jewelry conspired to create intensely worked ruffled and beaded silhouettes that glinted with rock-crystal neckpieces and fistfuls of rings. Somewhere in there, a flash of translucent silver seemed to be a clutch in which the quilting of the CC classic bag had been frozen into the likeness of a refrigerator ice cube tray.
  
  

  It was a lucky stroke that the weather outside had kindly assisted Chanel in whipping subzero winds around the Grand Palais while this display was going on. Since humans are suggestible, it took only the merest suspension of disbelief to imagine this collection hitting the mark next fall, despite the fact that it will start to be delivered in July—and who knows in which century we’ll have another winter like this one? Nevertheless, putting global warming and the melting of ice caps both center stage and on the back burner (as it were), this show swept the audience along as they were treated to such amusements as seeing Karl Lagerfeld’s favorite, Baptiste Giabiconi, swagger out of an ice cave in a full-length polar bear coat.
  
  

  It wasn’t all played for laughs. Within the context of a season of innovative knitwear, Chanel’s was some of the most outstanding. A group of three short angora sweater dresses, tinted iceberg blue in the center, was an amazing follow-up from something Lagerfeld did with dégradé pastel embroidery in couture. One gray and black cardigan coat was knitted in a bubbly grid to mimic a down-filled puffer. And the finale was given to a wedding dress knitted in silk tulle ribbon to resemble Chanel’s bouclé tweed, forming a tight-fitting sweater in the body and then sweeping away in flounces in back. The bride—Freja, again—dangled an ice-block purse on a fur-woven Chanel chain.
  —Sarah Mower