|  |  |  | | | | | Runway Feed | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  A title like Nosferatu, dry ice pouring out from backstage—those are usually reasons for alarm, but not, it turned out, at Maxime Simoens' show. As one relieved journo put it, "No fangs." A Couture week upstart, Simoens has more of a real world than otherworldly style. In fact, only 20 percent or so of the pieces he put on his catwalk today could be defined as couture. No surprise, those were the most gothic of the lot, with neckline-trimming chandelier crystals clinking as the models walked by and gossamer capes trailing behind.
As for the rest, it was quite streamlined: Sheaths and pantsuits were cut economically, and in accordance with the show's theme, they were color-blocked in graphic black and red. One dress came with a diamond cutout over the heart. The legions of the undead would be pleased, but it was the kind of number a living and breathing male could appreciate, too. Simoens will sell a lot of those frocks.
—Nicole Phelps | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  "Ten years? It's nothing," Anne Valérie Hash said before her couture show this morning. And perhaps she had a point on a day when a more venerable house like Dior was on the schedule. Still, the designer celebrated her brand's anniversary in her own unflashy way, presenting a concise group of ten looks on models and ten more mirror images on mannequins.
Couture has been enjoying a bit of a rebirth lately, with houses old and new looking with some success to the Far East for customers. Hash has made-to-measure clients spread out around the world, from Switzerland and Belgium to the Middle East and Asia. What distinguishes them, other than their disposable incomes, she said, is how well they know their bodies. "They tell me, 'I need sleeves,' or 'I don't want my stomach to show.'" Hers isn't a couture collection built upon fantasy. Instead, today's outing focused on Hash's understated, feminine, yet minimal signatures: "smoking" all-in-ones and trompe l'oeil dresses that look like a blouse and skirt but are in fact one piece.
But just because her clothes are reality-based doesn't mean they aren't dreamy. Hash has always had a sublime eye for color, and she used it to good effect here on a peachy pleat-front silk mousseline shirt dress with a smooth fall of a skirt in crepe a shade or two pinker. The designer has a similarly light touch when it comes to drape, for the most part at least. An asymmetric, nearly backless slipdress with a belt-loop neckline made it look as if the model had simply decided to wear her long black skirt as a frock; unfortunately, it fit about as well. If subtlety eluded Hash there, though, a one-sleeve jacket over a bustier dress had a seductive swagger. That outfit could appeal to women who like to cover up and those who like to show off in equal number.
—Nicole Phelps | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Elie Saab has said à bientôt to Miss Havisham. Where his January Couture show drooped under the weight of heavy embellishments, this collection felt a bit lighter and—it follows—more modern. That's not to say that the designer has changed his look; there were still scads of beads and crystals, as befits the haute couture, and even strips of fur were used as accents. But Saab's diaphanous, fairy princess dresses felt of this Paris moment. He caught the feeling for the long-sleeved, slim gowns that we've seen elsewhere, opening with one in an icy gray-blue tulle that was draped and gathered at the waist and accented with metallic silver.
Next up was a sleeveless full-length dress followed by a knee-skimming number in the same shade of aquamarine. Saab worked his methodical way through his palette. After a section in pale blue came white, then pink, mauve, and brown. He ended with a navy group and a single bride in platinum white. It seemed there was a backless dress in every color. Saab's old-fashioned, repetitive way of showing detracts from his precious workmanship. He's seen fit to upgrade the clothes themselves; now, perhaps it's time to update his presentations. He could start by kissing the wind machine good-bye.
—Nicole Phelps | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Though their label began as a mix of Americana-inspired workwear and traditional English tailoring, David Neville and Marcus Wainwright have adopted a more-the-merrier approach to influences since. Their recent menswear collections have drawn from various and disparate traditions, sporting to Scottish, military to millennial. This season, they pushed further still. One the one hand, Wainwright explained at their new showroom this week, they were drawn to surfing. ("It's a culture that's very attractive," he explained, while admitting that neither he nor partner David Neville is much of a surfer.) On the other hand, they referenced cholo culture, which grew out of the Latino gang scene of Los Angeles and the southwest.
It was the cholos who gave Rag & Bone the giant, diagonally pleated cropped pants that made a curious new addition to their range. The real-life cholos bought their Dickies several sizes too big and folded or belted them into the shape; the label's are sewn in place, for the volume without the uncertainty. Wainwright and Neville aren't the first designers to borrow the style, though you imagine they likely are the first to reimagine the Hawaiian shirt (a surfer staple) in a low-riders, barbed wire, and apartment complexes print. How you feel about that will depend on how open you are to a luxury label lifting street culture emblems for fun and for profit. Likewise the thick-soled slip-ons. "It's that Boyz N the Hood look," Wainwright explained. "A cross between Stubbs & Wootton and cholos."
Scattered throughout, whether in surfing looks (with surfboard stripes, lifeguard yellow wax cloth shorts) or cholo styles (with shirts closed at the top and open below), were the kind of tailored pieces that continue to define the brand, whatever the flavor of the season might be. Wainwright spoke of an "element of England," grounding the more out-there looks. And that's just what they'll do. Everyone (or maybe everyone but a cholo) will warm to a hand-tailored morning coat made at Martin Greenfield's Brooklyn factory. Or the dandy-friendly jacquard suiting, a first for the brand. It came in both blazer and, intriguingly, windbreaker form. "You can imagine Jagger wearing it," Neville piped in. Sartorially speaking, a boy from a slightly nearer hood.
—Matthew Schneier | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Carven | | | July 16, 2011 at 8:59 PM | | |  Carven may be a far cry from haute couture, but that doesn't stop designer Guillaume Henry from romancing his message. "It's not just clothes, that would be boring. There's always a story," he said at the label's rue Royale headquarters today. For his first-ever pre-collection, the story is a holiday in Switzerland. It gave him the opportunity to revisit some previous hits in clever new ways. The lace appliqués that he used to provocative effect on his Fall runway were altogether sweet here, creating trompe l'oeil lederhosen on a sweater or an apron on a skirt. A photo print of vintage postcards of the Alps appeared on both a silk shift and a nicer-price cotton T-shirt dress. Colorful map prints also turned up on tops and skirts. Basics with a difference make up a big part of the line, and Henry delivered those in the form of a mac cropped at the waist, a toggle coat cut in rugged white denim, and a trench left unlined so it can be worn all the way through summer.
The brand is growing by leaps and bounds. In addition to larger-than-ever offerings of shoes and bags, Henry showed his first bathing suit, a white maillot with a cutout above the midriff. Not much of a connection to Switzerland there, but the cutout will be familiar to his fans, and that's even more important.
—Nicole Phelps Media Files
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left. Media Files
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Piombo | | | July 16, 2011 at 8:59 PM | | |  Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Azzedine Alaïa inspires devotion like no other designer in fashion, so it was small wonder that his first show in eight years should end with applause that went on and on… and on, until French Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand scooted backstage and coaxed the famously shy designer out to face a rapturous standing ovation. And that was the only logical climax to a presentation that was punctuated throughout by involuntary squeaks of appreciation from a front row that included Donatella Versace, Sofia Coppola, and Kanye West.
Alaïa is known to be an acolyte of Madame Grès. He loaned dresses to the exhibition of her work running right now at the Musée Bourdelle in Paris. The Grès show has become a cause célèbre, not just because of the sublime workmanship, but because the clothes themselves are startlingly contemporary. They're a testament to the sui generis power of Grès' vision, which yields an almost eerie timelessness. And it was that same quality that came across on Alaïa's catwalk today. Credit his absolute control of his craft. His focus was as sharp as the laser cutting that created the latticed velvet on his eveningwear. It felt like the designer was exploring all the possibilities of a tightly edited handful of ideas, starting with one that was newest for longtime fans: the coat-dress. Cut from the substantial felted wool that is an Alaïa favorite, it had a rounded, slightly dropped shoulder, a bell-shaped flaring from inverted pleats on the hips and a padded texture to the skirt. It was a standout in the leaf green that is also an Alaïa (and Grès) fave.
The sheen of croc-stamped leather felt like something new, too. Alaïa used it in a trim green coat-dress, in a zipped sleeveless top, and matching pencil skirt in aubergine. The zips that defined the hips of the skirt were the designer's latest take on the body-consciousness that has defined his career.
And that brings us to the miracle of his knitwear. Alaïa has worked with the same mill in Italy for the last 30 years. Such an enduring relationship has allowed technical feats like this collection's short fitted jackets, as well as evening dresses that limned the body to the hips, dipped to cup the bum, then erupted into flamencolike tiers of ruffles. All in knit! Sober yet erotically charged, they were looks for proper grown-ups—of any age. "You just don't see clothes like that," one loyal customer rhapsodized at show's end. "There's everyone else. Then there's Alaïa."
—Tim Blanks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  A mood board methodically arranged with haunting pictures of the last tsar's family and their lost world cued the fairy-tale princess feel of Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli's new couture collection for Valentino. One dress—dévoré-ed flowers on a sheer background, with pleated tulle wings flying from the shoulders—was so Neverland-ready that it was a wonder it didn't elevate then and there from the catwalk.
A similar magic infused much of the rest of the collection, even daywear like the tweed suit that was gilded with gold and platinum. There was a fearlessness in the fact that so much of it was so old-fashioned, in specifics like the buttons running up the sleeve of a governess-y pale crepe gown or down the back of a black cashmere coat, or, more generally, in the neo-medieval restraint and decorum of long-sleeved, floor-length gowns. One, in black velvet, was practically penitent. But Chiuri and Piccioli's signal achievement has been to turn the old-fashioned into something new and irresistible. "A sense of memory," was Piccioli's cryptic clue. "Not nostalgic," Chiuri added quickly. True, how could they—or any of their glamorous young clientele—possibly be nostalgic about a period they had no direct experience of? But what the designers seemed to be talking about was the way they have managed to take the foundations of haute couture—the incredible, time-consuming, numbingly detailed techniques—and applied them to their own curious vision. Take that penitent black velvet gown, for instance. A few outfits later, it opened up into a delicate Gothic lattice that was suggestively contemporary.
Delicacy as a signpost of technique was also obvious in a cocktail dress spun from a net of crystals, or a petaled skirt with a tracery of platinum. Hair-meister Guido Palau's fragile gold-and-crystal diadems were a sterling accessory. But equally, there were outfits that seduced with their straightforwardness. A Cossack-collared white wool jacket over a long skirt saw the White Russian princess in daywear mode. And a simple panne velvet gown—braided at the neck and waist, slashed open at the back, and rendered in an elusive shade of eau de nil—was quite possibly dress of the week.
—Tim Blanks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Just over a week ago, Riccardo Tisci dazzled the menswear crowd with a lush, colorful show inspired by bird-of-paradise flowers. For his new haute couture collection, it was paradise in general that intrigued him. "Purity, lightness, fragility," was how he summed up his focus. At first glance, this was a much more restrained affair. The ten looks were all white, or very nearly so. But Tisci held nothing back when it came to the handwork.
Months and months in the planning, a long tulle dress was decorated with tiger's-eye pearls that had been inserted with crystals to catch the light and arrayed in the exact same pattern as the marks on an ostrich skin. Another gown was even more painstakingly embroidered with tiny silvery-gray caviar beads. In a callback to his women's ready-to-wear, Tisci paired it with a matching jumper boasting a sheer front panel and beading everywhere else so thick it was 3-D. A third dress, the most expensive and time-consuming to make of all the pieces, was entirely sewn of symmetrically placed hand-cut silk tulle paillettes. The result looked like some sort of exotic fish--in the most flattering possible way.
And, really, that was just the beginning of the embellishments. Hand-curled feathers; plumes so densely embroidered they looked like fur; dégradé beading that not only changed color but also went from shiny to matte—all rewarded the sort of up-close inspection that Tisci has made a point of his Place Vendôme couture installations. At these presentations, every detail, however small, warrants his attention. On the one hand, a fragrance diffuser misted the scent of spring roses through the rooms; and on the other, Popol Vuh, circa Werner Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God, played on the speakers.
Tisci, in other words, hasn't entirely abandoned his dark side, nor lost his taste for provocation. Mingling among all those high-priced embellishments were the oversize plastic zippers that have become a signature of his modern take on the traditional art of custom dressmaking. And don't forget all the flesh laid bare by his cutouts, peekaboo fringe, and tulle. Still, the exquisite technique was the big story here, pointing as it did to the continuing evolution of this designer's unique couture vision.
—Nicole Phelps | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Marni | | | July 16, 2011 at 8:59 PM | | |  Presenting your Resort line alongside the couture shows can be a risky proposition; garments lovingly labored over by hand have the potential to make the machine-made stuff look flimsy by comparison. Consuelo Castiglioni didn't have that problem with this Marni pre-collection. Not just because the fabrics had a substantial hand, from the sturdy black canvas appliquéd with gold leather she used for a smock and an A-line skirt to the spongy crepe of a pair of flaring, seventies-ish trousers. There was also the fact that a few of the silhouettes owed something to traditional couture shapes—take the rounded, three-dimensional look of the sleeves on a tunic, or the tulip cut of a long skirt.
Prints once again figured big here. Geometric tile patterns echoed those on the label's Fall runway, but were several shades bolder; while an oversize violet keyed into the season's developing trend for tropical flowers. The Marni girl will find plenty here to keep her happy until Spring.
—Nicole Phelps Media Files
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Iceberg built its business on knitwear, and based on its Resort collection, we'd say the Italian label hasn't lost its groove when it comes to sweaters. Case in point: the oversize, sunny yellow cashmere pullover with a can't-miss giant Mickey Mouse face covered in crystals. If it sounds almost gaudy, it was surprisingly fun when styled with scrunched up sleeves, a wrap-effect pencil skirt, and double T-strap pumps. It's hard to compete with Mickey, though, and the rest of the lineup faded into the background with the exception of the evening looks. One long gown had a twisted halter neck, copper beading, and a high slit for a hint of sex appeal, while a tuxedo jumpsuit brought the label's casual sportswear approach to after-hours dressing. Going forward, more of this would be welcome.
—Brittany Adams Media Files
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Chanel | | | July 16, 2011 at 8:59 PM | | |  Karl Lagerfeld recently acquired a full set of stills from 1927's apocalyptic sci-fi classic Metropolis, signed by the film's director Fritz Lang to its young star Brigitte Helm. It was sheer coincidence, however, that there was a Metropolis feel to the set for today's Chanel haute couture show. Or was it? The backdrop for the presentation was a neon-limned mock-up of the Place Vendôme, with Napoleon replaced at the top of his column by a robot Coco. (In Lang's movie, a mad scientist makes a robot replica of Helm.) The set was dark and glistening, like rain had just fallen. A perfect film noir atmosphere, in other words. And Lagerfeld had the perfect script for it—Coco's own life story.
At least that was one way to look at a collection that seemed to chop through time. It clearly wasn't a chronological arc. The show opened with Chanel tweed suits, which didn't make their appearance until the twenties, and it closed with "lamp shade" evening silhouettes that echoed the work of Paul Poiret, the early twentieth-century Parisian designer whom Chanel helped render irrelevant with her innovations. Michel Gaubert's soundtrack, meanwhile, created an aural equivalent of the temporal mash-up by following new English pop with bursts of Stravinsky (he was Coco's lover in the twenties). But Lagerfeld had already prepared us for this when he called the collection Les Allures de Chanel. Plural—he wanted to emphasize her multifacetedness.
But, if the clothes themselves were any guide, he also wanted to preserve Coco's mystery. The collection was so dominated by shades of black, gray, and midnight blue that the odd accents of fuchsia looked like less-than-happy accidents. Even when Lagerfeld used white, he defused it with a drizzle of dark beading or a shadowy veil or even a glittery black tank. The mood felt like an organic follow-on from the dystopia of the Fall ready-to-wear show. As with that collection, the lack of compromise, particularly with the tricky peplum-over-narrow-skirt silhouette, could challenge brand fans. But the somber luxury of the wardrobe Karl Lagerfeld is proposing for dark times is immensely seductive.
—Tim Blanks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  You can't be down on a boy with a dream. For decades, Bill Gaytten strives under John Galliano's yoke as one of his most intimate facilitators, then suddenly fate conspires to throw him into the lead role, and he has the means to do everything he has ever wanted to do, everything he has ever bitten his tongue over. What's more, he has a team of the industry's best who have cherished him these long years for the adorable creature he is, and they are prepared to help him realize his dream: Stephen Jones with his headpieces, Jeremy Healy on beats, Michael Howells with his set design, Pat McGrath on makeup, Orlando Pita on hair. And they do this not just because they love Bill but because they want to acknowledge the achievements of his fallen master.
So what happens next?
On the evidence of today's first Dior couture show without John Galliano, what happens is a misjudged effort to impress an alien thumbprint on an aesthetic that, for better or worse, is one of the fashion industry's most clearly defined. After the show, a remarkably sanguine, even elated Gaytten was perfectly happy to celebrate the opportunity he'd been given to bring his own tastes to the fore, and they were significantly architectural: Frank Gehry, Jean-Michel Frank, the Memphis movement of the eighties. The opening outfit—a crazy-paving jacket with a ruffled collar and a full pleated skirt—kind of caught the postmodern madness of Memphis. And the subsequent parade of folded, tiered, unfinished taffeta, gazar, and organza had a similar assault-on-couture-orthodoxy vibe. There was a Bar jacket or two in the mix, acknowledging Dior's legacy, but the overriding sense was that a demon, long-contained, had been released, so that the Dior woman had suddenly been possessed by a disco dolly who, to the strains of Grace Jones, would blow out her hair and rampage to the nearest dance floor in a molto-bat-winged hostess gown that perfectly captured the campiness of cult-fave TV play Abigail's Party.
There were also echoes of one gloriously mad moment in Italian fashion when denim prophet Adriano Goldschmied produced clothes under a label he called Bobo Kaminsky, but that could hardly be considered a reference point for haute couture. The finale brought together black in a Napoleon hat, white in a crown of stars. There was one dress draped party-style in tinsel, another splattered with crystals. Then came Karlie Kloss, dressed as a Pierrot, sad clown all alone in the spotlight as the soundtrack failed and glitter showered down. But the stardust missed her by this much. And that felt like some kind of crazy cosmic metaphor.
So, once again, what happens next?
—Tim Blanks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  On the day when he was finally able to realize his long-nursed couture dreams, Giambattista Valli rose to the challenge of tradition with a collection that threw down the gauntlet to anyone who would insist that this rarified métier is on its last legs. Valli celebrated the past when he used the white poplin shirtdress—the blouse de cabine—of the atelier worker as a building block. The most obvious example: the way he layered a black lamé tweed skirt over the "blouse." But if that combination of casual and couture felt like essential Valli, there were many more examples of the designer's ability to meld formality and—for want of a better word—fun. Try a cocktail dress that proceeded downward from a pink coral yoke to a crystal-ed black body to a hem of ostrich feathers. Or the coat-dress in oh-so-serious gazar that dissolved from a coral bodice to a skirt in lacquered lemon blossom.
Amid such sensual pleasures, Valli anchored the floaty and the flyaway, conveying the essential rigor of couture design with his animal-printed mousselines and monochrome florals. He even paraded a penitent, a woman in an ostrich-feather sheath swathed in a black lace veil. But, more to the Vatican-friendly point, Valli also proposed a shot of red, like Valentino before him. Perhaps it's no wonder couture-inclined designers from Rome love red. You could almost say it's by papal decree.
—Tim Blanks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Couture week means a lot of crinoline, tulle, and taffeta. The word "fusty" comes to mind. Bouchra Jarrar cut through all that like a knife today with another collection that confirms her technique is just as sharp as her vision. Knives are no accidental metaphor. The jacket of an elegantly cut black tailleur was sliced open with a slash slightly askew of center, and teardrop cutouts accented the bodice of an otherwise understated little black dress.
Jarrar loves bold, graphic lines. Vivid stripes of pulsating blue and white bisected a simple gray shift, trimmed a charcoal tweed sleeveless coat-dress, added interest to knits. Backstage, the designer said she was interested in playing with the contrast of masculinity and femininity, but it's that luminous blue that people will remember. It was particularly striking on a vest interwoven with natural-color yarn, whose handwork made it the show's truly haute-est piece. Jarrar's collection may not be couture, per se—it's sold at Ikram, Jeffrey, Kirna Zabête, and Bergdorf Goodman—but its unfettered modernism gave it an edge on the first day of these Paris shows.
—Nicole Phelps | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Milly | | | July 16, 2011 at 8:59 PM | | |  Michelle Smith thinks of Resort as a "palate-cleansing sorbet course" before Spring. The vibrant scarlet and cyan shades in this collection were indeed refreshing, as was a long, dip-dyed "island" dress that satisfied the vacation aspect of Resort (there were cute swimsuits for that, too). After taking in the recent Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L'amour fou exhibition at Gagosian, the Milly designer wondered what it would like to be an artist's muse. So there were impressionist, painterly prints on A-line skirts and dresses. Other notable looks included a "kooky square-pattern" dress that appeared to be two separate pieces (a lightweight chain was sewn into the top half to achieve a nice drape), and a stretchy cargo trench dress with tortoise shell novelty buttons. There was nothing terribly groundbreaking here, but Smith has her whimsical customer nailed down.
—Brittany Adams | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Cacharel is one of the handful of houses to recently appoint sapling creative directors eager to make names for themselves in the industry. But fashion watchers will need to wait until the Spring shows to see what kind of new tricks designers Ling Liu and Dawei Sun, who both did time at Balenciaga, have up their sleeves. Resort was a transitional collection for Cacharel, and the in-house design team played it safe, reinterpreting some of the most successful styles from past seasons. There were plenty of sweet floral prints and signature sharp blouses here. They also brought back bright hues, which were all but absent on the Fall runway. Of these colorful pieces, a simple draped minidress in heavy coccinelle (French for "ladybug") silk was particularly striking.
—Brittany Adams Media Files
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  You can learn a lot from a T-shirt. London-based designer Graeme Armour, for instance, has been fêted in the press and gotten plenty of look-sees from key retailers for his sharply gothic clothes, but it wasn't until he made a range of jersey pieces—initially exclusive to Japan—that he found himself with a sales hit on his hands. This season, as he debuts his first Resort collection, Armour is integrating the jerseys into his mainline. Moreover, he seems to have internalized the lesson of their success, dedicating himself to making clothes that are forthrightly more accessible and wearable than they have been until now.
"Wearable" and "accessible" typically read as euphemisms for "boring," but not in Armour's case. To wit, check out his sheer mesh pocket tee, a more subtle thing than it looks. The shoulders are oversized and rounded—a signature of this collection—and the sleeves are cut open, so they flutter around. Those kinds of construction details matter; they make a simple piece distinctive. Same goes for the sweatshirt-shaped tops with sly sheer inserts and draped jersey dresses with a come-hither opening at the hip. Armour is very good at sexy; he knows how to be tasteful about it. Here, his most vixenish pieces, like a cropped halter top in micro-pleated viscose, fused easily with more androgynous looks, such as a pair of cuffed silk trousers in blackwatch plaid, or a boxy black and white plaid shirt with leather collar and trim. There was a bit more color than usual, thanks to those checks, and a bit more playfulness, which is welcome. Armour is on the right track.
—Maya Singer | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Giorgio Armani is clearly looking East. After a Resort collection that drew on Imperial China, the Fall haute couture collection he showed today was an homage to Japan. While it's true that China represents an unprecedented business opportunity—meaning it's smart to market to it—Armani's connection to Japan is a deeper and more emotional one. He has been financially supporting a UNESCO scholarship program to help child victims of March's disaster. With today's Privé show, he wanted to show his support in a more personal way, and also perhaps acknowledge a creative debt that stretches back decades, or at least to his famous samurai-influenced collection.
The result was a striking symbiosis of man and country. Japanese visual icons—ranging from parasols to cherry blossoms—were predictably transmuted in prints, and, equally predictably, there were obilike belts and origamilike folds. But it felt like Armani had reflected on new Japan as much as old traditions, because there was a hint of Rei Kawakubo's original radicalism in the man-tailored pants, in the layered, elongated Edwardian line, in odd details like the double cuff on a jacket sleeve, and especially in all the asymmetry. Witness a one-armed jacket, the single floral-printed pannier that hung off a black bolero, or the diagonal slash that bisected a velvet dress to reveal a printed interior. And, seeing we're on the subject of the new, the collection's major futuristic flourish—the stiffened bodices that stood up like shields over the torso—could potentially also be laid at Japan's door. Was it protection they offered?
The drama of the clothes—and their inspiration—literally came to a head with the origami architecture of Philip Treacy's "hats." They highlighted the structured nature of Armani's couture, which was as deliberate here as a black patent-leather bodice and a world apart from the fluidity of his ready-to-wear. Remarkable, really, that a man at this stage in his career should be pushing forward into country that is uncharted for him. But the path was illuminated by pieces like the glowing evening sheath, crusted with thousands of tangerine bugle beads, that helped close the show.
—Tim Blanks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Jonathan Saunders is loving working with menswear. That much was clear from his visible pleasure as he tried on his samples. They fitted him perfectly, no surprise when he was insisting he only made things he wanted to wear himself. Sounds obvious enough, but you'd be surprised how often the disconnect between designer and design opens up a credibility gap, especially in menswear. Not here, though. In his first full collection for men, Saunders applied his design vocabulary—the engineered prints, the confident color palette, the modernist tendency —to such classics as a peacoat, a gab trench, and a striped shirt, but each of them was given an idiosyncratic twist. That shirt, for instance. The stripes were actually an engineered jacquard, so subtle that only the truly informed would recognize the feat. "It takes as much work to do that as a big jazzy print," Saunders said proudly.
While the outerwear worked an appropriately traditional palette of stone and tan, the designer added aqua accents for a Miami Beach effect. The same shade colored a suit and a parka. It made an interesting counterpoint to the collection's other visual flourish, a print that looked like Victorian wallpaper. It shouldn't have worked, but Saunders turned it into something so T-shirt-casual that it gelled well with the lean, clean lines of everything else, at the same time as it added an arts and crafts-y edge that reminded us of the designer's roots.
—Tim Blanks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Kenzo | | | July 16, 2011 at 8:59 PM | | |  Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left. Media Files
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  With actor Vincent Cassel winding up Natalie Portman about black swans and white swans on the soundtrack of Jean Paul Gaultier's new Couture presentation, one inference was that dancers and couturiers share an obsession with their craft. Gaultier currently has a three-decade-plus career retrospective running at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and it is from all accounts a monument to glorious obsession. The retrospection seems to have led to reflection, because this collection cast its eye back over decades of boundary-pushing, taboo-busting innovation in design, from men in skirts to conical bras to unlikely hybrids (a biker tutu?). Hence the reappearance on Gaultier's runway—15 years to the day since she'd last walked in a fashion show—of Ève Salvail, whose shaven and tattoo-ed scalp was once such an affront to supermodel glamour. Here, the designer cast her against type as his white swan.
Though it's not the first time he's attempted such an overview, this was probably Gaultier's most accomplished one yet. From the first outfit—a chic pinstripe pantsuit that walked away to reveal a froth of tutu spilling out behind—his peerless tailoring was on parade. His signature mutated trench has rarely looked more gorgeous than it did here, reconfigured as an evening dress in pale gold silk faille and mousseline. The gender-bending took a turn for the opulent, too. The designer's male dandies were sloe-eyed decadents from a Diaghliev fantasy, in keeping with the ballet theme.
But the passage of time has taken the edge off such drollery. Gaultier's longtime male muse Tanel swishing down the catwalk in a floor-length skirt of ostrich feathers would once have sent a shiver of deliciousness through the crowd. Here, he was like a cuddly—if slightly ragged—uncle in his frock, in the same way that Gaultier himself is now one of the grand old(ish) men of haute couture. Which means there is today as much to appreciate in the way he carries the torch for tradition as there used to be in the way he challenged fashion orthodoxy.
The technical achievements in this collection included remarkable trompe l'oeil work with feathers (particularly an alpine ski sweater composed entirely of them). Gaultier's approach to plissé pleating echoed Madame Grès, subject of an exhibition currently running in Paris, which Jean Paul couldn't stop raving about after his own show. There was also some Dior in there, too. Those with a memory might recall the moment when Gaultier was mentioned as a possible candidate for that job, before Galliano snared it. Plus ça change…
—Tim Blanks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  A young designer like Alexis Mabille is living testament to the potency of the Parisian couture mythos. The gowns he creates are the sort of thing you imagine a boy racked by fever dreams of fashion would conjure up: big, elaborate, luxe confections that would once have been the very definition of "Paris fashion" for the likes of magazine readers, moviegoers, and anyone anywhere who lived a vicarious life as opposed to a glamorous one. But Mabille always brings more than that to the table, usually something arcane and utterly French. It doesn't always work, but at least he gets an A for effort.
This time, he looked to La Fontaine's classic animal fables, dressing his models in outfits inspired by all forms of furred, feathered, and feelered creatures. The Ant was in glossy black crepe, with side slits baring an expanse of thigh. The wings of her Grasshopper rival were duplicated in lamé and duchesse satin on the bodice of a dress.
The Black Wolf was in black velvet with Swarovski "fangs" running down both arms. Long silk fringes were bunched to form a bustier for The Horse. Then they were tied in the back, where they flowed into a tail-like train. The Magpie was perhaps the simplest and the most effective: an elongated black swallowtail coat over a white crepe column.
There was both drama and logic in such pieces. But not always. The poor Swan was cursed with mustard yellow leggings below her minidress of tattered white organza. As for the Frog (which sounds so much better in the original as La Grenouille), she wore a silk gown so huge it was easy to imagine dwarves were supporting her under her dress. At least that was an image that stuck with the fabulist theme, but it also highlighted Mabille's tendency to the overwrought. A weakness, for now.
—Tim Blanks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left. Media Files
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Tracy Reese's latest Resort collection featured relaxed, organic fabrics and a neutral-heavy palette with only the occasional pop of "zinnia" orange. Reese is always hip to what her customer covets, and that is usually a flattering, feminine frock. So, naturally, there were a few of those here, like the nicely draped tawny one with scattered, subdued sequins, or an A-line number with a leather bodice and full, lacy skirt. Other notable moments included a cutout-shoulder sweater in a python print Reese pulled from her archives and several denim twill looks trimmed with navy leather.
—Brittany Adams | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
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