London Fashion Week Spring-Summer 2007 - Alexander McQueen

The story of the last few years of Alexander McQueen has been a long, frequently angry tussle between his love of grand theatrics (which often deflect energy and attention from the clothes) and the more sullen straight-up parades flung on to appease the commercial guys (which only deflate his critics' expectations). For the first time, his spring collection resolved those conflicting tensions in a presentation, staged in the round in the Cirque d'Hiver, that framed all his romantic, historicist accomplishments without veering too far in either direction.

An ensemble of musicians and a dusty chandelier gave just enough background atmosphere to sustain the sequence of gracefully detailed Edwardiana, infanta dresses, and sharp signature tailoring. His collection notes quoted Barry Lyndon, Goya, and the Marchesa Casati, but really this was a revision of all the things the designer does best. Going back over his own history—as well as favorite points in fashion history—is something McQueen has done before; in this case it improved the sense of lightness and delicacy in his clothes. Nineteenth-century bodice-fitted jackets came out with chiffon jabot blouses and long skirts, followed by corseted dresses—some with hard, hip-exaggerated hourglass carapaces—which bloomed into lace-covered skirts. A palette of dusty gray, ivory, and faded pinks added to the poetic rendering of skills he has perfected over the years—both during his stint in couture at Givenchy and at the atelier he maintains in London to make wedding and special-occasion dresses.

From this last, perhaps, and the young clients who come there, he's learned about the softness a woman wants in a romantic dress today. Still, the standouts were a couple of more modern looks perfect for less dressy evenings: gray pants with versions of the season's tunics over them, one in asymmetric tiers of dusty-rose lace, and the other a gold-leaf-tinged elongated T-shirt. Looking at it from a broader perspective, it's true to say that this self-referential McQueen collection did not contribute to the new debate about how fashion can move on from its fixation with the past. But as a summation of all he has to offer in the way of refinement, it was one of his best.

New York Fashion Week Spring-Summer 2007 - Carolina Herrera

For spring, Carolina Herrera jettisoned the fifties inspirations that threatened to weigh down her fall collection. With a front row lined with both new and longtime members of the best-dressed list, she seemed to be thinking, Why look anywhere else for ideas? Realism was the order of the day, served with a smattering of couturelike touches and Verdura jewelry. Her trench was cut in black-and-white lace and accented with rosettes. A slim wool sheath—the very essence of urbane simplicity—came with subtle pleating details. And this time, the references to the past were handled gently. A toile sundress was printed with the likeness of Marilyn Monroe, but if you weren't looking closely, you might have missed it.

 That fabric appeared later in the show, underneath a veil of heavily beaded chiffon. If some of the evening dresses were a little busy and overdone compared to her lighter resort offerings, there were at least two that had her gals circling their program notes: One was the finale, a net cocktail number with ribbon embroidery that was right in line with the fun, short dresses seen on many spring runways; the other was a slim matelassé gown with a ribbon sash dividing a rose tank and a deeper red narrow skirt. It was polished, but also effortless—a combination the designer pulled off with a fair degree of consistency in this collection.

Paris Couture Week Fall-Winter 2006 - Valentino

With a nod in the direction of Russia—and perhaps a wink to the female members of the superspending emergent oligarchy—Valentino opened his Fall couture show with a black swing coat heavily decorated with folkloric embroidery. He took his themes from Russian palaces, art treasures, and handicrafts, but themes never deflect this designer too far from his lifetime's focus, which is simply to make his women feel special. By outfit three, a superb bubble coat in black duchesse satin that was reminiscent of the fifties but perfect for a young woman of today, it was apparent he was going to break up the references with a few beautiful pieces untethered to any narrative.

Bell-skirted cocktail dresses and skirt suits in embroidered tweed or topped with minute gold-lace cardigans could bear a glancing resemblance to Russian dolls or icons—but it doesn't really matter. What does is that the silhouettes look young and right for the moment, and that the handwork is extraordinary. Evening dresses stood as a master class in the flawless refinement that has been his trademark since he opened for business in Rome in 1959. One in particular, a draped black-chiffon goddess gown with an asymmetric shoulder strap fastened with a ribbon cockade, had a timeless beauty any woman would cherish. In the week that he celebrates his Légion d'honneur, the audience gave Valentino loud applause for the lifelong and unwavering pursuit of his vision.

Paris Couture Week Fall-Winter 2006 - Jean-Paul Gaultier

 

The visual pun and the trompe l'oeil sartorial quip have basically been owned by Jean Paul Gaultier for 20 years, so it's no surprise to see him referencing Schiaparelli, Dalí, and Cocteau in this surrealist-tinted season. So unsurprising, in fact, that a bride with a candelabra on her head, a redingote sleeve sprouting a fully feathered cockerel, and a suit with a cloth fox stole implanted in its neckline seemed not madly disturbing, but almost normal.

 

The truth is, Gaultier's habitual cheekiness is kept so well in check now, his collections give off a sly chic rather than shock. This latest outing was essentially an exercise in running through his classic to-do list: the trench, the trouser suit, the bomber, the L.B.D., and, of course, the corset dress he's made his own. The built-in jokes tended to be visible only from the side or the rear of the garment: Slender velvet gowns came with sheer panels in the flanks; a puffy-sleeved fur jacket, with an organza back. A trenchcoat dress, meanwhile, was cleverly veiled with a trailing silk scarf that seemed to flutter away into a puff of smoke. All very sane and wearable in polite society.

Gaultier seems to have reconciled himself to the fact that these days, even the elite are in no mood to spend money on something that might risk ridicule. For those with fond memories of his cheerful ribbing of the bourgeoisie, that's a pity. But he did allow himself one veiled dig at his rich-and-thin target market: A little black dress, plain in front, turned to show a scooped-out back with a spine and ribs recreated in strips of organza. In the program notes, it was called "Wallis."

Paris Couture Week Fall-Winter 2006 - Givenchy

 

At Givenchy, what's interesting is watching what the young designer Riccardo Tisci can make of the rarefied milieu of haute couture. It is a field now narrowed to a very few players, some of whom were running their own ateliers before Tisci was born, and it is not fair to compare the work of a novice with the accomplishments of masters. Rather, the question is, what do his collections say about who he is and how he sees the world?

 

To judge from this presentation, Tisci is working toward expressing a somewhat dark, contemporary vision of Parisian chic, permeated with an awareness of global undercurrents. The themes in his program notes were drawn from multiple ethnic sources, including Bosnia, India, Africa, and Indonesia. They produced a show, mainly in shades of dark browns and black, that juxtaposed precise tailoring and evening gowns with vast tribal headpieces, veils, and skeletonlike boleros, and suggested imagined worlds of ritual, ceremony, and myth. Clearly, Tisci is a designer sensitive to the notion that fashion is more than a straightforward showcasing of salable clothes. That's to be applauded, even though his fledgling career is a work in progress.

Paris Couture Week Fall-Winter 2006 - Elie Saab

 

There's a growing sense that the tables are turning at Elie Saab. For one thing, this supersuccessful Beirut designer is proving a quick study. Gone are the slit-to-the-groin sub-Cavalli looks that made him seem like such an outsider when he began showing his couture in Paris. In their place are many pretty, perfectly tasteful dresses. And his cleaned-up presentation, with its simple hair and makeup and absence of annoying doodads in the way of hats and jewelry, is starting to set an example for some far more revered Paris fixtures of how to make eveningwear look contemporary.

 

It's also increasingly obvious that, as Western designers look ever more hopefully to the burgeoning fashion market in the Middle East, Saab already has it sewn up. As the lights went down, an inner-circle couture watcher whispered authoritatively, "Every Saudi princess is in town. And they're buying." Saab's clothes are designed for women who dress up and have plenty of parties to go to, not just for celebrity red-carpet one-night stands. Many a design studio in Paris, Milan, and New York might have cause to envy that.

His pragmatic style may lack the traditional grandeur of couture, the willingness to take a highfalutin theme and run with it, but no matter. He has all the bases covered—from black or ivory guipure-lace cocktail wear to seemingly endless floor-length options, in nude with sparkle, silver and gold sequins, shot taffeta, and panne velvet. All he needs to realize now is that showing so many looks detracts from his best gowns, like the simple one-sleeved sequin wrap. Overvisibility of supply has a way of diluting perceived luxury-value, but season by season, Elie Saab is moving in the right direction.

Paris Couture Week Fall-Winter 2006 - Christian Lacroix

It's the vivid and unique color sense of Christian Lacroix that knocks you sideways. Even the tights in his couture collection beam out news about the shades of the coming season: turquoise, purple, and brilliant scarlet. See them set against khaki, bronze, teal, midnight, dusty pink, pale gold, hot orange, and ice-blue, and it's a sensory feast before you even take into account the layered delicacy and intricate details of the clothes.

Suffice to say that this collection captured the trends and pushed them into a personal realm that could only exist in the mind of Lacroix. He showed short-and-leggy shifts with a waistless, floating volume. He did egg-shaped coats, strapless bell-skirted damask dresses, leg-o'-mutton sleeves, and extravagant astrakhan capes. Renaissance balloon sleeves cropped up alongside infanta dresses and draped chiffon gowns. There was gilding and lamé; ribbons and jet; clouds of tulle; and billows of taffeta. By some miracle, none of these elements ended up fighting one another. After 20 years, Christian Lacroix is, without doubt, at the height of his powers.

Paris Couture Week Fall-Winter 2006 - Christian Dior

Let us not be so prosaic as to ask exactly what Joan of Arc, Siouxsie Sioux, Botticelli, and the forties French film actress Arletty may have to do with one another—we've arrived in the parallel universe known as John Galliano's Christian Dior. So, on with the show! It¿s a parade of medieval warrior-women in gilded chain mail, copper verdigris gowns, and glass diadems, each equipped with an armored sleeve. It's a bizarre troupe of goth-punks in outsize black-and-red folded 3-D shapes fashioned from trash-bag plastic. It's a mincing line of forties ladies in pea-green and magenta doublet-jacketed crepe suits sporting lobster parts for hats. And then it's a perambulating collection of Tuscan topiary, with pennants and trumpets poking out atop.

All this—and, be assured, there was more—played out against the backdrop of a Renaissance garden underneath a sky that alternated between blood-red storm clouds and a spinning astrological wheel taken from an illuminated manuscript. Such historicist games, richly yet randomly referenced, are, of course, part of the perverse delight of any John Galliano presentation. This season, the connecting threads of his allusions even managed to make sense in places. He refined the dark-ages militarism that appeared earlier on Dior's ready-to-wear runway, explored the parallels between doublet and hose and tunics and leggings, and hinted at a surrealist subtext that seems a pretty apt response to the here and now. Between the theatrics, there were also some amazingly covetable draped gowns in sugarplum, white, and peach. These showed up just before the finale: Galliano dropping in to take his bow, dressed as a spaceman.

Paris Couture Week Fall-Winter 2006 - Chanel

With his sharp knack for synthesizing the mood of the moment into the spirit of Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld came up with a couture statement that might neatly be labeled "mod medieval." In a short, leggy collection shown entirely with thigh-high boots, some in distressed denim, he compressed a tough vibe into a sequence of abbreviated suits and tunic dresses marched out at high speed around a stark-white runway.

The skinny-leg device showcased Lagerfeld's deft handling of new proportions. It started with a narrow, molded shoulder line falling to dresses with a slight flare in the hem, or to short, belled skirts articulated to swing underneath tweed jackets. One outstanding cardinal-red duchesse-satin coat with a huge bubble collar was a succinct reply to the vexed refrain of whether volume can be truly desirable—no question, if it looks that gorgeous.

Still, for all the rigor of line, there was rich Chanel craftsmanship in every piece. Jeweled buttons and belts, embroideries of exploding stars, pearl and diamond hair decorations, dense patches of appliqué and stones, and smotherings of black satin bows conspired to give a fleeting impression of armor and heraldic pageantry—that's where the sense of futuristic medievalism came into play. It all passed at such relentless velocity, though, the details were difficult to catch, at least until the very last moment. When the girls finally stood still, the audience, watching from seats on a central dais, suddenly found itself revolving, carousel-style, at leisure to inspect every look. Great trip, in every sense.

Paris Couture Week Fall-Winter 2006 - Armani Prive

The fact that Giorgio Armani is working to set his Privé collection head and shoulders above his ready-to-wear is increasingly apparent. In a literal sense, he built up the collars of his opening daywear with face-framing furls and finished the look with forward-tilted toques—he's a man who can't resist a hat when flying at couture altitude. From there, the stylistic mood hovered somewhere between the enveloping Poiret coat and the precise, peaked-shoulder jacket of old Hollywood silhouettes, cut in complex zigzag patterns and tiny pleats.

 

In a more pervasive sense, though, the distinguishing move forward in Armani's collection was his ever-richer deployment of materials and technique, like a sheared mink made light with organdy insets, or a fan-pleated python trench. For a designer in touch with the lifestyles of the superrich in Asia and other far-flung regions where he's extending his reach, that makes sense. Nevertheless, this line is at its best on the territory he's already defined for himself—the place in the spotlight marked out for the singular Armani evening dress. When he's concentrating on minimally framing a woman's presence with one of his pale, strapless, scrunch-pleated, and draped gowns, the attraction of this collection is self-evident.