Cacharel

07.05.12 | Comments Off

Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Alexis Mabille

07.05.12 | No Comments

Pity the designer who had to follow Raf Simons' blockbuster debut at Dior. Today, that task fell to Alexis Mabille, and the Frenchman suffered by the comparison. A beauty look that had his models sporting crescent moon hairdos with diamanté brooches suspended from their tips did him no favors, but the collection's more fatal flaw was its lack of focus.

Backstage, Mabille said he was "imagining women as jewels." That gave him his far-ranging color palette—malachite to opal to topaz to platinum—and an excuse to lay the sequins on thick. Beyond that, it was hard to connect the dots between the show-opening clingy black jersey dress trimmed in 600 buttons and the finale look in nude crepe veiled in a silvery organza. Still, there were a few winners in the mix. The long-sleeved velvet number with slits on the front and back of the bodice and batwing sleeves stood out for its simplicity. There's beauty in diversity, sure, but a strong point of view is everything in fashion, as Simons made so clear at Dior. Mabille's collection didn't have enough of that.
—Nicole Phelps

Balmain

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Olivier Rousteing has developed a bit of an America fixation. A year ago, at a presentation of his first collection for Balmain, he was talking about Las Vegas. When he was working on this Resort lineup, a trip to Miami made a big impression. You saw it not only in its South Beach colors (yellow, peach, and mint) and oversize Don Johnson proportions, but also in its Latin influences. "I'm mixed race, too," he said, "so it was beautiful to see the connection between Cuba and the U.S. there."

"Fun, happiness, and hope" were the endearingly earnest Rousteing's talking points for Resort, and we'd say he nailed all three, without killing off the sexy edge that defined the Balmainia moment under his predecessor, Christophe Decarnin.

The key silhouette here was an elongated blazer that buttoned well south of the navel and fell to about the hips, worn with loose, pleated, and cuffed trousers. There was no such oversizing with the dresses, though, which remained as mini as mini gets. Rousteing is really getting behind a silhouette with a folded-over skirt construction that creates a flaring volume at the sides of the thighs. He also gets this season's prize for novelty for a dress made from basket-weave raffia.
—Nicole Phelps

Collette Dinnigan

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

Christian Dior

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Fashion had seen nothing like it for years. Outside in the street, there was hysteria. Inside, the industry's great and good—Alaïa, Elbaz, Jacobs, Theyskens, Tisci, Van Assche, Versace, von Furstenberg—gathered to see Raf Simons debut his first haute couture collection for Christian Dior. That it would be a success seemed a given, what with the evolving polish and confidence of Simons' "couture trilogy" for his previous employer, Jil Sander. That it would be such a triumph was a thrill. The avant-garde outsider from Antwerp insinuated himself into the hallowed history of haute couture with a tour de force that had both emotional and intellectual resonance. As the man himself said, "A shift is happening."

About that outsider thing: It's a position that has always loaned a crystal clarity to Simons' vision and has helped him to the purest interpretations of his inspirations. Here, he used that unusually heightened sense of focus to reflect on Christian Dior as architect, a notion that dovetailed neatly with his own obsession with construction. The first look—a tuxedo whose jacket was shaped after Dior's iconic Bar jacket, one of the most distinctive silhouettes in fashion—established an innate compatibility that reached across a half-century.

Simons has been engaged with this world for a while. Dior was obviously the guiding spirit of his fascination with midcentury couture (see the Q&A here) during his last seasons with Sander. But he approached an actual couture collection with an appropriate balance of reverence and iconoclasm. One key silhouette could best be defined as a full-skirted classic ball gown truncated at the peplum (a quote from a 1952 collection, according to the run of show), its skirt replaced by black silk cigarette pants. The formal past, the streamlined future, meeting in the middle. It was the same with the traditional Bucol silks woven to represent a painting, drips and all, by Sterling Ruby, one of the contemporary art world's hottest properties (and a Simons favorite). Past and future met again in an evening ensemble that matched the athletic ease of a citron silk knit to the grandeur of a floor-sweeping silk skirt. And the veils that Stephen Jones contributed to the finale may have been from Paris in the 1930's, but there is timeless allure in that look.

Simons returned to the flared hip of the Bar with a deep-pocketed coat-dress in red cashmere as well as a strapless dress in the same heartbreaking shade of pink that launched his last Sander show. That was the kind of subtle personal flourish that married his own story to Dior's history. It also underlined how much of an asset Simons will be not just to Dior but to couture itself. He can't help himself; he will bring a heart-on-his-sleeve human dimension to this remote and rarefied world.

But as he proved today, he certainly won't be doing it in a low-key way. Christian Dior's own obsession—flowers—was translated into salons lined ceiling to floor with panels of blooms: delphiniums in the blue room, orchids in the white room, mimosa in the yellow room, and so on. More than a million all told, making a gorgeous architectural abstraction of nature. There's some kind of metaphor about creative processes in there somewhere, but it's simpler to leave things with Simons' own definition of the day: "a blueprint."
—Tim Blanks

Bouchra Jarrar

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Bouchra Jarrar has been showing at Couture for six seasons and has yet to put a single beaded ball gown on her runway. Rigor is her stock in trade, and there was more of that at her Musée Bourdelle show today. She opened with tailoring. It's as precise as ever—she cuts a mean pair of trousers. But notice the ruffle at the hem of the first look's ivory vest. That small detail told the whole story of the collection, which was notable for its new sense of femininity.

"Everything has a waist," she said backstage. "It's very constructed, but A-line and flared." A year ago, her jackets were boxy and her frocks were almost egg-shaped. Here, belts played a starring role, whether cinching dresses made from shirting stripe fabric or buckled over the black, peplumed bustier that topped a pair of gabardine pants.

Women have fallen for Jarrar because she's given them something new to wear for work. This season, seduction is the order of the day. A silk gown in a lily print turned to reveal a plunging draped back. Another long dress was made from shifting layers of georgette and crepe de chine in black and a green she aptly called "very profond"; the effect was captivating. And, yes, she even did a beaded gown, or at least it was partly beaded on its bodice. Lovely all around.
—Nicole Phelps

Tsumori Chisato

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

Versace

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"Donatella should've modeled." That was Christopher Kane, a Versace acolyte, following the Atelier Versace show at the Ritz tonight, a few moments after the platinum-blond designer took her bow in a black patent corseted dress with a waist so tiny it rivaled those of the teenage models. The point being, this haute couture show was as Versace as Versace gets: the pastel chain mail, the hip-high slits, the scarf prints, the Medusa emblems, the bared skin. If a few crystal beads fell as models strutted down the catwalk, that kind of thing's bound to happen at the dance clubs these dresses are destined for.

"It was very emotional. I had to get up my courage to come back," Versace said after the show. Not that you'd know it from this fearless display. First off, she'd booked the Ritz hotel, home to her brother Gianni's couture shows for eight years, and not just for a show in the pool room, but also for a dinner in its restaurant, L'Espadon, followed by a disco party. Then, she recruited a celeb-packed front row: Christina Hendricks, Fan Bingbing, Pierce Brosnan, Lea Michele, Matthew Morrison, and M.I.A. had the photographers lunging across the runway for their shot. And as for the dresses, Jessica Alba put it best: "sexy, strong, warrior." Or maybe Elizabeth Banks: "Donatella's not afraid to show off a woman's body."

Lindsey Wixson opened the show in an A-line trench constructed from thin strips of ivory patent woven through rose gold buckles and cinched with a boxing belt that looked like a riff on her recent men's collection. Versace elaborated on the process for short corseted dresses made from tarot-card-print silk laminated with PVC and cut into narrow lengths; bits of flesh were visible through the slits. Later on, that game of peekaboo became even bolder. Slashes on beaded evening dresses were sutured together with strands of crystals; another dress was patched together with silk chiffon lacing from pieces of leather that were hand-cut with tiny circles and hexagons. For colors, Versace favored nudes and jewel tones that matched the cocktail rings made from yellow diamonds, emeralds, and topazes the models wore on both index fingers.

A couple of hours after the last model hit the catwalk and Donatella took her bow, the Ritz's pool had been converted into a disco, complete with a set from M.I.A. "Can you feel the spirit of Gianni in here?" a reveler asked. "I can, I can feel it." With Versace and her daughter, Allegra, grooving with Dita Von Teese and Alba in the VIP section and everybody else looking on, it was some party. Donatella's party.
—Nicole Phelps

Thom Browne

07.05.12 | No Comments

Lookbooks lie. The images you see accompanying this review are the most pallid record imaginable of the remarkable presentation that Thom Browne staged in a Parisian garden square for his Spring 2013 menswear.

For all its flaws, Ridley Scott's Prometheus is a movie as primed for impact on fashion as his earlier masterpiece Blade Runner. Unfortunately for that theory, Browne hasn't seen the film. Still, there was a mythological component in his show that seemed a little bigger than your average clever staging. The mythology of fashion? Delightful thought. On arrival, guests were greeted by a greensward covered with neat lines of rather large silver brogues. So far, so anal, in the Browne tradition. But when the garden was invaded by huge silvery insectoid satyrs, like escapees from Pan's Labyrinth, past predictabilities evaporated. After the satyrs had worked their macabre magic, an army of giant Slinkys shuffled into the garden to boing-boing electronica (Doctor Who fans could have visualized Daleks as an alternative). Each one of them settled over the silver shoes like a broody king penguin. When the Slinky dropped, a model was revealed in an outfit from Browne's new collection. So transporting had been the setup that it took a moment to remember that clothes were, after all, the point of all this.

And, amazingly, they matched their intro. It was still Browne's silhouette—outré layering and cropping—but the palette had shifted from Calvinist sobriety to preppy-on-acid. Candy-colored ginghams and madras, beaded lobster appliqués, whale-print trousers, knee socks—Browne's vision transported into a parallel universe and given a delirious spin. It was a wise, and necessary, move. All those signature items suddenly took on a new lease of life.

But a comprehensive appreciation of Browne's madness would have to take into account the fact that the silvery goat pants worn by the satyrs were branded with the designer's signature tricolor tag. As in, they might also be in the collection. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
—Tim Blanks

Christophe Lemaire

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Evolution, not revolution, is the Christophe Lemaire MO. "The more I work with the same idea in mind, the more I find ways to make it work," he said at a presentation of his new Spring menswear. And accordingly, there was much here that looked like timeless Lemaire: the rounded shapes, the multi-pleated pants (which Lemaire has been doing for season after season, long before the current vogue for the style). Lemaire plants his designs at the unlikely nexus of workwear and new wave, managing to reference both David Byrne's big suits from Stop Making Sense (in a passage of gray tailoring) and Chinese workers' uniforms. For Spring, he merely pushed forward. He's incorporating more color than ever before, and while the palette remains on the whole slightly dusky, there was the welcome addition of ocher and mauve. A paint-drip print, inspired by David Hockney, pointed at new lightness ahead. Light, in weight and in feeling, was the word for his first forays into denim. Lemaire cut a boxy, oversized T-shirt, a pajama-style top, a vest, and pants from dark, tissue-thin Japanese fabric in indigo and smoke gray. And despite being personally "very anti-shorts," he debuted his first pair, a pleated, belted gabardine version that hit just below bermuda level—"almost a colonial one," he called it. Slowly but surely, the times, they are a-changing. "I wouldn't mind going even further," the designer said.
—Matthew Schneier