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France keeps fashion flowing
Source: Shanghai Daily |
October 10, 2010, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
LONG-AWAITED Paris fashion week came and although the global economy hasn't completely recovered, flourishing creations, luxury fabrics and sexy models blooming in the French capital were a reminder not to lose your optimistic outlook on life.
Chanel powerfully expressed the classical and elegant. Karl Lagerfeld's designs made young Chanel lovers realize that wearing their grandma's old Chanel suit would make them just as hip as the It girls.
Jean Paul Gaultier didn't just use professional skinny models in his show, he had plump girls too. We can hear his shouting: fashion does not belong to a specific group but to everyone who loves beauty and has self-confidence.
The most striking show was, of course, Alexander McQueen's. His suicide signalled to many the death of his fashion spirit. Fortunately, his successor Sarah Burton's debut proved that McQueen lives on.
Chanel
Hole-ridden tweed suits that looked like they'd been devoured by generations of moths opened the show with what seemed like a sly commentary on the French heritage label's amazing staying power.
Today's Chanel, designer Karl Lagerfeld seemed to suggest, remains as timeless as it was decades ago under Mademoiselle Coco: Just dig in your grandmother's trunk, pull out her classic Chanel skirtsuit and you'll look as trendy as the likes of Keira Knightly, Lily Allen and Vanessa Paradis.
Chanel's shows are always a grand spectacle, but Tuesday's chic black-and-white Versailles-style garden set was even grander than usual. An orchestra played covers of Bj?rk songs as the models meandered among the fountains and the black hedgerows, their black and navy skirtsuits or hotpants contrasting with the crushed gravel in blinding white they crunched underfoot.
Lagerfeld also had A-line dresses in chiffon with beaded black curlicues that echoed the rounded forms of French gardens. A series of floaty dresses in saturated watercolor print silk injected the collection with a dose of color, and the ostrich feathers that dangled from hemlines gave it an airy lightness.
Novelty models have been a hot commodity on Paris catwalks, and never to be outdone, Chanel sent out a few: a dashing blond man in a white tweed jacket and jeans with his mini-me, a little boy in a matching outfit, as well as French 1980s supermodel Ines de la Fressange. The mother of two teenage daughters said it was the first time she'd walked for Chanel in 21 years.Alexander McQueen
In the months that followed British fashion designer Alexander McQueen's suicide in February, the fashion world was abuzz with speculation about the future of the house. How could McQueen's successor, his longtime right-hand woman Sarah Burton, possibly take forward a house so fundamentally built on the extraordinary creative vision of its founder?
Burton's brilliant debut on Tuesday at the forefront of the label put any rumors about the house's future following McQueen's departure to rest. Her spring-summer 2011 ready-to-wear collection was a tour-de-force that channeled McQueen's darkly surreal style, remodeling his signature elements into strange and beautiful confections that managed to be at the same time new and reassuringly familiar.
It was all there: Tailed pantsuits in mesmerizing jacquard, sculptural sheath dresses entirely made from monarch butterflies, or feathers that gleamed darkly like spilled oil or woven chaffs of wheat that appeared to be one with the models' woven hairstyles.
The audience of fashion elite burst into whoops of approval and frantic applause for Burton, who spent years as McQueen's deputy and deeply understood the troubled designer and his work.
Burton's brilliant debut was undoubtedly among the strongest shows of Paris.Jean Paul Gaultier
The show had all the ingredients of a blockbuster: The Gossip's Beth Ditto's thunderous acappella performance, models in Joan Jett spiky wigs, and hardcore gear that was on-trend with the punk collections shown earlier this week at red-hot Paris labels Balmain and Balenciaga.
But, like a wet firecracker, the show started with a bang and quickly petered out.
The peak-shouldered jean jackets and cropped skintight jeans were convincing, but what were those tropical palm prints doing there? They looked like leftovers from Gaultier's stellar Mexican-themed show a couple of seasons ago.
And the flower prints? You could see where Gaultier was going with the idea, but punk and sweet pink roses just don't mix.
The problem seemed to lie in the fertility of Gaultier's imagination: There were just too many ideas on the catwalk, and the collection got lost somewhere in that prodigious creativity.
The invitations announced the show would explore the contrast between "XXL" and "XXS," but besides Ditto and another big girl, the rest of the models were the usual cast of waifs who dominate the catwalks worldwide.
That seemed a shame, because Gaultier has often cast amazing-looking nonprofessionals in his shows and he could surely have found plenty of curvaceous beauties for the job. Plus, a serious debate on the industry's obsession with skeletal girls is long overdue.
Chanel powerfully expressed the classical and elegant. Karl Lagerfeld's designs made young Chanel lovers realize that wearing their grandma's old Chanel suit would make them just as hip as the It girls.
Jean Paul Gaultier didn't just use professional skinny models in his show, he had plump girls too. We can hear his shouting: fashion does not belong to a specific group but to everyone who loves beauty and has self-confidence.
The most striking show was, of course, Alexander McQueen's. His suicide signalled to many the death of his fashion spirit. Fortunately, his successor Sarah Burton's debut proved that McQueen lives on.
Chanel
Hole-ridden tweed suits that looked like they'd been devoured by generations of moths opened the show with what seemed like a sly commentary on the French heritage label's amazing staying power.
Today's Chanel, designer Karl Lagerfeld seemed to suggest, remains as timeless as it was decades ago under Mademoiselle Coco: Just dig in your grandmother's trunk, pull out her classic Chanel skirtsuit and you'll look as trendy as the likes of Keira Knightly, Lily Allen and Vanessa Paradis.
Chanel's shows are always a grand spectacle, but Tuesday's chic black-and-white Versailles-style garden set was even grander than usual. An orchestra played covers of Bj?rk songs as the models meandered among the fountains and the black hedgerows, their black and navy skirtsuits or hotpants contrasting with the crushed gravel in blinding white they crunched underfoot.
Lagerfeld also had A-line dresses in chiffon with beaded black curlicues that echoed the rounded forms of French gardens. A series of floaty dresses in saturated watercolor print silk injected the collection with a dose of color, and the ostrich feathers that dangled from hemlines gave it an airy lightness.
Novelty models have been a hot commodity on Paris catwalks, and never to be outdone, Chanel sent out a few: a dashing blond man in a white tweed jacket and jeans with his mini-me, a little boy in a matching outfit, as well as French 1980s supermodel Ines de la Fressange. The mother of two teenage daughters said it was the first time she'd walked for Chanel in 21 years.Alexander McQueen
In the months that followed British fashion designer Alexander McQueen's suicide in February, the fashion world was abuzz with speculation about the future of the house. How could McQueen's successor, his longtime right-hand woman Sarah Burton, possibly take forward a house so fundamentally built on the extraordinary creative vision of its founder?
Burton's brilliant debut on Tuesday at the forefront of the label put any rumors about the house's future following McQueen's departure to rest. Her spring-summer 2011 ready-to-wear collection was a tour-de-force that channeled McQueen's darkly surreal style, remodeling his signature elements into strange and beautiful confections that managed to be at the same time new and reassuringly familiar.
It was all there: Tailed pantsuits in mesmerizing jacquard, sculptural sheath dresses entirely made from monarch butterflies, or feathers that gleamed darkly like spilled oil or woven chaffs of wheat that appeared to be one with the models' woven hairstyles.
The audience of fashion elite burst into whoops of approval and frantic applause for Burton, who spent years as McQueen's deputy and deeply understood the troubled designer and his work.
Burton's brilliant debut was undoubtedly among the strongest shows of Paris.Jean Paul Gaultier
The show had all the ingredients of a blockbuster: The Gossip's Beth Ditto's thunderous acappella performance, models in Joan Jett spiky wigs, and hardcore gear that was on-trend with the punk collections shown earlier this week at red-hot Paris labels Balmain and Balenciaga.
But, like a wet firecracker, the show started with a bang and quickly petered out.
The peak-shouldered jean jackets and cropped skintight jeans were convincing, but what were those tropical palm prints doing there? They looked like leftovers from Gaultier's stellar Mexican-themed show a couple of seasons ago.
And the flower prints? You could see where Gaultier was going with the idea, but punk and sweet pink roses just don't mix.
The problem seemed to lie in the fertility of Gaultier's imagination: There were just too many ideas on the catwalk, and the collection got lost somewhere in that prodigious creativity.
The invitations announced the show would explore the contrast between "XXL" and "XXS," but besides Ditto and another big girl, the rest of the models were the usual cast of waifs who dominate the catwalks worldwide.
That seemed a shame, because Gaultier has often cast amazing-looking nonprofessionals in his shows and he could surely have found plenty of curvaceous beauties for the job. Plus, a serious debate on the industry's obsession with skeletal girls is long overdue.
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