Turning heads in Paris
Print Edition
Paris Fashion Week showcases a range of spring looks with Celine finding inspiration from the tropics, Givenchy looking to the beauty of butterflies and Christian Dior surprising with some masculine tailoring. Chloe disappoints somewhat with a collection lacking cohesion.
Celine
Designer Phoebe Philo doesn’t put an avant-garde, pedicured foot wrong.
Though her bamboo-floored catwalk collection for Celine perhaps lacked as much creative bang as last season, in almost every enviable, feminine look there was a visual surprise.
The tropical foliage that lined the runway set up a theme — that was ever subtly handled — in slim “leopard print” long coats. When you looked a little closer, there was a beautiful realization: these weren’t big cat spots but little flowers.
Buttons were scattered gently away from their holes to become purely decorative on beautifully soft wools in black, green and mottled gray.
Chloe
Chloe has a varied clientele and understandably likes to please.
In Sunday’s show, British designer Clare Waight Keller tried too hard — creating a myriad of styles that didn’t quite work together.
Gold Egyptian-style appliques, wide waist bands, masculine knee-high swashbuckling boots mixed with colorful abstracted floral leopard.
But Waight Keller succeeded best when the Chloe girl got complex: one incredible, multi-layered marbled black and white high waisted volume skirt, and a navy dress with almost square embroidered fabric foliage.
Givenchy
The muse was the butterfly: in its cocoon, hard edged then fluttery.
With this, Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci took his foot slightly off the intellectual pedal to produce a highly feminine show.
Styles from the 1940s heyday of Hollywood glamor, in furs and fluttery silk dresses, abounded.
Silk ruffles and lapels in gowns or python print resembled a marbled cocoon. Models wore black filmy stockings to mirror the delicate mesh of butterfly wings. It produced a great creative synthesis.
Christian Dior
Raf Simons produced a surprising show for Christian Dior in several ways.
Firstly, the jacketed-businesswoman theme was a dramatic departure from his last ode to diaphanous couture.
Second, the near-sacred codes of Dior — softly feminine gowns, sculpting bar jackets — seemed almost gone with Simons’ masculine tailoring style.
The show, entitled “City Lights,” which began with long menswear cashmere coats, did feature some nice suits — although they weren’t particularly ground-breaking.
Simons’ androgynous thinking had more success in a series of wool gowns in fuscia, bright yellow and blue.
The best part of the show was when he let the Dior girl do the talking: in a great set of asymmetrical and trapeze nylon dresses that blossomed in quilted pleats.
Dior girls don’t want to go to the office. They want to have fun.
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