John Galliano’s pinstripe pantsuits and 1930s film-star dresses for Dior on Monday looked almost prudent, a case of battening down the hatches if more bad economic news leads to a slowing of consumer spending.
That’s one way to look at Mr. Galliano’s workmanlike performance as the French spring collections began and crowds of editors and onlookers amassed in the sticky autumn air to see the latest clothes. There is usually more hullabaloo for the Paris shows than those in Milan or New York, as well as a time-tested belief that whatever fashion looked right in Milan will be validated by Paris or it will not.
Mr. Galliano’s retro tailoring was really a continuation of his fall collection, with less pomp and luscious color. Because Mr. Galliano is capable of fashioning a dress from a Gainsborough — or, equally, of stripping it down — one can assume from his update of the Dietrich three-piece pantsuit, the more subtle embroideries, and the pretty but harmless sex appeal of silk peignoirs and “combinettes” that for him those other courses were a commercial banana peel.
The collection also included evening blazers pinstriped with crystal beads, skimmy dresses in lilac or pistachio silk edged with creamy lace, and some longer jacketed numbers of the “Dynasty” genre. So often accused of showing “the emperor’s new clothes,” Mr. Galliano took his runway bow wearing only a tailcoat, a white shirt and socks with suspenders.
At the moment, there is a definite war being waged in fashion, a move by a handful of designers, including Nicolas Ghesquiere, Alber Elbaz and Raf Simons, to build a modernist defense against standard-issue blue-chip luxury and the value it represents.
On Monday night, Martin Margiela, who has successfully made himself an enigma in the fashion world (he refuses to be photographed), offered a collection that was a brilliant assault on our assumptions. It stripped away artifice, excess, stuff, postmodernism, references. And though the collection was plainly modern and sexy, it even seemed to refuse the questions: “Is it new? Is it sexy?”
Mr. Margiela has kept modernism in his sites for a while. (One of the most-often seen jackets in Paris is his version with peaked and squared shoulders.) There were new variations of that sci-fi shoulder, but now he looks at body-conscious shapes, like tube tops and stretch miniskirts, and uses neutral tones like beige, white and black to help impart a superlean silhouette, as well as the illusion of nudity.
The models, in fact, were more covered-up than exposed. Certainly they looked very sexy in the clothes, with armbands that seemed to continue the stripe effect of a garment and flat black sunglasses that made you think of censor bars. The modernist drive of the collection was relentless, as though Mr. Margiela had found a legitimate window to fashion’s future and was going through it. There were also bustier tops in a pale blue fabric, shown with jeans that had been cut and frayed to a wispy, delicate fringe, so that they had become a new form.
Rick Owens has pushed himself hard in recent seasons to express more lightness and originality with his style. This collection focused on airy fabrics, apparently organza, and shapes with lines established by draping or by the contours of graphic black and white stripes. Although the stripes were a bit overpowering, Mr. Owens’s sculptural dresses and wand-sleeve jackets over cloudy layers were very effective. And he gives everything more couture polish.
Almost certainly the ingenious Jun Takahashi had something fun in mind when he opened Undercover with a parade of models in patchwork bikinis, tromping in a kind of clog espadrille, and then lemony dresses creased in the pattern of a spider’s web. But, despite some fresh takes on summer classics, like seersucker shorts and terry coats, he got carried away with the vacation jokes.
A Yohji Yamamoto show can be long. It can be puzzling. But invariably, like a conversation, it hooks you. With long glossy braids down their back, the models first appeared in black jumpsuits, then in more ruffles than Miss Kitty of “Gunsmoke.” The ruffled shapes extended away from the body, almost (and one does not mean this unkindly) as if you were wearing a frilly ottoman.
Of course, it gave a different spatial dimension to fashion. Among the terrific looks in the show were jackets and slouchy pants in various silver materials.
Christophe Decarnin of Balmain is not in the same class as these other designers, despite having some top editors in his front row. Sometimes editors go for a designer because he gives them exactly what they like, clothes for self-fulfilling editorials about the rich, glamorous and trashed.
In a way, Mr. Decarnin’s beaded and fringed tunics, his fringed black suede pants and silver-sequined gray cardigan and T-shirt describe perfectly the perils of such a lifestyle. If the clothes were any less “now,” if the models looked less than themselves and more groomed, if the ruffled jeans were just a shade brighter, they would belong in a B-list club in St. Tropez.
The curtain came down on Milan Fashion Week yesterday with a show by the cult Italian label, AB/SOUL.
