Paris: October 3
By Rebecca Voight
Requiem’s design duo, Italian Rafaele Boriello and French/English Julien Desselle, are, along with Christophe Decarnin at Balmain and Giambattista Valli, Paris’s next big things. Inspired by christening dresses and Truman Capote’s 1966 Black and White Ball—in other words couture and dressy baby clothes—the show was full of desirables. Requiem’s elegant little dresses, especially the first one they showed featuring ruffles, mini pleats and puffy sleeves in white with a trompe l’oeil black vest, has just the right amount of delicacy.
Ah, Chanel! What a world separates this house from everyone else. The show was held under the glass dome of Paris’s Grand Palais on a brilliant sunny morning. There were a few people in the crowd outside with bags on wheels. That’s because it’s Friday and although the Paris shows end on Sunday evening, many will fly away as soon as Chanel is over. After a week of impossibly cramped conditions, often in venues that are difficult and unpleasant to get to, Chanel has constructed its own white theatre in this huge airy palais in the beautiful centre of Paris. There’s room for everyone to sit down, take off their coats and truly enjoy the show. And when I say everybody I mean perhaps 1,000 people! After a week of frustrations where many labels deliberately limit their seating to create excitement, at Chanel it’s noblesse oblige and bienvenue tout le monde. The crowd is smiling and not just for the cameras. They’re remembering why they love fashion in the first place. There’s a crowd on the way to the seats. ‘What’s this, some new snafu? Mais non! It’s a queue to pick up the fashion show gift, a big bottle of Chanel N° 5, handed out by charming mademoiselles.
At that point, I began to feel like a child on a stylish escapade with Uncle Karl. He’s thought of everything to amuse me including a life-size—no joke—façade of Chanel’s rue Cambon headquarters. So here we are with a bird’s eye view of a movie set. And because there’s a separate side entrance for celebrities, you can watch them walk, one after the other, to pose in front of the storefront. They’re all dressed in fall Chanel of course, to bridge the gap between reality and the runway. Claudia Schiffer minces up on sky high heels in a camel cardigan with a leopard cinch. The—um—dress is so short that a wardrobe incident seems imminent, but she’s a pro. Meanwhile Emma Watson, and a score of young French actresses, manage to make Chanel look ingénue and rock ’n’ roll—quite a tour de force.
And the spring collection? Karl Lagerfeld was inspired by a Marie Laurençin portrait of Coco Chanel, so the look is watercolor, romantic, feminine. The Chanel suit with short cap sleeves in optic checks, as well as everything else in the show, is paired with curious opaque/sheer stockings like knee pants. The Chanel multi-chain necklaces have turned into exaggerated watch fobs, sans watch. The fun bag looks like a Chanel store shopping tote in pink leather, and the shoe is a transparent plastic pump with black signature toe and crushed silver heel. Cardigans turn up as dresses and bolero jackets mix with drop-waist skirts to shake up the usual proportions. And instead of bras under transparent shirts, there are blouses with huge black bows across the chest, which look slightly naughty, but aren’t. Evening is in pale Laurençin gray and pink iridescent silk—like soap bubbles—covered with semi-precious stones. The best dress has a long gypsy skirt and a guitar slung over the shoulder. Karl Lagerfeld likes boys in Chanel: the five guys he sent out this time looked a bit embarrassed to be dressed like boy toys in tight silk jackets, bow ties and Chanel watch chains.
The gossip surrounding the departure of Alessandra Facchinetti from Valentino, was confirmed after the show, Facchinetti’s second ready-to-wear collection for the label. The house’s accessories designers, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli, who worked under Valentino Garavani for 10 years before his retirement, have been named co-creative directors. These quick changes at Gianfranco Ferré, Celine and others risk tarnishing the image of the old houses. Facchinetti went through a similar situation when she succeeded Tom Ford at Gucci. The collection she presented for Valentino looked a bit soft and loose. She’s been trying to modernize the house, but with so many young designers going back to classic couture structure, soft seems beside the point.
Martine Sitbon’s Rue du Mail is making its name in the complex dress department. There’s lots of abstract patching here with flashes of flesh, but curiously the best pieces were the simplest: a voluminous, but classic trench in silky beige and a perfect peplum jacket with deep V over narrow black pants.
Alexander McQueen is completely wrapped up in his own world and his mind is on Darwin’s theories of evolution, with a sympathetic nod to extinct and endangered species (as evidenced by a group of taxidermied animals on the runway). Everything here is so beautiful, over detailed, fascinating, masterful and deadly decadent. It’s all wood nymphs in kaleidoscopic wood-ring prints on satin and complex tailoring over net body suits with fantastic floral embroideries.
Commuun’s Iko Furudate and Kaito Hori, the Japanese duo that launched their collection in 2005, are minimalists and the result this season was beautiful. Their cocoons in gradated colors look like tinted clouds and are about as close to wearing a cream puff as you can get.
Alena Akhmadullina is one of a few Russian designers showing in Paris. Unlike the others, she’s from Saint Petersburg, not Moscow. And her style is young, not the usual big money chic one associates with Russia. There’s one great thing here: simple floral cotton dresses topped with bright crochet skeleton vests—a wickedly innocent association that makes her one to watch
Jean-Charles de Castelbajac can’t be ignored or taken very seriously either. His shows are pure parody, fashion for the sake of art and politics. Like Jeremy Scott who showed “Let Them Eat Gas” sweaters, Castelbajac filled his show with Mickey Mouse references and a sequinned Obama portrait dress.
Shown: Chanel Spring 2009. Photography by Peter Stigter
Rebecca Voight is a Paris-based freelance writer.
CHANEL | RUE DU MAIL | ALEXANDER MCQUEEN
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