Only a handful of designers in the world have the creative vision & authority to push fashion in new & often challenging directions. One is Nicolas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga, who on Thursday showed a ready-to-wear collection that looked far beyond fall 2010.
But another was Alexander McQueen, whose death has left a giant creative void. The problem for fashion in the age of instant access to images is simple: Without willful individuals exerting their imaginations, experimenting with new materials & shapes, the industry as a whole will seem weak to the people who follow it. There has to be something exceptional, violently strong & not immediately available, if fashion is to be a force.
This was brought home during the Balenciaga show, which used materials that were difficult to identify. Some appeared to be coated in a plastic, others resembled packing materials. Jackets printed with words in primary colors could have come from posters you see in the streets. Mr. Ghesquiere said his objective was “to ennoble everyday objects.”
Although the silhouette was essentially a square on stilts — square-cut jackets with skinny pants or minis — there were shapes within shapes, & squares formed by the overlapping panels of jackets. Puffy white jackets that resembled down vests were incorporated in to what appeared to be zippered jumpsuits. The tops of shoes suggested ski bindings, their heels a stack of boxes.
The number of materials, the textures, strained sometimes. Perhaps that’s a risk Mr. Ghesquiere thought he had to take. I couldn’t help but think of the plenty of futuristic shapes in the recent Central Saint Martin’s graduation show, in London. A number of those ideas looked newer. Still, Balenciaga was interesting stuff.
Balmain is straight, expensive formula. Christophe Decarnin used velvet brocades & plenty of gold lace & leather this season, with Annie Oakley fringe along sleeves. I admit I’m a sucker for a black pantsuit with gold pinstripes that twinkle like the Eiffel Tower.
In his own calm way, Dries Van Noten is a showman. He's staged shows in the Palais Royal, under rococo ceilings, in the open air, & six times turned a banquet table in to a runway. The guests basically pushed back their chairs & watched.
For fall he's taken army khaki & made it an offhand companion to Paris tailoring. The newest coats & jackets, in masculine wools with nipped waists, suggested a ’50s hourglass figure, with olive drab pants narrowing below the knees & buckled with straps. So it was a pity he had to make do with the schmaltz of a government reception hall in lieu of the vitality of a street corner. The clothes, after all, had that energy.
The ’60s seem to work like a pill on designers. A pink pill for Jean Shrimpton, a blue pill for Janis take your pick. You will receive a complete picture, right down to the go-go boots & teased mane. Marco Zanini’s collection for Rochas, on Wednesday, was rich in ’60s sugar — like tunics with slacks, a fuzzy white teddy bear coat, & slanty, block-heel shoes — not to be cheerful.
& that was & a problem. Military khaki, however recast, is still a common street look, & Mr. Van Noten’s technique of mixing olive drab with tailoring or reinterpreting the trench coat as a skirt merely adapts ideas from men’s fashion, notably by Junya Watanabe & Raf Simons. What looked most confident in this collection were those gently nipped coats & jackets, & styles like a sleeveless double-breasted black tweed dress with leopard-print chiffon edging the neckline.
A palette of sky blue, peach, yellow, gold & beige sent everything bouncing along. Mr. Zanini is a nice designer & it would be lovely to document that the earth moved for him — & us — but in coming down on the sweet side of the ’60s, he left himself tiny for the imagination.
With Manish Arora, what you see is what you get: a visual overload of color & beading with sci-fi effects. (If you think a model’s life is glamorous, ask the six beauties selected to have motorized stalks of nylon wands shooting from their heads.) The blaze created by the sequins is intense, as are the prints, but you can’t help wondering if Mr. Arora shouldn’t have a second option.
Unquestionably, Gareth Pugh’s dark, contorted leathers have become more polished in recent seasons as he seeks commercial respect. But it's also put the London designer in a odd bind. The collection he showed on Wednesday lacked variety — can he expand on his vision? More crucial for Mr. Pugh, where’s the outrage? Where’s the desire to shock? The tempering of that in anyone so young is more dismaying than not having a wider assortment of sweaters.
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