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International Herald Tribune
II Monday, October 8, 2007 Fashion

Flowers, feathers and Indian colors

LIMI FEU

ELIE SA AB
From Page I
tions might sound, this was his simplest
collection for Ricci, giving the house in
its 75th year the birthday present.
By combining a youthful stride in
narrow pants, often shaded in rust or
cloud gray, with the long gowns sweep-
ing with romance, Theyskens caught
absolutely ‘‘L’Air du Temps’’ — th is
fashion moment and the name of
R icci’s iconic fragrance.
Alexander McQueen
ith a flutter of butterflies encas-
W ing her head as a fantasy hat and
with a severely fitted dress, it could
have been the late Isabella Blow walk-
ing down Alexander McQueen’s run-
way.
The designer, whose talent was dis-
covered by Blow, devoted his show to his
mentor. A giant wing construction dom-
inated the runway and feathers were a
consistent theme, from blood-red splat-
ters on a white shoulder piece to gentle
paintings of plumes on floating dresses.
ideas and changes the landscape (this
time it was a carousel and fairground)
the effect is always much the same.
The theme was ‘‘Grey Gardens,’’ the
much revisited 1975 documentary about
the two eccentric Edies in their run-
down Long Island mansion. Galliano
could have inserted more of the underly-
ing tragedy and something of the 1970s.
But this was just Galliano light. So
HER MES
bringing to Chloé too many artsy and
painterly effects on square-cut dresses.
But this season proved that he is not
trapped in that vision.
Hermès
ackstage at Her mès, it looked like
B Old Delhi during the Indian festi-
val of Holi. The models were shaking
or Huntsman, John Galliano, Vivienne
Westwood, Paul Smith, Calvin Klein
and seven years with Donatella Ver-
sace.
Yet what comes through in the work
of Kinder, 42, is a deep research into
fabrics, using a dye-dipping technique
that produced shadow and light on
simple clothes.
Fresh, too, were the tiny shoulder
K ENZO
Photographs by Chris Moore/Karl Prouse
jackets to pair with dresses and a sense
of layering that had 1920s references
without looking vintage. He called his
inspiration: ‘‘What would have
happened if Coco Chanel had married
Sid Vicious.’’ (w w w.k inderfash-
iondesign.com)
Suzy Menkes is fashion editor at the
International Herald Tribune.
Limi
makes it
hey were young Japanese
T women taking life in booted
stride, wearing the navy and white
that used to rule Tokyo before
Kawaii pink and Harajuku girls.
And Limi Feu’s easy mix of
clothes moving energetically
across the body, with white
blouses, asymmetric cutting and
mix of irregular stripes, was
greeted with generous applause.
‘‘I wanted it to be Japanese,’’
said the designer backstage, as she
embraced her family — while her
father, Yohji Yamamoto, hiding
under his hat, saying, ‘‘My heart is
beating.’’
Feu has been showing in Tokyo
since 2000 so she is no naïve
beginner. She is also her father’s
daughter, using dark, loose shapes
— but with less of a romantic
vision, a rock ’n’ roll edge and with
more bodily freedom, as patches
of skin appeared at shoulders or
hips. Showing on women friends
she had brought from Tokyo, Feu
made a sound Paris debut. And
Yamamoto certainly thought so.
‘‘I think she made it,’’ he said.
— Suzy Menkes

The feathers underlined the idea that
Blow is now with the angels.
‘‘She influenced me a great deal —
her personal style, her emotion and her
fragility,’’ said McQueen. ‘‘She had
great style, exuberance and imagina-
tion — and I hope that came through in
the show.’’
The emotional sensitivity of the show
brought some beautiful homages — but
these were iconic pieces that are part of
the designer’s fashion lexicon: the fitted
Prince of Wales suit, with ultra-sharp
shoulders and surely dedicated to ‘‘Issy’’
as much as a sheath dress scissored out
of crocodile, tinted blush pink and fit-
ting like the proverbial glove.
This was not a collection of greatest
hits — McQueen is too creative a design-
er for that. But the unique pieces still re-
verberated with the imagery that he has
used since the start of his career. And
that rigidity is starting to recall Thierry
Mugler’s hard-edged silhouettes.
The chiffon dresses were soft and
beautiful. But McQueen’s harsh attitude
toward women has not changed. Models
struggled down the runway on teetering
platforms. It is an inevitable part of his
oeuvre that a woman will appear caged
— even if the dress underneath is divine
McQueen now has to decide whether he
wants, at age 38, for his creativity to be
caged into the universe he has created.
John Galliano
verything in John Galliano’s
E garden was lovely: pretty dresses
smothered in roses, frills, pink colors
and fancy hairdos. You could say that
the show was a hardy perennial.
However much the designer plants new
Dreaming in Japanese
t was a quite show for Mar tin
I Gra nt, no complicated prints,
no overbearing themes, no bells
no whistles. And his faithful
clientele would not have it any
other way.
Here was a collection of classics
with a hint of Asian refinement in
the strong shoulders, leather obi-
sized belts, oversized origami
folds of fabric and the slicked-
back samurai ‘‘chomage’’ topk nots
on the models.
Standout pieces of the show
were a great fitted leather jacket
with large lapels and big buttons,
a pair of familiar-looking wide-
legged pants that turned
attention-grabbing when a closer
inspection showed subtle tucks at
the knees and a pink cocktail
dress with a loosely pleated front
that brought to mind fluttering
rose petals.
But a collection is nothing if not
a time to showcase talent. To
repeat the same cut of a jacket, be
it in different fabric, or to pair
elegant tops with the same tiny
shorts is a missed opportunity to
reveal to a captive audience the
width and breadth of a designer’s
abilities. — Jessica Michault
there were ‘‘Tea-for-Two’’ 1930s love-
lies twittering about in their bias-cut,
flower-patterned dresses worn with
fancy hats and fancier hairdos. The
girls camped it up, offering a rose to the
front-row guest Kayne West.
It was vintage Galliano, sweet but
never cloying, the lightness of the
gowns without any of the couture
sumptuousness at Dior and a few pas-
sages of seductive black tailored suits.
The show seemed a bit of a lark — in-
cluding Galliano’s own outfit: flowered
underpants that looked like they must
be part of the new line of children’s
wear he is starting with Diesel.
Dita Von Teese, the porcelain-
skinned burlesque dancer who dresses
in just Galliano’s 1930s way, summed
up the show, saying, ‘‘I got sensory
overload.’’
Chloé
h loé was a brand that first
C flowered in the 1970s, and Paulo
Melim Andersson in his second show-
ing for the house insinuated a little of
that ‘‘f lou’’ on which Karl Lagerfeld
made his early reputation. In fact, it
was the fluid outfits in longer lengths
— the slender cardigan over airy, gauzy
tunics and pants or the other lengthy
layers at the heart of the collection that
resonated as news.
It seemed smart to take Chloé back
to its roots — while still pushing for-
ward. It has most recently been pitched
as a brand for women who want to stay
forever innocent on the cusp of maid-
enhood and maturity.
Andersson is still heavily influenced
by his time in the design team at Marni,
MARTIN GR ANT
the leather turbans and silken hair
twists and Jean-Paul Gaultier was wip-
ing from his face the russet powder that
had been falling in colorful puffs off the
backdrop.
It was a Hermès-goes-to-India mo-
ment — literally, in that the house is
planning to open a store in Mumbai
and as a theme for the spring/summer
2008 show.
‘‘The sari is the most elegant gar-
ment for women in the world,’’ sa id
Gaultier, after his finale of saris in jew-
el shades of purple, orange and blue.
But he added that he was fascinated by
the Raj colonial world of polo and sa-
fari. All these ideas — and themed
shows now seem a cliché — were given
a coat of super luxury.
And often it worked beautifully for
Hermès, as in the white crocodile jodh-
purs, or just the same pants in a stone
beige with a ultra-fine cashmere knitted
vest over a full-sleeved white blouse.
The Hermès silk prints treated as
free-floating tops and sari drapery, on
the lines of the toga, looked very fine.
Accessories like carved bangles,
scarves and bags in colors of curry and
spice carried only a light dusting of In-
dia.
Kenzo
ll sorts of birds pecked among the
A Amazonian jungle of leaves that
hung over the Kenzo runway. But orni-
thologists in the wild had filmed the
birds that appeared on video screens
hung among the fronds.
The Kenzo jungle was by the design-
er Antonio Marras, who cited many ref-
erences from modern art to the 1982
Werner Herzog movie ‘‘Fitzca rra ldo,’’
about an opera fanatic in the Amazon.
If it sounds complicated, it was not
half as complex as the clothes, which
were like a psychedelic ode to saving
the rain forest: here, flowers glowing
on skirts, parakeet colors screaming
from feathered bags. Only occasionally
did a darker jungle green jacket with a
milder leaf pattern look less like a mad
movie poster.
In his eponymous collections, Mar-
ras is a romantic with a quiet sensibil-
ity. For Kenzo, he seems obliged to spell
everything out in capital letters.
Elie Saab
he flowers scattered over dresses at
T the start of Eli Saab’s show sug-
gested that the designer was finally
moving from sex pots to flower pots.
Those few dresses with 1950s full skirts
were charming, with black silhouettes
of big blooms on green and yellow.
But, alas, the garden wilted and the
flower dresses were replaced with
those oh-so-familiar sparkly, drop-
dead red carpet gowns which turned
into one long (very long) big yawn.
K inder
Another name to note is Kinder, the
Italian-born designer who has an im-
pressive pedigree — training at Saint
Ma rtin’s College of Art and Design and
then working with the Savile Row tail-
iht.com/style
Photographs of Paris Fashion Week