Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Since the departure of the design duo of Michael Herz and Graeme Fidler in September, the Swiss accessories label Bally has gone without a creative director. This needn't have been an issue, given that under Bally's previous management, Herz and Fidler's ready-to-wear had been sidelined in favor of shoes and bags. But its ambitious new CEO, Frйdйric de Narp, has other plans. Bally is to be a lifestyle brand, which means shoes need accessories of their own above the ankles. Herz and Fidler have not been replaced, but the Bally design team worked in conjunction with the young French designer Alexandre Mattiussi of Ami to restart ready-to-wear. Accordingly, they skew younger and trendier than their predecessors, who more often mined the company archives for inspiration.

The debut collection under the new leadership is small but not unencouraging. After years of function-driven clothing, it may take time to convince Bally's existing customers to add a double-breasted topcoat or a slouchy pleated trouser to their accessories purchases, however appealing they may be. The transitional step of beginning with the materials and expertise the company already has in hand would seem to be the right one, as in the case of a puffer jacket in soft, black Bally leather.
Matthew Schneier

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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Brioni co-founder Gaetano Savini traveled to Japan in 1963. The historical record existsit's a small, age-stained diary with Arigato=Grazie scrawled across the cover. When Brioni's current steward, Brendan Mullane, turned up the journal in the house archives, it was like he'd received a sign from above. Mullane has made a habit of retracing the Brioni founders' steps (last season, he replicated their trip to London), and he packed his crew up and took them all to Japan. The result is perhaps the most Japanese collection of ultra-luxury Italian suits ever attempted.

The entire enterprise is premised on bringing together the two traditions. It started on the micro level: Mullane spoke of borrowing colors from Caravaggio (rich cherry red, deep green, navy) and weaving them into Japanese suiting wools, then garment-dyeing Italian cashmere coats in a pink the color of Japanese cherry blossoms. From there, it grew to macro: There were traditional Western suits in single- and double-breasted iterations, but the apex of the mix was a suit silhouette inspired by a kimono, with inset lapels and a belted waist. It drew the largest crowd of goggling Italians.

On the trip, between visits to Tadao Ando's building and the Naoshima Biennial, Mullane met with a 450-year-old firm of kimono artisans, from whom he commissioned a custom print featuring cranes, bamboo, and plum and cherry blossoms. It showed up printed onto silk shirts and woven into suits, but its wildest and most luxurious expression was on a bomber jacket hand-painted with the crane motif. It will be a limited edition and, as the euphemism has it, priced on request. Which in the end makes it different less in degree than in kind from Brioni's usual wildly luxe fare. (This is a collection that includes a full-length mink with a Prince of Wales pattern hand-cut into it with a razor.)

Skeptics may wonder at the wisdom of a departure as marked as this one, but wonder is at least as worthy a response as skepticism. "To me, it's quintessentially Brioni," Mullane said of the collection. "Everything has that nod to Italian sartorialism, but taken to the next level." Besides, Savini isn't the only traveler with an understanding that arigato=grazie. Cross-cultural appreciation goes both ways. "Most of the customers of the kimono company," Mullane confided, "are also Brioni customers."
Matthew Schneier

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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If cats have nine lives, leopard spots have 900, give or take. They've been going strong for so long now, you'd think designers would be hard-pressed to come up with new ways to interpret them. But that's what Sarah Burton was up to this season at McQ. First she digitized a print she picked up from an early Alexander McQueen show, and then she flocked it. On a cropped bomber, the red-and-black-on-white results looked graphic, almost three-dimensional. It should be an easy sell at the stores. Tartans, similarly, are as tried-and-true as they come. Burton kept hers fresh by pairing them with leopard spotsor better yet, by splicing two different patterns in one great-looking minidress.

Elsewhere, she tweaked street-smart basics like biker jackets, parkas, and peacoats, giving them a bit of polish without sacrificing any edge. One biker came with a tartan lining, another's was baby pink. A red and black color-blocked peacoat looked particularly sharp. Its patchwork motif carried over into denim. Hip-slung and holey, Burton's boyfriend jeans signaled a new, more relaxed attitude for McQ. It's one that makes good sense for this little sister brand.
Nicole Phelps

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Canali uses its runway collections to travel. Recent outings have taken it to Paris and St. Petersburg, but for Fall the label stayed closer to home: Venice. "I suppose all Italians love Venice," said Elisabetta Canali backstage. "It is a city of art, full of tradition."

Venetian traditions infused the collection with a romantic spirit slightly incongruous for an 80-year-old suit label. But what's the good of a vacation if you can't get away from yourself for a little while? The delicate colors of mist and the watery blues and greens of canals provided the palette. Venetian velvet took center stage as a material for wafer-colored jackets and trousers; wallpaper motifs borrowed from the walls of palazzi were jacquard-ed into the suits.

There were pieces of such exaggerated lovelinessall rounded-down shawl collars, robelike coats, and shimmering silk shirtsthat they threatened to send the elegant lot spinning toward pure fantasy. But then there's a school of thought that says that's what a runway is for. If the collection felt less contemporary than it might have, that's because, Elisabetta insisted, "Elegance must be timeless." Anyway, as a concession to the present moment, she mentioned that she'd just relaunched the label's Web site, as a portal to its globe-trotting world.
Matthew Schneier

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There's something of sixties London in the pipeline right now, which probably means David Bailey is about to have another moment. Frida Giannini caught an early whiff of it with her latest collection of menswear for Gucci. Bailey's classic portraits of the era have always helped nourish Giannini's fantasies of London. There and then, London's la dolce vita was mod. Here and now, on the Gucci catwalk, mod was embodied again by skinny, speedy boys in turtlenecks and drainpipes paired with hyper-tailored bum-freezers and shrunken peacoats, and topped off with the sort of fisherman's cap John Lennon once favored. In fact, the cap-peacoat-and-black-leather-pants combo felt a little like something the Beatles would have worn in their Hamburg days.

But this was no mere retro-vision on Giannini's part. Neoprene bonding mutated classics. The monochrome of mod was alleviated by creamy pastels lifted from the palette of rising young Canadian art star Kris Knight. They added a subtle energy, particularly in leather, to pieces like the powder-pink blazer and the pale blue military shirt. If the artificiality made you think of sugary pop, it also had a slightly fetishistic kink (maybe that's a bullet a leather shirt will never really be able to dodge).

Back at the beginning of her reign at Gucci, Giannini showed a men's collection that was fizzing with the fun of the ragazzi on Rome's Via Veneto in its dolce heyday. Today's outing may have been darker in tone—King Krule (neu-Morrissey) and Smiths (alt-Morrissey) on the soundtrackbut it was a reminder that Giannini still knows where the boys are.
Tim Blanks

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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

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John Varvatos idolizes rock stars. His years-long campaign to be the tailor of record for rock (casting grizzled headliners in his ads, publishing John Varvatos: Rock in Fashion, etc.) can't have left any mind unmade that to him, these guys are gods. Or if not gods, their mortal second-bests: superheroes. The designer effectively confirmed the theory tonight. It was superheroes, he said, that inspired the new collection. Coming off a new ad campaign with hard rock's tireless costumed crusaders, Kiss, he'd thought about how to bring some of their larger-than-life dash to his collection. So he sprinkled it with what he called magic dust. That was most likely a metaphor. But you couldn't fail to notice that everything literally glittered.

The first superhero-to-be was Varvatos favorite Miles McMillan in a motorcycle-style blazer that zipped on the bias and featured shoulder and elbow patches of silver-foiled croc. He and each guy that followed looked like a Varvatos man amplified: one who wore the usual attenuated tailoring accessorized with biker boots, wallet chains, and knotted scarves, but whose jacquarded jacket and tie played tricks with the light, whose jeans came in stretch leather, whose sweater closed with silver toggles like little stakes. Stardom is a common enough fantasy, though it remains to be seen how many will line up to dress the part. The most extreme pieces, like a black overcoat whose back sprouted what looked like raven's feathers, appeared to be ready for a concert stage, but Varvatos insisted that everything on the runway had been bought for his stores and would be on view in his showroom for any other retailers brave enough to take it on.

The encore to the production, such as it was, was a quartet of surprise guests who came out with Varvatos to take his runway bow: Kiss in the flesh, vamping to "Rock and Roll All Nite" with Gene Simmons' yard-long tongue unfurled for the occasion. The band had flown 17 hours to make an appearance, to be capped off by a performance at the show's after-party tonight. Then it would be straight back home to L.A. Backstage, guitarist and vocalist Paul Stanley offered his own critical appraisal of his friend. For him, he said, Varvatos represented not capricious fashion, but timeless style. "John is not a member of the fashion community," he added. "He is a member of the rock 'n' roll community." Then he toddled off to rock and roll all nite.
Matthew Schneier

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The satanic vroom in the room launched the latest Versace collection as a paean to the biker as the new cowboy, living life on the wild frontier, outside of so-ci-e-tee. Whoops! Nothing new in that notion. Just as there wasn't much that registered as "new" in the Versace show. But it sure was a hell of a ride.

"My CEO told me I had to show a lot of product," Donatella announced, a propos of a collection that was chockfull of stuff. Most memorable: a handful of boys who were basically bare-assed in chaps, bar the skimpy, hungry-bummed bandana-printed briefs they sported. "It was a way to show underpants," Donatella merrily declared. "Male lingerie!"

That particular group looked like showboys from a Vegas review inspired by Kenneth Anger's underground biker classic Scorpio Rising. Oil-stained denims highlighted by studded codpieces might have been costumes from the same production. And, once that seed was planted, even suits with horseshoe, cactus, and sheriff's star appliquйs had a glitzy campiness that screeched Vegas.

But subtlety has scarcely ever been Versace's calling card. There were so many moments of stand-up-and-be-counted over-the-topness in this collection: the red leather cowboy that looked like a New York Doll (circa the era of Malcolm McLaren's management); the bike-printed jacket and jeans that might have been lifted from a kid's duvet cover; the chinchilla hoodie&ahem, the chinchilla hoodie!

Donatella took her bow in a wrinkled white cotton blouse. Wrinkled! Cotton! "Very cowgirl," she said with a laugh. In fact, she was laughing a lot backstage, in a way that suggested a state of relaxation that is seldom allowed her by the gimlet-eyed world in which she moves. "There's a young Versace customer who is looking for these products," she insisted, eyeing the enthusiastic guys who clustered around her in their chaps. "I'm inspired by the confidence of the models."
Tim Blanks

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