The set of a Chanel show is the gold standard of fashion excess: icebergs, forests, the world after the world has ended…nothing is too much for Karl Lagerfeld. The set for today's couture presentation gave nothing awayan enormous glistening white tube loomed center stage, so blank that its only possible promise was revolution. And revolve it duly did. When it revolved, it revealed shaggy French pop star Sйbastien Tellier, his orchestra, and two giant sweeping staircases fresh out of an Art Deco fantasia from the Hollywood thirties. No, Lagerfeld corrected, "It's an ice palace, a nightclub on another planet."

He knew those stairs, the kind of stairs down which vedettes would make a grand entrance, posing every step of the way. Couture stairs. So he had his models sprint down them, as light as fairies, skipping and spinning. It was an adorably spritely fuck you to any notion of heritage. And yet Lagerfeld also strapped his fey young things into corsets with stays, the very thing that Coco herself cast off in the name of modernity nearly a century ago. He compared them to motocross belts. "This is ballroom-cross," he joked. Laughter aside, the supreme irony of corseting a Chanel woman was surely not lost on smart cookie Karl.

Anyway, the corseted midriff was the core over which he laid a bolero (or crop top) and a short skirt for the collection's defining look. It was energetic, athletic…and it was really the only thing that could successfully match the footwear. Every outfit featured a couture sneaker by Massaro: python, with lace, pearls, and tweed. (If you're curious about the cost of such an item, the price tag will probably be something in the vicinity of Ђ3,000.)

In the spirit of sportiness, there were also knee and elbow pads, and there was athletic-wear transfigured: A crystallized blouson was one of the prettiest pieces in the collection. In fact, the luminescence of the trim, lively clothing seemed doubly noteworthy, given that yesterday's Dior Couture show was also about light and movement. The two most significant fashion houses in France just made a major commitment to a new generation…to the future, in fact.
Tim Blanks

http://feeds.style.com/~r/fashion_show_updates/~3/FTcRajAbovc/

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

http://feeds.style.com/~r/fashion_show_updates/~3/EK9U4RkmI-s/

The art-fashion frisson that continues to seduce so many designers of both menswear and womenswear struck Jay Ahr's Jonathan Riss from a different angle for Pre-Fall. Forget all the MoMA-worthy auction bait; he had his sights set on the purity of African patterning and ornamentation, and used working zippers as his primary medium. If this link wasn't immediately apparent upon glimpsing his come-hither dresses, it was compelling enough in his mind's eye to yield a collection that revealed his technical strengths. Basically, the zippers could be manipulated at various points along the garments to vary the degree of exposed skin or modify silhouettes. Riss seemed to delight in determining when to include a two-way zipper, where to position the openings, and how to use them for optimum contour definition. In his demonstrations, some were more intuitive than others. Still, they added functional decoration to his LBDs and flouncy skirts, and this made him proudest of all. He also seemed pleased with his latest fabric innovations: an embossed faux leather patterned in squares like a chocolate bar, a technical woven material that evoked an African textile, and a funky red-shaded faux fur that was less imitation mink than extra-large layer.

Riss is well aware that his trompe l'oeil dresses (a one-piece blouse-skirt combination) have become his signature, and so, in addition to the zippered styles, he introduced a slightly longer length as well as a version embellished in micro-metal rings. This dimensional pattern also played out on an unstructured shirtdress that was roomier than usual for Jay Ahr. It also happened to be as sexy as any of Riss' slinky creationsand affords him new room to play around for the season to come.
Alex Veblen

http://feeds.style.com/~r/fashion_show_updates/~3/m0eI05UuufM/

The set of a Chanel show is the gold standard of fashion excess: icebergs, forests, the world after the world has ended…nothing is too much for Karl Lagerfeld. The set for today's couture presentation gave nothing awayan enormous glistening white tube loomed center stage, so blank that its only possible promise was revolution. And revolve it duly did. When it revolved, it revealed shaggy French pop star Sйbastien Tellier, his orchestra, and two giant sweeping staircases fresh out of an Art Deco fantasia from the Hollywood thirties. No, Lagerfeld corrected, "It's an ice palace, a nightclub on another planet."

He knew those stairs, the kind of stairs down which vedettes would make a grand entrance, posing every step of the way. Couture stairs. So he had his models sprint down them, as light as fairies, skipping and spinning. It was an adorably spritely fuck you to any notion of heritage. And yet Lagerfeld also strapped his fey young things into corsets with stays, the very thing that Coco herself cast off in the name of modernity nearly a century ago. He compared them to motocross belts. "This is ballroom-cross," he joked. Laughter aside, the supreme irony of corseting a Chanel woman was surely not lost on smart cookie Karl.

Anyway, the corseted midriff was the core over which he laid a bolero (or crop top) and a short skirt for the collection's defining look. It was energetic, athletic…and it was really the only thing that could successfully match the footwear. Every outfit featured a couture sneaker by Massaro: python, with lace, pearls, and tweed. (If you're curious about the cost of such an item, the price tag will probably be something in the vicinity of Ђ3,000.)

In the spirit of sportiness, there were also knee and elbow pads, and there was athletic-wear transfigured: A crystallized blouson was one of the prettiest pieces in the collection. In fact, the luminescence of the trim, lively clothing seemed doubly noteworthy, given that yesterday's Dior Couture show was also about light and movement. The two most significant fashion houses in France just made a major commitment to a new generation…to the future, in fact.
Tim Blanks

http://feeds.style.com/~r/fashion_show_updates/~3/j7l2P3uqMW4/

In every couture collection, Ulyana Sergeenko tells a story. This time, it was a reimagining of a ride on the Orient Express. Sergeenko's new heroine not only crossed borders (the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), but also, in a manner of speaking, cross-dressed, borrowing clothes from the men she met on her travels and mixing them with her own more feminine attire. "She could be a movie star," Sergeenko said, "but she

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It's official. In December, French fashion's governing body, the Chambre Syndicale, granted Bouchra Jarrar an haute couture appellation. This was an upgrade from her guest-member status and a seriously big deal. She's secured a place in couture's history books, joining the ranks of pre-war women designers like Chanel, Vionnet, Grиs, and Schiaparelli. It's been more than thirty years since a woman was named a grande couturiиre. Thirty!

And so there was good reason for the newfound swagger in her exuberantly embellished jackets and gilets. "J'ai des oiseaux," she said backstage. "I have birds." And she meant it. Jarrar used ivory feathers last season, but here they were packed closely together in natural shades of brown and black or were dyed a gorgeous sapphire blue. There were probably more colors in this show's plumes than in all her previous collections combined. More crystals, too. They encrusted the front, back, and sleeves of a Perfecto, or, more subtly, were tucked among the long "shard" sequins of a bolero jacket, only now and then catching the light. Jarrar was just as attentive to her tailleurs. A devastatingly precise blazer and redingotes (with sleeves and without) were made from custom-dyed handwoven threads. They gleamed.

On the couture runways, glory tends to come from gowns destined for the red carpet, or maybe a royal wedding. Jarrar, a little like Coco Chanel before her, is obsessive about clothes for everyday, unapologetically so. This season, there were military flares and tuxedo trousers that made a persuasive case for pleats. Glittering accolades? Meh. Ask any woman, there are few things more glorious than a great-fitting pair of pants.
Nicole Phelps

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The undulating shapes of Oscar Niemeyer's buildings and bridges made up one of two messages informing Paule Ka's tightly edited Pre-Fall collection. A young Marianne Faithfull was the other. This overlap of architecture and ingenue was best expressed with short A-line dresses broken up by lace inserts in shades of chartreuse, robin's-egg blue, and lilac. The most dynamic paired the lilac with poppy-red stretch wool. The lace was best left unlayered; otherwise things turned too dainty to maintain any relation to the aforementioned inspirations. Elsewhere, a twisted duchesse satin cummerbund belt reined in silhouettes and impressed more than a conventional belt (that same satin detail also appeared as a decorative band across the instep of a heel). Spider mesh extended wool miniskirt hemlines by an extra inch, even though they revealed the same amount of leg. Pants were notable only insofar as how unimportant a role they played; Faithfull started off a skirt girl, anyway. Outerwear integrated plush panes of rabbit, fox, and curly lambostensibly to ensure that the lace never ends up feeling too drafty.
Alex Veblen

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Goddesses are trending at the couture shows. Yesterday Donatella Versace conjured glam ones in crystals and acid hues of orange, green, and purple. Tonight, Alexis Mabille tried to bring the goddesses of Greco-Roman statuary to life. If he didn't make as good a go of it as Lady D, first to blame are the paper butterflies that multiplied in the models' hair and occasionally alighted on their noses. Second are the shoulder-duster rhinestone earrings. Mabille needs to learn to simplify. The exemplary fit of his classically constructed gowns would make a bigger impact if it weren't mucked up by all the extras. We clocked several beauties in this show, from a pair of silk crepe columns draped from halter "necklaces," with the effortless appeal of a toga or a sarong, to a more rigorous bustier dress, lace appliquйs decorating the hips. A body-limning Chantilly lace number stitched with crystals will go down as the most convincing case ever for his career-long obsession with bows.

But in other instances, Mabille's gowns were more showgirl than goddess. Where else but onstage would a floor-length sheath with a belly button-exposing teardrop-shaped cutout be called for? Likewise, there was something of the costume department in an exuberantly pleated "Mark Antony" coat worn with beaded tulle leggings. If the model hadn't been clutching it to her breast, she might have fallen backward from its weight. There'd be no ascending to the heavens in an outfit like that.
Nicole Phelps

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Last July, when they launched their label, Atto's Julien Dossena and Lion Blau demonstrated a light touch with unlikely combinations. It attracted the attention of some important retailers and likely helped Dossena land a creative director gig at Paco Rabanne. Atto's sexy sequined turtlenecks (whoever heard of a sexy turtleneck?) became hot sellers when the collection landed in stores a month or so ago. Their second offeringthe designers have opted to show only twice a year, off-runway during the pre-seasonsis slightly bigger than the first, and filled with new ideas about juxtaposing odd elements. Hard and soft came together on crepe de chine slipdresses bisected with leather panels and on menswear-style trousers cut from a fleecy polyester. Elsewhere, an A-line skirt was spliced with a panel of pleats made from an unexpected technical fabric, while a double-breasted coat and jacket, as haute Parisian as it gets, were cinched with oversize obi belts, West-meets-East style.

Ultimately, though, this collection's pleasures were of the simple sort: Graphic black-and-white color-blocked sweaters in downy angora felt even better than they looked. And a clingy turtleneck dress was printed with the brand's logo, only so big it was completely abstract. In its own way, it was just as attention grabbing as last season's sequins.
Nicole Phelps

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Putting poppies and spacecrafts in the same collection would not be anyone's idea of obvious. As the two main motifs in Alexis Martial's second outing for Iceberg, they represented diametrically opposite ways to explore seventies tropes: one, feminine and free-spirited; the other, retro modern. The real story, however, took shape in Martial's unconventional way of recombining classics. His skirts, for instance, were an asymmetric merger of handkerchief and accordion pleat. His turtleneck knits were capped with a quilted yoke. Trimmed in fox fur or offered in nylon, his extra-long zip hoodies assumed new responsibility as outerwear.

Despite his best intentions, the designer didn't always make a splash. His near-obsessive use of neoprene felt fresh when double-faced with knit; formed into a blazer, the material remained more constricting than a space suit. Multicolored python belts, glossy patent plackets, and Rainbow Brite shearling collars made clear that Martial can think like a stylist. But the spaceship appliquйs took a wrong turn along the way from young boy's universe into high-fashion space. He need not try so hard to convince us that he can navigate contemporary Italian terra firma. The simply striped ski sweaters and salt-and-pepper tweeds seemed to make this point cleanly and without compromise.
Alex Veblen

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"They're bad characters. They've got morning-after hair, and they've thrown on their haute couture to run around in the next day." Giambattista Valli painted a vivid picture of his muse backstage before his show. When he landed on the couture schedule six seasons ago, he didn't so much set out to rewrite the rules as he did to inject the made-to-measure world's rarefied confines with a young energy, aided and abetted along the way by his photogenic front row of international jet-setters. Rarely, though, has Valli's magnificent obsession with youth been more apparent than it was tonight, with his emphasis on a short, supremely leggy silhouette and what he called a "spontaneous attitude."

He built his party outfits on a fitted miniskirt base, sometimes swagging rolls of duchesse satin around the hips on top of that mini, and other times layering a short-in-front, long-in-back kicky pleated skirt with a splice up the middle over the top. Above that it could be a cropped top in a silk cloque with a grosgrain-ribbon hem, or a sleeveless silk shell embroidered in iridescent blue three-dimensional floral appliquйs. Valli's fabrics and embellishments tended toward the dense and heavy, the polar opposite of Raf Simons' work at Dior today. By the same token, the color palette (especially that vivid blue and pink on black) and the voluminous, peplumed shapes owed a noticeable debt to Simons' debut at Dior circa July 2012.

Simons is leading the fashion conversation at the moment; it's probably all too easy to get swept up in it. But Valli is a runway veteran, with plenty of his own things to say about layering print and texture. They resonated most clearly in Joan Smalls' appliquйd floral-print dress with a matching crop top worn over it, and again on an Yves Klein blue thigh-slit ball gown topped by an abbreviated black bugle-bead embroidered tank. That look was youthful in a way that was entirely Valli's own.
Nicole Phelps

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

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Guillaume Henry began pursuing a tougher look for his Carven girl last season; actresses who came of age in the edgier-than-now nineties like Drew Barrymore and Liv Tyler influenced him. This time, he said his muse was Bonnie Parker, the ultimate girl outlaw, as played by Faye Dunaway. But there was nothing quite so obvious in his Pre-Fall lineup as a beretnot much tough about those anyway. Instead, he created prints inspired by Brassaп's early photos of street art for a flared mini and a trim button-down, and cut a mannish coat in a bold white tartan. Outerwear was a big part of the story. Shearling bombers and aviators, along with wool toggle coats in navy or camel, took their cues from military uniforms. The more boyish vibe aligns Henry with the direction other labels are heading in this season. Ladylike is on the wane. But once an ingenue, always an ingenue. The signature Carven charm materialized most obviously in shrunken sweaters and short A-line skirts, and on a great little long-sleeved dress made from silvery-white lace.
Nicole Phelps

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

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The nineteenth-century Dutch artist Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted scenes from the Roman Empire. His subjects always seemed to be reclining amid marble statuary, and there was a good chance that the Mediterranean Sea was shimmering in the background. Elie Saab set out to capture a bit of that idyllic ambiance with his new couture show. His pastel colorsblush pink, hydrangea blue, and lilacwere lifted from an Alma-Tadema canvas, and the collection

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Fifty-five looks for fifty-five operas. The Valentino designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli were after something new for Couture this season, and they found it in the age-old tradition of opera. The show opened with a nod to La Traviata; Giuseppe Verdi's score was embroidered in black on the long, full skirt of a parchment-colored tulle dress. After that, Chiuri explained, "we wanted to describe the character of each [opera's] protagonist in a primordial way." By the end, they had called out all the greats: Puccini's La Bohиme inspired an elegant navy cashmere cape and silk crepe sheath. Bizet's Carmen produced a pleated bronze tulle gown with silver-gray guipure lace embroideries.

Admittedly, the connections were sometimes tenuous, but that didn't detract from the austere beauty of simply draped silk marocain dresses in earthy shades of sienna, green, and mahogany. Or the divine splendor of a gold thread dress embellished with four thousand smoky gemstones that took twenty-five hundred hours to affix. The monastic and the regal are the twin signatures of Chiuri and Piccioli's work chez Valentino. Both sides of that aesthetic presumably appeal to Florence + the Machine's Florence Welch, who was perched near Giancarlo Giammetti in the front row.

The surprise was all the animalsa veritable menagerie of them, or as the French composer Camille Saint-Saлns would've had it, a carnaval des animaux. A swan, a snake, and a peacock made from feathers that wrapped around the waistline of ballerina tutus&lions and elephants on a double-face cashmere dress and a coat (not embroidered, mind you, but built into the fabric of the garments, like a puzzle)&even a gorilla and its baby were spotted tucked amid the leather floral appliquйs of an organza cape.

The creativity of the set dressers at the Rome Opera House had a profound effect on the duo this season; Chiuri and Piccioli invited the opera's artisans to paint the show's runway and backdrop. But if theatricality is a virtue onstage, the more realistically the creatures were rendered here, the better off the clothes were. By contrast, a satin tiger practically pounced off the skirt of the finale dress. The workmanship was second to none, but the designers may have overestimated the big cat's charms. All in all though, this was another bravura performance.
Nicole Phelps

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Ballerinas for Bonbon. Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren are launching a new perfume. The ad campaign for Bonbon was projected onto the backdrop at the end of their show tonight; it stars a seated Edita Vilkeviciute, her naked body painted in pink bows the same color and shape as the fragrance bottle, which sits perched on her lap.

In a sweet little piece of cross-promotion, the designers cast members of the Dutch National Ballet as models, dressing them in leotard-tight dresses in nude shades of latex that looked remarkably like real skin, some of which were hand-painted with trompe l'oeil tattoos of ruffles, birds, or those bows. In a week when Schiaparelli was back on the Couture calendar after sixty-odd years, Horsting and Snoeren were the ones to embrace surrealism, draping folds of latex from tattooed bird's beaks and bows. One short-sleeve asymmetric-hem dress looked like a high-cut bodysuit with a skirt slung over just one hip, leaving the other exposed. What was rubber and what was flesh? You couldn't tell. It was the kind of head game that the Dutch duo has always loved.

In recent years, the received wisdom on Couture was that it was basically just a promotional device for a brand's perfumes. Viktor & Rolf proved the clichй true. Our guess is they got some perverse pleasure out of that.
Nicole Phelps

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By one count, Zuhair Murad

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Maison Martin Margiela's "Couture" collection, Artisanal, corrals a number of different creative impulses: finding preciousness in the un-precious or the overlooked, asking compelling questions about what constitutes value in fashion, and celebrating the craft of the hand. In fetishizing the production process (detailing the provenance and the production time), it's creating a fashion equivalent of the Slow Food movement. Artisanal is also a collection about collectinggathering up bits and pieces from other times and places to repurpose in the here and now. Today's version of Artisanal took that particular impulse to high/low extremes: Clothes wrapped and draped from textiles designed by artists (some of them sourced from "private collections") were matched with bricolages of found doodads, beads, chains, soda-can pulls, crystals, keys, and so much more. And, as has become a habit with this collection, the result was mesmerizingly, bizarrely beautiful.

Whoever's responsibility it is to scour the world for source material for MMM must have one of the best jobs in fashionor maybe one of the most difficult. You wonder at the powers of persuasion it took to winkle the fourth look's Frank Lloyd Wright textiles out of a private collection in Flagstaff, Arizona, so they could be whisked to the Maison's workshop, where the elves of the triple M would transfer the cherished cloth into a mere dress! Point being, it never is just a mere dress. Like an atelier full of interning Dr. Frankensteins, MMM's alchemists compose new life from bits and pieces of the old. Here, that life lived on so many levels, from the white T-shirt stitched with scraps of old Mariano Fortuny fabric (production time: twenty-two hours), to the opera coat cut from a 1920s Bauhaus tapestry (production time: one hundred and ten hours). The approach to raw materials was catholic enough to embrace a tapestry based on a Gauguin painting (it made a huge coat) and an old rescue blanket (from which a jacket was cut). Or silk scarves from a 1930s brothel (sewn together to make a pencil skirt) and embroideries based on designs made by the famous fifties tattooist Sailor Jerry (stitched into shell tops). You hear tell that shoppers increasingly appreciate a narrative attached to their purchases. MMM delivered the goods in spades.

Seeing we mentioned habit, there is one MMM go-to that might be due a revision. The models once more walked with faces covered, this time with organdy veils whose eyeholes were embroidered. Kanye West made Artisanal's last, glittering face-huggers practically iconic when he wore them on his tour. But these masks were so damn creepy that, instead of forcing 100 percent of your focus on the clothes (surely the point of the exercise), they left you pondering beauty and horror, and the life-forms that might need such coverage.
Tim Blanks

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When Alexis Mabille says he is returning to the classics, he essentially means he is exploring his greatest hits with a little less frou. So for his second pre-collection, he reduced his ideas down to flattering high waists, all-day-everyday dresses, and some assorted dandy details. Yet again, Mabille has reimagined his signature bows, this time as mohair grosgrain (yes, there is such a thing) down the placket of a blouse, as delicate hardware affixed to cardigans, and integrated into the back pockets on quilted denim.

The newsiest part of the collection was the new AM print in a medley of typefaces, from Victorian to collegiate. The silk was printed according to the same savoir faire practices as Hermлs. It

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