Here are the looks that caught Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan’s eye during the Paris Fashion Week shows for fall 2016 — some because of their impeccable design and others because of their lack of it.
• Dries Van Noten designs lust-worthy clothes.
The top was an extravagance of silver and bronze spangles. The skirt was a beautiful, chaotic mix of emerald sparkles creating crazy-colored leopard spots on a black skirt. The shoes were ruby velvet. Around the model’s neck sat a furry collar streaked in chestnut brown. And it was all glorious. It was hand over your credit card, cancel the cable, indulge yourself and revel in the pleasure of a kind of beauty that turns a mundane day into an occasion.
• Chanel skips the gimmicks.
Karl Lagerfeld knows how to excite a woman’s imagination to the degree that she will fulfill her out-of-her-price-range lust for a Chanel jacket with a $40 lipstick or $30 nail lacquer. But he also knows how to get to the heart of fashion, which is to give customers clothes that they can easily wear.
• Balmain celebrates the booty.
It was all about the bottom half at Balmain. The hips. The tush, the derriere, the money-maker. Designer Olivier Rousteing showed off a fall 2016 collection filled with lavishly structured skirts in pale pink jacquard, pine-green lattice work, pale pink ruffles and gray feathers. … The skirts celebrated the roundness of the hips, the curve of the rear end.
• Saint Laurent dissects the 1980s.
There were strapless silhouettes and others whose sleeves were more like enormous prehistoric wings jutting from the shoulders. And Slimane included poofy skirts that were cut so short that they only barely covered the downward curve of the derriere. The shoulders were big and broad. An enormous cobalt blue fur had shoulders so broad it hung from the model like a giant furry sign board.
• Jacquemus breaks down garments to their roots.
The designer Simon Porte Jacquemus showed a collection during this city’s fashion week that reduced clothes to their elemental shapes, to their raw beginnings, to basic ideas — and reconstructed them. And so a circle skirt became a piece of fabric wrapped around the body with a two-dimensional circle attached to the front like a shield.
• Balenciaga trades glamour for normal.
The collection offered simply tailored jackets and dresses with a sculpted silhouette that emphasized the hips while minimizing the waist. The shoulders were broad and oversize but not overwhelming. He offered up sportswear — parkas, shearlings, trench coats — that were worn partially unzipped so that they sat back and away from the neck. Demna Gvasalia said it was important to him that they not simply look good in the clothes but also liked the clothes they were wearing.
• Haider Ackermann wants everyone to look like a glamorous praying mantis.
The models stalked out with their hair wrapped in colorful coils that had it spiraling upwards like insect antennae. Their legs were elongated in skinny trousers cropped at the ankles. They were perched atop keen-toes booties with needle thin heels. Many of the fabrics glittered. Even the velvet glowed under the bright spotlights. The result was a parade of models who called to mind a swarm of praying mantis. Elegant and graceful but with a dangerous glint.
• Comme des Garcons gets weird.
Everything about the ensemble was odd and inscrutable. It was weird. It was fashion. And it makes people crazy. The simplest thing that fashion can do is to clothe us for an occasion and spark a trend. Furry shoes! Leopard prints! Pink! The more difficult task is pushing us to change the way that we think about our culture and ourselves.
• Iris van Herpen takes us into a freaky dream.
The clothes this season are fascinating thanks to their intricacy and the manner in which they swirl, dive and soar around the body. And van Herpen certainly raises questions about the nature of the human decision-making process. How much of it is based on considerations in the conscious mind and how much is determined by white noise in our head?
