PARIS, October 2, 2008

By Sarah Mower

As it faces up to a world of dramatically reconfigured priorities, what action should fashion take to stay relevant? Should designers be paring back, or keep pushing the new? On YSL's runway, that tension surfaced. "I felt for an extreme simplicity," Stefano Pilati said, "but it has to be feminine and a bit audacious. Lifting the spirits was making sense to me." His solution was to play it both ways, with Japanese-inflected austerity on the one hand, and no surrender over risk-taking shapes and hotly desirable shoes on the other.

The Orientalist-modernist mix came out in the towering lacquered chignons and soft, cocooning shapes that had been derived from kimono wrapping and Japanese fishermen's pants. Pilati can claim authority over the drop-crotch trouser: He started it, and now that it's entered the mainstream he's edging it further along into fluid, baglike shorts, rompers, and jumpsuits. If that sounds awful, by the end of the show the concept of a garment that happens to be joined between the knees—worn with buttoned-up shirts or tailored jackets—had gained a degree of visual inevitability that might be a staging post on the way to normality. (Fearless young stylists have already been sporting their own versions of them around the shows this week, so that's another sign.)

In any case, there were aspects of the show that didn't insist on pushing that particular nether-parts envelope. At some points, Pilati stepped up to answer the call for the kind of reassuring, regular Parisian chic women demand from YSL. An amazing asymmetric black dress with volume gathered up in a drawstring bow in the back did that, as did several pale gray regular pantsuits, and, for someone racier, reworkings of "Saharien" jackets with the cross-lacing details running through peplums or up the small of the back.

If it didn't have the slam-dunk, uncompromising fashion stance of Pilati's last collection, the riveting new shoes–latticework grids of leather with metal-mesh heels–were enough to score a huge hit. First, they were walkable; second, they represent a coolly modern collision of the airiness of multi-strapped gladiators with the look of a boot. In a season when so much footwear has limped off runways to muttered protests from female audiences, that point alone puts YSL in the lead.

PARIS, October 2, 2008

By Nicole Phelps

A report out today says profits at Stella McCartney's company increased sixfold last year. Clearly, her feel-good formula is working, and all the elements were in place at her Spring show: the best soundtrack in Paris (this time including a song from papa, Sir Paul), an arty backdrop (inspired by coloring books and designed by the British artists Dinos and Jake Chapman), and clothes with her trademark mix of effortlessness and sex appeal.

She started by tweaking her beloved jumpsuits. They came tailored in makeup-pink, with deep lapels that plunged to the navel. McCartney's kind of slouchy, slightly oversize tailoring has caught on in a major way: The longer boyfriend jacket with the strong shoulder and the pushed-up sleeve that she showed today over little cocktail dresses or with cropped pants has become a big trend. Her trench coveralls might not be as adopted as readily—we don't all have legs like Natasha Poly.

PARIS, October 2, 2008

By Nicole Phelps

Ivana Omazic had the thankless job of going through with a collection after it was publicly announced that Phoebe Philo would be replacing her at Celine later this month. Like her LVMH stablemate, John Galliano at Dior, Omazic said tribal traditions were her starting point, and like him she didn't take the idea too literally. There were Polynesian-tattoo prints on silk organza dresses, "scarified" supple leather pants, and Masai beading on skirts. She touched on other trends, too, including transparency. The rest (from the hand-painted crinkled-voile wrap dresses to the jersey separates to a couple of suits) looked like it could've come from a tribe called BoBo…as in "bourgeois bohemian." You can call it commercial, but you can't fault her for that—not when retailers are cracking jokes like, "I have big news: We sold a dress!" Yes, there were some missteps, starting with an overly conceptual wedge shoe that was missing an instep, but Omazic deserves credit for making the most of her unpleasant situation.

Striking Clutch Bag!!!

PARIS, September 30, 2008

By Sarah Mower

What is the future of black? That's the philosophical question Rei Kawakubo says she was pondering while designing her Spring collection. Since Comme des Garçons virtually invented black as the non-color of fashion in the eighties, that's probably a logical line of thinking for the woman whose original mind has such a widespread influence over generations of designers. Recent collections of hers have triggered outbreaks of bright, clashing, cartoonish color and multi-textured, perforated layerings that have been openly quoted by Marc Jacobs, and have trickled far down the fashion food chain.

But now Kawakubo is back to black, presenting it almost as a mathematical treatise in geometric volumes. Hexagonal cutting was the central motif, shaped into poufy geodesic tops and cocooning skirts. Using vinyl leather, she patchworked mini hoodies that looked almost like deconstructed soccer balls, and then started to add decoration: frilled edges on stiff plastic tectonic shoulder plates, transparent cellophane underskirts. By the end, a more organic feeling was breaking through: petaled tufts of tattered chiffon spreading over back-to-front jackets, and then whole dresses constructed like topiary. Underneath it all, there were wide shorts and regular trousers and flat lace-up shoes that offered a less experimental baseline for daily dressing. But did the collection end up answering Kawakubo's original question? That's something only she can know, and she's not one to spell out an insight. All that's certain is that she's set out yet another puzzle here that many designing eyes will be trying to figure out in seasons to come.