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Paris Highlights: Spring 2009

Lanvin: Spring 2009

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.

For Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of the Museum at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), black has never gone out of style, despite last season's love affair with all things bright and floral. For fall 2008, though, fashion is returning to its dark side, which makes perfect timing for the publication of Steele's new book, "Gothic: Dark Glamour" (Yale University Press, $45) and a corresponding FIT exhibition which opens the same day as the book comes out -- Sept. 5.

So, we asked Steele - what makes goth goth?

"Although mostly associated with rock musicians and teens wearing all black," says Steele, "goth is a recurring theme in contemporary fashion. But just because a dress is black doesn't mean it's goth. It's got to have an element of the magical, the mysterious, the dangerous about it."

According to Steele, Horace Walpole launched the idea of gothic with his 18th-century novel, "The Castle of Otranto." A scary tale set in a ruined, haunted castle, it was one of the first horror stories published in England. Even earlier, during the Roman Empire, the Romans called the invaders the Visigoths - or barbarians, the opposite of a civilized people.

Steele cites Alexander McQueen (his fashions are "dangerous, with a hint of the sinister" about them), Rick Owens ("a little decadent"), Comme des Garcons (" Rei Kawakubo pushes the envelope") and Yohji Yamamoto ("he said black is the color of nothingness") as designers who weave goth into their collections. This year Prada did a lot of black lace, which Steele says has a gothic vibe, while Nicolas Ghesquiere's collection for Balenciaga had a cyber-goth look.

You don't need to spend sky-high designer prices to try a little goth in your own wardrobe. "Black-red nail polish (1. Black Satin from Chanel, $20) is instantly gothifying," says Steele. Other ways to goth up your look are with motorcycle boots (2. Harley Davidson 'Typhoon' Motorcycle Boot, $103.99) or "vertiginous heels," a long skirt or dress, a leather jacket (3. Joie Women "Amita" Fitted Leather Hooded Jacket, Bloomingdale's, $594.00), a spider-webby sweater top and for makeup, pale skin and a vampirish lipstick (4. MAC, shade Underworld, $14). A lacy necklace (5. Beth Lauren Metal Leather Net Feather Necklace, Intermix, $215), and a skull or two couldn't hurt, either, as in a Winged Skull Burnout Tee (6. Kohls, $16.80).