In Paris, Tweed Tangles With Tulle
By CATHY HORYN
Published: March 7, 2005
PARIS, March 6 - If the wedding dresses in Rei Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons collection were poetic, which poet would have conceived a fairy bride with a grotesque clown face? Which "mad, bad and dangerous to know" poet would have recognized that this was not a sweet-tempered woman who had designed these heavenly clothes, but a true romantic rebel? Why, Lord Byron of course.
Bisexual, club-footed, a serious waster, Byron was the quintessential romantic, his poetry, like that of the Sturm und Drang, set in defiance of moral and social conventions. Ms. Kawakubo would probably say that it takes a similar degree of anger and passion to make great fashion, though typically she is as silent as stone. But if you were to think about what the Romantic poets rebelled against, Ms. Kawakubo's choice of a classical setting, filled with church music, should have been a clue. This was not a show about marriage but rather the political and moral climate that favors one type of union over another, and ultimately represents a war against liberal beliefs.
"Anticonservatism," Ms. Kawakubo said backstage as reporters, perhaps seeing themselves in veils and yards of crimped lace, looked nonplused. One reporter, seeking a peg to hang her story on, even asked Ms. Kawakubo what she had worn on her wedding day. She received an incoherent reply. As Ms. Kawakubo's husband, Adrian Joffe, said: "I think you'd have to open Rei's head to know what she's thinking. Ideas come to her, and she can't explain why."
An hour later, across the cobbled courtyard of the École des Beaux-Arts, Jean Paul Gaultier presented his fall collection for Hermès. Already on Saturday, Patrick Robinson, the former Perry Ellis designer, had shown his first collection for Paco Rabanne. It was a somber, if not joyless, display of silk skirts cut in overlapping layers, crinkled black wool dresses and shearling coats, with the familiar Rabanne wattage confined to metallic platform shoes and some rhinestones. He seemed to be pitching these clothes at conservative mainstream tastes.
And by the time Mr. Gaultier sent out a navy peacoat with a beaver collar, and some saddle-stitched suede skirts and blazers that recalled the classic bourgeois style of Saint Laurent's Rive Gauche label, you could see the essential point of the French fall collections, which end on Sunday evening with Stefano Pilati's show for Saint Laurent.
This had not been a season, in the end, about linear lines and novel takes on volume. Nor had it really been about a new sobriety, despite all the felted black wool and ecclesiastical overtones. It had been a war, an ideological war, between the bourgeoisie and the romantics, and it was going to be a fight to finish.
At Hermès, Mr. Gaultier's clothes seemed to make reference to Saint Laurent's 1976 Russian collection or, anyway, the Russian revolution, with the models in shearling coats, black workers' caps and fringed blanket coats. Yet this was also a show that struck hard at impeccable French taste, with many pieces, like the top-stitched skirts in raisin-brown or ivy suede, the peacoat and a kilt in black silk velvet with chiffon inset into the pleats that a lot of women will recognize as keepers. The chief executive of a New York department store left the show, saying: "I'm glad we don't carry the line. My wife would want to buy everything."
Lars Nilsson is a romantic without a rebellious streak. His show for Nina Ricci opened with a pretty lace dress and a sheared fur coat in a slouchy 1920's silhouette. There were slip dresses, including one in marigold that was shown under a tweed coat with ties above the elbows, and a loose blouse in a leaf print with a high ruffled collar and a slim brown wool skirt with slivers of bronze sequins hidden in the pleats.
Phoebe Philo, the designer at Chloé, took off the last three months to be with her new baby, and so she was a spectator at the show on Saturday. Yet she has given Chloé such a clear identity that the collection produced by her design staff glided naturally forward. There are still plenty of boxy jackets, but what's new are knife-pleated silk skirts, the mixes of navy and black (a cropped black sweater, say, over a dress in navy chiffon) and some exquisite long dresses in white lace or linen edged in black or veiled in black tulle. They recalled Chloé's ultraromantic heyday in the 70's, minus the nostalgia trip.
John Galliano opened his show with a spree of polka dots and striped blazers, over some of the coolest pants in the business. In white cotton, they were a blend of sailor and rapper, with cuffs scraping the floor. Hollywood was nominally his theme, and that meant crimped hair, a tight jacket with a white satin collar framing the face (imagine a Hurrell portrait), some slinky print dresses and touches of pink marabou.
Junya Watanabe called his puffy tweed jackets and cotton shirts "hard-core couture," though Roman-shade skirts were a miss. And in what seemed a completely logical bid to be more commercial, Alexander McQueen sent out a collection of couture-slim suits based on Tippi Hedren's style in "The Birds." Some of the looks were so close to the Hitchcock original that you would swear that instead of a handbag, the model was toting a bird cage. The show was crammed with great pieces, like pleated chiffon cocktail dresses, slick denim and some Charles James-size gowns. But you can't help wondering if in his romantic-rebel heart, Mr. McQueen will one day regard this as his least favorite collection. Where was the anger that has always given his clothes an edge?
nice idea!
Can't wait to see the lovely comme you bought.
