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By CATHY HORYN
Published: October 10, 2005
PARIS, Oct. 9 - The British designers John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, who arrived here a few years apart in the 1990's and today work for rival French luxury companies, are considered fashion's leading showmen. They follow in the tradition of Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler, whose free depictions of nuns, Eskimos, drag queens and Hasidic Jews would now be judged as quaint or politically incorrect. And given a pair of scissors and a bolt of cloth, they could cut a garment as well as Madeleine Vionnet or Azzedine Alaïa.
Their talent was as hard to cap as a Texas oil well, and everyone enjoyed the bath. Yet in recent seasons, as luxury groups have come under greater competitive pressure, and have partly responded by cranking out more and more handbags and other revenue-making gauds, Mr. Galliano's and Mr. McQueen's creative freedom has seemed tempered.
Last week many journalists were disappointed with Mr. Galliano's spring Dior show, a diluted version of his July couture collection. Sidney Toledano, the president of Dior, said it was Mr. Galliano's aim to produce a narrow offering of blush chiffon dresses and pinkish nude denim separates. "He felt that this approach was more contemporary," Mr. Toledano said, adding that retailers were pleased.
For two seasons now Mr. McQueen has produced collections that are manifestly commercial - again, causing insiders to complain that the British bad boy has become lazy. This season his clothes have a hard, clean look redolent of the 80's: slick tailored suits in black crepe de Chine with black opaque tights; black microminidresses with necklines scooped out and filled in with taut chiffon; and a Grecian minidress in black jersey with a boxing belt and a leather bolero. There were also white goddess gowns over gold lace boots and mini versions with crystals or chunky gold chains.
You couldn't mistake the Alaïa influence. Mr. McQueen said it was no accident. "I've done Victorian, I've done romantic," he said. "I wanted to bring sexy back. It's what is missing right now. And Alaïa was sexy for me. It was classy sex." He added, "I have so much respect for him, and I don't even think he will mind."
Mr. McQueen has built such a reputation as a showman that in a sense people won't let him be a designer. The smartest look in this energized collection was also the subtlest: a slim white pantsuit with low, tacked-down lapels. And it was almost lost amid the Alaïa effects. Mr. McQueen is also someone who can get below the fashion surface. Despite the rightness of the minimalist silhouette this collection was all about surface. It grasped the notion of sexiness technically but not with feeling or belief.
Somehow, in his own collection, Mr. Galliano found the need to do and say more. This was an enormously exhilarating show, and probably many people were unprepared (after Dior) for the gross humanity that filled his runway. It included dwarfs, child twins, adult twins, fat women, bewhiskered old men and models who figured in Mr. Galliano's purse-poor days in Paris, like the still-handsome Marie-Sophie Wilson.
The strength of the show was that it worked on several levels at once. There were the clothes: white cotton jackets and skirts veiled in thin, slightly creased black tulle; long coats made from petals of fabrics; and exquisite evening dresses in printed and tattered chiffon, a darker underlayer often giving a smudgy effect.
There was the humanistic quality of Paris expressed in the faces and body types of the models, most of whom are actors and musical performers. A young, well-respected French journalist asked me after the show what I thought of "the monsters." It took me a second to realize he meant "freaks," as if that makes a difference. He added that people sitting near him were laughing at Mr. Galliano's models.
The only reply to that is: Hearken to the pot calling the kettle black. Every day along the Rue de Rivoli you see fashion people going to the shows in their extravagant skirts and strange hats. You don't think ordinary citizens snigger a little? Who is the freak? The fashion world pays lip service to the notion of individuality, by putting white, blank-faced models on the runway. In Milan this season you rarely saw a black or Asian model. That is intolerable, not Mr. Galliano's fat women and twins.
Freedom is the most important thing to a designer. And at the end of the show Mr. Galliano made it clear he had not lost it. He sent out a stagehand with a marionette. It was a figure of Mr. Galliano with Mr. Galliano's long freakish hair, striking Mr. Galliano's macho poses. So who was really pulling the strings?
The clothes that Phoebe Philo designed in her first season back at Chloé after a maternity leave reflect an extremely self-assured woman. "I was really bored with seeing my clothes copied on the high street," Ms. Philo said, meaning mainstream shops. "I wanted to take more risk." This was plain in ultrashort baby-doll dresses and some odd but appealing mixes, like a loose moss-green voile top over a couture-stiff skirt in golden yellow satin.
The show, focused on dresses, had white cotton chemises with delicate pleating and lacework at the yoke. One style was based on a man's nightshirt, and there was a delicious number in what appeared to be layers of white organza or cotton with a cropped black jacket.
Lars Nilsson brought a fresh sportive chic to Nina Ricci, with less lingerie and more styles like short, airy cotton dresses gathered in papery folds at the neck and a cute seersucker skirt with a sailor polo top in coral knit.
The Belgian designer Haider Ackermann effectively combined lace cotton shirts with layers of gauzy leggings and jersey tops. A minimalist with a lovely sense of texture, Mr. Ackermann may not know he is actually a fine draper. The clue was a tersely draped evening dress in pale-complexion pink.
nytimes.com
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OR MAYBE SOMEONE HAD BEAUTIFUL LIPS
