Paris Fashion Show (Part V)

Chanel
Alexander McQueen
Hermes
John Galliano

Chanel
Karl Lagerfeld is an extremely smart designer and businessman. He has managed to reinvent the traditional Chanel look without losing the Chanel root, and as a result, Chanel has attracted more young clientele than people could imagine yet maintained its classic image.

Karl Lagerfeld introduced denim with tweed trims shown with traditional tweed jackets and jackets with bold colors such as red and purple. In my opinion, though, the classic black, white, and gray combination is still the best in the show. Karl especially designed an outfit with prints inspired by the steel work in the Grand Palais. It was also said that Karl gave out books about de Grand Palais to all the attendees of the show. To me, it is a brilliant idea to tie the classic Chanel with such classic architecture.

Hermes
Jean Paul Gaultier had a great season. He showed fresh yet classic clothes for the Hermes collection and he integrated the Jean Paul Gaultier details with Hermes’s accessories and signature orange well. Outfits were shown with the Kelly bags coming with different sizes and colors, mostly yellow and orange. Kelly style belts are also used in numerous outfits to accentuate the waist line. Lots of people have doubts about red, burgundy, and orange, but the combination just looked stunning in the Hermes show. After years of the Birkin hype, here comes the Kelly era.

John Galliano

John Galliano’s fashion belongs to ordinary people. Instead of sending an army of skinny models, John Galliano showed us from the midgets to the overweight and from the happy to the depressed that we see in our daily life. His fashion shined because of his concerns and the emotion brought by the figures in his clothes.

Alexander McQueen
That show was the biggest disappointment in the entire Paris Fashion Week. After the past outstanding collections, Mr. McQueen showed so many tacky short dresses and too much sexuality on stage. We can easily tell how hard he is trying to make his brand profitable. Unfortunately, Alexander McQueen is no Tom Ford, and he was running against what he was good at.

Paris Fashion Show (Part IV)

Ann Demeulemeester
Hussein Chalayan
Stella McCartney

1.Ann Demeulemeester

Honestly speaking, I didn't follow Ann's work until my friend Faust talked about her (a lot). Ann doesn't design cookie cutter fashion and she has her own thoughts. She thinks that people should make clothes with the movement in mind. It's somewhat like Yohji's thought that the asymmetric clothes will look different once people wear them and put things in the pockets and it's a way to carry/express your personality. Both of them are so dynamic.

Ann rarely makes colorful clothes, but the first outfit is my favorite. Just look at how the clothes flows with body and how the material drapes. It's quiet yet beautiful. I recommend watching the video if it is available. I believe that the clothes look different when they move.

2. Hussein Chalayan
Another "new" designer to me. (what a shame!) The cut is superior yet the clothes are cut differently. Often times, the inner layer is figure snugging but the outter layer adds curves. The day wears are classic with a modern twist. The evening dresses could be experimental and crazy. Remember disco parties? Here you go.






3. Stella McCartney
She is definitely more mature as a designer. The clothes are more understated yet beautiful. Her normal sharp pant suits are more breezy in this season, and she offers little dresses for day. There are watercolor shades of gowns shown at the end of the show and I am sure that they will be extremely popular among the Hollywood stars.

Paris Fashion Show (Part III)

I will not be sleeping well if I do not share those pictures tonight. Those are from my favorite show Balenciaga.

Nicolas Ghesquiere delivered the most powerful collection since he started working for Balenciaga. He combined the Balenciaga classic clean and sharp lines with massive amount of hand work to produce couture level fashion on the ready-to-wear show. The show started with rather safe egg shape dresses (one of Balenciaga's classic shapes) followed by more and more complicated clothes covered by embellishment. The jackets and pants are sharp as usual, while the details made me speechless. My favorite pieces are the black Tshirt with beads and the blue color pant suit. Few people might be able to pull off the entire "baroque rock star" look, but one item or two will upgrade your spring look instantly.

Pick up your phone, and call the boutique now. Trust me, those clothes are going to be in fashion history books.

Paris Fashion Show (Part II)

A tiny little more disappointments and then let's move on to look at all the good stuff.

Viktor & Rolf seemed losing all of their good ideas. Consistant with their new store design, everything in the show was backwards: the decorations were upside down, the designers greeted first, and the evening gowns were shown first. Besides that, I didn't see anything interesting there. They probably tried to hard to be avant-guard.

The Rochas show gained absolutely positive feedback from the editors, but I don't like it. The designer continued the elongated shapes from the FW'05 colleciton, but the skirts looked too long for spring and summer. To me, spring and summer are about short skirts and breezy outfits. The Rochas girls are too covered up. The good news is that the designer offered pants. The shapes are beautiful.

The following pictures are from Rochas. Picture courtesy of Style.com

Paris Fashion Show (Part I)

I would have been depressed hadn't there been a Paris Fashion Show. I knew the best are here, and they just raised the bar of "good fashion".

I guarantee you that there are shows you just hate, not because of the quality of the design or the style, but because of the concept that you never get. I am a huge fan of Yohji Yamamoto's FW05 show, but the SS06 show disappointed me. I didn't get the whole camouflage theme. Some said that he had war in mind, but I thought that a master like him would not use such physical language. The good news is that everything else are standard Yohji style, and that made me feel better. Later, when Rei and Junya showed their latest design, I realized that Yohji was the best performer among the Japanese designers in Paris Fashion Show. To me, the Japanese designers are avant-guard and experimental, but they seem to have the same ideas over and over again without further developing them. They normally look "different", which is a good thing, but I wonder how many people on earth will be able to wear them. Fancy design without functioning. That is what I hate.

The following pictures are from the Yohji Yamamoto show. Picture courtesy of Style.com