Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.
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“What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.” That Susan Sontag quote provided Alexis Mabille with a starting point for his new Haute Couture collection. Mabille’s general idea was to incorporate some element of a man’s wardrobe into each of the outfits. Nothing groundbreaking as far as concepts go, but it did produce one of the designer’s most restrained and accomplished offerings in some time. First out was a “tuxedo” consisting of a double-breasted jacket and long, narrow skirt, the wool on both pieces fused with lace to create a tempting bit of peekaboo at the waist. Elsewhere, the neckline of a black lace gown was accented with lapels, and a white bib-front shirt was extended into a dress. As a rule, the more masculine the look, the more compelling it was. A frilly dress embroidered with naive parrots on a vine lost the plot. But an emerald green strapless number, the torso of which was built like a jacket with lapels peeled back to reveal the creamy satin corset underneath? We’d bet Mabille’s star client Dita Von Teese already has that one on hold. It put proof to the Sontag maxim, and then some.
—Nicole Phelps
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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.
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One of the highlights of this week’s Couture schedule is sure to be the opening of the Musée Galliera’s new show, Les Années 50, La Mode en France 1947-1957, curated by the fashion savant Olivier Saillard. In a timely coincidence, Donatella Versace revisited the decade for her Atelier Versace collection tonight. That starting point marks a departure for the designer, who has lately found muses in the likes of Lady Gaga and Grace Jones, and inspiration from more contemporary reference points, like nineties grunge.

Donatella’s fifties, of course, were different from the Galliera’s fifties. Her round-shouldered, boned-waist jacket featured a strategic cutout at the shoulder with a gold buckle to suspend it in place. A slit-front bustier dress, meanwhile, was a dress in name only; one of the legs of the model who wore it was covered with a pant. These were among the strongest looks in the collection, confidently executed and rigorously structured. In some ways, they were the polar opposite of the navel-baring, slit-up-to-there tropical-print dress of Donatella’s that Jennifer Lopez wore to the Grammys back in 2000, simultaneously cementing both divas’ places in red-carpet history. Lopez was in the front row tonight, poured into a strapless corseted gown with gold buckles at the hip. But if Versace’s techniques are more sophisticated now, it was and always will be about flaunting the assets at this house.

Also percolating was the notion of taking something as simple and everyday as the T-shirt and rendering it haute by covering it in crystals and beads and draping it into an hourglass evening dress. Side by side, these dresses didn’t have the precision of the opening numbers—though perhaps because of that fact, they will be fun and sexy to wear. A few fringed pieces made from crinoline, with fine strips of patent leather embroidered on top, somewhat muddled the message.

For the finale, it was back to the fifties, but as before, with a generous tweak. A powdery pink silk-duchesse satin ball gown came slit up the middle, fully revealing the black Swarovski crystal bodysuit it was strapped and buckled to. “I am Versace,” the designer said beforehand, explaining the piece’s brazen cut and construction. “I have to show it to the world.”
—Nicole Phelps
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How memories fragment was the gigantic theme that Mihara Yasuhiro took on board for his Miharayasuhiro Spring collection. He had a deeply personal motivation. British stylist Bryan McMahon, who died at the beginning of the year, worked with Mihara for years. In fact, the designer called McMahon his mentor. “I come from the country of the kimono and the original street style,” he said. “Bryan brought classic tailoring and elegance to the brand.” So Mihara wanted his new collection to stand as a memorial to all their collaborations. Given that these included some of the most memorable menswear productions of the past decade, that promised something special, even more so when Mihara brought in fashion editors Kim Howells and Luke Day, two of the people closest to McMahon. So the collection unfolded as a patchwork of Mihara and McMahon, whose hat and beads accessorized some of the models.

Mihara’s sterling characteristic has always been the way his clothes can carry a story. They are aged—torn, laddered, frayed—in ways that suggest life-changing experience. The designer agreed that the natural status of the Mihara man is probably refugee. He said he felt like one himself. Probably McMahon did, too. That was in the clothes today: the double layers, with the top layer distressed to reveal the fabric below; the denims with the Freddy Krueger slashes; the tie-dyed knit parka with threads pulling; the pieces patched together to create unusual proportions. There was more to the patterns this season—leopard, paisley—which might have had something to do with McMahon’s own eleganza. It loaned the incongruous edge, which is another Mihara signature. And kudos as usual to the footwear, particularly the half-silver/half-suede desert boots.
—Tim Blanks
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Véronique Nichanian has always created pieces with print at Hermès. It is, after all, a print house, as she acknowledged at tonight’s presentation. But she never showed those clothes. And now she agrees that men might have come around to color and print much sooner if they had ever been offered them. So what we had here was a making-up-for-lost-time situation, and Nichanian was making the most of it.

Hermès prints are legendary: almost psychedelic in their vivid color, eye-popping in their detail. Which made the route taken by Nichanian quite radical in that corporate context. The dominant graphic was a fractured print she called Fragments. She played its abstract blockiness against a blurry ikat called Flores or a digitally influenced number named Glitch, and a detailed print of flora and fauna dubbed Les Jardins d’Arménie. Recombinations of the four were used in the same outfit—shirt, trousers, bandanna. It wasn’t as in-your-face as it sounds. The prints were all within the same tonal range, so no eyeballs were harmed by combining them. Still, this was Hermès, heartland of wealth that has no inclination whatsoever to announce its presence, so there was definitely a frisson of otherness. A more traditionally luxurious terra firma was regained with a crocodile sweatshirt in a shade of deep green Nichanian decided was “eucalyptus.” But she matched it with a pair of poplin jogging pants in the Glitch print, overdyed with said eucalyptus. This was an old Hermès and a new Hermès meeting in an interzone of casual luxury.

In the end, that may be the primary achievement of Nichanian’s decades-long tenure at the house. She has quietly defined a category that other designers in the luxury arena are now scrabbling for. Suits with sandals was one of the season’s big statements—Nichanian has already been there, done that, moved on. Her crocodile creations are obvious apexes in the pyramid of desirability, but a cardigan in knitted nubuck is scarcely less riveting. And a windbreaker cut from the canvas used for yacht spinnakers is arcane—and humble—enough to satisfy those for whom hide is hideous.
—Tim Blanks
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A school bell sounded as a loud crush of teens spilled from classrooms above into seats opposite the audience, a straggler in a red knit cap triggering applause. This was the start of class and Ami‘s Spring men’s collection.

Designer Alexandre Mattiussi said he’d been watching the American TV shows Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills, 90210, as well as the French teen-pulp hit Premiers Baisers. High school, high-camp melodrama! You can imagine him absorbed in hours-long Netflix marathons. The Breakfast Club, that oft-cited source of teen self-discovery, also came into play. “Really, I just wanted to have fun,” he enthused after the show.

Indeed, this was a joyous, energetic ode to teen spirit. Schoolboy stripes in sporty team colors set the raucous tone, punctuated by heart prints and smiley-face badges on baggy basics. Ever present was that classic campus uniform of the two-buttoned blazer over a starched cotton button-down, here untucked, and shorts. T-shirts came in bold two-tone combos and track shoes in “Sour Patch” colors, said Mattiussi, who’d clearly done his homework.
—Lee Carter
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