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Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof's experience designing ballet costumes for the Dortmund Opera House last summer clearly had a huge effect on them. Their Fall presentation was dance-inspired, from the tip of its ballerina topknots to the toe of its pointe slipper-influenced heels. Dress after dress exploded at the hem into tutus of tulle, and the finale featured a solo by Lisa-Maree Cullum, prima ballerina of the Bayerisches Staatsballett. Talbot name-checked Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Red Shoes" as direct inspiration, while heaping scorn on the classic Powell-Pressburger film of the same name. Both spin a dramatic story of destructive obsession, which is scarcely what you'd expect to see reflected in the controlled cocktailwear that is Talbot Runhof's core business, but in fact a little more emotion would have been welcome in a tightly edited show that struck one note and stayed there.

Dark fabrics were draped and swagged for an effect that was anything but balletically airy, especially one floral print that looked like les fleurs du mal. The less said about the red propylene "legwarmers" the better. What levity there was came from the froths of tulle. Two gowns at the end featured a technique called "aluminum steaming," which loaned an elusive metallic shimmer to a floating floral print. They could almost have been the most glamorous shower curtains you ever did see. Following Cullum's solo (in red pointe slippers), the designers took their bow in red kicks. Cute.
—Tim Blanks
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Lily Cole as a black-leather catsuit-ed Emma Peel in the Hermès remake of the sixties British TV series The Avengers. Pourquoi? Actually, in a tongue-in-cheek way, it made a kind of sense for this bastion of French values. First, it gave Jean Paul Gaultier the license to hook in a spoofy power-woman stereotype for the season (a character fashion's toying with now). Second, it brought in masculine tailoring by way of Savile Row (the bowler hats and furled umbrellas were clearly the accoutrements of Peel's partner-in-sleuthing John Steed, or the Whitehall Spymaster out of James Bond). This apparent Anglophilia might have been expected to cause an international incident, given the Franco-British rivalry that's existed since Agincourt. Somehow, though, Gaultier managed to swing the whole thing around to end up as a pretty effective demonstration of classic Hermès values.

Having established his references, clever old Gaultier was, first of all, able to make sly fun of the kinky-fetish aspects of so much black leather-wearing—something that has indeed crossed the mind as a slight issue of taste in many a show this season. When Gaultier sets about using napa leather at Hermès, however, his real concern is to cut a regular and discreet jacket or coat, the likes of which is one of the foundations of the house ready-to-wear. The saddlelike epaulets with dangling vestigial stirrups may be discounted as a prank—get past them and the bowlers and the umbrellas, and what you begin to see is impeccable tailoring, with no egregious extras as far as trendiness is concerned.

That settled, Gaultier was free to use the remainder of the collection to sneak in such fare as casual-deluxe duffels, parkas, and sporty vests, along with the superb knitwear of the house. Still, he was stumped on eveningwear. He's not alone in that, this being the season of the comeback of day. But fringed mohair blankets arranged in tiers, as evening skirts? That was a joke that was just a joke.
—Sarah Mower
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Cerruti, the French tailoring label, hasn't had much of a profile in womenswear for several seasons, but on October 1 last year, the company signed the London-based Australian designer Richard Nicoll to revive its credibility. In the short time he's been there (while shuttling to and fro on Eurostar), Nicoll has identified the house strength in daywear and set about recasting it for a modern woman's working life. One of the ways he does that is through tonal color, matching cranberry shades in a single look, then grays; moving into a strong passage of petrol, teal blue, and navy; and then into unconventional pastel tones of apricot and beige-pink.

Yet being allocated the last-but-one slot in four weeks of shows didn't do the management any favors. While scores of editors were streaming home after Hermès, or struggling in traffic across town to make Miu Miu, Cerruti had chosen to show in the bleak, out-of-town cluster of abandoned warehouses the Chambre Syndicale of Paris has christened "Halle Freyssinet"—and which some international fashion professionals have taken to calling "Hell."

Overall, there was not enough here to make a fair evaluation of the soundness of Nicoll's ideas about dressing working women. His mohair knits certainly have a fluffy appeal, as does the windowpane check tailoring, but notions like pants in see-through perforated fabric and latex skirts and leggings aren't going to fly. Next season, Cerruti would be better off taking their presentation back home to their classy, light-filled showroom in the center of Paris, walking distance from where their customers live, work, and stay on business.
—Sarah Mower
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The last several seasons have been challenging for small brands like Raffaele Borriello's Requiem. But according to the designer, business is picking up. Credit that to his timely introduction of lower-priced elements like embellished knits, coupled, on the other side of the coin, with a stubborn refusal to skimp on luxe fabrics or his preferred way of piecing them together into one frock. Predictable little black dresses aren't Borriello's cup of tea. Instead, a Fall cocktail number might come with gazar sleeves, a charmeuse bodice overlaid with mesh, and a skirt made from a leather look-alike wool. Other designers may be editing out long evening dresses from their shows, but not Borriello, who describes his label as "an end of the afternoon-into-evening collection." His most charming floor-grazer was a feminine take on the tuxedo.
—Nicole Phelps
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It's ironic that Wolfgang Joop, who once made his living putting men and women in power suits, has become such a maximalist. For Fall, he appeared to have looked to Spain or perhaps the Argentine pampas for inspiration. The first outfit featured a striped and fringed horse blanket tossed over the shoulders, and from there Joop went on to turn those blankets into all manner of blazers and trenchcoats, with leather buckle closures and fringe lining the arm seams. But as strange as they sound, they worked; he can still cut a mean jacket. There was also a good-looking shearling aviator and cool leather perfectos cropped high underneath the armholes.

On the more feminine side of the story, the designer showed draped scarf-print dresses trimmed with fur in a manner that echoed what Galliano had done earlier in the week. Other frocks came with large, multilayered accordion-pleated ruffs at the shoulders or heavily scalloped yokes, which gave them a costume-y sensibility out of step with the season. There were some decent outerwear pieces here, but now would've been an opportune moment for Joop to have fully re-engaged with the tailoring that was once such an integral part of his oeuvre.
—Nicole Phelps
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If her Prada collection, with its emphasis on the bust, was a sexual come-on, Miuccia Prada's Miu Miu show was about romance—at least on its pre-Summer of Love sixties surface. The narrow, short silhouette made an erogenous zone of twiggy legs elongated by square-toed pumps. Sleeveless shifts came with high, chin-scraping collars, some accented with thin, floppy bows; other dresses blossomed below the waist and were cinched with large turnkey closures (the better to preserve the innocence of the girls who wore them, perhaps). An abundance of silver rosettes dotting the front and circling the hem of coats added to the sweet Mary Quant-ish vibe.

But this wouldn't be a Miu Miu show without a little—or a lot of—provocation. Pinafore dresses with plunging U-fronts were worn with bandeaux that exposed the flesh under the breasts; shifts had cutouts at the ribs; and miniskirts flipped up suggestively at the outer thighs. All of this was done in fabrics that had an odd, incongruous solidity.

The linear, Edie Sedgwick, pre-hippie sixties have been popping up with increasing frequency as the Fall season comes to a close. This collection put Prada squarely in the center of things, but, as usual, with her signature perverse twist.
—Nicole Phelps
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On the final day of Paris, Marc Jacobs rounded off the Fall collections in more ways than one. Not to put too fine a point on it, this was one fashion show heterosexual men are going to understand. Breast-wise, it put it all on a plate—or rather a corseted, cantilevered, frill-edged balcony. "And God Created Woman" announced the program, bringing up thoughts of the era of the young Bardot, of fifties-sixties wasp waists, and circle skirts. And, inevitably, Miuccia Prada, who first broached the comeback of the curvy silhouette earlier in the season in Milan.

It takes a different casting approach to do justice to the refocusing of all eyes away from legs to the plentiful bosom. Thus, Jacobs had called on Laetitia Casta, Bar Refaeli, Catherine McNeil, Karolina Kurkova, and finally Elle Macpherson, all women whose physical attributes have acted as a disqualification for fashion show participation for so long. Not that the rehabilitation of the embonpoint was vulgarly done. Jacobs framed it more as a fresh, feminine, ingenue look, with hair scraped back into high, bouncy B.B. ponytails; clean makeup; and square-toed, block-heeled pumps trimmed with flat bows—another angle on the Mad Men era but this time with a charming Frenchified accent. The show swung along prettily as a fountain sprayed and jolly fifties movie music played in the middle of the tented courtyard, creating that quintessentially Parisian atmosphere, a sense of all being right in the best of all possible cities to be appreciated as a woman.

If there was little to zero variety in silhouette—and the dirndl-esque petticoated skirt can't be for the many—the items and trimmings exemplified the Vuitton knack for classy detail, as in fur buttons and collars and glittery heels. And above all, this Louis Vuitton show provided a charming backdrop to display the bags. This season, it's a zillion mignonne reinterpretations of the classic Speedy. Here, that functional shape, designed in the 1930's, came flocked and sequined, smothered in guipure lace over satin, or woven in metallic thread and done up in fox.
—Sarah Mower
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Elie Saab scored some major red-carpet coups at the Oscars on Sunday, putting nominee Anna Kendrick in a blush pink gown and Rachel McAdams in a pastel floral number—both dresses from his January couture collection and both unapologetically pretty. For Fall, he took a much darker view, focusing primarily on black, with hits of burgundy, teal, and midnight blue for evening. His message would've been more powerful and effective had he edited down the 60-look show and eliminated the clingy tree-motif jerseys, but his sleek hourglass sheaths and flirty, full-skirted pieced lace cocktail dresses will appeal to more than just Hollywood starlets.

Zeroing in on real-world clothes rather than his usual event-dress-heavy lineup was a prescient move in a season when designers en masse have been rediscovering the power of plain. You couldn't call all of his eveningwear restrained, though: There were some see-through ombré net and peekaboo lace styles that, as any celebrity stylist could tell you, will never fly with the fashion police. But when Saab tamped down the excess in favor of understated goddess gowns and just-revealing-enough jewel-tone sequined columns, it was easy to picture the results on a red carpet sometime soon.
—Nicole Phelps
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Freja Beha Erichsen and three bears on an ice floe. This was the arctic scene at Chanel, where giant chunks of bona fide iceberg, specially transported from Scandinavia, formed the frozen landscape around which models solemnly splashed through a sea of 'berg-melt in shaggy snow boots with ice-block heels.

The Karl conceit of the season, no surprises, was an in-every-way extravagant play on Coco in cold weather. Using more fur than he'd even flung at Fendi—the twist being that here the fur was fake—Lagerfeld steered this collection nearer to couture than ready-to-wear than ever. Fur was woven into brown tweeds; formed deep pelmets on the lower half of leather jackets; became almost igloo-shaped capes, bonnets, even—for goodness' sake—furry trousers. Meanwhile, the suit and coat combinations also had a level of lavish elaboration usually reserved for haute eveningwear. Fur-fringed embroideries and ice jewelry conspired to create intensely worked ruffled and beaded silhouettes that glinted with rock-crystal neckpieces and fistfuls of rings. Somewhere in there, a flash of translucent silver seemed to be a clutch in which the quilting of the CC classic bag had been frozen into the likeness of a refrigerator ice cube tray.

It was a lucky stroke that the weather outside had kindly assisted Chanel in whipping subzero winds around the Grand Palais while this display was going on. Since humans are suggestible, it took only the merest suspension of disbelief to imagine this collection hitting the mark next fall, despite the fact that it will start to be delivered in July—and who knows in which century we'll have another winter like this one? Nevertheless, putting global warming and the melting of ice caps both center stage and on the back burner (as it were), this show swept the audience along as they were treated to such amusements as seeing Karl Lagerfeld's favorite, Baptiste Giabiconi, swagger out of an ice cave in a full-length polar bear coat.

It wasn't all played for laughs. Within the context of a season of innovative knitwear, Chanel's was some of the most outstanding. A group of three short angora sweater dresses, tinted iceberg blue in the center, was an amazing follow-up from something Lagerfeld did with dégradé pastel embroidery in couture. One gray and black cardigan coat was knitted in a bubbly grid to mimic a down-filled puffer. And the finale was given to a wedding dress knitted in silk tulle ribbon to resemble Chanel's bouclé tweed, forming a tight-fitting sweater in the body and then sweeping away in flounces in back. The bride—Freja, again—dangled an ice-block purse on a fur-woven Chanel chain.
—Sarah Mower
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Alexander McQueen's last works were given final honors by his trusted team in a hushed and dignified showing that went to his core as a designer who scaled the heights of couture accomplishment. Sarah Burton, his right hand, described how, in beginning this collection, McQueen had turned away from the world of the Internet, which he had so powerfully harnessed in his last show. "He wanted to get back to the handcraft he loved, and the things that are being lost in the making of fashion," she said. "He was looking at the art of the Dark Ages, but finding light and beauty in it. He was coming in every day, draping and cutting pieces on the stand." The 16 outfits shown had been 80 percent finished at the time of his death.

What McQueen was preparing had a poetic, medieval beauty that dealt with religious iconography while recapturing memories of his own past collections. He had ordered fabric that translated digital photographs of paintings of high-church angels and Bosch demons into hand-loomed jacquards, then taken the materials and cut stately caped gowns and short draped dresses. In its ornate surface narrative, that might read as a kick against the plain and restrained direction fashion is taking, but in their own way, the fluted, attenuated lines of his long dresses suggested a calm and simplicity. Instead of aggression, they transmitted the grace of the medieval Madonnas and Byzantine empresses McQueen had been studying.

For anyone who had watched his development through the years, the references to milestone collections were apparent. The bandage-bound heads, some with feathered coxcombs, simultaneously called up the designer's rebel-British background and his landmark Asylum collection while also catching a likeness to the modest head coverings seen in Northern European medieval portraiture. When a high-collared, formfitting cutaway jacket made entirely from golden feathers appeared, it read as a direct retrieval of McQueen's first step into haute couture in his Icarus collection, after he took the helm of Givenchy in 1996 at the age of 27. This time, though, it was realized with even more skill, with a multilayered white tulle skirt sprinkled at the hem with delicate gilded embroidery.

Somehow, that one outfit encapsulated everything about McQueen: both the tailoring and the romanticism. Perhaps he wouldn't have chosen to show it in such a simple and intimate way—in a small, ornate room to privately invited groups of editors—because that left out the full realization of concept and showmanship that equally drove his creativity. But the circumstances, sad as they are, allowed his friends and colleagues to share a long and poignant moment to look at what the man achieved, and to grieve for him.
—Sarah Mower
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Beige, beige, and more beige. It's no news by now that the paler shade of brown, and the grown-up daywear it connotes, have become mainstays of the season. It's the route Chloé has taken for Fall, with such thorough commitment that until halfway through, it almost seemed Hannah MacGibbon was reluctant to offer anything else.

From the outset, she whittled the look down to its clearest components: a long-sleeved silk blouse and high-waist flared trousers, and the bouncy, blown-out Charlie girl hair that captures the seventies American sportswear attitude this trend is all about. Next up, MacGibbon introduced knitwear, classic menswear overcoats, and an early-Armani-like jacket that might have jumped out of Vogue's pages in the post-women's lib era—when dashing to work while looking enthusiastically businesslike was the thing.

It's a feeling, of course, that MacGibbon shares with her British female designer peers Phoebe Philo and Stella McCartney, who both passed through the Chloé studio some while back. They left the label with a reputation for girly dressing, jingly-jangly It bags, and statement shoes, but now that they're all into their thirties, these young professionals are leading a different life.

MacGibbon's house-cleaning instinct has thrown out the all the frills, prints, funny bags, and chunky clogs and platform shoes that last made Chloé hot. The bags have been stripped of hardware and logos, and the footwear renovated as sidewalk-friendly caramel riding boots and springy-soled wedges. The flirty, blowy dresses, once the Chloé signature, have been axed. The hip-girl, slightly streetwise element that used to be part of the personality here was this season reduced to a mild play on western styling—a minor outbreak of leather fringing and one pair of velvet, gold-embroidered jeans that turned up in the second half.

In terms of brand differentiation, though, that leaves a conundrum for buyers. Chloé's offering for Fall puts the label in direct competition with what so many others are producing now. It left some puzzlement over whether leaving the house's youth behind is such a wise move.
—Sarah Mower
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The shoes at Valentino—blush-colored patent-leather kitten heels trimmed in metal studs—are an apt metaphor for the direction Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri are taking the storied label. Former accessories designers under Valentino Garavani himself, they're utterly in touch with all of the house's romantic, ruffled codes, but they're determined to modernize it with their more dangerous, youthful sensibilities. Their biggest success so far: dressing fashion favorite Chloë Sevigny in one of their Spring gowns for the Golden Globes back in January.

Today, the experimental films of Kenneth Anger, who sat front-row, gave the proceedings a bit of edge, but the contemporary feel came from the clothes themselves. Yes, there were ruffles by the yard, but they decorated little cropped leather jackets worn over party dresses just as tiny. There were scads of lace, too, but the designers patchworked it irreverently together with point d'esprit and leather mesh. And they didn't ignore Valentino's signature color, red, which looked fresh layered with a powdery nude on the final draped gown. That, however, wasn't the collection's most showstopping evening number. That title belonged to another dress, made from tiers of lace hand-embroidered with thousands of minuscule, shimmering lilac beads.

Giancarlo Giammetti, the house's co-founder, famously criticized the duo's most recent couture show on his Facebook page as a "ridiculous circus." He was all smiles tonight, as were some young editors, whose collective reflections can be summarized as, "Wow, I want to wear Valentino for the first time."
—Nicole Phelps
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All week, the Twitterverse has been asking, what's Lindsay Lohan doing at Dior? At Viktor & Rolf? At John Galliano? Shouldn't she be putting the final touches on her second Emanuel Ungaro outing? Today, before the show, the house gave us all an answer: Sorry, paparazzi, but the omnipresent starlet actually had nothing to do with the Fall collection.

Estrella Archs took her bow solo, but just because Lohan and the heart-shaped spangled pasties that got so much attention last season are out of the picture doesn't mean that the pressure is off. On the whole, the collection of draped and ruched party dresses, scattered here and there with tailored jackets in menswear fabrics, was an improvement, if not necessarily made with the same joie de vivre or finesse as Ungaro's originals. But with the eighties moment fast disappearing in fashion's rearview mirror, Archs has new challenges ahead of her should she remain at the label. Now that everyone's talking about minimalism again, the first order of business will be finding a way to make the house codes relevant again. As difficult as it's no doubt been for Archs at Ungaro, it's not yet clear that she has skills adequate to the task.
—Nicole Phelps
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Question: If all the camel coats in all the Fall collections were laid end to end, how many people would be able to tell them apart? Giambattista Valli added one of his own to the long line of beige show-openers: a cocoon-ish shape balanced on kitten-heel slingbacks. The shoes were a key to the slightly sixties theme he was working. It's another trend of the season, of course, but it's also a decade this designer frequently uses as a starting point for his unashamedly feminine, slightly frothy approach—which was soon to break out in tufted 3-D ribbon embroideries, variously deployed on shifts and gowns.

Whatever Valli does—cute day suits, short cocktail, or over-the-top statement gowns—it has the knack of charming the wealthy, social customers who are his loyal friends. The Valli girls, including Brooke Shields, Coco Brandolini, Dr. Lisa Airan, and Andrea Dellal's shoe-designer daughter, Charlotte, were there in force this time to show solidarity with the designer, as well as to shop. Like several other Italian labels recently, Valli's has caught the fallout from the financial catastrophes that have been sinking fashion conglomerates in his home country. Mariella Burani Fashion Group, which manufactures his collections, went bankrupt last month and is being liquidated. An announcement released just before the show stated he is taking production into his own hands.

Valli's fans will find a lot to like among his Fall offerings, which eschewed plainness and sobriety for mostly short, swingy dresses with elaborate surfaces and sheer panels (perhaps the through-views to the panties will somehow be obscured in reality). Some of the tuxedo looks over wisps of chiffon—an homage to the Saint Laurent retrospective about to open in Paris—might well (again, with the underwear issues sorted out) appeal to the brigade of chic mothers Valli also serves. Considering the crisis conditions under which this collection was designed, it was a respectable show from one of fashion's more resolutely optimistic survivors. Could the fact that there was an oligarch in the front row be a sign of hope? Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB agent who is a British newspaper proprietor, was scanning the show with his son Evgeny, a sponsor of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund.
—Sarah Mower
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It's not usually a good sign when a designer opens up with a knit leotard with a cutout at one hip worn over a pair of clingy exercise shorts and heavy tights. Where, for example, might a young woman sport such an outfit, outside of the ballet studio? But there was more to this Vanessa Bruno show than the opening suggested. Dance, or more precisely, the layered and wrapped outfits that dancers wear to rehearse, provided Bruno with an organizing theme for her Fall collection. And if it's hard to picture that first look hanging in the window of her Rue de Castiglione store, her outerwear, starting with a long, icy gray shearling knitted at the hem, will have them lining up.

Already own a trench? Bruno's given her fans a reason to buy a new one in the form of a drop-waist camel leather version or another in tweed with a leather storm flap. She also made some smart moves with her tailoring. Adding a strap to a blazer so it stays on when you wear it tossed over your shoulders isn't a new idea—Helmut Lang did it a decade ago or more—but it's probably new to her girls. As for the season's must-have mixed-media jacket, hers combined crisp gray flannel with a deep leather hem and a ribbed knit back.

There were other things to like here as well, including a ribbed cardigan with leather elbow patches, the floaty printed chiffon dresses, and Bruno's patchwork stacked-heel boots with fur trim. All in all, a strong show from this well-priced Paris favorite.
—Nicole Phelps
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