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Julien Macdonald was quick to point out that his 35-piece collection wasn't resort or cruise; it was a "Christmas flash," which gave it a certain climactic specificity. Baby, it's getting colder outside, so Macdonald made knitwear to throw over his party frocks. For skin not yet kissed by holiday sun, he kept his colors on the dark and—it must be said—dreary side, with dusty, washed-out jewel tones. Even the white of a classically draped cocktail dress had an aged chalkiness. Macdonald lives on Portobello Road, and his vintage finds from the market there had a big influence on pieces that at times had a thirties languor, a twenties flapper quality, and something even earlier, with tattered lace and faded ruffles that could have come from Miss Havisham's closet.

The aggressive sexiness that characterized the designer's work in the past was absent, though his emphasis on bias cutting made even the most prosaic-looking piece snake sinuously around the body. Where Macdonald's Christmas really flashed was in his knitwear. Again, all of it had a worn, deliberately snagged look, but there was a slouchy appeal to the sweater dresses. One was essentially a man's polo-neck jumper with corset-laced shoulders; another a cardigan, also corset-laced. Too gothic for seasonal cheer, but sly and sexy just the same.
—Tim Blanks
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"I like to be as focused as possible," says Christopher Kane, which is why his collections always have such a strong, clear quality. Resort was no exception. Following on from last Spring's bomb motifs, he opted for flaring nebulae, as seen by the Hubble telescope. He explained that he liked "the idea of explosive outwards expansion" (a nice metaphor for what's happening with his business), but all that cosmic hyperactivity also yielded some great prints (translating beautifully into silk cashmere knitwear, too), with plenty of the interplay between light and darkness that's a Kane signature.

Nothing showcased that kind of contrast better than a biker jacket in chiffon with a frilled skirt attached. Kane offered the same piece in black leather, an accent carried over from Fall in high-waisted shorts, a bustier, or the bodice attached to an organza gazar skirt. Gazar also featured in a long princess skirt, gathered at the waist so it flared out. Mid-thigh, it zipped in half to become a skating skirt. Same with the halter-necked version, which Kane called a "housewife dress," though it was anything but suburban in its fiery print of cosmic catastrophe—a desperate-housewife dress, perhaps?

Those full, flaring lengths and the palazzo volume of the pants were experiments with new silhouettes for Kane, perhaps not entirely successful in comparison to the Barbarella-sleek line of his baby dolls and drop-waisted T-shirt dresses, where his focus was steely. By the way, Kane named his shoes for Barbarella—maribou-trimmed Zanotti platforms, ironic bordering on camp, and a joy to behold.
—Tim Blanks
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Elie Saab loves La Fenice, Venice's legendary opera house. As its name would suggest, this phoenix has burned to the ground and risen from the flames three times. For his Fall Couture collection, Saab borrowed the ruched velvet of La Fenice's curtains, the gilt and blue of its decoration, and even the fire and ash of its hellish moments for one multicolored mousseline gown. Given that backstory, the result was understandably a little overwrought.

Before the show, Saab said, "If a woman doesn't want 'rich,' she doesn't come to couture." So rich was what he gave her, from the moment Karolina Kurkova sashayed out onto the catwalk in a gown of deep red guipure lace swathed in silk tulle. The dress that followed her was short but scarcely simpler, with its bands of chiffon and lace liberally doused with sequins.

The designer claimed he was breaking some personal ground with his focus on classical draping. There was lots of asymmetric single-shoulder action, and he was also keen to pay more attention to the back of his dresses. That's where the décolleté was this season, which often left the front decorously covered up to the throat. Put that together with the color scheme; the broad-shouldered, bat-winged proportions; and the embellishment of the fabrics, and the collection felt heavy, even slightly old-fashioned. Saab is a proven master of red-carpet dressing, but these clothes sometimes made one wonder in exactly what decade that carpet was being unrolled.
—Tim Blanks
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Couture embraces worlds. The day that began with Elie Saab's stolid womanliness ended with Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli's reconceptualization of Val's gal as a dolly bird—all short skirt, dropped waist, baby doll, and kitten heels. The mood was compounded by the name the designers gave their collection: The Dark Side of First Love. If that notion has a Lolita tinge, Chiuri and Piccioli made the clothes to match. They even dropped a cage over one girl to let you know she was trapped.

Teen psychodrama may fit with the kind of "dark side" idea they've sometimes toyed with in the past, but it was downright peculiar in a couture context. Still, as a pitch to a much younger customer (and those girls were out in force in the front row today), the collection was a major success on its own terms: haute couture for the Twilight generation. From the little black dresses in gazar that opened the show to a trapeze coat in ivory crepe that tied with bows down its front to the tiers of ecru lace trimmed with feathers, the clothes had the spirited dressiness that you see now in Valli's gals, for instance. They weren't saccharine, either—that dark side lurked in the black gazar sheath that underpinned a sheer dress trimmed in huge organza flowers or a baby doll in ruffled tiers of powder pink.

And look closely and it was plain to see that Chiuri and Piccioli had done their research on classic couture shapes, however abbreviated they might be here. But that will be scant consolation to mournful clients of the ancien régime.
—Tim Blanks
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The key to Jean Paul Gaultier's latest collection could be found in the opening and closing outfits of his show. First up, a reconfigured trenchcoat in black gabardine. Last out, the same idea in white silk (worn by a bride who played herself down the runway—literally—with a violin). The trench is Gaultier's signature piece. The fact his latest show was bracketed by it suggested the collection was about him this time: not Mexico or Hollywood or Mars or anywhere else he might have been recently. Being the most Parisian of French fashion designers, that gave him a lot to work with. Being Jean Paul Gaultier gave him even more. So it was a crying shame the show didn't ultimately offer the thrills he once provided so routinely we almost came to take them for granted.

It started auspiciously enough, with Karlie Kloss in that trench, reconfigured with batwings (despite the Brides of Dracula gear later in the show, this was less vampire chic than an evocation of the glamorous heyday of Parisian haute couture). The pinstripe tailleur that followed, swathed in a huge silver fox, was a reminder of Gaultier's mastery of the masculine/feminine hybrid. The jacket with black mink cone breasts (and a butt to match) also revived an iconic moment in the designer's career. He exaggerated the silhouette of a biker jacket, then trimmed it with badger fur to give it a halo. That was clever. But he went on to use the same trick a few too many times, which left an impression of peculiar proportions. Same with the batwing shape, which turned to draggy droop at the drop of a hat.

Perhaps it wasn't so surprising, given Gaultier's stint at Hermès, that the most appealing pieces in the show were the most luxuriously simple: a twinset of cashmere cardigan coat and vest; an elegant black dress that was basically just a long silk cardigan reversed; an asymmetric evening gown of black jersey with a gusset of gold running down one side.

A long tweed and ostrich feather skirt paired with an asymmetric top in pleated black leather generated a round of audience applause, but not nearly as rousing as the one that greeted Dita Von Teese, on hand to publicize Gaultier's lingerie for La Perla the way she knows best. She managed to moon the audience twice.
—Tim Blanks
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Old Hollywood has had a hold on Giorgio Armani since he was a boy. His first suit today—the skirt limning the body, then flaring out just below the knee; the draped jacket with the definite shoulder; the crepe silk overcoat thrown insouciantly over the lot—could have been Carmen Kass playing Carole Lombard (with Sharon Tate's hair). Even the shoes with their thick Perspex heels chipped in. The outfit set the pace for the designer's Armani Privé show—not retro but remarkably restrained and businesslike, with a subtle monochrome feel that was underscored by the many shades of brown on display, reflecting the theme "A Play on Amber."

The draped jacket and skirt combination is an Armani classic, of course. Here, he emphasized fluidity, exaggerating and softening the drape, extending one scarf collar over a shoulder and fastening it with a large wood and amber brooch. He also offered a handful of coats as alternatives, one as soft as a cardigan in cashmere and belted at the throat, another studded with crystals, and a third in camel to be worn over a broad-shouldered, belted crocodile jacket that exemplified Armani luxe.

For evening, he elaborated on the drape still further, with cascading folds of silk satin. And he made his amber theme sparkle, ladling sequins over goddess and mermaid dresses. Karlie Kloss shimmered in hers, the draping lending a sinuous mobility to the dress as she walked. It was just enough to make one wish there'd been more "play" and less "amber" in the show.
—Tim Blanks
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Karl Lagerfeld has often insisted that his collections come to him in dreams, but following his new Chanel couture show, he claimed the dream this time had been a nightmare. "No, no, just kidding," he quickly added, but there was a weight to the clothes that suggested a darker thread in Chanel this season. Compared to the glistening sci-fi whites of his Spring couture, these looks had a moody tinge. The colors, for a start: maroon, loden, navy, brown, camel. Next, the fabrics. As the show unfolded, there were velvet trims on shadow plaids, crystal trims on camel, fur trims on tweed. Dark tapestry was crusted with embroidery and beading. Imperial gold detailing against a field of navy sequins made Freja Beha Erichsen look like a girl waiting for her Ruritanian soldier.

Then there were the proportions—tiered, short-over-long. A cropped jacket with elbow-length sleeves topped a high-waisted, to-the-knee skirt—a look that combined elongation and bulk in a way that was intriguing though likely to pose a challenge to many bodies. How would it gel with the Leightons, Blakes, and Jessicas in their front-row perches? But if the collection had a difficult aspect, it also felt brave in its boldness and focus. In place of the magpie glee that can make a Chanel show such a sensory overload, there was an almost military discipline here, even as the parade grew more elaborate with each passing outfit. The combination of voluptuousness and severity could have bordered on an arch libertine sensibility, but barely brushed hair and fresh, girlish makeup added a vital lightness.

The ever-precise Lagerfeld is a textbook Virgo, but in honor of Chanel the Leo, he filled the Grand Palais with a vast and marvelous lion. Its paw rested on a huge globe—a Chanel pearl, perhaps—from which the models emerged. Befitting a collection that had the courage of its convictions, this was a fierce, awe-inspiring creature—one that could have sprung from a dream or even a nightmare.
—Tim Blanks
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Christophe Lemaire's T-shirt collaborations with favorite artists like ESG, Ariel Pink, and classic Krautrockers Cluster suggest degrees of idiosyncratic enthusiasm and wide-ranging curiosity—not to mention exquisite taste—that should stand him in good stead when he enters the rarefied, intimate world of luxury that Hermès represents. (He recently replaced Jean Paul Gaultier as the brand's creative director.) And the collection he just showed for men and women under his own name—his first show in seven years—also offered proof that he has his own distinctive take on quietly convincing luxe.

Lemaire took the Orient as his inspiration. He was particularly struck by the men and women in the street, all dressed in the same way, in the documentary Michelangelo Antonioni made in 1972 during the Cultural Revolution in China. But where that event was a denial of individuality, Lemaire used a battery of subtle fashion effects to make his uniforms stand out. Hot colors—cinnamon, curry, cyclamen—contrasted with cool whites, taupes, and grays in superlight silks and cottons and delicate prints. In both his women's and menswear, the designer made the most of the elegant volumes of Nehru jackets, caftans, kimonos, and kurtas. He mixed East and West to great effect: a subtle samurai shoulder on a seersucker jacket, say, or shorts in pale gray Ultrasuede paired with a modified kimono top, or a deconstructed trench that shared a feather-light flyaway quality with a windbreaker in paper cotton. The alluring plainness of the clothes brought to mind Martin Margiela's work for Hermès, and even if that impression was shaped by the announcement of Lemaire's new post, it surely bodes well for the future.
—Tim Blanks
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The history of haute couture is studded with magnificent obsessives like Cristobal Balenciaga and Charles James. Even if Riccardo Tisci's name never makes it onto that list, his latest Couture collection for Givenchy proved that he shares the grandmasters' fanatical devotion to realizing an intensely personal vision through cut, cloth, and, in Tisci's case, extraordinarily elaborate ornamentation. This season, he opted out of a proper show in favor of intimate presentations, where he could better highlight detailed pieces like the painstakingly patchworked leather coat or the dress in Chantilly lace where the pattern of the lace had been duplicated in appliquéd leather (the dress ended in a cascade of dégradé ostrich feathers—Tisci considers dégradé, lace, and fringe-work his signatures).

The darkest color in the collection was the chocolate brown on those feathers. Otherwise, everything was white, flesh-colored, or gold, with a salon dedicated to each shade. Even the baboon fur that was attached to a swallowtailed knit jacket was spookily bleached. Fact is, Tisci didn't need black to exercise his gothic inclinations. He claimed his inspiration was Frida Kahlo and her three obsessions: religion, sensuality, and, given the painter's lifelong battle with spinal pain, the human anatomy. The zipper pulls were little bones, a belt was a spinal column re-created in porcelain. The dominant motif of the collection was the skeleton, laid out flat in the lace appliquéd on a long tulle column, or rendered in three dimensions in obsessively dense clusters of crystals, pearls, and lace on the back of a jacket in double silk duchesse satin. Nestled in the middle? A tiny ceramic skull sprouting angel wings. At one point during his presentation, Tisci rather tellingly muttered, "A romantic way to see death."

That jacket was suspended in the all-white "ceramic" room. In the "skin" room, Tisci showcased lace catsuits, one decorated with a Swarovski crystal skeleton that took 1,600 hours to create. In the third, "gold" room was a lace dress that demanded six months of work. Dresses encrusted with gold paillettes, stones, and beads were almost too heavy to lift, despite being revealingly scissored away at the waist. If the detail was breathtaking, it was also quite numbing in its intensity. The last room featured a giant portrait by Willy Vanderperre of Tisci's muses wearing the dresses, seen from the back. "I love that view," Tisci explained, "the spine of people." Walk round the photo and there was the same view from the front, the women all posed reverentially like hand maidens. In obsession is born the cult of couture.
—Tim Blanks
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A retro strain ran through Consuelo Castiglioni's Resort collection. Aside from the swags, ties, and ruffles and the emphasis on an hourglass silhouette, there was a governess-y tinge to a high-waisted skirt with a green striped satin blouse as well as to a rust-colored bibbed blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves. Castiglioni name-checked the Bauhaus for its influence on the graphic print of a long summer dress, and that design movement's resolutely unromantic quality hovered over the clothes. The costume jewelry, on the other hand, was all boldness and sensuality. Outré and prim in the same outfit: Castiglioni excels at that kind of face-off.
—Tim Blanks
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Alexis Mabille went through a phase of thinking it was modern to mix his ready-to-wear and his couture into one homogeneous stew. Reason prevailed when he realized that wasn't doing his craft any favors. But with his new couture outing, he maintained a ready-to-wear fundamental by building his collection from mix-and-match separates.

He started out with a basic eight top-and-bottom combinations and managed to double, maybe even triple them. Admittedly, it was mostly by exchanging a skirt for a pair of pants, or removing a dressy outer layer, but Mabille made his point nevertheless. With a twist, of course. His clothes are scarcely the stuff of an everyday wardrobe, hence his insistence that he was designing for "high-profile events" in the life of the modern professional woman. So a tuxedo jacket could be paired with pants and a pussy-bowed blouse in pink silk crepe, or worn over a simple black cocktail dress. Or a long evening coat might be worn either with a black turtleneck and full lace skirt or a lace bustier and black cigarette pants.

The craftsmanship that Mabille was keen to highlight was most obvious in a black velvet column with a lavishly embroidered and beaded bodice. Random trompe l'oeil petals cascaded down its front. It was the kind of seemingly throwaway gesture that confirms Mabille's sly talent.
—Tim Blanks
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If the clothes that Bouchra Jarrar showed for her second haute couture collection weren't quite as severe as the austere stonework of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs that provided their backdrop, they definitely had a classical rigor about them. Jarrar set out to offer a complete wardrobe—from jackets, dresses, and a trenchcoat to the goddess gown that closed the show—in a way that reflected the breakfast-to-bedtime ideal of traditional couture. That meant her emphasis was on what she felt was essential, and things were pared down to the max. The palette, for instance—navy, black, ivory, with gold accents. And the silhouette, streamlined for an athletic impact that felt very much now (the trench was sleeveless).

There was delicacy in the balance of a two-piece outfit in ivory crepe that met at a single point on the waist. The slashed wool pieces with a glint of gold lamé underneath had a subtle glamour. But the most encouraging aspect of the collection might have been Jarrar's faith in her own voice as a designer. After the show, the Balenciaga and Lacroix alum counted "my maturity, my age" as influences. If enough customers feel the same way, then Jarrar's voice could become that of contemporary couture, too.
—Tim Blanks
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Right now, in the Paris hotel rooms of many fashion editors, there are bunches of flowers, plastic-wrapped and raffia-tied. When they returned to their rooms after the Dior couture show today, did the attendees make the connection between what they'd just seen on the catwalk and what was sitting in a vase in front of them? Stephen Jones created headgear that looked like a florist's plastic wrap. Someone else contributed the raffia belts. And nature did the rest. "It's the most inspiring teacher," said John Galliano, after a show that was a hymn to all things floral.

Part of his research involved studying real flowers, spending an hour watching the light change on a parrot tulip, for instance. That partly explained the collection's wonderful colors, especially the vibrancy of the dégradé effects. You could attribute the rest to Galliano's contemplation of images by the two great flower photographers de nos jours, Irving Penn and Nick Knight. Dior himself obliged with the silhouette, a tulip shape that Galliano seemed to feel Mr. Christian had never really made the most of. He certainly sorted that out.

Perhaps it was the precision of the inspiration that accounted for the show's clarity, not only in the palette but in the delicate techniques. The fronding, the feathering, the ruching, the ruffling—all duplicated the extraordinary intricacies of flowers. Delicate they may be in nature, but his objects of study gave Galliano free rein to be bold with a coat like a huge inverted daffodil and a dress in black taffeta that was hand-painted with pansies. It's unlikely that when he compared himself to a jardinière tending his blooms, the designer had attendees like Blake Lively, Jessica Alba, and Lou Doillon in mind, but you could imagine them being seduced by his hybrids, the jacket and skirt combinations like the white felt over lilac organza, or the jade mohair with a swoop of portrait neckline over a petaled bubble of black organza.

In an Edenic fashion world, this would be the daywear that would fully complement evening dresses of an extraordinary dimension—gigantic domes of tulle overlaid with gloriously colored swags of organza. On the opening day of the Paris couture, the casual insolence of the draped one-shoulder outfit that closed the show was a provocation. "Beat this," it declared.
—Tim Blanks
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Clare Waight Keller's knitwear background means she has a natural curiosity about the textures and treatments of fabric. It's one way she's making 195-year-old Pringle of Scotland more modern. From her men's collection for Spring, Keller carried over the waxed silks, glowing reds and blues, and translucent white, in poncho-like shapes. She dissected traditional plaid into grids, which were woven into two tank dresses and layered, one over the other, to form the familiar pattern. She feathered fil coupé for an effect much like a raffia, but softer, for a top and skirt. Keller also engineered knits into a fully fashioned bra and shorts with a cardigan over top. It was a sassy, summery little outfit.

Special effects aside, the designer's overriding goal was a look with the crisp, clean edge of the women in vintage Peter Lindbergh photographs: something as graphic as a white shirt and beautifully tailored pants that could cross from work to play with a minimum of fuss. She's getting there.
—Tim Blanks
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Francesco Scognamiglio has received a lot of press lately for dressing Lady Gaga—not only on the red carpet, but also in her Madonna-esque video for "Alejandro." He's also outfitted her Madgesty, for that matter. The emerging Italian designer is manna for fashion risk takers, but he's playing it safe for Resort, riffing on the season's most popular motifs: cardigans and T-shirt dresses in blue and white marinière stripes and denim sailor pants, with accents of anchors and embroidered crests here and there. There was also a very pretty floral print for a party dress and a matching cardigan. "The inspiration is Capri, which is near my hometown, Pompei," he said. We can't quite make out what a prim white blouse and ankle-scraping black skirt have to do with the Italian vacation spot, but we could see Gaga in them.
—Nicole Phelps
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