Christian Dior: "In this economic climate, I want to focus on the established codes of Dior: the Bar jacket, the panther, the lily of the valley," John Galliano said of his approach for Christian Dior this fall. That platform translated into a collection both controversy-free and superb in its own right.... "It all begins with the corset," he said. He thus sent out models wearing dresses worked in various transparencies, or seemingly caught in states of undress—jacket sans skirt, enormous ball skirt sans bodice. It was, he quipped, as if the girls weren't ready, and someone said, "Just go!" This allowed him to show off the craft of couture-building via the most intricate, exquisite undies imaginable—hand-made bras, corsets, girdles, garters, tap shorts, stockings—and to provide the kind of rich theater that is now as core to the house as the Bar jacket. Atop the corsetry: inventively molded and decorated takes on that iconic item; lean, your-slip-is-showing dresses, and volume galore, in a fab embroidered coat; short, crisp crinolines and dream-sequence evening stunners... more
Alexis Mabille: This hot young French designer can do girly or glamorous--and it all looks like a dream. Dressing gowns, lace-trimmed handkerchiefs and antique bedsheets were among the elements Mabille summoned from his childhood memories of linen closets to create a chic collection that woke up his audience at the start of Paris couture week. Mabille has a very Gallic sensibility, and he evoked French maids with his eyelet-edged gauze dresses and vintage Yves Saint Laurent in his pajamalike smokings and a black evening column that revealed touches of flesh in between pert black bows. But he also has a young and fresh sportswear sensibility all his own, rendering an oversize T-shirt dress in layers of cloud-blue organza and edging it with pastel organza petals... moreRelated post: When in Paris, the man to know at the Ritz... and what he knows
