Day 3 of Paris Fashion Week shows include

  • JUNYA WATANABE MAN
  • ANN DEMEULEMEESTER
  • ATELIER GUSTAVOLINS
  • JUUN J.
  • KRIS VAN ASSCHE
  • BORIS BIDJAN SABERI
  • COMME DES GARÇONS HOMME PLUS
  • GIVENCHY
  • JOHN GALLIANO
  • BERLUTI

HIGHLIGHTS

KRIS VAN ASSCHE

“Every guy needs his white T-shirt,” said Kris Van Assche, who offered a show’s worth of variations on the theme. “The whiteT-shirt is the real thing. It’s one of those basics that’s undeniably sexy.” Van Assche’s tees were either sport/tailored mashups, as in the collared shirts with T-shirt backs, or bits of trompe l’oeil sleight of hand, like one-pieces made to resemble layers of shirt and tailored jacket. The hazard of riffing on a basic, however, is that the results can look rather basic. Worn with pleated shorts or jeans, or outerwear given shape by gathered backs, the looks rarely rose above the day-to-day. Some tricky bits aside, that made for an unusually wearable collection. But its focus felt ultimately like a hindrance. (Source: Matthew Schneier, Style.com)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPX5CyFuzk8
GIVENCHY

Religion and sex have always gone hand in hand, the basest instincts transmogrified into spirituality—even martyrdom—by ardent denial. As a good Catholic boy from Southern Italy, Riccardo Tisci has a finely tuned sense of the power and allure of both saintliness and sin, but he’s never managed to integrate them quite as successfully as he did tonight. The setup—air thick with incense and a sonorously churchy organ to get us in an appropriately reverent mood while we sat…and sat…and sat—had the slight saveur of cheese on communion wafer, but when dozens of models poured in rapid-fire succession through a lily-bedecked archway, the sheer animal drive of Tisci’s vision crushed cynicism like a bug.

He said that “the cult of communion” was his starting point. A brocade of a child’s communion gown could have looked innocent, but Tisci spookily printed it with vestigial faces that looked like the Shroud of Turin’s sisters. In the same way, his plays with layering and proportion would have more easily suggested priestly vestments—there was indeed a certain virtuousness in the white collar that peeked from under black coats—if they hadn’t been cut from an ice-pink duchesse satin. If the aprons and flaps also evoked Westwood and McLaren’s Clothes for Heroes, that’s only because the idea of punk priests seemed made in Tisci heaven. Punk popes too, in the papal-red details on tees printed with abstract Madonna faces.

And that’s Madonna as in “Mother of Christ” rather than La Ciccone, whose current tour has brought Tisci’s clothes to the massed millions. The designer had artists reinterpret classic religious imagery to provide the collection’s graphic meat, the tees and sweats that have made Tisci’s work for Givenchy such a visible presence around the world. There is some irony in that fact, given that he arrived on the scene as a precision cutter of razor-sharp tailoring. Obviously, that was still pristine-present and correct tonight. A blouson or a double-breasted jacket layered over a long shirt is almost as much of a Tisci signature as a jumbo tee. Almost! In mere months, the Virgin Mary will be as inescapable as birds of paradise are now, and rottweilers were then. (Source: Tim Blanks, Style.com)

http://youtu.be/2esZhzZJkd0

JOHN GALLIANO

Why surrealism? “It was a good excuse to be able to do the kind of clothes I wanted,” Bill Gaytten said after his show for John Gallianotonight, “doing things you’re not supposed to.” Many naughty boys have used fashion to bite their thumbs at The Man. But Gaytten’s homage to surrealism had a joyfulness not often achieved by any of them, and long since absent from this particular label. Uncouth shall set you free.

His collection skipped happily from Magritte’s clouds to Dalí’s lobster (memorably borrowed before by Schiaparelli, and later Prada), from the flower bed to the constellations. On his list of don’ts-made-dos: top-to-toe matching looks, with coordinating bowler hats by Stephen Jones; the riot mix of print and embroidery; and womenswear techniques adapted for men, like a series of sheer-detailed macro-print coats cut on the bias.

One coat toggled between an exquisite embroidered floral motif and its opposite: a graphic print like an X-ray of the pockets and seaming hidden inside. It was followed by a passage of printed snail shells. Abandoning the tired narrative that used to structure a Galliano show opened up the possibility of a stronger, more purely visual statement. “I’m less interested in narrative,” Gaytten said. “It’s a little bit purer, less overstyled.” The emphasis on image reminded you of what powerful ones it’s in his power to create.

Gaytten acknowledged there’s more of him in this collection than in the ones that preceded it. “There always was,” he said, “but it was always to John’s tune. I wanted to move it on a little bit.” And, he added, “I’ve had a little bit more time to concentrate as well, for obvious reasons.” A new era at Dior begins next week without him. But a new era at Galliano may have just begun here. (Source: Matthew Schneier, Style.com)

http://youtu.be/UK6Q0r7KHB8