Paris: October 4
By Rebecca Voight
Paris is noisy, but Australian designer Martin Grant is so calm, cool and collected you might miss him. This is a man who knows where a woman’s waist is and he manages to highlight it in almost every silky dress.
Antonio Marras is in Alice in Wonderland’s garden for spring. The Kenzo designer combined three or more fabrics (glitter, chiffon and florals) in gray and sepia tones for his puffball dresses and his crocheted mohair patchwork looks like a future heirloom.
Lebanon’s Elie Saab knows how to make an Oscar dress. His ready-to-wear collection is full of more accessible—though still satiny and glittery—entrance numbers in violet and turquoise with plenty of beading and liquid jersey.
Chloé has a new designer, again. Hannah MacGibbon, Phoebe Philo’s former assistant, made her debut with a collection full of scalloped edging on coats, shorts, pinafore dresses and jumpsuits in crisp cottons and sunny colors like apricot. She needs to work on the proportions—softer, sleeker and shorter, Hannah.
Some combinations are perfect. Jean Paul Gaultier and Hermès for example. On a sandy runway scattered with cactuses, JPG sent out a posse of Western looks that flirted with cowboy kitsch. Fringed wraparound suedes, cardigans shaped like ponchos and chiffon Mexican blanket stripes merge Hermès seamlessly the Wild West.
With the exception of giant feathered Beefeater hats, John Galliano was seriously down to business in a collection that featured his greatest hits: bias-cut chiffon florals with tiers of ruffles, and sexy, silky safari jackets over little dresses mixed boudoir and baby doll.
Shown: Hermès Spring 2009. Photography by Peter Stigter
Rebecca Voight is a Paris-based freelance writer.
MARTIN GRANT | ANTONIO MARRAS | HERMÈS
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