International Fashion ...1 Balenciaga

Nicolas Ghesquière describes his collection as “Parisian”. The designer had mined the Balenciaga archive, examined the structure of a drape-waisted forties redingote, thought over a later sari-inspired collection, and pulled up three late-sixties scarf prints. He took it from there to design a modern translation in satin, printed silk and fragile dévoré velvet.
It made for a sumptuous collection that played down his sci-fi tendencies in favor of a softer femininity. The Ghesquière codes were in play, too, of course. The draping emerged first in swagged charmeuse skirts, suspended from a hip-hugging yoke, and then in a fluid, wrapped relation of the jodhpur shape he brought into fashion two years ago. The shoes could only have come from him: patchworked distillations of everything that was going on in the collection, with jersey print, mesh, suede, scarf ties, and a heavy walking-boot tread on the sole…./2

International Fashion ...2 Balenciaga

There was a sense that Ghesquière was walking a fine line between embracing pragmatism and pushing luxurious experimentation. There was also a little black dress, along with shaved mink silhouettes appliquéd onto a knit base to wrap smoothly around the body as coat-dresses, all relatively plain. Mostly, though, it's the way Ghesquière worked print that will be pored over by fashion diagnosticians. Anyone on the lookout for eighties influences might see something Dynasty in the puffed shoulders of the spotted and streaked prints that were wrapped into dresses and fragile blouses. The word, in the end, was sophistication: Ghesquière didn't pull back on the Balenciaga insistence on developing couture-level handwork, but there was also a sense of reality that sent cohorts of pressured buyers out onto the Place de la Concorde with relieved smiles on their faces. "Wearable" and "money in the bank," they were calling it. Not compliments they're throwing around easily in these strained times. …/3

International Fashion ...3 Donna Karan

If Donna Karan didn't invent uniform dressing in the eighties, she went a very long way toward making the idea a sexy one. Now, with the economy in a nosedive, she's brought the clever, potentially budget-saving concept back for Fall, and the result is one of her strongest-looking collections in seasons. It starts with a jacket or a draped jersey top—all exaggerated sculpted shoulders with a wrapped or belted waist. On the bottom, it's either a long, lean skirt or tapered trousers. …/4

International Fashion ...4 Donna Karan

That powerful, triangular silhouette came down the runway in all sorts of arrangements, each ready to be pulled apart and reconfigured with any number of different pieces. A caramel calfskin trench jacket, a white poplin button-down shirt, or a black silk parka might be paired with a stretchy, below-the-knee jersey skirt, while a portrait-collar alpaca jacket or turtleneck bodysuit might top cropped pants. …/5

International Fashion ...5 Donna Karan

But it wasn't all about separates. Dresses, whether they came long-sleeved or in a draped goddess style, followed the same commanding lines. Karan only abandoned the bold shoulder to reproduce on the runway a look that she herself has been wearing for years. Made from satin jersey suspended from a necklace of leather-wrapped rings, the halter-style "cold shoulder" dress—as she calls it—has been battle-tested not only for sex appeal, but also for ease. Who wouldn't want to slip into a uniform like that? …/6

International Fashion ...6. Dries van Noten

Dries Van Noten has the authority to respond to the times with a relaxed elegance that many women will identify with. It boils down to simple suggestions: an easy-fitting blazer to slip over a blouse and fluid pants; a draped day dress; a sweater to wear over a long skirt for evening. The show opened and closed with belted camel coats, but the strange color combinations in between threw off any feeling of dullness.
While there was nothing overtly retro in it, the undercurrent was of the day-to-day glamour women in Europe and America mustered for themselves while facing the privations of World War II, the template of making the best of oneself in "good" simple clothes, with a slash of orange-red lipstick to keep up morale. All that was subtly reinforced by the long, street-like runway, which was reflected in a two-story-high mirror that gave an angled overhead view, as if from an office-block window: an impression of a legion of city women pressing on with their lives, come what may. …/7

International Fashion ...7 Givenchy

Riccardo Tisci was giving quotes backstage. "It was Schiaparelli, animal sensuality, the forties, the thirties," he began, and then pulled himself up with a more cogent submission: "Actually, I wanted to show lots of different shapes for all kinds of women." In this collection, there were ample representations of Tisci's breadth of appeal: suits, coats, tailored dresses, well-cut pants. Yet there were many other parts as well—fierce, chic one-sleeved spiral-cut dresses with fur implants in the shoulder pads; feathers and goat hair embroidered onto tulle; signature Tisci-esque moments of fetish-y leather and Goth mermaid; studs on white leather…and so it went on.

Yet perhaps things have now reached the stage where the guy doesn't need to keep trying so hard to prove himself: We believe him. It would actually have shown more self-confidence if he'd whittled his catalog of accomplishments down by a third. …/8

International Fashion ...8 Haider Ackerman

A bigger venue, a more convenient time slot, important faces in the crowd—has Haider Ackermann finally arrived? The beautiful collection he showed today certainly suggests he deserves every bit of the newfound attention.
The designer has developed something of a cult following for the seductive way he can wrap and drape a long dress and construct the tiniest, supplest leather jackets around. Both of these signatures returned for Fall, the former in a thicker knit with asymmetric shoulder lines, bare expanses of back, and a daring hip-high slit up one leg. The latter came in bold-for-Ackermann shades of ruby and violet, as well as in burnished gold sequins.
Where this collection upped the ante was with new embroideries and an assured hand for mannish tailoring. "She's coming from nowhere and brings her treasures with her," Ackermann said of his muse, adding that "she's not androgynous, but there's that side to her and she's trying to bring it out. …/9

International Fashion ...9 Marc Jacobs

Leave it to Marc Jacobs to deliver a neon-hued, big-shouldered, crimpy-haired eighties antidote to the gloom and doom of 2009. "I was thinking about the good old days in New York," he said after the show, "when getting dressed up was such a joy." By the good old days, Jacobs means the nights he spent at clubs like Area, the Palladium, and Paradise Garage. Maybe it was the recent Stephen Sprouse project he completed at Louis Vuitton, or perhaps it's the fact that he now lives in Paris full time, but his Fall show was a big, juicy nostalgic kiss to a city that doesn't really exist anymore.
The show started simply enough, with a gray cardigan sweater and charcoal trousers, but when the model walked past, you saw the back half of a kilt and braces—Jacobs' new uniform—and knew it was going to get personal. …/10

International Fashion ...10 Marc Jacobs

He worked his way through little silver-and-black A-line shifts; party dresses in metallic leathers and floral brocades with flaring, full skirts and monster shoulders; velvet bustier tops and high-waisted over-dyed jeans; and Crayola-bright jackets, capes, and hooded coats. The only filter that separated these clothes from their East Village forebears was the expensive, luxury fabrics they came in. Every girl had a different hairdo, shellacked into Mohawks, flips, and bouffants, and the makeup was straight off the album cover of Duran Duran's Rio.
Will fashion as outrageously ebullient as this—in some cases, make that just plain outrageous—sell in the harsh reality of the late noughts?) Jacobs insists that he wasn't thinking about the economy when he was working on the collection, and maybe he wasn't. These days, wagering that women will splash out on feel-good clothes is as good a bet as any. …/11

International Fashion ...11 Lanvin

"People keep trying to divide designers into optimists and pessimists, but me—I'm a realist," declared Alber Elbaz. "I thought with my heart about what women need from fashion—dresses, suits, blouses, coats. Life isn't just parties and lunches." With this empathetic orientation, Lanvin for Fall added another dimension to the revival of Parisian values that are turning out to be the distinguishing feature of the best of this season's collections.
At first sight, there was something that evoked the forties in the abbreviated, sober chic of the dresses and suits. Still, there is something here—and maybe this is the "Parisian" part—that refuses to sink into banal austerity. His message: What was good then is just as good now, and what's bought now can have just as much value years hence. In a year when all other financial investments look like a joke, a Lanvin one is as rock-solidly trustworthy as fashion can be.

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