A CRISP but sunny day marked the start of the Paris prêt à porter closing the round of international winter collections in New York, London and Milan.
A number of designers presented their shows on Wednesday, but in a departure from the conventional line-up, Balenciaga rather than Dior launched the week yesterday, not in the company ateliers on the Left Bank as is customary, but in a salon at the luxury Hôtel de Crillon.
With wide 80s shoulderlines, extensive silk draping on skirts and trousers in colours like blue, green, lilac and black, the collection was a far cry from the high-tech fabrics and architectural shapes so much a feature of the house’s recent seasons. Some buyers found the collection “challenging”, in other words difficult to sell, but if the designer, the so-called god of futuristic fashion, Nicholas Ghesquière was less forward looking, that in itself is a sign of the times.
Draping and fabric manipulation, but free of 80s references, were also evident at Sharon Wauchob’s defiantly independent collection held in an abandoned garage in the Marais in the presence of the outgoing Irish Ambassador to France, Anne Anderson.
Wauchob, who is the only Irish designer showing on the official Paris catwalk, always remains true to her own aesthetic, continuously experimenting with cut and detail and intricate new ways with fabric.
Pleating and lace were used in unconventional and alluring ways – a Poiret-shaped dress in silken bronze pleats featured a deep monastic cowl at the back. Black guipure was shredded and fringed into streamers on the hem of a dress, piled flamboyantly over the shoulder of a jacket or fashioned into grid-like tunics. Sexy, close-cut trousers provided the foil for a shearling jacket cut into overlapping layers like paper or for another in luxurious grey and black fox fur. Hammering home the tough chic look were jodhpurs, pintucked suede boots, black gauntlet gloves and leather leggings, a robust uniform in which to ride out the recession.
One designer who knows how to cut leather with a fluidity and verve all of his own is Rick Owens and the sweeping, angled folds and cutaway fronted frockcoats that paraded down the catwalk showed his mastery of curvilinear shapes and angles. Colours like icy blue and grey were as stark as the geometry and patchworked wool coats displayed the same cool modernity. And yet there was something courtly and elegant about the collection’s formality, a medieval grandeur in the taut, high-waisted leather jackets with armoured shoulders, the oversize cuffs and the long sleeveless coats with flying panels.