photo via imaxtree.com for nymag.com
It may be unbearable to think about fall clothes at the moment (94 degrees Fahrenheit), and your mind may be on what you’re planning to light on fire tomorrow night, but in Paris, it’s the couture, good, bad, ugly.
Dear Karl. Karl Lagerfeld’s sleek, mod hoods for day at Chanel are killer, appearing both on day looks and in modified form on evening looks. And that’s the key, that Lagerfeld does do daytime, albeit a rarefied daytime. In fact, Lagerfeld does a full collection that women of means who might go to the couture can live in. Contrast this with Galliano for Dior.
Go have a look at the whole Chanel couture collection. (Start at look fifty and you will be richly rewarded.)
Dior, as it is processed through the great fashion machine to be consumed at our end is as little like the ravings of the creative mind of John Galliano as can be. Witness his couture collection. Yes, Galliano understands the value of theatrics to generate publicity for a brand. And so he shows at Versailles. But this collection included a satin harlequin costume and jarring, abundantly ruffled skirts that remind us of the skirts of the Barbie ™ shoved into the little girl’s cake. We could wrack our brains trying to make historic/geographic sense of what Galliano was trying to do here—there were mantillas and he wore a bubble-gum toreador costume for his bow, so okay Spanish-ish—but the takeaway was that of Galliano scratching the phonograph needle across the LP of fashion history. Taken as a whole, his drag queen looks are exhausting. The moments that worked were those when he settled down and referenced Christian Dior’s New Look silhouette.
photo via imaxtree.com for style.com
Fun activity: watch Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette to get the setting of Galliano’s extravaganza in period-appropriate form and frankly, with better gowns.
And, stay tuned for couture, Portland-style.
WHAT TO DO NOW?