Valentino
Something odd is going on at a house that, until last year, had had the same
designer at its helm for more than four decades. On Valentino's retirement
the company announced that he would be replaced by Alessandra Facchinetti,
36. Eyebrows were raised, then lowered, when she produced a warmly received
debut ready-to-wear collection in March and an even more enthusiastically
received haute couture one in July.
So far, so encouraging. Except that after the Valentino show at the weekend
she was fired, to be replaced, according to a statement from the house, by
Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli, accessories designers at
Valentino for the past decade. This is an eerie echo of Facchinetti's
experience at Gucci, where she was sacked after two seasons and succeeded by
Gucci's accessory designer. To add to the humiliation, Facchinetti says she
learnt of her dismissal from journalists. Then Valentino himself weighed in:
“[Chiuri and Piccioli] always demonstrated an enormous respect and love for
my work. There is an existing archive with thousands of dresses from which
they can draw and take inspiration to create a Valentino product that is
relevant today. It is a shame their predecessor didn't feel this need.” Oh
dear: updating a brand is never easy, especially when the founder is very
much around. As for Facchinetti's collection? It continued her respectful
yet modernising journey, but may never hit the shops.
Chanel
What's it like to have earned so much money by the age of 18 that you need
never work again? Perhaps you get sudden urges to buy a white
quilted-leather guitar case, or tights that have been artfully spun to look
like, well, tights, but ones with built-in cycling shorts.
If so, Emma Watson, sitting in the front row at Chanel, was in the right
place. Karl Lagerfeld is the maestro of the barmy accessory. Having had more
than 20 years in which to learn that you don't mess with the label's bouclé
tweed suit, he let rip with accessories. Half of them are jokes (or one
assumes that they are, then finds that there's a waiting list for them in
Manila, or they've become an ironic statement in Dalston). So don't be
surprised if you see Chanel carrier bags in all the magazines come spring,
because they swung down the catwalk, in paper or leather, it was hard to
tell. Those clear plastic courts with black toecaps may be big, too, and the
lattice-work anklebootswill probably do nicely. As for the monochromatic
clothes: suits, with looser, boxier jackets; a T-shirt-shaped tunic dress in
tweed. As for ruffles, they were central to evening wear: big bouncy tiers
in metallic silks that brought to mind the ebullient glamour of 1930s
Hollywood.
Yves Saint Laurent
Here's a peculiar thing. Do you see the black skirt pictured on the right?
It's not actually a skirt. It's a, well, what, exactly? A tirt? Skousers?
For Stefano Pilati - the person responsible for this winter's
seven-eighths-length trouser craze - has taken another leap into the dark
and put a collection on an enormous Paris catwalk that revolves mainly
around dhotis, some with crotches at the thigh, others with crotches at the
ankle. That's quite a statement. A large section of the audience, normally
Pilati disciples, couldn't take it. Nor - and this is the really spooky part
- could the camera. I have looked and looked through the pictures for one
that clearly demonstrates the dhoti connection but, time and again, the
camera makes every single outfit look like a conventional skirt - which is
handy really, because that's pretty much how they will appear in the stores,
once the buyers have had their say.
So what was really new about Pilati's collection? The return of the bare upper
midriff, perhaps. Those caged ankle boots, another erotic frisson to set the
tills chirping. Or those thigh-length wrap jackets worn over peg trousers or
calf-length skirts.
These aren't easy proportions on anyone, but among the challenges were some
rather lovely, relatively simple, kimonoinspired shapes in inkly blues,
black and khaki. As the burgundy sheer sequined dress pictured above
suggests, no one can currently touch Pilati when it comes to producing
something that looks both sedate and rather sick (and I mean that in a nice
way).
Chloe
Not that the fashion world is anything like The Devil Wears Prada, but while
Alessandra Facchinetti was learning that she'd been fired from Valentino
from journalists, Hannah MacGibbon was preparing to step into the shoes of
Paolo Melim Andersson, recently of this house, but now dispatched to the
eternal holding room of designers who shouldn't have been hired in the first
place. Not that Andersson wasn't talented, but he came from Marni, and
Marni's boho was in his blood; Chloé's girlish prettiness wasn't. MacGibbon,
by contrast, was part of the Chloé team in the golden reign of Phoebe Philo,
so her debut collection was doubly mystifying.
The first enigma: copper-coloured metallic trousers. Weird trousers are in,
but weird trousers that make even the models look 8ft wide? Next, those
stegosaurus fins that embellished the first outfit, and a few other jackets
and skirts. Admittedly, she made them look pretty, but Christopher McKane
got there first, in London three weeks ago. In between the steg details and
fat-pants were some sweet pieces - paper-bag skirts and shorts in lovely
shades of lemon, apricot and taupe, cute ruffled apron tops - but there
seemed to be a problem with the fit of some of the dresses. And a problem
etched into the brows of the normally poker-faced buyers for whom this label
used to be a cash cow. But note to Ralph Toledana, Chloé's CEO: give
MacGibbon more than three seasons to prove herself.
Alexander McQueen
McQueen's shows are often a bit of a mental assault course. This time it was
the life-sized stuffed animals that adorned the catwalk -not Paddington
Bear, but polar bear, leopard and various others of their endangered pals -
that provoked a twinge. “Every species is fragile,” read the programme
notes, “but animals are the underdogs while we are actually bringing about
our own extinction - and theirs.” Animals certainly are the underdogs, and
the under pelts (and top pelts) in many a collection. Mentioning no names,
of course, because this is a spring/summer collection and even most Italian
designers don't do fur in July.
I should probably focus on the clothes rather than the philosophy of
extinction, because they are extraordinary. We expect faultless engineering
from McQueen, but even fluid silk dresses seemed to be constructed on a kind
of invisible scaffolding. McQueen says he was inspired by the Industrial
Revolution, and perhaps his work is the closest clothes will come to
Brunel's suspension bridge in their blend of technique and imagination. An
overlapping fringed dress with an embroidered sheer lace back seemed to
change from black to charcoal as the model moved. While those head-to-floor
animal prints won't be everyone's cup of tea, there are bound to be more
commercial pieces in the showroom. Now if a figure such as McQueen would
stop using skins in his winter collections, that would be a revolution, too.
