Key trends for winter include the wider shoulderline, draping, and the mix of masculine and feminine
“RIGHT NOW fashion should be a morale booster – escapist, excellent and constant. This is a credit not a creative crisis.” So argued designer John Galliano as the Paris prêt a porter closed the international catwalk season this week.
With US buyers thinner on the ground and with lighter budgets, increasing numbers from China and Korea were an indication of the emerging markets on which luxury companies are pinning their hopes of future economic growth.
Key trends for winter were the wider shoulderline, draping, the mix of masculine and feminine, with colours such as black, grey and metallics predominating. Black leather biker jackets everywhere reflected a tougher attitude to challenging times with the best collections consolidating heritage strengths such as Dior, Chanel and YSL, though with widely differing themes.
In the final line-up, Galliano’s show was a colourful and exuberant celebration of eastern European folkloric dress that opened in a whirlwind of stardust with models emerging from a tunnel of light as if from a faraway place. Embroidered wool skirts, gypsy blouses and flamboyantly decorated coats, laden with silver jewellery, had an ethnic luxuriance heightened with red pompom footwear and elaborate headdresses. For the finale, dresses of filmy lightness with veils of white voile had a dreamy, fairytale quality.
There was nothing dreamy about the bomber jackets, jump suits and leather helmets at Hermes based on the workwear of early 20th-century female aviators such as Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart. With its associations of pioneering, independent women, it was a winning transatlantic theme for a luxury leather company executed with customary panache and polish. Crocodile leather jackets lined with astrakhan, leather parkas and long grey greatcoats seemed perfect status symbols for today’s affluent high flyers.
But it was left to Marc Jacobs at Vuitton to end the week on a high note with an audaciously feminine and flirty collection, a quintessentially French mix of restraint and romance. Making use of all the girly trappings – the frills, the bows and boudoir laces – he sent out sophisticated, shapely dresses with lavish décor and suits adroitly ruched and draped that in another’s hand would have looked de trop.
There were terrific black jackets, some with picture frame collars, cut with extreme rigour and severity, but the joie de vivre showed in the colours, in the flame red overcoats and iridescent green sheaths. And if some items looked more like carapaces than capes, they only served to reinforce the collection’s optimistic femme fatale spirit and the notion that better times may lie ahead.