Paris Fashion Week:Martin Margiela, the innovative and famously reticent Belgian fashion designer whose creative director is Irishman Patrick Scallon, presented a thought-provoking collection in the Bercy sports stadium yesterday in Paris.
Starting with a simple flesh-coloured bandeau top and tight skirt, it built up, piece by piece, a flying cutaway coat here or a train there, developing from the initial basic foundation.
Sometimes it became difficult to decipher what was flesh and what was fabric, so fluid and form fitting was the silk jersey. Exaggerated shoulderlines, already making their appearance on fashionable French women, were rendered in white and colour-blocked shades of black, blue or grey, occasionally with subtle trompe l'oeil sequin embroidery. Everything was about the freedom and control of cut and the raggedy blue jeans hanging by their seams harked back to Margiela's familiar deconstruction days.
Nothing could have been a greater contrast than the Junya Watanabe/Comme des Garçons collection at the Intercontinental Hotel, a parade of pale prints gathered into milkmaid dresses with puff-ball sleeves and skirts swagged like curtains.
Dramatically different too was the tough and sexy urban wear from Marithe & Francois Girbaud. Season after season they update and restyle common street garb like jeans and parkas with the assurance and polish from years of experience. It made for a safe but sure line-up of jeans in silver brocade, tunics in silver lamé worn over T-shirts, red racer back dresses, tight black trousers with zip, chain and stud décor and some really cute wrap and tied jackets.
Technology meets fashion could have been the alternative title of the Issey Miyake "Wind Collection" yesterday. James Dyson, he of the vacuum cleaner technology, collaborated with creative director Dai Fujiwara on the elaborate wind tunnel set. The show was really about fabric manipulation and development with unusual shapes and silhouettes created by elaborate ruching, folding and the signature Miyake pleating. Though there were some lovely breezy, bouncy dresses in chevron shapes and innovative meshed knits, it somehow seemed overcontrived and failed to sparkle.