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International Herald Tribune
12 Wednesday, October 5, 2005
JUNYA WATANABE
iht.com
Coverage of Paris’s fashion week,
including slide shows
and an e-mail newsletter.
Punk takes
note of Dada
Continued from Page 11
giela. Standout pieces were the simplest:
cut-away raincoats, jackets edged with
houndstooth and khaki green jackets
worn over knife-pleated shirts.
Viktor & Rolf turned fashion upside
down — literally, as the show started
with the duo and their models taking a
bow. Then came dresses worn so that
sleeves or shoulder straps were
dangling at the ankles. Although Viktor
Horsting (dressed in white) and Rolf
Snoeren (in black) said that the creative
rotation produced new shapes and sil-
houettes, it all looked like their familiar
aesthetic: a spirited modern take on
classics producing evening clothes fit
for the Dutch Princess Mabel, who
turned to the duo for her wedding dress.
There was much to like among the
cream and cappuccino satin dresses or
blouses patterned with birds. But layers
of upended tank tops with dangling
straps were just too clever.
You might think that the veteran
Vivienne Westwood would no longer
be intent on stirring up protest. But
from the moment she hung a giant red
‘‘AR’’ at the back of the runway, to her
final exit wearing a T-shirt saying: ‘‘I’m
not a terrorist — please, please don’t
shoot me,’’ she was promoting ‘‘Active
Resistance to Propaganda.’’ But the
clothes were more of Westwood’s his-
torical romanticism, with swooshing
fabrics and asymmetric cutting.
Jean-Paul Gaultier’s reprise of his
Ukraine-inspired couture show
brought peasant blouses mixed with
Parisian tailoring, flower-patterned
meadow-sweet dresses and ooh-la-la
apron skirts. The peasant stuff included
cherries on the head and puffed-sleeve
blouses. The show was charming, but
mostly walked familiar territory as an-
drogynous pants suits were given a styl-
ish airing. The Ukrainian maidens
morphed into black-clad Sicilian wid-
ows. But only occasionally, when red-
and-white checked gingham touched
coal-black tailoring or the folkloric em-
broidery was on a smart wrap jacket,
did this Ukrainian rhapsody sing.
VIVIENNE WESTWOOD
Balenciaga is Stellar
Continued from Page 11
lace or trace lace around a skinny frock
coat that had the French actress Em-
manuelle Seigner sighing and dying for
it in the front row?
The Balenciaga show was exception-
al among the many attempts to revive a
brand, because Ghesquière keeps the
integrity of the Spanish master yet
makes it modern. The great divide be-
tween old and new is the sense of a
body in motion, as the models strode
out in pants or in dresses that held their
sculpted shape, yet revealed the body’s
silhouette underneath. Lace evening
dresses that might have looked like
honeymoon nightgowns were so beau-
tifully worked that you felt the inspira-
tion had come from a mantilla in a
Velásquez painting or from the
archives that Ghesquière is now using
with an easy confidence.
Vandevorst: Women transformed
he A.F. Vandevorst show opened
PARIS
T with models standing on the
darkened stage of the Elysée Mont-
martre. It was only when they took to
the runway that they revealed them-
selves to be merely reflected images of
the real women tucked among thick
black curtains.
In a show that seemed to be about
transformation, the Belgian designers
An and Fillip Vandevorst took the popu-
lar themes of draping, pleats and full
skirts and morphed them into some-
thing all their own. There were over-
sized jersey tops that fell in folds off bare
shoulders and matched with leggings or
wide pants. The short hoop skirts stand-
ing away from the body gave the cloth-
ing volume and movement. And micro
pleats on pockets, jacket hems and skirt
fronts added texture and intrigue.
With most outfits a single color from
head to toe (white, black or sand), the
well-cut jackets were given an inventive
touch with the addition of oversized
plastic buttons racing up the back of the
arms or fastening tight the clothing
across the chest. When the last model
left the runway, it was clear the duo had
come up with a collection of wearable
clothes for women who want their fem-
ininity with a modern edge.
— Jessica Michault
www.gucci.com
Fashion
‘‘He keeps the integrity of the house
in such a modern way,’’ said the stylist
L’Wren Scott, whose long, lean legs
seemed fashioned for Ghesquière’s
skinny pants or even the loose, playful
page-boy knickers. ‘‘Balenciaga’s herit-
age is so admirable,’’ she said. ‘‘And in
the cut and attention to detail, every-
thing has the spirit of Balenciaga.’’
Although this collection had the de-
tailed workmanship (and probably the
high price tags) of haute couture, the
only way a luxury house can survive
today is to reach for fashion’s summit.
François Henri Pinault and Robert Po-
let, Balenciaga’s parents from PPR and
Gucci Group, both said that their lips
were sealed on figures but that ‘‘Balen-
ciaga is performing even better than we
expected.’’
Suzy Menkes is the fashion editor of
the International Herald Tribune.
AF VANDEVORST
Yves Saint Laurent at the exhibition ‘‘Smoking Forever,’’ at the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves
Saint Laurent, above; and guests, left to right, Catherine Deneuve, Pauline and Paul Smith,
Saint Laurent, Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux.
A toast to Yves for ‘le smoking’
By Suzy Menkes
feel pleased — and proud,’’ said
‘I Yves Saint Laurent, looking at
the tuxedo suits arranged on
plinths like pieces on a chess
board, with a vast image of the designer
with Catherine Deneuve on the
lacquered black wall.
As if by magic, the coal black pant-
suits seemed to move around. They
were not mannequins coming to life,
but the guests invited to the Fondation
Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent to cel-
ebrate ‘‘Smoking Forever.’’
It is not, as the title suggests, permis-
sion to light up. Although, this being
France, cigarettes were being puffed be-
tween elegantly manicured fingers by
the time the couturier’s close friends
had moved from the rigorous exhibi-
tion, with its checkerboard floor, mod-
ernist white columns and shiny black
grand piano, to the gilded dining room.
There, with the curvaceous and viva-
cious Deneuve between Saint Laurent
and the culture minister, Renaud Don-
nedieu de Vabres, le tout Paris raised
glasses of vodka to ‘‘Yves,’’ as caviar ar-
rived in individual dishes molded out of
ice from Prunier — Bergé’s restaurant.
‘‘I don’t remember my first tuxedo —
but I know I have always worn one with
nothing underneath,’’ said Betty Cat-
roux, after eyeing the opening exhibit:
a 1966 tux with a froth of white blouse
underneath and a delicate sketch of the
outfit from the master’s hand.
‘‘I like le smoking because that was
the moment when Yves empowered
Photographs by Christopher Moore, above; Suzy Menkes for the IHT
women,’’ said Bergé, who was sitting
between Monique Lang, wife of the
former culture minister Jack Lang and
June Newton, whose late husband
Helmut gave a sexual charge to the tux
with his iconic nude/dressed images in
a dark alley in 1975.
‘‘The thing about a tuxedo is that it is
virile and feminine at the same time,’’
said Deneuve. I don’t remember my
first one — I think it was in the early
1980s when the picture was taken —
double-breasted and very severe. It
really does make you feel different as a
woman, it changes the gestures.’’
The men — including François-
Henri Pinault, chief executive of PPR,
the parent company of Yves Saint
Laurent — naturally wore tuxedos. But
so did every single woman in the room
— except for Corinne Ricard of the li-
quor dynasty in a cream Gaultier pant-
suit. Pauline Smith, sitting with her
husband Paul and Loulou de la Falaise,
wore the very last couture tux made in
the house in 2002, before Saint Laurent
retired.
‘‘My first memory is a photo of Jean
Shrimpton in a ‘smoking,’ said Falaise,
referring to the gangly legged model of
the 1960s. ‘‘I like a tuxedo because it is
so easy. Seven minutes is all it takes to
get ready to go out!’’
‘‘Smoking Forever,’’ at 5 avenue Mar-
ceau until April 23, is curated by Chris-
tophe Martin, who received a resound-
ing cheer at dinner — not least from his
mentor, the metteur en scene Bob
Wilson. Martin has managed, in just
two rooms of the rather too small exhi-
bition space, to recreate a moment in
fashion and social history where wom-
en stood shoulder to padded shoulder
with men — or even strode ahead.
‘‘It was a transfer of power and I
wanted the mannequins to look like
soldiers, warriors — that is why it is like
a game of chess with the women in com-
mand,’’ said Martin of the first room.
The display shows different aspects of
the tux, from chic all-in-one overalls
from 1975 to the lush velvet coat with a
satin edge from 1984. Throughout the
exhibition you can see how Saint
Laurent treated black as a color, using
grain de poudre with the texture of coal
against gleaming jet beads and sparkles
of crystal. The accessories, taken from
the YSL archives, are all the original
partners for the clothes.
The second room, where Saint
Laurent’s timid, smoky voice can be
heard on the soundtrack, is devoted to
the romance, rather the sobriety, of a
tuxedo. With the curving grand piano
as its centerpiece, offset by the white
pillars, Martin has shown the more
feminine side of le smoking, as in a 1983
dress draped on a curve with a bow at
the front.
The accompanying catalogue, with
reproductions of the original sketches
as well as photographs, has a page writ-
ten in Saint Laurent’s handwriting
where he defines a tuxedo in his own
words: ‘‘For a woman, le smoking is an
indispensable garment with which she
finds herself continually in fashion, be-
cause it is about style, not fashion. Fash-
ion’s come and go, but style is forever.’’