**
MEN’S
16 Tuesday,
July 5, 2005
Balenciaga
and legend
Bettman/Corbis
The late Cristóbal Balenciaga.
face-off between Cristóbal
A Balenciaga, the legendary
couturier who died in 1972,
and Nicolas Ghesquière, 35, who
has taken up the flame, will be
staged by the Musée de la Mode et
du Textile in Paris. The museum
will announce this week the
upcoming show, in July 2006 —
the first since New York’s
Metropolitan Museum of Art feted
the Spanish-born designer in 1973.
But the Paris show will not be
as controversial as the Met’s
current portrayal of Coco Chanel
on equal footing with Karl
Lagerfeld. Nor will it be
Balenciaga’s original designs with
the house’s current ‘‘editions’’ or
reworked vintage looks alongside.
‘‘It will be about the themes of
Cristóbal Balenciaga’s work and
their connection to the present
when there is a meeting point,’’
says Ghesquière, who admits that
at first he was both ‘‘thrilled’’ and
‘‘afraid’’ that the museum asked
for his involvement.
Pamela Golbin, who is expected
to curate the show, said on
Monday: ‘‘We have the project and
we are working very strongly for
it to happen.’’
Ghesquière, whose current
windows at the Bon Marché
department store are conceived
without showing clothes, says that
he will tap his contemporary art
friends, who include Dominique
Gonzalez-Foerster, to help stage
the Paris exhibition.
‘‘There must be vigilance about
the selection of the clothes, to give
a key to people who don’t know
Balenciaga and to give authority
to the label,’’ says Ghesquière. ‘‘I
hope it won’t be too nostalgic, but
about structure, imagination and
what is organic to the house.’’
Gucci Group, Balenciaga’s
parent company, has given
support to the exhibition and as
Ghesquière says: ‘‘It comes at the
best possible moment for
Balenciaga when there is so much
interest and demand.’’
— Suzy Menkes
Nicolas Ghesquière, f lame keeper.
A SPECI A L R EPORT
PAUL SMITH
Match point for mixed doubles
By Suzy Menkes
PARIS
ou don’t have to follow the
Y tennis season to know that for
menswear designers the cru-
cial stage is match point.
How two halves of a slightly different
suit fabric mesh together or when a
palette of colors works in perfect (mas-
culine) harmony are the small issues
that mean a lot for big brands.
The French menswear season for
spring/summer 2006 moved into a
quiet phase as the designers — mostly
Belgian and Japanese — who were pre-
pared to make a bold statement morph-
ed into those who send out more classic
clothes.
At Yves Saint Laurent, Stefano Pilati
took a few carefully planned steps for-
ward — not least with the leopard-
print Moroccan slippers that caught
both a certain raffish elegance and a
whiff of the original designer’s connec-
tion to North Africa.
Pilati took the writer and musician
Paul Bowles as his muse, although he is
known more for ‘‘The Sheltering Sky’’
Owens branches out
ick Owens stretches his tall
R frame across a monumental,
modernist couch and explains
why he has added furniture to his
pantheon of men’s and women’s
designs and his Revillon furs.
‘‘I wanted to create something for
the apartment — and now this is my
favorite room in the building,’’ he
said, referring to the studio where he
is in the process of turning resin and
plywood into a white table. He de-
scribes it as a ‘‘wedding cake.’’ But,
with its embedded toothy skulls, it
seems more like a voodoo accessory.
The couches, chairs and tactile tree
trunk of a lamp are best described as
retro-futuristic, meaning the modern-
ist canons of the Le Corbusier era have
been given a space age look with the
translucent resin and spongy seats.
www.gucci.com
f ASH ION
HER MES
than for his style, even if there is a vis-
ceral North African connection with
Saint Laurent.
‘‘It brought a certain formality — but
I wanted a real summer collection,’’
said Pilati of a show that included both
suits in hyper-subtle mismatched mate-
rials and with elongated vent-free jack-
ets; and also sportswear. That meant
polo shirts and blouson jackets (even in
Prince of Wales check suiting) and
pants with a discreet YSL gilded logo. A
fresh sea breeze blew in with thick knit
cardigans with sailing boat motifs.
Pilati seems most confident with
tailoring, whether it is a shapely dou-
ble-breasted jacket or a tuxedo with
velvet pockets, a curvy satin lapel or a
floppy bow tie. And although the mis-
matched suits at the beginning seemed
too hearty for a modern summer, their
blends of different fabric showed Pil-
ati’s artistic eye.
It was a surprise to see Paul Smith,
champion of the breezy, regular guy,
send out formal double-breasted suits
and enough ties to put the open-neck
shirt to flight. Short, shapely jackets
with two buttons at the back in a trun-
‘‘It’s not like I planned on produ-
cing it — but I would like it if
someone wanted to do a limited edi-
tion,’’ said Owens.
To Revillon, for which he now has
the license, the designer has brought
what he calls a ‘‘real summer collec-
tion,’’ meaning light, formless pieces
to be worn like accessories. They
come in leather with ostrich-like
blisters or in what Owens describes
rapturously as ‘‘Chinese toad.’’
New too is the ‘‘Lilies’’ collection of
classic ultra-fine jersey pieces in the
designer’s signature mud-colored
neutrals. That joins a range of ‘‘Dark
Shadow’’ denim, with smudgy effects,
and the main fashion lines. For the
menswear, three years in Paris seems
to have affected the Owens casual
West Coast style.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
cated fox-hunter style were classy and
there was an aristocratic countrified
feel both to the set of a grand house
covered in dust sheets and to the ram-
bling rose patterns. They climbed over
shirts rather than ancient stone walls
with the print sometimes contained
within a stripe or as a larger flower pot
image.
Smith’s mixed doubles — suits when
jacket and pants melded but did not
match — were well done and the finale
of loose shirts in sugared almond col-
ors looked delicious. Yet there was a
sense of restraint to Smith’s usually
ebullient style.
‘‘I’ve been doing a lot of rock and roll
— and I love it,’’ Smith said backstage.
‘‘But I feel the mood is changing.’’
At Hermès, the story was almost ex-
clusively about color and how the
mouth-watering shades of apricot,
peach and shrimp were mixed as if for
a summer buffet.
‘‘And I did lots of prints because I
wanted it to be joyful and summery,’’
said the designer Véronique Nichanian.
Yet this show of casual wear in ultra-
luxurious fabrics did not quite come off
Photo by Christopher Moore/Andrew Thomas
Rick Owens is now designing furniture.
‘‘Instead of soft and drape-y, it is a
little bit sharper and fitted to the
back,’’ says Owens of the men’s range
for Italy’s Concordia. — Suzy Menkes
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
HER ALD TRIBUNE
K ENZO
Photographs by Christopher Moore/Andrew Thomas
ANN DEMEULEMEESTER
on the runway. Surely a few more per-
fectly proportioned blazers and suits in
elegantly faded colors could have been
added to what sometimes looked like
upscale workwear? Or maybe the audi-
ence needed to stroke a glove-soft crab-
colored suede blouson or feel the tex-
ture of a lavender mesh sweater. Only
the program notes explained the de-
tails of a cardigan in ‘‘velvet goatskin
with open worked saddle stitching’’ or
the many ‘‘H’’ logos so subtly worked.
The printed shirts spoke up better
for themselves and so did the casual
evening elegance of sweat top and
pants with a gleam of satin at neck and
as tuxedo stripe.
The themes of the season included
color and pattern, which was expertly
done at Rykiel Homme, where striped
cardigans, madras check jackets and
sweaters with artistic blocks of pink, RYKIEL HOMME
green, turquoise and yellow all gave a
graphic edge to the clothes. With just a
tiny dose of the 1970s in fitted safari
jackets and the now-fashionable-again
espadrilles, Rykiel had a summer spirit.
Véronique Branquinho joined the
designers inspired by music — in her
case a young Bob Dylan, whose slim,
short raincoat and striped blazer were
on the show room rails and in photo-
graphs on the walls. It gave pep to the
designer’s precise, masculine clothes.
Bernhard Willhelm inhabits a nurs-
ery world in which colors are crayola-
sharp and shapes as generous as a child
wearing his older brother’s pajamas.
Once the designer added another ele-
ment of American rapper style, the stars,
stripes and dots entered clown territory.
Jessica Michault reported from Paris:
The Kenzo menswear show was in- BERNHARD WILLHELM
spired by the silky smooth era of the
1930s. Models with slicked-back hair, sense of whimsy and a bit of color — a
boater hats and braided sandals gave dusty pink ensemble was one notable
the collection a relaxed ‘‘tennis any- standout. Jackets came with the cuffs
one’’ feel. The lean silhouette was up- buttoned back leaving shirtsleeves ex-
dated through the use of rough-cut posed and pants legs were slightly
edges on suits, subtle flower motifs on gathered on the inside revealing bare
jackets, and full pants cut to bag a bit at legs. Feathers in jacket pockets, charms
the knees. dangling from the neck, and paint
Ann Demeulemeester’s debut splatter sneakers all helped the slouchy
menswear show was a romantic affair. clothes convey the romantic message.
The designer continues to lighten up
without letting go of her ubiquitous Suzy Menkes is fashion editor of the
black by infusing the clothing with a International Herald Tribune.