The Paris shows ended on a high, thanks in no small part to Karl Lagerfeld, who imported a massive iceberg from Scandinavia as the backdrop for his furry Chanel coats and boots, iceberg-blue Angora knits and tweedy suits — not to mention full arctic bear ensembles. Even the bags played on the theme — some of them, in fact, turned out to be hot water bottles. Chanel is one of the few labels that have weathered the crisis well and, thankfully, Lagerfeld uses its considerable resources to constantly up the ante when it comes to creating a visual spectacle.
Needless to say, most other designers kept things simple by comparison. At Chloé, the designer Hannah MacGibbon worked almost exclusively in a sober palette of beige, offering men’s-wear-inspired pantsuits, overcoats and slacks that brought to mind a 1976 French Vogue spread — or the wardrobes of male fashion icons like Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani at that time. At Valentino, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli stuck to the ruffle motif they turned into a huge trend last season — and why not? So far, the pair is successfully modernizing Valentino’s appeal with kicky dresses and cool accessories (like their new studded shoes) while staying true to the house’s uptown roots. Miuccia Prada, for her part, committed to the ’60s trendlet that she began in Milan; at Miu Miu, the brightly hued shifts, U-front dresses and square-toed shoes brought to mind a modernized Pierre Cardin.
But the talk of the town at the end of Paris was undoubtedly Louis Vuitton. Marc Jacobs has a knack for turning the fashion dialogue on a dime, and he did so by casting well-rounded, full-bosomed women like Laetitia Casta, Adriana Lima and Elle Macpherson to show off his poitrine-enhancing corsets, ’50s skirts and flared coats. In the past few years, the need for using healthy women on the runways has become more apparent than ever, as designers have adopted the disturbing tendency of booking a gaggle of interchangeable teenage models who sometimes look like they have yet to reach the cusp of puberty. So Jacobs’s gesture is well appreciated, as was Miuccia Prada’s in Milan. But here’s the question: Why is it that curvy women in fashion must invariably be stereotyped as pinups? Do you absolutely have to be rail thin to wear a sharp blazer, a pantsuit or a short beaded dress? It’s as if the only alternative for a woman of a certain size was to cinch her waist, put a bow on and exhibit her chest on a ruffled platter. We have “Mad Men” to remind us of an era when there were few other options; isn’t it time we moved on? As a visual statement, Louis Vuitton’s buxom experiment got people’s attention. But if the goal is to really bring a more realistic cross-section of women into the fashion fold, we’re going to need more than a season of Victoria’s Secret models wearing A-line skirts rather than lingerie.
