Miu Miu: Ready-to-wear SS16
Miuccia Prada traditionally closes Paris with a party, via her Miu Miu show. It’s not a literal party – although they do serve drinks after, if you’re not legging it out to the 4.13...
Miuccia Prada traditionally closes Paris with a party, via her Miu Miu show. It’s not a literal party – although they do serve drinks after, if you’re not legging it out to the 4.13...
“The only limit is your imagination,” stated Nicolas Ghesquiere of his spring/summer 2016 Louis Vuitton collection – dedicated to all those geeky, techy build-em-up and bash-em-down cyber...
Quaquaversal was the name that Iris van Herpen gave her Spring collection. Apparently this means “going off in all directions”. We’ll take her word for it. It was all about the way she...
Wonder where the dynamic design duo of Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli have spent their summer holidays? I’m guessing it was on safari, judging by their African-tinged Valentino...
Imagine if Chanel had their own airline: curly-C’s entwined on a tail-fin, chic pilots in high-collared shirts like Kaptain Karl himself, and plenty of tweedy suits for the air stewards. Well, you...
Well, that’s sold it. After watching Saint Laurent’s show last night, it’s decided – we’re stripping off for spring. Forget demure, cover-it-up dressing. This was all about lingerie...
“Les oiseaux de nuit” was the theme of the Sonia Rykiel Spring show. For you uncultured sorts, that means night owl. And, according to the brief Google we did after the show, it’s also a kind...
I can’t put my finger on it but looking at the Hermèss show reminded me of a cult. Or Amish women. Or a cult of Amish women. Now I know these Hermès cult of Amish women are not traditional –...
It was to the swinging sixties that we were taken this season with Giambattista Valli. It was all youthquake and flowers. Lots of flowers. Powerful flowers. Flower power. But like the popular 80s...
Chitose Abe is the queen of the mash-up. And not of the mix-tape variety, although the allusions to 1980s legendary nightclub Paradise Garage in her Spring collection suggest she may be pretty good...
This is giving me a sporty Scot vibe. A sort of healthy version of Trainspotting, which I only mention as it’s the only Scottish film I can think of at the moment, so imagine Trainspotting and...
Sarah Burton went back to the seventeenth century for her Alexander McQueen show – to the Huguenot silk-weavers who gave Spitalfields its synonymous silken repute. Their means of placing...
For John Galliano’s Spring collection Bill Gaytten looked towards England’s fair shores. The first clue was the parade of Buckingham Palace-esque helmets, with their long horsehair plumes,...
A decade of the Galaxy? What a star turn. That was the celebration afoot at today’s stellar (geddit?) Roland Mouret show, but it wasn’t the sole focus. As the Galaxy turns ten, Mouret...
Danish artist FOS was responsible for the billowing, tented show space of Phoebe Philo’s spring 2016 show. They’ve worked together before, on furniture for Céline’s boutiques, the...
The Ungaro girl in the eighties was a party animal – pumped up colours, pumped out puffballs, sexed/up silhouettes in acid bright colours, but with s couture finesse. Emanuel’s...
The inspiration at Kenzo, said the ever-lovely Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, was”the global traveller”. Namely collecting trinkets and stuff as she traverses the globe. Holiday souvenirs....
“I’d love men to fall in love with the Nina Ricci woman” said Guillaume Henry of his Spring collection for the brand. And fall in love they are bound to. For how could they not? In that...
Roald Dahl’s “The Witches” has been fertile inspiration for Rei Kawakubo. She loves a witch – here with Cupid bow lips and flaming hair, like the one Hansel and Gretel...
Oh, Dame Viv. How you never disappoint. How do you find time to create such fine clothing whilst simultaneously saving the world? For Spring, it was all about Venice. Why? Because it’s sinking,...
“For Spring-Summer 2016, I wanted to introduce a woman who takes the codes of the House and feels free to portray them in her own way,” said Mr Elie Saab, very helpfully, at the top of...
We all wish we were rockstars. The look in French is called, um, “le Rock” – which doesn’t mean the wrestler-cum-movie star but rather the sort of garms Acne Studios showed in...
It was off to the runway for Mugler’s Spring show, hence the rather large golden propellor at the end of the catwalk. But these girls were not jetting off on a Caribbean holiday, oh no. They were...
Junya Watanabe knows exactly what his customers want, and what will sell. That’s why in an African-tinged offering shown in a Paris museum dedicated to colonialism, he showed ring-coil necklaces,...
Chartreuse, tobacco brown, violet and powder pink. Haider Ackermann’s collection was a succulent palette of fresh colour and tactile fabric, like taffeta and panne velvet in sensuous bias-cut...
Oh, Yohji. How you delight us each season. We may not always understand – but is that not the very joy of it all? Apparently this Spring collection, those draped silhouettes, twisted and tied...
A blast of Snoop, a slither of satin, a spa day. Alexander Wang’s spring Balenciaga show was light, fresh, simple and simply lovely. Models and model-slash-actresses – Wang mates and...
“The people need to be strong,” said Jun Takahashi of his Spring collection. It was about righteous aggression. Stand up for your rights and be counted kind of thing. The Rolling Stones’s...
This season, the Isabel Marant girl has found herself. She’s been on an intensive Ashram retreat in Northern India, darling. She couldn’t recommend it more. And now, as she returns to Paris she...
Underwear as outerwear is the key notion of the spring season. But trust Dior’s Raf Simons to find something fresh and new and exciting in its expression. His Dior models marched out with sweet...
Though the brand is famed for its pleats (and don’t panic, there were plenty of them, a “baked stretch pleat”, no less) it has a new supporting player – the fringe. As in, fringed edges....
Hussein Chalayan celebrated twenty-one years in the business with his Spring show. Which, considering how arch and cerebral his work is, is a testament to his staying-power, resilience and...
Plastic is fantastic – at least in the hands of Jonathan “JW” Anderson, whose spring Loewe show was a veritable treatise on the transformation of trash into treasure. Or rather,...
The Rick Owens show had me thinking about the 1978 Bill Withers song ‘Lean On Me’ which I had surreptitiously heard earlier in the day before the show. It only takes a cursory glance at...
Today at Balmain the always clever Olivier Rousteing managed to excel himself to produce a collection that had purpose, was focused and reeked of high octane gloss and glamour. The detailing in the...
It all feels rather All That Jazz doesn’t it? As in the film, not the song from Chicago. Not literally All That Jazz, after all there were no sequin bowlers, or a Jessica Lange type lady...
The Ann Demeulemeester girl knows what she wants. And this season she wants to be dominated. There’s sex in the air and she loves the smell of it. Sticks and stones may break her bones but chains...
There’s a sense of youth at Carven this season. Mixed with a tongue in cheek sportiness. Fresh faced and sporty like a young Steffi Graf, and why I mention Steffi Graf specifically I...
Oh, the 1990s. What a great decade. And what great girls. “This season’s collection is a tribute to girls named Kate, Chloé, Cecilia, Corinne, Rosemary, Emma, and Courtney, who embody the...
There was a dishevelled futurism to Paco Rabanne’s SS16 collection, which in a way was also rather sporty. High tech sportswear fabrics were mixed with green army khakis and gold chain mail to...
Remember the Channel 5 TV show, The Tribe? Probably not. Well, for the uninitiated, it was a post-apocalpytic imagining of futuristic a world where adults have been wiped out my a mysterious deadly...
Rochas was a little late. But then again, the Rochas girl is the kind of girl to keep you waiting. But it doesn’t matter, because when she does arrive – all perfect in layers of...
Dries, oh Dries. How we long to wear, or even just wrap ourselves, in your fine clothing. For how else are we supposed to live out the romantic grandeur of your Spring collection? Just look at that...
Deconstruction is easy – ripping stuff apart at the seams, fraying it a bit to look interesting. Deconstructing to reconstruct is far more difficult, and takes a hand far more inventive and...
Remember that hat from the Sex and the City movie? The one that Samantha wears, handily doubling as a facial shield when her hunky Malibu neighbour spots her supping on some guacamole? Well, a couple...
Who said that knitwear can’t be sexy? Not Missoni, that’s for sure, whose Spring collection was introduced with a healthy dose of the sensuous – form skimming dresses in a fine, lightweight...
What symbolises a present better than a bow? Or even better, several of them? There were bows all over Salvatore Ferragamo’s spring collection – if not bows, then ties – on dresses and...
Dolce & Gabbana is as Italian as a slice of pizza. And not the sort you get in Tesco – oh no – Dolce & Gabbana would be slice of fresh stonebajed from a hidden backstreet of...
Frills – who’d have thought? That’s all we’ll be wearing next season, apparently. Or ruffles, you may alternatively like to call them. At MSGM, they found a place across their spring...
Geometry. Remember that? Something about circles and working out the radius or something. Well, it’s a thing again. According to Marni anyway, whose spring collection drew upon this mathematic art...