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John Galliano’s pinstripe pantsuits and 1930s film-star dresses for Dior on Monday looked almost prudent, a case of battening down the hatches if more bad economic news leads to a slowing of consumer spending.

That’s one way to look at Mr. Galliano’s workmanlike performance as the French spring collections began and crowds of editors and onlookers amassed in the sticky autumn air to see the latest clothes. There is usually more hullabaloo for the Paris shows than those in Milan or New York, as well as a time-tested belief that whatever fashion looked right in Milan will be validated by Paris or it will not.

Mr. Galliano’s retro tailoring was really a continuation of his fall collection, with less pomp and luscious color. Because Mr. Galliano is capable of fashioning a dress from a Gainsborough — or, equally, of stripping it down — one can assume from his update of the Dietrich three-piece pantsuit, the more subtle embroideries, and the pretty but harmless sex appeal of silk peignoirs and “combinettes” that for him those other courses were a commercial banana peel.

The collection also included evening blazers pinstriped with crystal beads, skimmy dresses in lilac or pistachio silk edged with creamy lace, and some longer jacketed numbers of the “Dynasty” genre. So often accused of showing “the emperor’s new clothes,” Mr. Galliano took his runway bow wearing only a tailcoat, a white shirt and socks with suspenders.

At the moment, there is a definite war being waged in fashion, a move by a handful of designers, including Nicolas Ghesquiere, Alber Elbaz and Raf Simons, to build a modernist defense against standard-issue blue-chip luxury and the value it represents.

On Monday night, Martin Margiela, who has successfully made himself an enigma in the fashion world (he refuses to be photographed), offered a collection that was a brilliant assault on our assumptions. It stripped away artifice, excess, stuff, postmodernism, references. And though the collection was plainly modern and sexy, it even seemed to refuse the questions: “Is it new? Is it sexy?”

Mr. Margiela has kept modernism in his sites for a while. (One of the most-often seen jackets in Paris is his version with peaked and squared shoulders.) There were new variations of that sci-fi shoulder, but now he looks at body-conscious shapes, like tube tops and stretch miniskirts, and uses neutral tones like beige, white and black to help impart a superlean silhouette, as well as the illusion of nudity.

The models, in fact, were more covered-up than exposed. Certainly they looked very sexy in the clothes, with armbands that seemed to continue the stripe effect of a garment and flat black sunglasses that made you think of censor bars. The modernist drive of the collection was relentless, as though Mr. Margiela had found a legitimate window to fashion’s future and was going through it. There were also bustier tops in a pale blue fabric, shown with jeans that had been cut and frayed to a wispy, delicate fringe, so that they had become a new form.

Rick Owens has pushed himself hard in recent seasons to express more lightness and originality with his style. This collection focused on airy fabrics, apparently organza, and shapes with lines established by draping or by the contours of graphic black and white stripes. Although the stripes were a bit overpowering, Mr. Owens’s sculptural dresses and wand-sleeve jackets over cloudy layers were very effective. And he gives everything more couture polish.

Almost certainly the ingenious Jun Takahashi had something fun in mind when he opened Undercover with a parade of models in patchwork bikinis, tromping in a kind of clog espadrille, and then lemony dresses creased in the pattern of a spider’s web. But, despite some fresh takes on summer classics, like seersucker shorts and terry coats, he got carried away with the vacation jokes.

A Yohji Yamamoto show can be long. It can be puzzling. But invariably, like a conversation, it hooks you. With long glossy braids down their back, the models first appeared in black jumpsuits, then in more ruffles than Miss Kitty of “Gunsmoke.” The ruffled shapes extended away from the body, almost (and one does not mean this unkindly) as if you were wearing a frilly ottoman.

Of course, it gave a different spatial dimension to fashion. Among the terrific looks in the show were jackets and slouchy pants in various silver materials.

Christophe Decarnin of Balmain is not in the same class as these other designers, despite having some top editors in his front row. Sometimes editors go for a designer because he gives them exactly what they like, clothes for self-fulfilling editorials about the rich, glamorous and trashed.

In a way, Mr. Decarnin’s beaded and fringed tunics, his fringed black suede pants and silver-sequined gray cardigan and T-shirt describe perfectly the perils of such a lifestyle. If the clothes were any less “now,” if the models looked less than themselves and more groomed, if the ruffled jeans were just a shade brighter, they would belong in a B-list club in St. Tropez.

British designer John Galliano and Belgian designer Martin Margiela are as different in style and personality as tweed and taffeta. Galliano is a flamboyant fashion plate himself, soaking up the footlights on his runways by appearing at the end of each show in a different get-up (yesterday he was the quintessential Englishman in his tails and boxers). Margiela, on the other hand, shuns any kind of personal attention, refusing to be photographed for the press and never showing his face at the end of his shows. (A quick front row poll at his show yesterday revealed that several journalists who had been covering the designer for at least a decade had no idea what he looked like).

But the two designers do share at least one characteristic: they are both what the French would call “betes de la mode.” Literally translated that means fashion monsters, more loosely it means they are both intensely passionate about fashion. In both cases, that passion translates into an incredible skill for tailoring and cutting as well as an infallible ability to stay ahead of the trends. It’s interesting to note that both designers burst onto the Paris fashion scene as outsiders — bad boys willing to shake things up. Today, nearly 20 years later, they are both leaders in their very different worlds: Galliano heading up what is arguably the most established of French luxury goods houses and Margiela widely considered the leader of fashion’s avant-garde.

But even these two bad boys — or monsters — of fashion are toning it down this season, sending out a message that clearly strips away the hype and froth of fashion’s recent past. Their subdued looks might just be the harbiner of a new kind of minimalism. For Galliano that means revisiting the strict tailoring of the 1930s and 1940s by day, with sharp shoulders on jackets and trench coats. His models wore beautiful makeup, as glamorous as ever, yet somehow discreet, like an old photo of Garbo or Dietrich slinking down the Avenue Montaigne, far from fashion’s hungry spotlight. Margiela’s models, on the other hand, appeared seemingly stripped of all glamour, in flesh-colored body stockings and long jackets with linebacker shoulders. Their blacked-out sunglasses made them look like bodicons from Blade Runner. The designer seemed to be making a statement about the ubiquity and uniformity of fashion today, especially on the red carpet. Both designers are turning a page, reaching for something classic and lasting in fashion — however outrageous that notion may be….

British designer Vivienne Westwood used her Paris fashion show as a platform to protest against Britain’s moves to increase the number of days terrorist suspects can be held without charge.

“I’ll be voting against him, definitely. Anything to get him out,” said Westwood, who is best known as one of the founders of the punk movement in the 1970s.

The Home Office said that, while a 56-day limit on detentions has been widely reported, no formal proposal was ever made and that officials are still trying to determine how much longer they would like to hold terror suspects.

“We need people (in court) in front of the law – this will protect me,” she said.

The curtain came down on Milan Fashion Week yesterday with a show by the cult Italian label, AB/SOUL.

Hinting that hemlines will be rising next spring, at the heart of the collection was a series of mini dresses in white cotton, red ruched chiffon and blue silk.

Dresses were accessorised with bow belts and oversized sunglasses, and teamed with sleeveless cardigans and tan wedge sandals.

The show was the finale in a week when designers including Matthew Williamson, Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Roberto Cavalli previewed their spring/summer 2008 collections.

Today, fashionistas moved on to Paris where the prêt-à-porter season, with close to 200 shows on the official and “off-piste” calendar, marks the final leg of the four-city fashion road show, following on from London and New York earlier this month.

Major shows in the coming week include collections from Chanel, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Valentino, the Roman designer who recently announced his retirement after 45 years in the fashion industry, will also show his final ready-to-wear collection.

The Indian designer, Manish Arora, makes his debut at Paris Fashion Week today with a Bollywood-inspired show.

His collection, which includes “pop art” embroidery, multicoloured plastic beadwork and crystal-studded dresses depicting the elephant god, Ganesh, has taken four months of work by 250 artisans in his New Delhi atelier.

Other pieces feature brilliantly-coloured cartoons based on traditional Indian comic books and the work of the American artist, Roy Lichtenstein. “I don’t think the French will have seen anything like this before,” Arora said. “It will be like a parade of futuristic maharajahs.”

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

All that was missing was the campfire as Armani unleashed the ‘Giorgio Gipsy’, his most provocative muse yet, at Milan Fashion Week yesterday (Monday).

Dripping in fringes, with a crystal sarong knotted around her breasts and a peasant-girl scarf knotted over her long hair, Armani’s nomadic traveller glided sensuously down the catwalk in jeweled sandals so delicate she was almost barefoot.

The designer took his inspiration from the remote southern islands of Italy, such as Pantelleria, where he has a home, and wove a collection of sensual, lustrous beauty from a single accessory — the scarf.

In rich cypress-greens or watercolour silks, orchid-printed chiffon or fine metallic lace, the scarf became a short dress, a one-sleeved tunic or a slinky camisole.

Sometimes, the scarf was transformed into a low-slung skirt, with tiers of silk fringing quivering around the legs. At other times, it returned to its natural tradition and became a huge, elaborately tasseled shawl.

Draped over the shoulders, it suggested, but never entirely revealed the crystal bra-tops worn with silk, ‘dhoti’ trousers, knotted below the knees; nor did it completely conceal the brilliance of the sinuous, beaded, strapless dresses underneath, knotted at the cleavage and caught-up on one hip to show a glimpse of ankle.

The scarf was also the key accessory of this spring/summer collection. Embroidered with shimmering sequins, worked in glitter-mesh or else in plain silk, it covered the heads of all the girls, or in fisherman-style silk net, was tucked into the necklines of draped blouses.

The languid exotica of the collection even extended to the daywear, where shrunken bolero jackets and spencers came with variations on the sarong-trouser, all in silk, in tones of stone and gravel, and all accessorized with the essential ‘Giorgio Gipsy’ scarf.

But for all his romantic vision of the de luxe gipsy “yearning for a life more closely tied to the rhythms of nature”, as he explained it, Armani equally demonstrated he has one foot planted firmly in fast-forward, hi-technology, announcing the same day, a new collaboration with the Japanese electronic giant, Samsung, for a range of mobile phones and flat-screen televisions.

Earlier, the design team of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana took inspiration from the Glastonbury Festival for their younger, streetwise line, D&G.

This called for patchwork smocks and long ‘Haight Ashbury’ maxi- dresses in floral chiffon, and frayed and patchwork denim bell-bottoms and mini-skirts worn with men’s blazers and boyfriend-cardigans.

But where were the wellies? All the models wore flat, rawhide “gladiator” sandals: it was obviously a fantasy “Glasto” without the mud.

Burberry Ltd. is a manufacturer and marketer of men’s, women’s, and children’s apparel, as well as accessories and fragrances. The Burberry name is virtually synonymous with the tan gabardine raincoat pioneered by the company more than 145 years ago. Writing for WWD (Women’s Wear Daily) in 1989, Andrew Collier described the garment as “a mainstay in outerwear worldwide, that symbolizes all that is Britain: sturdy and unassuming, equally at home in fine hotels and muddy lanes.” In 2000, Burberry operated 58 company-owned stores, and its products were also found in department and specialty stores around the world. In 1999, the firm launched the Prorsum designer collection as part of its efforts to reinvent Burberry’s luxury brand status…

Read full history of Burberry here

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