Fashion Review: At Paris Shows, Welcome Touches of Levity

Susanne Bartsch, the New York club promoter, arrived at the Jean Paul Gaultier show on Saturday night wearing a see-through black body stocking and a broad chiffon headpiece that toppled over into her neighbor’s airspace. That would be mine.

“I came from the Vivienne Westwood show, and I had to change because of course I had to wear something of his,” she said, meaning something by Mr. Gaultier. “It is insane!”

Moments earlier, members of a middle-aged Kiss tribute band walked by wearing silver stretch bodysuits that left not enough to the imagination. The runway was covered in some form of glittering black grit that emitted a strange smell, and Mr. Gaultier was promising a show with top models dressed as pop stars from the 1980s, including Madonna, Grace Jones, Annie Lennox, Sade, Michael Jackson and a couple you would recognize only if you are French.

So, yes, it was insane. But insanity, or just loosening up, is something that fashion could stand a little more of now and then, and Mr. Gaultier’s runway show was hilarious. Karlie Kloss, with her swingy-slinky walk, was a natural as Boy George in a rainbow-striped kimono jacket, and Jessica Stam performed at least two versions of Madonna, wearing a corseted costume that Ms. Bartsch leaned over and described as “couture bondage.” (As far as the clothes went, the Jane Birkin section, though inappropriate for the time frame, offered the most commercially viable options, like a jeans jacket in denim-colored sequins.) By the time the descriptive-resistant performer Amanda Lear made an appearance, in a shiny pink bathing suit, there were no words, just applause.

In a season of serious fashion, with a lot of intensity surrounding the ready-to-wear collections of Raf Simons at Dior and Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent, there were still bursts of levity.

Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, now in their second year as the designers of Kenzo, have had a commercial hit with their sweatshirts embroidered with the face of a tiger, which are competing with Balenciaga’s poster-print graphics for the title of most ubiquitous look among showgoers. So their spring collection carried forward with more jungle imagery, this time Asian-inspired, with tiger stripes and digitally rendered leopard spots as hidden embroidery amid the dresses and coats. Some pieces, like a smartly belted duster dress in khaki and navy, were loosely based on the elements of a trench coat.

Isabel Marant gave equal play to Hawaiian floral prints and Indian paisleys in her easygoing collection, which consisted of the usual assortment of slim-fitting jeans and blouses, cutoff shorts and slouchy sweatshirts, or just enough for a cool girl to find something to love.

Over at Carven, Guillaume Henry was a little heavy-handed with dark, wintry colors and suits made of a thick sponge-y fabric, but he also offered a clever toile print on sunny dresses with cutouts at the sides. If you looked closely, the toile depicted an African safari, with lions lounging under trees and giraffes craning their necks.

Rather than playing coy, Peter Copping went for kinky this season at Nina Ricci, pairing many of his looks with fishnet stockings. That includes one clear fishnet-print raincoat. It was a bit too much, but the sexier look worked well enough with playful polka-dot dresses that were just on the safe side of transparency, or when he sobered up a suit, with a brazen slit skirt and a jacket with elasticized sleeves, with a touch of gray men’s-wear checks.

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Fashion Review: Chanel, Chloé, Saint Laurent, Valentino: Fashion Review

On Tuesday morning, streams of black cars made their way to the Grand Palais for the Chanel show, and the driver of a Rolls-Royce with diplomatic plates got into a shouting match with two French police officers.

Unsaid is how much fuel is burned for fashion: constructing show spaces that will be immediate tear-downs (Dior), installing mega sound systems (Saint Laurent) or just getting thousands of models, editors, buyers, hairdressers, caterers and the odd celebrity (Jennifer Lopez, at both Chanel and Valentino) around town. This extensive use of time and resources is all to display clothes in the most advantageous light.

A designer must work doubly hard to show that there’s a creative purpose in such excess. And even then, there’s always a chance he or she will seem woefully out of touch.

The 12 wind turbines on the Chanel runway, their blades idly turning under the glass roof of the Palais, did not mean that Karl Lagerfeld had gone green. Like the blue solar-panel pattern on the runway, they were strictly for effect: to suggest the technological innovations in the fabrics, as well as lightness and air.

A household fan, I guess, just wouldn’t do.

Chanel can be accused of obtuseness and political incorrectness; it once trucked in an iceberg. In the end, the turbines didn’t really add anything to the show, except an absurd sense of delight each time you looked up at the white blades. But neither did they detract from anything. On that huge, light-hazy stage, framed by the minimalist towers, the spectrum of colors — royal blue, pink, aqua, red, sage, lavender — blurred into random drops, much as your eye picks out the bright hues in crowded streets.

It’s hard to know where Mr. Lagerfeld gets his ideas, or how much of the total effect he sees in his mind as he starts to sketch a collection. But his ability to impart abstract impressions, as well as an attitude, is utterly fascinating. Another thing to look for in this collection are graphic textures: subtle grid effects created by mesh (sometimes embedded in cotton), very flat tweeds, the bold stripes in the platforms of shoes, and the checked edging of paper-white jackets and cropped tops. The short, blown-out silhouette is self-evidently about air.

Hedi Slimane has returned to the runway, as creative director of Saint Laurent, where he once designed men’s wear before transforming Dior Homme into a hot, skinny-suit connection. He brought back his showmanship but, alas, not the fashion sense that people expected of him.

He seemed reluctant, in fact, to interpret the Saint Laurent style, and so what the audience got (I saw the collection online, as I was not invited) were tightened-up pantsuits, blouses with frothy bows, fringed suede, floppy hats, caftans and other bohemian trappings from the late ’60s and ’70s. It was a nice but frozen vision of a bohemian chick at the Chateau Marmont.

The real question is whether there remains a vital enough story in Saint Laurent to tell to young women. With Céline, Phoebe Philo created her own. Maybe that’s a cue to Mr. Slimane: Don’t tell other peoples’ stories, tell your own.

I don’t know a “virginal polo shirt” from another polo shirt, but despite how that sounds, the Valentino designers, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, had a terrific show. In black, paper-white, ivory, and rose shades of pink, A-line dresses and skirts in lace and other materials lightly swept over the body. Feminine details, like collars and bib fronts, were restrained. Along with the fabrics, what made the collection was the modest, beautiful line.

Clare Waight Keller has found her legs at Chloé — in cute, oversize Bermudas and rounded pants. The shorts looked great either with a slim collarless jacket and long crepe blouse or a cropped popover top (a trend this season) with crisp white T-top. The misses in this collection were almost all a result of some excessive gesture: a too-wide collar or overshaped sleeve. Last season she filled her collection with offbeat sportswear pieces. Somehow, she needs to pour off some of the feminine syrup.

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Fashion Review: Paris Fashion Week: At Givenchy, Coming Up for Air, and Taking a Step Forward

With nearly everyone here taking a pause, thinking outside fashion and the present moment, and burrowing into the early years of a house, if that is a designer’s job, I wondered what Riccardo Tisci would do at Givenchy.

Mr. Tisci has had a somewhat tortured journey at Givenchy, though he has outlasted, and in a way outgunned, his two predecessors. His motifs have included goth weeds, crucifixes and attack dogs. If he considered Hubert de Givenchy’s iconic dresses for Audrey Hepburn in a string of ’50s and early ’60s movies, and for women like Jacqueline Kennedy, he kept those thoughts well concealed.

Yet that period ought to be a powerful inducement for a designer to question his ideas, considering the freedoms that were in the air — in art, music, films. The sexual revolution was around the corner. And before Yves Saint Laurent got going, in 1962, Mr. Givenchy was on the case. His clothes were ravishingly light and knowing.

When Mr. Tisci opened his show, to live organ music, the first look was a baby-blue, one-sleeve silk dress with a ruffle around the yoke and down one side. Despite the striking accessories, like metal chokers embellished with wood and shoes with studded plexiglass heels, the eye kept flying back to the superb and satisfying clothes.

He aced the dopey ruffle, reducing its movement to a flutter on a lean silhouette. Not for a minute did the clothes look nostalgic. If he came close at all, it was with mock turtlenecks and halter fronts, but he submerged the latter with an airy white gazar tunic worn with black pants.

Gold bar tacks placed at the shoulders or the sides of tunics served as minimalist adornment, but they also kept in check the effusive fabrics, including radzimir and organza. Another classical statement was the Givenchy blouse, done in lace or chiffon with the modern asymmetry of one overscale sleeve.

It might not have been the most challenging collection, but for Mr. Tisci it was an important one, with liberating aspects. And its timing couldn’t be better.

Female designers of women’s fashion differ from men in that they wear the clothes, but, in a larger sense, they also inhabit them. They associate them with place, as well as mood and experiences. A female designer is more apt to treat a ruffle ironically. On Monday, both Stella McCartney and Giambattista Valli showed sheer looks.

But whereas Ms. McCartney’s tubular dresses playfully incorporated an elliptical patch of color into the pleated fabric, and could be worn alone or with a belted summer tweed jacket or one of her gauze knits for a completely different effect, Mr. Valli offered his clients the harsh choice of wearing underpants with his sheer minis. Fortunately, he had more substantial clothes, too.

In one way or another, Ms. McCartney was exposing a female obsession with this collection: how much of one’s self to show? From the crisp forest tweeds to asymmetrical wrap dresses, to a beautifully cut tuxedo with a boxy jacket, there was a cool sense of economy and order. But then she starts to tug at the blind. More skin is revealed: diamond-cut dresses in black and white silk organza, or the unfettered summer look of a black eyelet shirt over one of those clingy elliptical skirts, suddenly refined in jet black.

Hermès may have the world’s best leather artisans, along with silk-print makers, but what it needs is more passion and precision in its women’s fashion, from Christophe Lemaire. He seemed on the right track last season, with languid pantsuits and sports-inspired clothes, but this collection didn’t project a woman with an assured, quirky sense of style. Having the money to buy crocodile shorts with a matched top is beside the point. Would you anyway?

Even if some Hermès’s customers don’t mind being led by the nose, the company still has to invest in the dreams of other people, and the principle that they look to these shows for ideas, and not merely nice products. There should be a far more advanced sense of style at Hermès, as there already is in its men’s wear.

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