The power that is Paris

PARIS — Elegant minimalism, sculptural tailoring and stiff fabrications -- that’s what is driving fashion forward for fall.

Nicolas Ghesquiere’s collection for Balenciaga has become such a bellwether, it’s impossible to know what’s going on for the season before you see it. And it was a wake-up call all right, breathing life into a four-city show cycle that until now was practically lifeless.

Reviving old labels is still the fashion business formula, and Ghesquiere -- more than any other young designer -- has taken a rusted old house and made it his own. His latest collection brought the history and tradition of French couture to a new generation with intergalactic silhouettes and stiff, sports-inspired materials.

What a far cry it was from John Galliano’s 1960s snooze at Dior. This was modern-day power dressing.

I like to imagine Ghesquiere’s atelier as a special-effects studio where he’s in protective goggles with a blowtorch, molding fabric like fiberglass into sculptural plates, then assembling them like armor on dress forms to create the most wondrous garments.

Ghesquiere designs a piece of clothing as he would an object, a car even. Each look makes you think, “How did he do that?” That’s the mark of a true artist. The elegant little black dresses that opened the show were simply spectacular with sculpted bodices, stiff peplums and crossover skirts, slit up the leg.

He used the same sculptural approach on patent coats, molded through the chests like superhero costumes, and three-quarter-sleeve tops worn with black leggings accented with white or shadowy print insets.

Then he turned his attention to draping, creating sleeveless silk and satin tops in vibrant shades of yellow, red and blue, wrapped by a modern-day Madame Gres. How great would they look with a pair of black trousers at an evening party? Much more modern than a gown. The finale pieces really were works of art -- neoprene dresses and coats that were perfect canvases for Japanese landscape scenes and trompe l’oeil samurai armor.

Veiled shoe boots with sharp points jutting out of jeweled heels were exceptional in a season where over-the-top shoes and bags have been noticeably absent from the runways. Sensing that the market has neared saturation -- or perhaps that in this economy, women might be inclined to pass on the one-season, $2,000 bag -- designers have at last moved the focus to clothes. Because we might not need new handbags, but we always need to get dressed.

Debuts at Valentino, Ungaro

There has also been an absence of flashy sequins and beading, and an emphasis instead on the craft of dressmaking, cutting and shaping, as designers attempt to redefine minimalism. Longer skirts, statement-making jackets and blouses are all emerging as key fall pieces. The week also included a couple of high profile debuts at Valentino and Ungaro, where new designers are struggling to chart a future course for those ladylike houses in a world that places a premium on edgy and cool.

Alessandra Facchinetti, 35, was in the unenviable position at Valentino of having to present her first collection for the house just a month after the master retired. It was an auspicious start, if a bit dull, with a youthful feel and a mostly pale palette of pearl gray and blush pink.

She started with a few softly tailored bandleader jackets and coats with asymmetrical closures, worn with bell-shaped skirts. Pinwheels of ruffles were worked onto the top of a pearl gray cocktail dress, and the hem of a rounded blue skirt fastened with a slender copper bow belt. Bare legs were replaced by black opaque tights worn with two-tone satin sandals, and bow-front ballet flats were paired with slim trousers. She paid homage to Valentino, sending out a couple of gowns with paper-thin pleats resembling pages in a book. But they were unflattering. In fact, none of the gowns had the va-va-voom glamour that was Valentino’s signature, and the mark of someone who works in the couture.

The announcement that 23-year-old American wunderkind Esteban Cortazar would take over Emanuel Ungaro, where so many more experienced designers have already failed, was as shocking as Facchinetti’s appointment. (She came and went in the top spot at Gucci rather quickly.) But Cortazar is on his way to forging a more subdued identity for the house, which had its heyday in the more-is-more ‘70s and ‘80s.

He also worked in a pale palette, a metaphor perhaps for treading lightly. Pants came softly tapered and sashed at the waist, and knits had feminine flourishes such as bell sleeves and braided knit collars. Cortazar draped the body in chiffon, twisted and gathered into the flower on the shoulder of one lovely blush pink dress. Nature-inspired prints were also pretty, with vines and pink flowers, if a bit out of step for fall.

It was a quiet collection at Chanel too, without any radical new ideas apart from the massive carousel of shoes and hats that was the set piece at the Grand Palais. There was a handful of longer boucle skirts with gold buttons on the sides, but the rest of the hemlines were so short, it was as if Karl Lagerfeld didn’t quite believe women would buy into the trend. Jackets were longer, too, the freshest with stiff peplums falling away from the body, worn with slim miniskirts.

Tailoring, front and center

The season’s tailoring story continued to unfold at Givenchy, where after two years, designer Riccardo Tisci finally got it right, mixing toreador tailoring and flamenco ruffles with the edge of the street. The blouse took center stage, in olive with a tucked and ruffled bib, or white with a high neck, offset by sleek leather leggings, and the dresses were softly shaped, the best in black with bell sleeves and a gold filigree heart on the chest. Coats came with randomly placed ruffles, and a terrific leather biker jacket had pin tucked sleeves.

There was an even harder edge to Stefano Pilati’s collection for Yves Saint Laurent, shown on models-turned-fembots with identical black bowl hairdos and black lipstick. The sharp-edged clothes and angular silhouettes veered between being 1980s and futuristic. A beige cutaway coat looked great with cropped, pleated pants and platform ankle boots, and mid-calf asymmetrical skirts, some laced with electric blue, made a strong case for lowering hemlines. A chic alternative to le smoking came in the form of a sky blue satin jacket cut away from the body, with ruched lapels. But the white cocktail shift with eyelash fringe resembling fishing lures was a miss. And so were those trousers that ballooned out at the sides.

Yohji Yamamoto had some of the week’s most memorable jackets -- amazing mixed-medium pieces in wool and leather with jagged hems. Dries Van Noten added structure to his collection with fur jackets and blazers worn over lush marbleized print pants and dresses.

Jun Takahashi’s Undercover show was a fascinating study of tailoring and sportswear. He mined military uniforms, workout gear and outerwear, deconstructing and reconstructing it to the most refined end. Rick Owens’ avant-garde takes on motocross jackets were pieced-together patchworks of muddy-hued leathers, shearlings, denims and wools, with curvilinear seams and parallel front zippers. Some sloped down in front, or had wing-like folds in back, making the models look like manga superheroines.

There were no superheroines at Comme des Garcons, just disheveled sweethearts. When Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” opened the show, and the first models came out with high fur hats and unraveling braids mimicking the troubled star’s hairdo, it was clear that Rei Kawakubo had something to say about the pitfalls of fame. Heart-shaped frills cut out of bias-cut coats, tailored blazers and white shirts, along with ruffled bondage tops and puff ball tulle petticoats hinted at innocence lost. A few of the more deconstructed pieces even resembled straitjackets.

Too bad there wasn’t a celebrity front row at this one. Maybe they could have learned a thing or two.

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