Paul & Joe Resort 2013 Collection Runway Review, Runway Shows,Fashion Shows,Fashion Collections,Runway Reviews

BRAND: PAUL&JOE  |  PAUL&JOE OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Talk about a volte-face. At the beginning of Milan, Miuccia Prada made a play for sweetness with zippy car-print dresses, retro maillots, and high-heeled sandals with tail fins. Today at Miu Miu, she opened with a model who let's just say doesn't belong to the Natasha Poly school of good looks, wearing a black blouse wrapped with a shape-obscuring matching stole across the chest and a plain gray A-line skirt. Hollywood to hausfrau in less than two weeks.

Afterward, she made a point about designing the collection in the "15 days" (13 by our count) since her Prada show. "I tried to do something different." Tried and succeeded. Though there were some overlaps—midriff-baring bra tops made a reappearance, as did lace—the emotions the two collections produced were quite dissimilar. There was at once something folksy about Miu Miu and slightly cold. As the show progressed, though, she added color (oxblood, cherry red, cerulean blue) as well as festive prints. There was nothing to quite raise the temperature like those Marilyn Monroe bathing suits in Milan, but we can see fans warming to the stiff lace tent dresses here or a patchwork print skirt worn with a clashing print top. The leather intaglio mules and boots will be street-style fodder, no doubt.

Still, there's no one like Prada for keeping us on our toes.

BRAND: MIU MIU  |  MIU MIU OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

BRAND: PAUL&JOE  |  PAUL&JOE OFFICIAL WEBSITE

After the last model finished her final walk at Emanuel Ungaro, there were a few beats of confusion as showgoers stayed in their seats. Would someone be taking a bow? There was the briefest glimpse of a figure who turned out to be the house's newly named designer, Jeanne Labib-Lamour.

After officially parting ways with Giles Deacon just weeks ago, the house of Ungaro is clearly attempting a new tack, going the route of Balmain and, for a couple of seasons, Dior, by appointing an unknown designer from within in place of a star. Still, today's collection, at least going by its awkwardly worded show notes, was "the result of conscientious teamwork." And in its very commercially slanted pragmatism, it had the feel of design by committee—though certainly not an untalented one. The collection ably touched on all the house's codes of sexy, cowled, and ruched jersey dresses, and soft tapered silk pants and jumpsuits in splashy prints, these inspired by NASA aerial images that looked like abstract florals. There were ruffles on peplumed jackets and tiered skirts.

Certainly, for a house that has in recent seasons seen the extremes of star-shaped pasties and a stuffed sheep, it was markedly restrained. Many looks, including unembellished jersey dresses, were cinched with a simple, slim gold belt, and aside from a few sequined evening pieces and the plissé appliqué snaking around necklines, a light hand was taken with excess flourishes. What happens next at Ungaro remains to be seen, as does the question of whether Labib-Lamour will be another designer exiting the house's rather active revolving door.

BRAND: EMANUEL UNGARO  |  EMANUEL UNGARO OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.

BRAND: CACHAREL   |  CACHAREL OFFICIAL WEBSITE

How do you follow up a triumph? Because that's what you'd call Haider Ackermann's Fall show, which moved a good many in its crowd to tears.

For one thing, you book the tippy top of the modeling biz and they thank you for it. We witnessed Natasha Poly (ranked number two in the world on Models.com, for the record) doing just that backstage. "I think you're such a talented man," she said sincerely.

For another, you use your considerable talents to reconsider proportion. Ackermann's models have long walked on towering heels; his twisty, trailing silhouettes have demanded it. But for Spring, he was thinking along "rockabilly Lord Byron" lines (he loves a romantic poet, doesn't he?), and he put his girls in flats—backless oxfords slippers, to be precise.

They were a good fit for the new menswear elements in the collection—mismatched suits in bright silks and tie-print jacquards that showed off the designer's sublime sense of color, the jackets on the boxier side and the pants oversize and slouchy through the thighs. The layered, somewhat rumpled look sometimes included a washed leather vest under the jacket, other times a sheer shirt unbuttoned down to there, and in still other instances just a silk scarf, so that the back was exposed. Why so much menswear? "You love the idea that she would steal the clothes from her husband," he said, before correcting himself: "Her lover, not her husband."

It wasn't all a case of closet raiding, but the feminine side of Ackermann's story was the weaker one. Some of the pieces gave ammunition to critics who question the wearability of his clothes. Those Byronic robes would've come in handy to cover up dresses that were completely see-through above the waist. Better were the jackets with cutouts at the sides or across the back that he paired with stretchy skirts that scraped the floor behind the models' flats, or the lamé pleated dress in which Natasha closed the show.

This wasn't the blockbuster that last season was, but we'd still rate it a success for its cool new attitude.

BRAND: HAIDER ACKERMANN  |  HAIDER ACKERMANN OFFICIAL WEBSITE