Snakeskin, and plenty of it, is Hannah MacGibbon's obsession du jour. A year ago it was camel. For Spring it was sheer. As preoccupations go, this one produced one of her livelier outings, maybe a shade too much so. The Chloé customer will recognize the seventies-ish Charlie Girl shapes, but this time MacGibbon woke up to the potential of pattern and she applied it—liberally.

First up: a simple crew-neck sweater paneled with snakeskin and low-slung, pleated, full-leg pants in a snakeskin print. It was followed in short order by a python mac, a snakeskin intarsia sweater dress, a snakeskin print shirtdress, and well, you get the picture. The patchworks of python print in different colors had a graphic impact on the runway, but their chances off of it are slim compared to the round-toe, stack-heel pumps in the real thing. In the end, it's simply a material best applied in small doses. But, like we said, liberal was the order of the day: That two-tone tracksuit was all leather.

A yellow silk button-down, paired with high-waisted, cropped, and flared faded blue jeans, stood out. You could see someone in that outfit strolling out into the Tuileries sunshine and driving the thronging street-style photographers wild. Beautiful color; a bold, yet uncomplicated shape. Sometimes that's all it takes to cast a fashion spell.

BRAND: CHLOE  |  CHLOE OFFICIAL WEBSITE

It's hard to conceive of a more thankless task in fashion than taking over from a designer as galvanizing as Alexander "Lee" McQueen, but Sarah Burton is precisely the kind of quiet powerhouse who has what it takes to grab hold of his legacy and drag it where it needs to go to survive and prosper. As much as she worked beside McQueen for 15 years and clearly had a symbiotic connection to his very particular vision, it's her gender that is her greatest asset and point of difference, at least as it shaped tonight's show. The very first outfit could stand as a manifesto for the future: The tail coat is a trad McQueen piece, but here it was softened, its edges unfinished, and the hard, peaked shoulders that were another McQueen signature had been slashed open, relaxed.

Burton also softened the staging, a concept that was always so critical to a McQueen show. Where his narratives were often dark, discomfiting things, she opted for a nurturing atmosphere: a pagan, Earth-Mother-ly spirit. The woman in her show began as a plain white canvas and was steadily reclaimed by nature: wrapped in embroidered fronds, in leaves of black leather, in a raffia-trimmed brocade, in the wings of monarch butterflies or an enveloping mass of feathers. The craftsmanship was startling—that monarch butterfly dress, for instance, or a gown with a breastplate of gilded cornstalks and skirt of pheasant feathers, or another gown of pleated organza that looked like an unfolding sea anemone.

What hadn't changed with this show was the fantasia that defined McQueen's work. Burton has already said that there were so many ideas left to be explored in her work with the designer. Now that she has proved her absolute fealty, her absolute familiarity, it's going to be riveting to watch her apply the craftsmanship and teamwork that made this collection such a success to a new vision for the house.

BRAND: ALEXANDER MCQUEEN  |  ALEXANDER MCQUEEN OFFICIAL WEBSITE

PARIS, June 18, 2010

By Tim Blanks

Rue du Mail's Martine Sitbon will never stop listening to My Bloody Valentine, and she'll never stop designing clothes for girls like the girl she used to be, the kind who would wear a lean white tux jacket and imagine herself as Anita Pallenberg with a Stone of her own. But time has passed, and that ruffle Sitbon sewed around the hem of her party dress looked a little mumsy. The designer's Resort collection was strongest when it was at its toughest, when Sitbon was thinking about her woman as a pioneer, rather than a party girl.

Years ago, she was the first with the parka. This time, she offered a multi-pocketed piece she called a reporter's jacket, rather than a safari. "She's an intellectual girl," Sitbon said. Military shorts and a trench cropped into a jacket fitted into that story. At the other extreme, there were more of those droopy ruffles and bows in the designer's favorite crepe. Mercifully, there was also a print of carnivorous flowers to add some bite.

BRAND: QIUZHI  |  QIUZHI OFFICIAL WEBSITE

PARIS, September 30, 2010

By Meenal Mistry

The term "tweaked classic" is one of those fashion-isms that's so well-worn as to be nearly meaningless. Perhaps what Sacai designer Chitose Abe does is better described as remixing the canon of sartorial codes. It's certainly a few notches above changing a fabrication or a cut. The approach is one she shares with, say, fellow Japanese designer Junya Watanabe, but Abe has a knack for marrying wearability with concept. (She was in business for several years before diving into the fashion-week pond.) That knack was likely the cause of all the "oohs" and "aahs" emanating from the fashion crowd that had made a point of stopping by her presentation after Zac Posen's show.

This season, Abe focused on injecting luxury and volume into casual retail all-stars like trenches, nautical tops, and cabled knits. That meant blouse-y satin gussets set into the sides of caped and cropped trenches, and sleeveless flak jackets that zipped open to reveal the ends of a cashmere cardigan sewn inside. Flaring, pleated skirts came in one piece with a lacy slip. Elsewhere, Abe printed sailor stripes on a paisley cardigan with chiffon gussets that laced up the side in keeping with her "ahoy, matey" motif.

Abe develops all her own fabrics, and the highlight this season was a chiffon flocked with velvet and printed plaid. At times, it read as country gear, and at others as a nifty new tweed—but both read chic.

Though the clothes were presented on dress forms, each had a charming pair of Christian Louboutin pumps—either with pearl ankle straps or feather-trimmed—sitting at its base. Sadly, those won't be produced, but watch this space: Abe told us her next wearably cool and conceptual frontier is footwear.

BRAND: SACAI  |  SACAI OFFICIAL WEBSITE

PARIS, September 30, 2010

By Meenal Mistry

Last Fall seemed like the season when the wave of grown-up, polished dressing hit a particularly high crest. But ideas like that, which appeal to retailers' bottom lines and editors' personal budgets, while also having a genuine impact on the way women shop and dress, don't simply ripple away. That's where Sharon Wauchob started for Spring. "You want to address all that, but keep it fresh," she said after the show. "How do I take things that are seemingly sort of elegant, but still be me?"

Her answer was beautiful and luxurious, splicing the ladylike accoutrements of pearls, pleats, and lace with her signature hard-edged minimalism. Wauchob stuck to a palette of black and white, interrupted only by a bronzy ocher. That allowed you to fully appreciate the textures of various jacquards and laces on breezily deconstructed dresses, which were cut away to expose slices of back and shoulder. But for all the effort that went into it, all that texture and intricate work took a humble step back to let the power of the great piece—whether a drop-waist frock, fantastic fluid trousers, or a beautiful sheer blouse—really stand out.

Of course, there are some displays of technique that can't be ignored. That honor goes to the black pleated silk dresses that at first glance seemed to have a striated white pattern, which turned out to be tiny pearls sewn in between the lines. "They have to pleat it first and then embroider the pearls," Wauchob explained. "But it's all ready for production." After all, in the world of grown-up clothes, even a showpiece has to come to work.

BRAND: SHARON WAUCHOB  |  SHARON WAUCHOB OFFICIAL WEBSITE

PARIS, October 6, 2010

By Meenal Mistry

What would Lucy Ricardo wear to a job interview? That was one of the questions Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof asked themselves while designing this season's collection. (It would have been Lucille Ball's 100th birthday next year.) Their answer: a slim-line midi shift in fine chocolate wool with a skirtlike swag of chiffon fluttering from the hip. Did it make sense? Not quite, but then, logic has never been an absolute fashion essential.

The pair's aim seemed to be to inject the parade of fifties- and sixties-inflected elegant workwear, cocktail dresses, and bodysuits-cum-swimwear with some element of Ball's absurdist comedic sensibility. The most overt example was a floral baby doll with a sort of reverse halter. The visual joke was that from the front it read as a strapless dress and floating collar, and from the back as a shirtdress. But otherwise, their Spring muse was mostly left in the wings, with only an embroidery based on TV static and a black and white palette to represent her.

An entire page of the duo's show notes was devoted to an impressive listing of their many stockists in North America (Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Holt Renfrew), as well as Europe and Asia. This collection, with lots of pretty, uptown-girl dresses, will thrill those retailers. But whether these clothes needed a turn on the big stage of a Paris runway is another question the designers might want to pose to themselves.

BRAND: TALBOT RUNHOF  |  TALBOT RUNHOF OFFICIAL WEBSITE