Couture week ends on a flat note after emotionally charged adieu to broke designer Lacroix

Paris couture shows end after sad adieu to Lacroix

PARIS — Screen siren glamour, sexy, lacy bodices and a frothy collection of endless would-be bridal gowns brought Paris’ winter 2010 haute couture displays to an uneven conclusion on Wednesday, capping three emotional days that saw what’s likely to be the last show by Christian Lacroix.

The gifted French designer fielded Tuesday a superb collection of chic skirt suits and cocoon coats that culminated in tears and group hugs. Made possible by the largess of his longtime collaborators — Lacroix’s 22-year-old label is deeply in debt and likely to close at the end of the month — the show marked a singularly stirring moment for the fashion world.

The displays that followed felt ho-hum by comparison.

That was certainly the overriding sentiment at Elie Saab on Wednesday. The Lebanese designer — a red carpet favorite — sent out a never-ending parade of fluffy white dresses drenched in sequins, feathers and tulle. It was hard to spot the bridal gown among 46 looks that could all have been wedding wear.

Jean Paul Gaultier looked to vintage Hollywood for a solid collection that was equal parts Ava Gardner and Gaultier — the one-time enfant terrible of French fashion — himself.

Things were looking up at Valentino. Its new design duo finally found their way out of the archive and forged a sexy new look for the mythic Italian label. Out went the ladylike day coats and tasteful A-line cocktail dresses in jewel toned duchess silk; in came the second-skin bodice dresses in flesh-colored tulle and black lace; and up, way up, went the hemlines.

For his fourth couture display, Spanish designer Josep Font continued to shore up his avant-garde credentials with a ravishing collection of think pieces.

Other highlights of this week’s couture shows included Givenchy, where designer Riccardo Tisci melded the menacing and the sublime, and French designer Stephane Rolland, whose graphic mosaic embroidery was inspired by a wall covering at a New York apartment.

Fashion’s elite will again descend on the French capital early next year for the summer 2010 couture collections. Lacroix, whose name has become almost synonymous with couture, says that barring a miracle he will not be on the calendar.

That will be a hard pill to swallow for the rarified world of haute couture, which has long been battling attrition by labels that can no longer afford to field the loss-making, made-to-measure lines. Seen as lucrative publicity stunts during the bull market, couture is reeling from the recession. Seeing Lacroix wiped from the calendar can only further fray already rattled nerves.

VALENTINO

The new design team aimed to seduce a younger, hipper clientele with a racy tulle and lace collection that projected the Valentino woman out of the past and into fashion’s future.

Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli — who last year replaced Valentino’s successor just two seasons after the maestro retired — had been stuck in the label’s archives. For their first two collections at the helm of the house, they delivered up couture and pret-a-porter collections that were “more Valentino than Valentino,” full of gorgeous-but-dated coats and dresses embellished with oversized bows and roses.

This time around, however, they swapped stateliness for sexiness, delivering bustiers in nude tulle with panels of black peek-a-boo lace and thigh-skimming skirts.

Highlights included a floor-length gown made from tufts of black tulle, worn over a beige bustier. It pulsed with an almost aquatic delicacy, like a rare, light-fearing sea anemone. A strapless bodice of black bands sprouted a mammoth bow in the back, like the folded wings of a newly hatched moth.

Piccioli and Chiuri said their previous collections were based on memory — the storied label’s history — while this one was based on an image they themselves had conjured.

“This time, it’s maybe more about soul than memory,” Piccioli told The Associated Press in a backstage interview.

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER

Spotlights lit up Gaultier’s catwalk for a collection steeped in old fashioned Hollywood glamour and full of glamazon variations on his signature pieces — trench coats, second-skin dresses with sheer paneling and menswear suits.

A model in a sharp-shouldered pantsuit in black wool was channeling Katherine Hepburn between takes. A gold sequin-covered hourglass halter dress was screaming Jane Russell’s name.

Gaultier, who gave the world Madonna’s conical bra, imbued some of the looks his trademark humorous twist. Reams of film were wrapped around one model’s shoulders like a shawl. A body suit looked like the offspring of a trench coat and a swimsuit.

The bride — the look that traditionally closes couture shows — was just plain bizarre. In a mini dress made from what looked like plastic bags filled with gold sequins, she wore a veil draped over a cone on top of her head, with black-and-white close-ups of ’50s-era movie stars projected onto it.

ELIE SAAB

Saab could have used a shot of Gaultier-style weirdness to jazz up his brides — all 46 of them.

There were brides in bone white goddess gowns with trailing trains, in flirty, ivory bodice dresses and in creamy tweed skirt suits, all dripping with sequins, beads and crystals that sparkled like freshly fallen snow.

The show, held in the same salon in central Paris where Chanel held its couture display last season, was strikingly reminiscent of the luxury giant’s collection, which also had an all-white, snow queen theme. Saab’s collection was heavier on the frou-frou — bubbling over with wispy ostrich feathers, fluttering silk flowers and baubles — than Chanel, where the lines were pure and graphic.

Still, all that froth seems to have served its purpose.

Front-row guest Melanie Laurent, who co-stars in Quentin Tarantino’s new WWII revenge flick “Inglourious Basterds” said she was eyeing several of the looks for possible red-carpet wear.

“Usually, I’m more into black than white, but I’d be willing to give it a try,” said the French actress with a suggestive smile.

JOSEP FONT

“Wearable” is not a word you’d use to describe Font. “Crazy,” definitely. “Brilliant,” possibly. More than a wearable clothing line, the Spanish couturier designs rich, sculptural art that uses the female body as its pedestal.

Font pushes haute couture — that anything-goes laboratory of fashion — to its avant-garde extreme.

Models in his show Wednesday could barely walk — and it wasn’t on account of the vertiginous heels, as it is on many catwalks. Enveloped in a small mountain of mohair shag — a funnel-shaped coat — or swathed endless in yards (meters) of featherlight chiffon — an embroidered tunic dress — and with pointy plastic collages balanced on their heads, the models did a strange geriatric shuffle around the catwalk.

One minced about in a white cocktail dress with a single red sleeve with an enormous puff that in profile resembled an oversized Sacred Heart. Another lumbered under the bulk of a cocktail dress that looked like it was made from bloodied Yeti fur.

Clearly Font, who was fielding his fourth couture collection, is not for everyone. But for those who click with his extreme aesthetic, his shows are like watching (barely) ambulatory art in motion.