Negligees and Menacing Moons

Besides practicing again, I have been keeping up with the haute couture in Paris, which ended on the 7th. These shows are, I've learnt, put on by members of the Chambre Syndicale, which demands that a fashion house put on two per year. This year I liked all of the ones I looked at — as usual I looked at the slideshows on Style.com, which have the advantage of occasionally giving the names (and agencies) of the models, while Vogue proper's website has a little magnifying box so that one to look at the photos close up, so that the workmanship is visible and it is easier even to tell what the fabric is. But newspaper websites like the Daily Telegraph's have them too.

One of the dresses I remember is Azzedine Alaïa's last; it is (if I recall) made out of a black latticework-like fabric which reminded me vaguely of old Middle Eastern window architecture, it has a broad belt-waist with metallic rims, and it is tied up at the throat with thin black straps, and hanging from the waist there is a short overskirt which falls in a pattern of petals. The overskirt mimicked the "skating skirts" earlier in the show which — though if they are trimmed with real fur I am inclined to disapprove — had a lovely Victorian appearance, and one or two came in a dark red velvety shade. They reminded me of ostrich feathers because of their fringe and their laden droop.

Then I really liked Anne Valerie Hash's line, which was a masterpiece of modernist French subtlety, and it was a relief to see black models; I don't know how to say this tactfully, but here their inclusion didn't look like political correctness because I don't think the clothes — the satiny fabric and the creamy or black shades — would have looked half so well on anybody else.

I looked at Dior briefly, twice, and felt that the problem with it was that dress-wise John Galliano has a better rein on his imagination once he has indulged it; I don't remember him ever indulging in pastels much, though they're more of my own bête noire, and the choice of patterns would have benefited from a sober second opinion. But the way in which the costumes were thrown together was at fault, too, since pieces that looked busy and unwearable together would have done very well if they had been contrasted with something striking but plain. In one case I noticed that there was a quieter skirt; I think either giving it a broad hem at the bottom or a strip of dark colour would have helped, since it was beige and looked almost literally like the unglamorous gruel of office fashion. I don't think the collection was disastrous by any means, but not thought over enough (and the reasonably popular photo of the girl in the opalescent moon dress would have been less horrifying had the sickle not been wedged with such homicidal tightness around her face).

Elie Saab had a line of thin dream-dresses which had a bathroom colour theme going on, namely that I could imagine each tint in the handle and packaging of a feminine razor; and though like Monique Lhuillier's his dresses do appeal sentimentally I have been meanly inclined to think without evidence that he designs a little cynically for the unimaginative tastes of the rich and famous. With Givenchy I didn't exactly get the point, since it was essentially all white negligées, suitable if one is an opera heroine who wishes to die tragically of consumption (the riverside backdrop to the show lent another suicidal overtone, though perhaps too Canaletto summer and not sufficiently gloomy or house-overhung for the lantern-lit, Thames-dragging variety of old-fashioned demise) but otherwise a trifle beside the point of winter attire, or for that matter attire. The Valentino show was rich and cheerful, and I liked the bright congress of Natalia Vodianova, Anne Hathaway, and the other guests.

Jean-Paul Gaultier's show I've somehow forgotten, and Chanel's I don't think I looked at in the first place — which is absurd, of course, because they're very important and I tend to like Chanel.

Anyway, this was all kind of frivolous and what the point of reviewing it as I have is precisely, I cannot say, but perhaps it is amusing. What is more embarrassing sartorially is that I could stare at what Kate Middleton wears forever, and either photographers choose her photos very respectfully or she is incredibly photogenic; at any rate I tend to delay looking at slideshows for a few days so that I am not undignifiedly hanging onto her every snapshot, as it were. Kate Moss's wedding photos I skipped; and the royal nuptials in Monaco made me (like other meddlesome-minded hoi polloi) a little sad, so I went through one slideshow a little absentmindedly and decided to shroud the rest in a sort of imperfect individual privacy.