RM

Posted Thursday, 12th March '09 12:33

Usually deigning to show during the haute couture season, for Autumn/Winter 2009 Roland Mouret showed his somewhat unwieldly-monikered new label 'RM by the designer Roland Mouret' as part of Paris pret-a-porter week. The climate couldn't have been more right for Mouret to make his debut, obsessed as this season is...

LOUIS VUITTON

Posted Thursday, 12th March '09 00:00

MIU MIU

Posted Thursday, 12th March '09 00:00

John Galliano

Posted Wednesday, 11th March '09 23:08

An anonymous concrete warehouse, flat straight catwalk and four rows of wooden benches for seating. Could this really be a John Galliano show? As we all know, for extravagance, Catherine the Great has nothing on Galliano - was the master of modern make-believe trying to pull this one off on...

Chloe

Posted Wednesday, 11th March '09 18:34

For the past few seasons, Chloé has been a house in the doldrums. Designers have come and gone, sales have fallen and generally the whole thing seems to have got a little off-track. The unenviable task of Chloé's current creative head, Hannah MacGibbon, is to pull the beleaguered label back...

Alexander McQueen

Posted Tuesday, 10th March '09 21:44

With a mountain of former catwalk show props in the centre of the stage and rumours swirling that he had been inspired by his own archive, it was a fair enough assumption that Alexander McQueen was in a quietly retrospective mood for Autumn/Winter 2009. But around McQueen, assumptions are a...

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac

Posted Tuesday, 10th March '09 15:44

You can't help but wonder exactly when Jean-Charles de Castelbajac puts pen to paper to design his eponymous collection, so consistently does it parody exactly what we have witnessed on each season's catwalks. Take his Autumn/Winter collection as example - an ode to la Punkature, Blondie and Andy Warhol's fifteen...

VALENTINO

Posted Tuesday, 10th March '09 00:00

Yves Saint Laurent

Posted Monday, 9th March '09 22:19

Subversively conservative is a convenient paradox to describe the collection Stefano Pilati showed for Yves Saint Laurent. Then again, that pithy phrase perfectly describes the legacy chez YSL. With his last two collections pushing the envelope and taking the house into new and uncharted waters, for Autumn/Winter 2009 Pilati retreated...

Viktor & Rolf

Posted Monday, 9th March '09 18:54

The Greco-Roman statuary and neoclassical frieze decorating the head of Viktor & Rolf's catwalk leant itself to a multitude of potential interpretations. Was this collection going to be about Paganism, a return to the purer, simpler values of the Ancients? Were those pastiches of priceless masterworks about the modern ideas...

Stella McCartney

Posted Monday, 9th March '09 13:59

For many designers, this season has been, to a degree, about retrenchment, about defining, refining and reiterating exactly what their label is all about. Stella McCartney took stock and looked way back to her Central Saint Martins graduation show and clutch of independent collections before she was first plucked to...

GIAMBATTISTA VALLI

Posted Monday, 9th March '09 00:00

Dries Van Noten

Posted Sunday, 8th March '09 23:08

For Autumn/Winter 2009, much of Paris is divided into two broadly encompassing camps: the all-singing all-disco-dancing hordes of more-is-more glitter-drenched hedonists, and those championing the rather less extreme or escapist maxim of stealth wealth and anti-ostentation. It isn't difficult to guess which of these two schools Dries Van Noten subscribed...

Hussein Chalayan

Posted Sunday, 8th March '09 17:55

Even if harsh-shouldered, nipped-in and sliced-off 'Working Girl' power-dressing has become less of a flirtation and more of a fixation for designers taking us into Autumn/Winter 2009, the last place you would expect to see it is on the always-cerebral catwalk of Hussein Chalayan. Chalayan has always sought to push...

Emanuel Ungaro

Posted Sunday, 8th March '09 16:29

Emanuel Ungaro made its name in the flash and brash 1980s as a master of an almost-overpowering collision of patterns, colours and textures. His taste, in short, was never subtle. This is the house's very identity, and thus always poses a problem for those trying to stamp their own mark...

Karl Lagerfeld

Posted Sunday, 8th March '09 14:22

Karl Lagerfeld burns to work. It's his passion - thus the veritable Blitzkrieg of product with which he bombards us at his three shows each season, not to mention the hefty roster of licensees that bolster his own-name line. Alongside the bigger and more established likes of Fendi and Chanel,...

GIVENCHY

Posted Sunday, 8th March '09 00:00

Veronique Branquinho

Posted Saturday, 7th March '09 23:16

Being the last show in one of the more hectic days of Paris Fashion Week didn't do Veronique Branquinho any favours. After scanning through legions of disparate collections and attempting to unify them, by the evening slot one had simply run out of synonyms to describe what she showed. This...

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER

Posted Saturday, 7th March '09 22:50

This season, it is clear that Jean Paul Gaultier wants to talk about Sex, with a capital 'S'. Or rather, a capital 'X', such as the giant spanked flesh-pink one printed on the back of his show invite, itself trussed-up bank-robber style in a pair of fishnet tights to set...

Ann Demeulemeester

Posted Saturday, 7th March '09 21:27

Ann Demeulemeester takes her fashion very seriously indeed. A sombre, sometimes po-faced proponent of Goth attire, inspired variously but consistently by Patti Smith lyrics, religious vestments and 19th century Romantic poetry, Demeulemeester's output by and large adheres to Sir Henry Ford's paradoxical maxim: you can have it in any colour...