Screw Milan, How'd Paris Do?

Reviews of the rest of Milan were supposed to be here. But you know what? Milan sucked overall this season. Everyone did their thing and it looked nice and regular but nothing (apart from Prada) got me thinking or excited. So Imma cruise right through to Paris.

First up, Nina Ricci!
Lots of the reviews for Peter Copping's Nina Ricci were more than just a touch condescending, all along the vein of "awww, Peter Copping twied weally hard to make a tough, Fifty Shades of Grey collection". And sure the "toughness" was kind of adorable, and it wasn't his best, and sure Nina Ricci is more French heiress than whatever Copping was doing here - but regardless, I really dug it. All the folds and ties and zips and fastenings and, yes, harnesses, fell and fluttered in a beautifully haphazard kind of way.

Cardigans and skirts looked like they'd been thrown and tied on backwards, adding to the haphazard (but sexily haphazard of course) effect.

There was a wonderful thread of opposing parts throughout the collection, polka-dots with fishnets, pastel satins with sexy smoky eyes and bared nipples. Once again with Nina Ricci, I feel like we as foreigners have been served the most romantic, fictional version of the aloof/sexy/ultra feminine French woman. And that would make sense, considering Copping isn't French! He's not designing for real French women, he's designing for what the Brits see as a French woman. Which is not rooted in reality but in an inferiority complex and a curious obsession.

And I just wanna say, guys, that I'm really happy that I keep liking Nina Ricci's collections, and it's not just because liking something is nice. I was so sad when Copping replaced Olivier Theyskens back in 2009, he seemed like such a joke after Theysken's achingly poetic collections. As well as hating him on principle, his collections were, admittedly, nowhere near as good as Theysken's.

But now Copping has improved hugely, and is making me change my mind! And he did  it against a pre-existing bias! And while I love making snap judgments, what I love more is having my mind changed, or even being proved wrong.

Yes to this:

And no to this: First collection, Spring 2010, Peter has definitely won most improved player

all images vogue.com

Paris A/W'12 - Balenciaga and Nina Ricci

Balenciaga and Nina Ricci were fun shows because they both had little stories behind them, and when each look came out you could imagine the woman who was wearing the clothes and how she had put them together.

Balenciaga's collection was a whole office of women, dressing according to their department and status. They ran the whole gamut from interns to CEOs, and boy do I hope that actual business women wear these clothes. Of course since it was Balenciaga it was all futuristic and shiny, even the model's hair and faces seemed to glow. It seems that the future for office workers is looking bright.
I felt that a lot of the ideas in this collection were a continuation of last season - unusual stiff, boxy silhouettes juxtaposed with looser fabrics and nipped waists; contrasting prints and textures; 80s leanings - and it's very satisfying watching a designer evolve in this way, slowly, with continuity. It's also a good sign that Nicolas Ghesquiere is hitting a creative stride, and I'm already excited to see where everything goes next season.

Far from being reflective and shiny, Nina Ricci was dark and gothic. But not in an overly serious way! Because far from Nina Ricci being about a femme fatale this season, it was about a girl dressing up as one. Sort of. I guess only if this girl's mother or grandmother was a femme fatale, because that's whose closets the hypothetical Ricci girl was raiding.

I loved how the clothes managed to reflect dress-ups - baggy and haphazard, sleeves dragging past hands and old fashioned lace and tweed - without ever actually looking ill-fitted or like costumes. All that loose fabric was incredibly seductive, like how a proper ("proper" from a middle-class Australasian perspective) Parisian woman should look, at any age from her 20s to 40s, running around and breaking mens' hearts. It's a shame that Carine Roitfeld is no longer at Paris Vogue, these are the kind of clothes I can see her working with exceptionally well for the magazine.

all images from vogue.com