Staging a runway show is a tricky thing, especially in the multimedia age. With an ever-expanding audience, production teams and designers must plan for all contingencies. As expected, everyone takes a different approach. At YSL, the latest from Stefano Pilati’s continuing series of film collaborations aired before a cramped room of editors at the house’s atelier. It was hot in there and the film by Bruce Weber was equally steamy: black and white images of barely clothed (actually completely bare) young men were interspersed with archival footage of photographer Bunny Yeager’s images of 50’s pinup girls. Incongruently, the collection that followed covered every inch of the models with cloth. Pilati seemed to return to some of his earliest collections for the house, using lux, tonal cashmere and experimenting with volume. The sophisticated suits were closed either with a scarf wrapped at the waist or charmed silver safety pins. The shirts hung out and were pleated like skirts in some cases. While in those early collections the volume was in the pants, here it could go either way. Sometimes full coats with wide arms and soft shoulders went with skinny pants. Other times, cropped jackets went with dropped-crotch trousers.

Rick Owens preferred a blank misty stage and a focus on his clothes, whose cult status has grown to be immensely influential in the mainstream. The Owens watchers had much to cheer; the collection was staggering in scope and refocused on tailoring. The models hair was windswept and the shoulders on the jackets were strong and exaggerated. He even moved (slightly) away from his all black pallet with silver streaked grey suiting, white leather belted fur lined jackets, and the odd gold backless tank top. Croc Bloodstone boots and asymmetrical zipped blazers were full-on luxurious while the horizontally shorn fur (or was it just corduroy?) jackets and blazers kept things more low key.

When it comes to showmanship, John Galliano never disappoints. But this season was actually pretty low key: a smaller venue, less make up on the models, and not a centaur to be seen. Instead he focused on Sherlock Holmes. The first group of models emerged from behind a huge detective’s magnifying lens, each wearing exaggerated hunting caps of shearling and belted double breast tweed suits. Trench coats (some in clear vinyl), over sized Doc Martin-esqe shoes, and dropped crotch trousers all felt restrained by Galliano standards. The rest of the models were Asian-inspired stand ins for Holmes’s nemeses, wearing flowing kimonos and neon boxer briefs. If the clothes were dialed back, Galliano’s final bow was not: fireballs shooting from the runway made sure of that.

Rick Owens, fall 2010, photographed by Andrew Burmeister

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KEYWORDS: john galliano, paris fashion week, rick owens, ysl