Left, and center: Francois Guillot/AFP, Getty Images; Right: Jacques Brinon/Associated Press.Hakaan spring 2012.If ever there was a designer-to-brand matchup that was made of perfectly complementary parts, it would be the appointment of Manish Arora as creative director at Paco Rabanne this season. Mr. Arora’s flair for fantastical and theatrical designs is not that far off from what Mr. Rabanne was doing in the 1960s, when he made dresses of metal plates and squares that occasionally gave literal meaning to the term fashion victim.
Eric Wilson’s posts on the runway shows.
Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto AgencyPaco Rabanne spring 2012.Backstage on Tuesday afternoon at Mr. Arora’s first show for Paco Rabanne was probably the only place at Paris Fashion Week where you could hear a designer with a raspy voice saying something like, “She can wear the paper garment now, there is no swimsuit.” One dress lay on a table covered with what still looked like a zillion crystal-tipped pins, and yet the sewing was all done.
“I’m used to intricate workmanship in clothes, and dresses that take 25 people to make,” said Mr. Arora, who was wearing a sparkling V-neck sweater that was sewn with metallic threads, and gold painted sneakers, just in case you missed the clues on the metal invitations. “I make clothes with thousands of butterflies put together,” he said, describing one of his recent signature ready-to-wear collections, which are also shown in Paris. He’s also made dresses of feathers and countless reflective objects since establishing his label in India about 15 years ago.
Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto AgencyPaco Rabanne spring 2012.The Paco Rabanne label, which is owned by the fragrance company Puig, had been on something like a hiatus for several seasons, so when Mr. Arora was offered the job he headed straight to the archives for inspiration.
Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto AgencyPaco Rabanne spring 2012.His collection was based on four or five looks by Mr. Rabanne, including the founding designer’s first dress, designed of interlocking metal squares. Mr. Arora updated the look with what appeared to be small silver painted squares of snakeskin, though his were molded to the body like a second skin, or an X-Men character’s costume. Minidresses were shaped with exaggerated hips, some with panels that looked like crystal formations. There was also the metal pin dress, which, once on the body, looked like a fabulous porcupine. The finale consisted of a group of all black models wearing those paper dresses, in silver, red or green pleated foil, with enormous circular necklines that some of them had to struggle against to make their way down the runway to Grace Jones singing “Nightclubbing.”
“It’s not just about the show,” Mr. Arora said, anticipating the obvious question of who’s going to wear this stuff. Of course, there’s also a commercial collection, and “a lot of separates, skirts and bags,” he said.
Even the invitations, printed on metal squares with sharp edges, were a sly nod to Mr. Rabanne’s history of incorporating metal in his fashion to sometimes painful ends. It was the same thing here. Sasha Iglehart, from Glamour, cut her thumb when she tried to retrieve her invitation from her bag.
Francois Guillot/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHakaan spring 2012.The Hakaan collection, shown earlier in the day, will also require some modification before it goes into stores. The designer Hakan Yildirim, who adds an ‘a’ to his label, had three big ideas in his clean and clear collection: nicely tailored white suits based on underpinnings and dress shirts, with one lovely blazer that had billowing shirttails instead of a structured hem; short dresses made of strips of gold or silver beads; and dresses and suits made of sheer black fabric overlaid with thin black stripes or a cage grid. The latter looks were so transparent as to reveal much of the models’ anatomy, and while that is hardly an unusual sight in Paris this week, Mr. Yildirim really did go into Playboy territory.
Francois Mori/Associated PressMoncler Gamme Rouge spring 2012.
Francois Mori/Associated PressMoncler Gamme Rouge spring 2012.At Moncler Gamme Rouge this afternoon, cherry trees in full blossom on a white sand runway, a wind machine, soap bubbles floating into the audience, and paper petals filling the air like confetti all added up to a big distraction from the clothes that were being shown. There were a lot of great looks among Giambattista Valli’s spring sportswear for the label, but for some reason they were segregated. Paper-thin parkas and sporty dresses with neon sunset prints were shown on black models; lightweight dresses and jackets with bright yellow feathers sandwiched between two sheer layers of fabric were shown on white models; and all white dresses with 3-D flower appliqués were shown on Asian models. Mr. Valli’s mood seemed to be changing like the weather.
