PARIS, February 28, 2008 – She's fresh off a well-received haute couture show, so it was disappointing to see her stumble. Anne Valérie Hash's Fall ready-to-wear followed the lead, she said, of her made-to-measure work, and the geometric constructions she experimented with in January (seen elsewhere this season, too) were back—but with almost too much verve. A cocktail dress pieced together from molded bits of aqua and salmon silk was amusing in its eccentric way, but three-dimensional jacket lapels and shoulders that resembled dodecahedrons were over-conceptualized and overdone.

Ponyskin and fur are new materials for Hash. They worked best in smaller doses: Black ponyskin on the collar of a black cashmere coat worn with matching trousers was elegant, but a fitted, high-neck top and matching narrow skirt in the same stuff? Too much. The show's strongest piece was its simplest: a sleeveless embossed black leather sheath with the womanly shape that the designer said she was going for. The more complicated structures only served to obscure the models' forms; and there was nothing obviously feminine about her Prince of Wales checks, either. Hash has already shown herself to be quite accomplished at cut. If she scaled back her ambitions—and enthusiasms—those talents would rise to the surface.

– Nicole Phelps