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PARIS, July 10, 2002

By Sarah Mower

The real Julien Macdonald has finally stood up at Givenchy couture. At home in London, Macdonald is the razzle-dazzle king of showbiz fashion. Trying to be a refined grownup for the prim-and-proper Givenchy audience hasn’t worked. So, after last season’s essay in intellectual deconstruction, and the previous season’s stab at careful classics, Macdonald is finally showing what he’s made of. It’s brash and it’s loud. It’s got the leather and the bondage and the bodies and the eye-socking rainbows of color. And, hell, why not? If that’s what you do, go on and do it.

That means a black leather trouser suit cut into strips and fastened with aggressive bows. It means a white biker jacket encrusted with gold beads over a flouncy white leather ball skirt. A gold guipure lace Napoleon coat, bristling with fringed epaulets. An evening gown pieced from chiffon handkerchiefs that graduate from yellow through orange.

The neon minidresses, the punk-pink-dyed mink and the coats and gowns with trailing trains had a straightforward honesty about them. They’re good-time clothes aimed straight between the eyes of the pop-ocracy of the world. If Macdonald’s new bid for a house identity went straight over the heads of the stunned ladies in the audience, so be it. There are plenty of new high-spenders in Paris this week who just might get it, and love it. And even if they don’t, Macdonald can say that instead of pussyfooting around, he’s at last given Givenchy his undiluted all.