Balenciaga
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PARIS, September 30, 2010
By Nicole Phelps
The first thing that you noticed at Nicolas Ghesquière's terrific Balenciaga show was the casting. He opened with a trio of unknown girls with short, spiky hair that his team cast from the street, and he closed with the biggest super of them all, Gisele Bündchen. In between: Amber Valletta, Carolyn Murphy, and Stella Tennant—all of whom were very nearly bare-faced. "It was important not to disguise them. I didn't want clones," the designer said before the show.Ghesquière made references to the house's past—a famous leaf-paneled dress of Cristobal's apparently influenced the cocooning shape of pied de coq coats; an antique clock in the Balenciaga atelier inspired a new range of watches—but this wasn't an "archive" show. Nor was it one of the designer's bold leaps into the future. The through lines here: a teddy boy-meets-punk masculinity (for the first time in his tenure at the house, Ghesquière showed creeper-ish flats); wet-looking, plasticized textures; and, once again, the places where the handmade and the technological meet. The last dress, for instance, was finished with couture techniques near the neckline, but a laser machine made the precision cut that separated the bodice from the skirt.
"It's a reaction to a certain kind of sexiness," Ghesquière said. "It's about individuality." That's not necessarily so different from his thinking last season, but if Fall was conceptual, this produced some fantastic, utterly wearable (not just once-and-it's-over) clothes. The list is long and ranges from houndstooth outerwear with a graphic punch (the pattern made from plastic-y faux leather) to sleeveless, backless button-down shirts spliced together from mismatched neon lace to the streamlined, comparatively simple tuxedos to quilted leather moto jackets to the closing pair of spare yet technically complex dresses. Who but Ghesquière could make real life look this interesting?
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Spring 2011 Ready-to-Wear
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Edun Elie Saab Elie Tahari Elise Øverland Emanuel Ungaro Emilio de la Morena Emilio Pucci Emporio Armani Erdem Erin Fetherston Etro -
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Fashion East Fashion Fringe Felipe Oliveira Baptista Fendi Francesco Scognamiglio Frank Tell -
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Gabriele Colangelo Gant by Michael Bastian Gap Gareth Pugh Gary Graham Giambattista Valli Gianfranco Ferré Giles Giorgio Armani Givenchy Graeme Armour Gregory Parkinson G-Star Gucci -
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Haider Ackermann Hakaan Halston Hanii Y Hannah Marshall Helmut Lang Hermès Hervé Léger by Max Azria Holly Fulton House of Holland -
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Karen Walker Kenzo Kimberly Ovitz Kinder Aggugini -
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Naeem Khan Nanette Lepore Narciso Rodriguez Neil Barrett Nicholas K Nicolas Andreas Taralis Nicole Farhi Nicole Miller Nina Ricci No. 21 -
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Paul & Joe Paul Smith Pedro Lourenço Peter Pilotto Peter Som Philosophy Ports 1961 PPQ Prabal Gurung Prada Preen Pringle of Scotland Proenza Schouler -
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Zac Posen Zero + Maria Cornejo Z Spoke by Zac Posen
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