Spring Forms

PARIS -- At the Balenciaga show Tuesday morning, the clothes, and the clothes alone, left one in awe. They were, quite simply, spectacular.

They left one inspired by the wizardry of designer Nicolas Ghesquiere and mesmerized by how he has given this fashion house new life without purging it of its past. As one retailer put it, the Balenciaga presentation has been the highlight of the last few weeks of the spring 2006 collections, as this traveling band of editors and store owners has sat through hours of runway shows and combed through crowded showrooms in New York, Milan and, for the last few days, Paris.

The Balenciaga collection was artful, direct and lush. The clothes worked together to paint a single creative picture. And as the models paraded out, it was possible to see how one garment naturally flowed from the other. Each successive ensemble made perfect sense, yet was an utter surprise.

Before the show began, the audience sat expectantly amid a maze of white benches that wound through a plain white room. Folks had arrived early because of French labor strikes that affected public transportation and threatened to halt nearly all city traffic. No one wanted to be stuck breathing in diesel exhaust, drumming his fingers against the side of a taxi and wondering if he were missing something grand.

It would have been a shame to have been late to the Balenciaga show and not to have seen the first white dress to appear on the runway: It was the prelude to an exquisite story. The boat collar stood starkly away from the model's neck. The dress fit snugly against narrow shoulders and then moved confidently downward, creating a gentle egg shape around the torso and the hips and finally narrowing slightly at the legs. It was a confident, unfaltering silhouette, and a flattering one. Cut from austere duchess satin, it spoke of the history of the house that so famously offered women sculptural clothes that they loved, but confounded gentlemen who longed to see a woman's natural hourglass shape served up for admiration.

Ghesquiere followed that first dress with one livened up with texture. With a third version, he added bronze embroidery to the hemline, transforming the dress from pure geometry into something with fluidity and warmth. The embroidery brought with it a sense of romance, hints of the French belle epoque , courtesans and unabashed indulgence. A lace pattern was etched along the waistline of a pair of cigarette-slim trousers. They were worn with the tiniest jackets, again embellished with lace, with high armholes, narrow shoulders and a snug fit. Whether a dress or a pantsuit, the tailoring was rigorous and controlled down to the millimeter. The clothes treated the body like the infrastructure of some sleek, soaring monument.

The models marched out in rapid succession, moving smoothly and confidently on towering metallic heels as thick as soda cans. The trousers and jackets grew more elaborate, with the delicate lace prints becoming a layer of fine lace and then blossoming into tiers and pleats and lavish trails. There were cheeky rocker T-shirts in black with ribbon embroidery and printed with the phrase "Devils in Balenciaga." It was, said the designer after the show, an unabashed come-on to a younger customer -- or those of more modest means. It was a way to draw them into the brand, provide them with a point of entry that does not require their making a choice between paying the rent or investing in a pair of pants.

By the time the last models made their way around the room, the jackets had become more draped, more regal and less structured. The shoulders were rounded and molded with knife pleats. The sleeves were little more than clouds of lace, and the cuffs melted into layers of soft organza. Creatively, one had to admire Ghesquiere's control of his own flights of fancy. It would have been easy for him to get entangled in yards of lace and embroidery, leaving the eye overwhelmed by too many pointless flourishes. Ghesquiere made tough decisions. He knew when a garment was finished; he knew when to stop tinkering.

Bridging the gap between the house's somewhat austere past and his own love for pastiche and decoration, Ghesquiere appears to have created a collection that is commercially viable -- the sure-to-be sky-high prices notwithstanding. For all of their details and historical references, these are beautiful clothes that have nothing to say about culture or politics or the state of the world. Instead, they tell a lucid tale about the evolution of shape, the romance of embellishment and the mysterious workings of desire.

Ghesquiere received a line of well-wishers backstage after the show, a crowd that included his boss, Robert Polet, chief executive officer of Gucci Group, the brand's parent company. Polet hadn't gotten an early look at the collection, saying he preferred to be surprised, to see the collection unfold in the way the designer intended. After all, he said, there is something inspiring about a creative soul who tries to offer up something artful, on demand, so many times a year. (And surely Polet must have been happy to see Ghesquiere's creativity conjure up signature T-shirts. They are likely to sell with the same gusto as the company's handbags.)

Ghesquiere, with a pleased smile, noted that the collection was predicated on his desire to find a way to make a transition from architectural shapes to softer, more free-form, embellished ones. That is a difficult journey; more than one designer has lost his way. Ghesquiere made the trip look spectacularly easy.

Galliano for Dior, Caspia, Viktor & Rolf

When the clothes are as good as they were at Balenciaga, gimmicks are unnecessary. That strong collection made other designers look as though they were cowering behind rhetoric and high drama, afraid to just put the clothes out there and let them be judged. What's hiding behind all the hullabaloo?