The Soiree Is Over

Lanvin

At Lanvin, where designer Alber Elbaz delivered one of the best collections of the season, the emphasis is on financial restraint, shoes, jewelry and refraining from giving the merchandise away to clients who can afford to buy it.

Elbaz presented his collection Sunday evening at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. In dramatic fashion, his first model appeared at the top of a long, narrow runway. She was dressed in a black tank dress, its matte fitted bodice juxtaposed with a glossy, knife-pleated skirt. A fuchsia flourish streaked across the neckline like a reassuring wink. Don't worry: The clothes are slick. The heels are precariously high. The look is tough and film noir. But it's not mean. No one will get hurt.

The backs of the dresses were open except for the crisscross of straps that looked like a man's set of braces. Dresses floated with the lightness of parachute silk but with sportswear touches like flap pockets and industrial zippers.

The trousers were skinny but not tight. They were enticing, but it was hard for them to compete with the dresses' dazzling color combinations such as an olive and aubergine T-shirt dress as glossy as patent leather but as light as silk. Another dress mimicked a skirt and a baseball jacket. The front was uninterrupted but the back was split in two to reveal a provocative half-circle of skin.

A lot of designers this season have used similar aesthetic building blocks. Dries Van Noten used sportswear shapes -- gym pants, polo shirts, baseball jackets -- in a collection that injected these casual wardrobe staples with glamour. Nicolas Ghesquiere created a futuristic collection at Balenciaga with his use of glossy materials, aggressive cuts and incomparable imagination. And virtually every designer dabbled in minidresses, pleats and femininity.

But Elbaz combined them in a unique way. It was as though he pulled together all of the disparate elements of the season and made sense of them. He made them beautiful and powerful.

Alexander McQueen, John Galliano

The happily clapping mannequins who opened the Burrows show seemed quaint compared to the new standard of theatrics in the fashion industry. Alexander McQueen had a group of chamber musicians serenading an audience in a theater-in-the-round setting at the Cirque d'Hiver. The male musicians were dressed in gray tailcoats; the women wore long gowns the color of slate. An enormous cobweb-covered chandelier hung low over the center of the stage. Signaling the start of the production, it rose slowly with the first notes from violins and a harpsichord.

The models glided out in elaborate headdresses and long embroidered skirts, jackets that recalled the Edwardian period, and ruffled dresses that brushed the floor. Mixed in with the costumes, McQueen also showed a few expertly cut pantsuits and loosefitting evening trousers in dove gray worn with a pale pink strapless top with a trailing tail of ruffles.

McQueen's collection, with its intricate detail and grand flourishes, left one wondering what precisely he planned on selling. No woman is in the market for a long skirt with enough padding along the hips to turn her into an enormous pear.

But McQueen understands that his job is not merely to make pretty clothes. He has to create a brand image in order to sell the fragrance and his new lower-priced collection: McQ.

Those who succeed in fashion over the long haul must be experts at reinvention. They are constantly tweaking their collections, striving to make them younger. Modern, modern, modern. That's the relentless mantra of the design business. It is not necessary to entirely forsake one's defining aesthetic. But a designer has to constantly make cultural connections. An observer might be hard-pressed to recall an instance in which Janet Jackson has worn a Valentino gown. But it was savvy for Valentino to have her at his show last week. She has a new CD. After having lost 60 pounds, she's enjoying a bit of adoration from celebrity magazines. Everyone can cash in on that.

Designer John Galliano is a cultural chameleon, a shape-shifter who changes his own look while filling his collections with surprises. For the collection he showed Saturday, he stocked his audience with performers including Lenny Kravitz and the celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe.