Where's The Woman?

Gallery
Where's the Woman?
Designers can be categorized in two ways: those like John Galliano and Alber Elbaz, who romanticize and idealize women, and those such as Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs and Stefano Pilati, who fetishize them.

Elbaz creates clothes that read like love notes. They express appreciation for femininity, but more important, they make a woman feel as though she is being complimented rather than ogled.

The collection Galliano presented Saturday was inspired by "Grey Gardens" and was filled with old-fashioned bathing beauties, sweet damsels and eccentric lovelies.

Galliano is an expert at evoking an almost painful yearning for love. The sculpted flowers that adorn his swing jackets have been crushed; his floral dresses in his signature bias cut trailed streamers of silk. One has the impression that the women of Galliano's fantasy are in the midst of epic heartbreak and he is searching for beauty in their tears.

If Galliano meditates on the vagaries of romance, then Nina Ricci designer Olivier Theyskens embraces the melancholy, the darkness and the aggression. His collection, with its palette of gray and washed-out blues, offered a welcome respite from the flowers and ruffles that have made spring 2008 a "pretty" season. His languid sweaters in shades such as ecru and ivory and his murky prints -- more swamp than garden -- are the rainy-day romantic alternative to the cloudless and sunny version expressed by other designers.

Givenchy, Chanel

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Designers need muses or at least a fantasy woman they envision dressing. They need to be able to imagine their clothes in some context that does not involve a red carpet or a concert stage. Otherwise, the clothes seem disconnected from even the fringes of reality. Who is it that these designers envision dressing? Naomi Campbell sat in the audience at Galliano -- not exactly the average woman, but surely she makes the occasional trip to Starbucks. Trudie Styler and husband Sting were in the audience for Galliano's Christian Dior presentation -- a mix of mannish tailoring and lingerie-inspired dresses -- earlier in the week.

Courtney Love seems to be an unlikely and worrisome character to inspire any designer and yet she has been sitting front row at a host of shows, including Givenchy. Riccardo Tisci, the designer at Givenchy, has been working to transform the label once known for grace and restraint into something more aggressive and provocative. For spring, he threw every possible idea onto the runway: pleats, asymmetry, zipper details, high waists, baggy crotches, rivets, ball bearings, fanny packs. Most of it was black. None of it was good.

At Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld wove chains through washers on dresses and belted little quilted coin purses around the ankle. The bags -- which at a glance looked like the ankle monitors worn by starlets under house arrest -- were an especially absurd idea. But because they bear the Chanel name, undoubtedly an upcoming music video will feature three or four of them stacked on some singer's leg as she chants an ode to her ankle purse.

Herm¿s, Jean Paul Gaultier, Ralph Rucci

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The collections from Jean Paul Gaultier -- his signature line as well as his work for Herm¿s -- were memorable. Not for the clothes and the woman who might wear them, but for their globetrotting and time-traveling themes. In his signature collection, he was inspired by swashbucklers and pirates and at Herm¿s he took his design cues from India. In his signature line there were camouflage skirts, intensely colored pantaloons and laced corset details. For Herm¿s, there were traditional saris as well as references to colonialism with crocodile jodhpurs.

The fashion industry rarely chooses the female head of state, the corporate executive or the stay-at-home mother as its icons. Are they afraid of the challenge? Ralph Rucci, who brought his ready-to-wear collection to Paris, knows how to make mature, rich ladies look even richer with his double-faced wool crepe suits, hand-painted coats and feather-dusted evening gowns. But who can find glamour in a PTA president? Whoever does that surely deserves an award.

Alexander McQueen, Miu Miu

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Designers prefer turning to women such as the burlesque performer Dita von Teese, who attended shows such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton. McQueen was inspired by Isabella Blow. Before committing suicide earlier this year, Blow was a fashion editor, a talent scout, a fashion patron, a muse and an eccentric. She was known for her rigorous glamour that included form-fitting suits and elaborate hats designed by British milliner Phillip Treacy.

Blow discovered and championed McQueen's talent. It's clear why she was drawn to him. He has always favored constricting silhouettes in which comfort is sacrificed for line, and ease loses out to dazzle.

It was impossible not to see the passion in the collection he presented Friday, as well as his affection for Blow. But there is also something disturbing in the relationship between a designer who often seems willing to abuse women -- aesthetically speaking -- and a patron who seemed willing to be pummeled for the sake of style.

His form-fitting gray sheath with a red patent belt was sexy. His multicolored feather print gowns were beautiful. And his structured jackets with their sharp shoulders and dresses that looked as if they had molded around the body were mesmerizing. And the hats, designed by Treacy, immediately made one think of Blow, who never seemed to attend a fashion event without lobsters, flowers, horns or some sort of abstract horse hair sculpture sitting jauntily atop her head.

But McQueen's passion appeared to be mean-spirited when he put models in shoes that looked like miniature tables and made walking a test of balance and tenacity. He designed a dress with metal rods jutting up the back and out to the sides like a winged scoliosis brace. He can't seem to resist creating some sort of cage in which women can barely move and their discomfort is disconcertingly evident.

Women are complicit in this fetishism. Certainly Miuccia Prada, in her Miu Miu collection Sunday, revealed a fetish for women as babies or teenage Lolitas with her baby-doll dresses paired with bloomers and carved stiletto heels. Her brocade minidresses were beautiful and so were the harlequin printed ones. But what about women dressed as sexualized toddlers? The reaction from her audience was little more than a shrug.

It seems dishonest to pretend that such images don't matter -- as the fashion industry so often does. How can insiders admire the detail in McQueen's feather-adorned dresses and ignore the fact that he has paired his clothes with head coverings that look like medieval torture devices.

Perhaps Blow would have been fascinated by the spectacle of a woman with her head in a cage. Hopefully, a handful of people at McQueen's show found it curious. Because the most disconcerting response is to simply ignore it.