Paris Chic in Retreat

Runways Are Intriguing, But Not Classically French

PARIS, Oct. 2

Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo sent a model down her runway dressed in a garment that looked as though it had been pieced together from deflated black soccer balls. The model's hair was hidden under a gray cotton-candy-like wig that rose nearly two feet high and made one wonder what Marie Antoinette had in common with David Beckham.

Just the day before, Maison Martin Margiela celebrated its 20th anniversary with a retrospective that included one-legged pants, backless jackets and other clothes -- to use the term loosely -- that might as well have been plucked from a surrealist painting. Indeed, to show off a particularly bold golden necklace, a model was wheeled out atop a platform, with her head and neck jutting from an oversize jewelry box.

Paris fashion, at its best, is an exploration of shape-shifting and fabric innovation, examining one's basic assumptions about aesthetics and practicality. Yet as that philosophy has blossomed, the traditional touchstones of French style have all but disappeared. Chanel and Hermès are virtually the only exceptions.

Fashion here, as in New York and Milan, is a global business. But while other cities maintain a sensibility unique to their geography -- New York still emphasizes sportswear, Milan focuses on tailoring, leather goods and sex appeal -- there is little on the runways here that cries out "French" with any conviction.

Only a handful of prominent French designers are at the helms of their own houses here. Fewer still lead the venerable old names such as Lanvin or Christian Dior. But more important than the nationality of the designer is that certain once-inescapable terms -- "bon chic bon genre," "Rive Gauche," even "coquettish" -- no longer apply to the sensibility dominating the runways here.

Their absence from French fashion comes up as the presentations of spring 2009 collections reached the halfway mark and the designer Sonia Rykiel celebrated her 40th anniversary. Rykiel is known for her quintessentially French point of view with her line's saucy St.-Germain-des-Prés style of trim knits, jaunty dresses and droll embellishments. The festivities marking her longevity underscored the reality that no major house speaks that language anymore.

Christian Lacroix, another Frenchman with his own label, creates boisterously exuberant but often fussy ready-to-wear that all too often lacks the urgency required of life now.

Givenchy

Urbane sophistication and femininity are no longer synonymous with Givenchy, which has been under the creative direction of designer Riccardo Tisci for three years. The collection he put on the runway Wednesday was inspired by cowboys and the iconography of the American West. That is the kind of reference material that should immediately raise eyebrows because it can so easily lead to the creation of costumes rather than clothes. And frankly, even the best Western gear tends toward Halloween unless one happens to be sitting on a horse or herding cattle.

Tisci avoided the pitfalls of creating garments better suited to a gunslinger film, but the result still was not pretty. What came down the runway for spring was alarming, not because it was poorly constructed but because it was ugly: tight black pants with insets of gold leather, a white jersey dress with tooth-shaped crystals hanging off it, bosoms strapped into yellow dresses and shrouded in sheer taupe chiffon. How could a designer -- and those arbiters of good taste with whom he surrounds himself -- not see how unflattering much of the collection was?

This collection was particularly disheartening because his work for fall -- dominated by some of the most beautiful and luxurious blouses and dresses of the season -- was so self-assured and thoughtfully restrained.