Paris Chic in Retreat

Jean Paul Gaultier

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Where Has French Fashion Gone?

There is very little that cries out "French" with any conviction on the runways in Paris this week.

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Jean Paul Gaultier was once Paris's great provocateur. Tuesday night, he showed a collection inspired by the body-conscious-clothing movement and ease of dance. Gaultier, who loves oddballs and characters, opened and closed his presentation with performances by a trio of dancers who were not classically beautiful. A female dancer was squat and muscular. A male dancer was exceptionally thin with an arm span that seemed to stretch the width of the runway. And the third dancer was androgynous with a luxuriant mane of brown kinky hair.

Gaultier focused on jersey, creating trousers that clung to the derriere and suits that moved in such synchronicity with the body that they were like a second skin. But the collection was inconsistent, with some pieces striking a strong enticing chord and others that were barely memorable. Too often that has been the problem with Gaultier's collections. They are strong on themes, but the clothes themselves lack wallop.

Gaultier was once able to startle and rile with his work, which has been inspired by tribalism, the dress of Hasidic Jews and the styles that sprang from the African diaspora. But the fashion industry -- and the broader culture -- has caught up with Gaultier. Where he once was in the brazen forefront celebrating full-body tattoos as a daring flourish, he is now in the middle of a society that jokes about a population of tattooed adults who will soon receive membership cards from AARP.

Dries Van Noten, Hussein Chalayan, Yohji Yamamoto

French fashion over the past few days has been in the hands of introverted intellectuals and progressive thinkers. Designer Dries Van Noten approached spring 2009 with a clean slate -- one stripped of the florals and chaotic prints that had distinguished his work over the past few seasons. In their place were windowpane checks, soothing ombre prints and stark contrasts between navy and white.

His collection unfolded Wednesday like a relaxing exhalation. His trousers were loose-fitting and cropped, the jackets slightly oversize and the dresses draped softly on the body and tied to one side. There was just enough structure to keep his easy silhouettes from turning sloppy. And just enough sparkle, such as gold sequin embroidery on the breast of a jacket, to make the simple shapes dazzle.

Later that evening, Hussein Chalayan showed his first collection since becoming flush with money from Puma. It was called Inertia, and it toyed with the effects of wind and movement on fabric. His soundtrack was the high and low tones created by fingers grazing the rims of glasses.

His models wore garments in colorful abstract prints that were constructed to look as though they had been caught in a breeze. A jacket was pinched along the torso, capturing the ripple effect of wind on fabric, for instance. And in the finale, a group of models emerged in dresses molded to imply the lashing force of a gale wind. Two wind machines blowing the models' hair added to the illusion. And then, suddenly, crash! The glasses shattered. The soundtrack stopped. The wind ceased. Inertia collapsed. Cool.

For so many of the designers who have recently presented their collections, the clothes are not enough to satisfy their creativity. These designers need a riddle. Or, perhaps, a gimmick.

The average person accustomed to thinking of trousers as something with two distinctly separate openings for the legs would have been bemused by what came down Yohji Yamamoto's runway. His cropped black trousers peeked from below oversize white shirts, black jackets were appliqued with the graceful white hands of a woman, the familiar lines of a man's tuxedo were translated into a woman's skirt, moving it beyond androgyny and toward a more powerful, encompassing kind of femininity.

Yamamoto doesn't like to tell audiences the story behind his collection. Make up your own, he says. It will be correct.

Maison Martin Margiela, Comme des Garçons

At Maison Martin Margiela, the person for whom the house is named hasn't been seen in public for years. He doesn't do interviews. Questions e-mailed or faxed to him are answered in the first-person plural. Who knows who's actually designing the label? And it makes the company's elegantly offbeat tailoring all the more intriguing.

Kawakubo, hiding backstage in the inky blackness of her show for Comme des Garçons, deals in riddles. Her favorite one is: What are clothes? Are they a source of modesty? Should they offer some identifying characteristics about gender, income and rank -- and thus help to maintain the social order? Or should they camouflage those things? Do they have to be attractive, and if so, who exactly is the judge of that? Or is this all really a load of pretentious hooey and can someone just pass me a T-shirt and a pair of jeans?

Kawakubo's deconstructed soccer balls looked like giant black eggs cracked open. They were neither beautiful nor ugly; they were simply compelling, and that's quite a trick. It's difficult to create clothes that postpone a visceral response. We are prone to thinking in stark contrasts, ignoring subtleties and making snap judgments. Kawakubo forces contemplation. She removes the influence of color. The collection was all black -- except for a few gusts of ivory and gray. She fools with texture and logic, creating backward blazers that button down the spine and explode with feathery bouquets of fabric across the chest.

Her dresses are virtual topiaries of plush feathered fabric. Her shoes are flat lace-ups, their gray iridescent sheen reflecting the lonely spotlight, their long pointy toes forcing the models into a flat-footed stomp.

Paris fashion can make your head hurt with esoteric meanderings. But it is impossible to ignore. And besides, it would be sad to try.