Interview

PHOTO BY JAN MELKA

It was a gathering of the well-heeled at Jean Cocteau's entresol flat on rue de Montpensier overlooking Paris's Palais Royal gardens last night where Jimmy Choo and Jane Cattani threw a party to celebrate its new 24:7 collection.  Launched last fall, 24:7 features a best-of selection of about 30 Choo styles including the brand's famous Gladiator stilettos, in new colors and finishes that's recently hit the stores. Cocteau, the French poet, novelist, designer and filmmaker lived in the apartment from the early 40s which is when he made his film classic  "La Belle et la Bête," starring his lover Jean Marais, until his death in 1963.  And it is very much his place, from the muscle-bound gods imbedded in the walls to the trompe l'oeil drawings by artist Pierre Le-Tan covering the narrow staircase.  Choo wanted to highlight its French side," said Cattani and  that it did with naughty couturier Alexis Mabille on hand with his muse Katell Le Bourhis,  design gallerist Clémence Krzentowsky, jewelry designer Marie-Hélène de Taillac and Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre whose book Fourrure is on the short list for France's Prix Goncourt. They all packed into Cocteau's jewel-like apartment sipping champagne and nibbling caviar on toast surrounded by shoe boxes-mountains of shoe boxes—and ladies oohing and ahhing saying, "Oh non, I can't go home without this pair."  As Cocteau once said "Style is a simple way of saying complicated things." 

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The secret's been out about Longchamp for a while now.  The fine French bag maker was leading a dignified if sleepy existence when all of a sudden Kate Moss started showing up in the ad campaigns about four years ago. Mini collections by American designer Jeremy Scott among others turned the Longchamp classic "Le Pliage" foldaway into a modern hit desired by all.  Last night, Moss, Longchamp and about 700 friends celebrated the launch of Kate Moss for Longchamp, a new brand designed by Moss for the house, at the Ritz Club in Paris. As the ad campaign's making-of film played on a large screen, featuring Moss in the back of a Rolls topless and photographed by David Sims in front of a chateau with one of the Longchamp bags she designed, a gaggle of professional Parisian party people in black tie sipped champagne with french fries while Moss hung out with her pal former Yves Saint Laurent muse Loulou de la Falaise in a cordoned off alcove. The Ritz's downstairs club bar was embellished with a zebra head trophy and complete stuffed zebra, the black and white stripes being a theme for the new Moss collection.  A performance by the Queens of Noize capped the evening, but my favorite was seeing France's Helmut Fritz, aka Eric Gref, whose number one hit "Ca m'énerve," ("It Bothers Me") is a delicious, long suffering lament on the futility of Paris party life—from trying to get a table at Hotel Costes without a reservation, to the sales girls at Weston and over and over again "those girls with Kate Moss bangs!"

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PHOTOS BY JAN MELKA

 
Where would razzle-dazzle be without Swarovski? Instead of limiting itself to the humble role of purveyor, the Austrianbling empire has waged an all-out campaign to keep crystals—or at least Crystallized Swarovski elements—alive and kicking in fashion through nonstop innovation, sponsoring countless design events and encouraging young and not so young designers alike. Last night the brand presented "Crystallized Ways To Say Black" at the Hotel Pozzo di Borgo (Karl's Lagerfeld's former residence, who himself has a number of methods for showing black). The temproary exhibition demonstrated the fruit of the crystal-maker's collaborations with 22 designers based on that fashion classic: the little black dress. Philips de Pury & Company will auction off all these beauties next September in New York to benefit the American Cancer Society and France's National League to FightCancer. Everyone and their mother showed up for this event including Miss France 2010. Meandering around the crystal-encrusted gowns by Alexis Mabille, Lanvin's Alber Elbaz, Giorgio Armani Privé and of course Sonia Rykiel.  As fashion curator Pamela Golbin recalled in her preface to the show's catalogue, "Coco Chanel did not invent the little black dress, but in 1926 she most definitely put it on the map. Dubbed 'The Ford' by American Vogue, it was the beginning of the era of equality." Crystals for democracy: who knew?


SEE ALL OF INTERVIEW'S COVERAGE OF COUTURE WEEK.

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Ay Carumba, who has been spiking Jean Paul Gaultier's tequila these days? The couture collection he presented for spring was the most extraordinary, inventive and technically masterful display of what couture can be that I've seen in ages. Gaultier went to Mexico—well, not really. He reportedly went to an exhibition about Montezuma in London last year. This could have been a hazardous trip with all the exoticizing, kitschy possibilities one might find on a mediated trip south of the border, but Gaultier's talent flew right over all that. The collection was irreverent, but also beautiful and full of ideas. It's so rare to find a designer who can make amazing clothes, but who also has a sense of humor. Gaultier puts to shame  the retrovision notion that couture has no legitimacy if it doesn't come from a house with a heritage. So we have a jean jacket with a matching sleeping bag skirt in tatters with bronze filigree beading. Mariachi sombreros in feathers, Zorro morphed with petticoats, a señorita's embroidered shawl spliced with a black jumpsuit and evening gowns fashioned from 3-D silk jungle flora and palm fronds.  This show was a relentless display as though once started Gaultier just couldn't turn it off. And the atelier he must have!  All reports that tour de force couture handwork is a dying art should be reconsidered.

Gaultier is a new couture house by Paris standards. He presented his first couture collection in 1996. What's exciting is that he's not just churning out the old standards: draping, intricate embroidery, bias wizardry etc... He knows how to do all that perfectly and it would be enough to sustain him in couture. But he's also inventing new ways to make amazing clothes by hand. This season's silk basketweave dresses flowed over the curves like a waterfall, bodysuits and jackets made from fan-folded  silk patchwork with each piece hand-dyed to create a gradated color effect looked surreal and the macramé, and constructions made from soft tubes of silk are wearable pieces of sculpture.  The end result is a mix of classic couture which any woman with too much money could wear, and show stoppers that can only come from a modern imagination in fine form. The debate whether this is wearable by mere mortals, or strictly for performance (high-budget Beyoncé and Madonna tours), is irrelevant.

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