Paris Diary: Day Nine

Louis Vuitton’s Marc Jacobs went back in time, circa 1910, complete with a LV real life steam engine and passenger car filled with his suffragette models, which pulled into the house’s Cour Carée station at precisely 10:05. It was early 20th century, all right, but Jacobs colored it like a daguerreotype, with all the haute arts of modern styling in fabrics covered with appliqué patterns, embroidery and Swarovski crystals and a three-piece silhouette featuring boyish cropped trousers underneath the curvy A-line coats and skirts. The Stephen Jones hats were a New Yorker cartoon version of the era’s headgear, in piled-up ponyskin—fall’s fetish material. Combining camel-brown tailoring with larger-than-life floral buttons, wicked diamond-studded leather skirts, and crazy patchwork Mary Janes, Jacobs’s babes of yore weren’t holding the bags. That task was taken up by the LV valets, who carried stacks of luggage, including the brilliant new velvet LVs on leather and croc hat boxes and long pink-and-white dog hair handbags.

Leave it to Miuccia Prada to have the last word on fall fashion. While most were hiding their pants under long skirts, at Miu Miu, Prada made clashing pattern pantsuits–a look that hasn’t been seen in a stylish light in a long, long time–the stars of her collection. Prada’s high-rise trousers and curvy jackets come in screamingly optic prints, often worn for maximum clash effect, with contrasting satin print blouses with jabot fronts. The models’ clown eye makeup put a surreal spin on it all. Bright doctor bags and crazy mixed-material brogues cinched with neat black bows crowned the off-the-wall look.