Get your panties pretty and your liquid liner sharp. There’s a New Look in town.

I’ve got to give it to our Funky Little Fashion Troll, he really got it bang on for the economic climate this time. Instead of having his enormous cast-of-thousands, all-singing/all-dancing couture shows which –while undeniably fun– isn’t in the very best of taste at the moment, what with Lacroix’s troubles and the whole unpleasant “global recession” thing, he went old school and did an intimate showing in the Dior atelier.

Intimate, as it turns out, was the word of the season.

Galliano said he was inspired by photographs of Big Daddy Dior dressing his models backstage before a show, and while I never thought I would describe JG as “shrewd” this whole collection, its presentation, design and production rings as just that.

Yes, it’s light and frothy and fun what with the under-as-outer and the corsetry –did you note it’s never vulgar?– but the bones of this collection are strong and smart and mostly wearable right off the runway. Galliano, for all the basques and whatnots, stayed super close to the house and most of the pieces –particularly the jackets which were capital-H heaven– are 30 year pieces, which is where the smart money is right now.  I also suspect that by focusing on separates, Dior can maintain their uncompromising quality of couture at a price point that’s a bit more accessible in a recession.

Now are these in my wheelhouse or what?

And don’t think we won’t talk about the shoes. I don’t like dropping serious bank on fabric shoes but:

RIGHT?! I’m not actually just wild for the last pair, but I do think the garter clasps are an awfully clever take on the Dior “D” logo. Oh, and do we even need to start the betting pool as to when Dita Von Teese is going to show up in these?

I actually don’t think Sasha Pivovarova  wore this that well, and I suspect it’s only her stature as Model of the Moment that got her in the Bar Suit, which comes straight from the 1947 collection, but she does illustrate the scampy 1980′s undercurrent –see also the Poison Ivy spiral perm– that added a little edge and kept this show from being too costume-y.

This was actually the look that impressed me most out of the entire collection, because it’s just perfect. There is nowhere to hide an error or an errant stitch and the collar is just…how do they even DO that? This is going to be in a costume institute someday. Scout’s honor.

I don’t care who you are, up to and including Olga Sherer who is actually modeling this piece of gorgeousness. If you think you’d wear this better than I would, you are sadly, woefully, painfully wrong. Blessyourheart.

And finally we have the confections:

I’m not just blown away by the enormous gowns this season –although I do expect to see someone on the red carpet in that first eggshell explosion– and I suspect Galliano’s heart wasn’t in it as much as it has been in previous seasons, but it didn’t especially detract from the overall collection.

Click here to see the whole collection: the details of the INCREDIBLE hats, the bags that are going to give Kelly a run for her money and the fantastic make-up, and for those of you who want to chip in and buy me the entire collection for my birthday, thanks everso. I’ll write of you fondly in my memoirs.

Many thanks for all the birthday wishes! Emotions have been running high here at Château Gâteau because yesterday my beloved kid brother –who has been undergoing various unpleasant cancer treatments for the better part of a year– was diagnosed with the lung cancer that would kill him and then *JUSTKIDDING* was told by his new oncologist –the guy who invented the surgery (and performed it on Lance Armstrong)– that no, he absolutely did not have lung cancer nor did he have any cancer at all and hasn’t for quite a while, and was perplexed as to why he’d had those last four rounds of chemo and radiation at all.

Yeah. SO. Basically it was both the worst and then suddenly the best day of my life (although I did stress-buy three Hermès scarves in the process which –in retrospect– was a bit extravagant, but at least I paid cash.)

Anyway, with all this hubbub I haven’t really had a chance to chat about the Fall 2009 Couture that showed in Paris a few weeks ago. With only nine houses showing it was a slim season. Here’s a sampling from the first three shows:

Alexis Mabille
I gotta say I’m not just crazy about anything Alexis Mabille’s shown in his three couture collections. In fact, my first and predominant thought is “couture? really?” He’s like that guy at work who is PRETTY good at his job, but not really good enough to have made partner/vice president/whatever at 26, so you sort of wonder if maybe he doesn’t have incriminating photographs of senior management giving cocaine to a schnauzer while wearing a Hitler costume.

Anyway, Mabille’s barely 30, and although he worked at Dior and YSL before creating his own house, I think he’s still finding his sea legs. I don’t think he’s ever going to have the Boy Genius rep of Lee McQueen or Galliano, but he might age into a sort of interesting Old Faithful house, like De la Renta. His concept, which seemed to be a fairly literal take on a girl tangled up in her bedclothes, didn’t merit such a monster collection –47 looks!!!– but I did like this robe

and thought the twisted bedclothes look was best executed through these wrapped tops.

2. Armani Privé
I’m never quite sure what to make of Armani’s couture collections, it’s like my mind is still rebelling against him even doing a couture line, and although all his looks are very Armani what with the slouchy pants and the suits and the muted colors, I find my favorite looks from the collection are looks that I’d expect to see from other houses. The shoulder trend of the past few seasons continued strongly throughout his jackets and there was a good deal of Marc Jacob’s excellent Spring 2009 collection to be seen in the luxe fabrications of the shirting and sportswear-influenced pieces. Finally, while I appreciate that unlike Mabille and his wispy bits of voile nothingness, Armani’s actually made clothes appropriate to the season, his whole collection seemed unusually heavy, stumbling under the weight of its own self-referential 80′s encrusted glitz.

Chanel
Whatever.

“Christian Lacroix Starts Insolvency Proceedings”

Y’all. I cannot handle this today. I’ve totally been a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown for the past few weeks anyway and NOW YOU’RE TAKING MY LACROIX?!?!

I can’t say I’m especially surprised, but I don’t think this is anywhere near the end for Edina Monsoon’s favorite designer.

Christian Lacroix, one of the few haute couture houses left, has been flying under the radar in this post-couture age. Lacroix is, and always has been, unapologetically continental in his approach to fashion as if to say if you don’t like his bright, exuberant Gallo-Iberian sensibilities, you can just take that mess over to Marc by Marc. The Lacroix woman doesn’t need you. The Lacroix woman doesn’t need anyone.

Speaking of being a woman on the verge, I am still in the throes of a major Almodovar moment, fashion-wise-speaking. If you’re not familiar with Pedro Almodovar’s earlier work, specifically the hilarious Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (both featuring a vintage Antonio Banderas in all his early-20′s glory)  do yourself a solid and netflix these today.

Love this. So casual and 80′s-Euro-in-a-Good-Way. I’m loving the jacket (I’m having an epic jacket moment) and with editing, a big girl could wear this look effortlessly. The rope ankle straps on those shoes, make the look for me, but I don’t think they’ve gone into production. This is what Lagerfeld was trying to do with his Villas Americas collection based on Sara and Gerald Murphy, the jazz-age expats who made the South of France glamorous to Anglo-American sensibilities and inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night” plus Ernest Hemingway’s unfinished “Garden of Eden“.

and while I love all things jazz age, what I’m all about right now is color, and I mean COLOR.

This still from Women on the Verge  has been on my inspiration board since October.  I love everything about it. It’s quirky, vibrant and flawless, although the women are not traditionally beautiful.

Also on my look board:

LOVE the color,  love the Perry Ellis-goes-to-Arles feel. Yes, this is a LOT of look, but there are a ton of individual pieces and references you could take and make your own. Am DYING for that acid green.

And then there are the polka dots.

Popular fashion wisdom has it that pink, plaid and polka dots always come back.  Big girls can wear polka dots like nobody’s business, especially great big ones which, as luck would have it, is what looks fresh now.

I know we did the Swiss thing a few years ago in a very retro 50′s rockabilly/pin-up way, and that was precious and all but it got tiresome.

These look fresh and I love how they play with the scale. And it’s so slouchy and easy. Very South of France.  If I ever do end up marrying Andre, this is totally what I’m going to wear when we’re visiting the ancestral manse.

Seriously.

One of the other fantastic things about this collection that reminded me so much of Almodovar is the jewelry. Pulling off a lot of statement jewelry in one look takes a judicious eye but I love both the irony of sending up the “more is more” mentality that got us into this delightful economic slophouse and the fun of just being unapologetically, gloriously over-adorned. Love it!

“There’s a credit crunch, not a creative crunch. Of course, everyone is being more careful with their discretionary purchases. I am. But it’s our job to make people dream, and to provide the value in quality, cut, and imagination.” -John Galliano

Spring 2009 Couture launched in Paris this week. Dior and Chanel showed early and of course they were both major moments in their way.  Galliano’s inspirations were Flemish painters and his collection was –after an admittedly unexciting Fall 2008 Couture– breathtakingly beautiful.

What struck me is how wearable so many of these looks are for big girls. Mr Galliano designs with women in mind. He plays with shapes and volume and movement, and you get the feeling after reviewing his collection that every shape fascinates him when it comes to women and clothes.

A lot of what makes Galliano a great fit for the house is that Dior always treated women’s bodies as women’s bodies. There were always hips and breasts and waists and legs, and one gets the feeling that looking at the designs of Mssrs Dior and Galliano that they are more concerned about the aesthetic beauty of the shape, not the social value.

The movement of these dresses just kill me.  You know it’s structured and cantilevered within an inch of its life, but it looks weightless.  I could cry.

 This jacket. Good gravy.

Perfect. I bet Dolce & Gabbana –they of the Big! Poufy! Gown!– wet themselves when they saw this. I would get married in this gown.

Can’t decide whether I love this or if it’s Too Soon for a resurgance of pale salmon after the evil done on its behalf in the 1980′s. It reads painterly, but it also read Laura Ashley goes Couture, but is that necessarily a bad thing? Hmm.