People were still finding their seats before the recent Giorgio Armani Privé show when applause and cheering broke out from a section of the front row.
Actress Jessica Chastain, who appeared in more films last year than there are Romney sons, had just learned that her role in The Help earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. Her runway seatmate, Cameron Diaz, was among the congratulatory chorus.
In fact, it was nearly impossible to watch the haute-couture spring collections – which take place in Paris every January – and not think about the Academy Awards ceremony, now just three weeks away.
Once Chastain had received the good news, the Armani show became an opportunity to hunt for red-carpet contenders and potentially select the one that would define a moment in her career.
When Givenchy held a presentation of 10 exceptional looks by Riccardo Tisci midway through the couture schedule, several fashion editors agreed that the label would be a wise and obvious choice for ingénue Rooney Mara, who is nominated for her turn as the titular character Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
With this silver-screen-themed influx, I found myself examining the collections with the eye of a celebrity stylist. Which dresses would be most television-friendly? What would stand out for all the right reasons? (Mind you, a polarizing frock can sometimes be preferable to a predictable one – it’s all about impact.)
Indeed, the red carpet would get a serious shakeup from one of Givenchy’s latest designs, such as the crystal-fringe-and-beaded-scale dress held up on one shoulder by a no-nonsense chain and paired with a white cashmere undershirt. The construction of another dress required 350 hours: to disassemble a crocodile skin, bleach it, dye it a rich peaty brown and attach it piece by piece onto tulle. I imagine, however, that stylists would likely steer clear of the doorknocker sized “nose sculpture” – an obvious obstruction to interviews and megawatt smiles.
Paris-based Italian designer Giambattista Valli is due for recognition outside his loyal circle of clients – and not just because Chambre Syndicale, haute-couture’s governing body, recently granted him official couturier status (up from guest member). Where Valli’s early ready-to-wear collections excelled in volume, his sophomore run at couture spoke almost entirely to technique and nuanced whimsy. (Though the pairing of a lace/cotton tuxedo shirt with a beaded pencil skirt trimmed with ostrich feathers might be too risky for the red carpet, it’s still a notable testament to freshness in fashion and worth noting here.) Each of his sumptuous gowns had a distinct personality, from the black muslin with lake-by-moon-light paillette panels to a simply draped, almost sporty, silhouette in searing fuchsia.
Only upon leaving the Valentino show did I realize there was not a single red dress. The label is known for its signature shade of scarlet, which I clearly didn’t miss amid design duo Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli’s pastoral vision of decadent scale. Floaty dresses boasting floral prints dug up from 17th-century fabric archives opened the show – lovely options if ever the dress code calls for Marie Antoinette-inspired opulence. The show’s program highlighted some impressive production figures for various gowns: 800 hours of weaving, 10,000 silver-plated glass tubes, 1,200 hours of embellishment. But first impressions form in a single minute and I’m not sure how much of this intricacy translated beyond a general sense of preciousness.
Elie Saab also took a softer turn for spring, with filmy fabrics designed to mimic a chrysalis and a flora print that conjured the gardens of Givenchy. But these idyllic conceits were still positioned within a black-tie-appropriate framework. What pleased me most were the shorter “baby doll” dresses, which meant less surface area for all the crystal and beaded bits and, consequently, less overall excess.
