Stella McCartney Keeps It in Perspective

Everybody gets so much exposure that the need for approval trumps the fashion imperative to be different. You know this is happening because many big houses have absolutely no qualms about giving us another pleated dress with a dropped waist.

That’s why Stella McCartney had such a good show on Monday. And she, of all people, knows something about media exposure as a daughter of famous parents. But the difference may be, in part, that Ms. McCartney, 40, is also the mother of four young children, so she can’t be so overly invested in the work, in people-pleasing, that the designs lose all perspective and pleasure.
Whether or not this is a conscious effort, it is a successful one because her clothes are among the most individual looking in Paris. Her main idea was to play with a wave effect, giving a curled edge to a jacket or silk Herve Leger dresses in white, royal blue and black. The one-shoulder body-fitting styles looked sporty, but the pastry swirls gave them a lingerie essence. Later, Ms. McCartney used the same contouring technique with inky stretch paisleys and foulard checks, adding white embroidery to finish swirled edges for an almost 3-D effect.
Ms. McCartney also does not have that designer problem of reducing a woman’s life to one or two moments: work, a fancy party. She also makes outfits that strongly hint of home, like a piped pajama shirt worn with a matching foulard-dot pantsuit, or a loose sweater or easy all-in-one to wear to a casual dinner. And they are done with a slightly wacky sense of humor that one assumes reflects her own life and those of the people on her staff.
Riccardo Tisci also had undulating shapes in his Givenchy show, with allusions to the sea and diving gear in the form of stretch pants with zips and dripping bits of fabric. What appealed about this collection is that though it was groomed to the hilt, with slick little skirts in fish skin, it had a blunt quality of aggression, from those chesty ruffles to the silver shark’s tooth pendants.
For her first Chloé collection, Clare Waight Keller focused on pleated silk dresses with sunray striped effects or checked inlays. She offered some floral embroidered white cotton, paired with a sleeveless cream blazer or cute shorts, but the puny amount of cotton was disappointing, and too much of the collection seemed cut on a straight line, so that the shapes were repetitive. Ms. Keller has bumped up the Chloé woman’s age — not a bad thing in itself, but you want to see her be a little more curious, and a lot less conventionally straight, in her next collections.