If anyone ever pondered the question of how a Dior couture show would play minus the smoke, mirrors, deafening music, extravagant sets, and locations—and haven’t we all?—now we know. For Fall, John Galliano took the collection back to the dove gray salons of the Christian Dior headquarters in the Avenue Montaigne to show almost in the way the clothes were traditionally presented to clients and the press in the 1950’s. And to be honest, sans the heart-pounding stress, stadium-size crowds, and general hurly-burly, it was a lovelier, more intimate parade to behold.

Popularity: 19% [?]

A cruise show on a boardwalk snaking along the Venice Lido with the sun about to set, gentle waves rolling in, and a whisper of a breeze to make sinuous shapes flutter in movement…it couldn’t have been a more poetic or, given the times, more uniquely audacious Chanel moment. “I wanted to reinvent the mystique,” said Karl Lagerfeld, talking about locating the collection in one of Coco Chanel’s favorite summer haunts—she visited Venice for almost ten years beginning in 1919 and met Diaghilev here. But Lagerfeld might also have been speaking about reinstating the long-lost leisurely sensation of a fashion show as an exceptional one-off experience. The 350 guests reclining on sun beds in the famous white tented cabanas certainly felt privileged to be witnessing the extreme glamour of the designer’s learned-but-light invocation of an important part of Coco Chanel’s biography, one that was overlaid with passing allusions to Visconti, Fellini, the Venice carnival, and the city’s art treasures.

“Coco on the Lido,” as Lagerfeld called it, started with a tableau of figures in tricorne hats and cloaks—cover-ups for a play on girdles and bras as bathing suits. Next came Tatjana Patitz promenading in creamy lace as the picture-hatted Edwardian mother in Death in Venice, her sailor-suited son Tadzio and his two sisters in ingenue fan-pleated dresses trailing behind. From there, the sequence took off into matelot- and gondolier-inspired stripes, interpreted in long-line fine-knit cardigans and playful beachwear with funny red and white striped wedge booties. The references kept streaming out—a halterneck dress fashioned in plissé knit to suggest Fortuny, the deep Doge red and the golden lion motif of the city flag, shimmery sequins and glass embroidery made to imitate the light of Venice glancing off water.

But for all that, not to mention the silent-movie hair and makeup that strung it together, the show avoided too slavish a narrative. There were moments of silliness as well: The Chanel sunglasses recast as Venetian masquerade lorgnettes and the flashes of eroticism in the exposed corsetry spelled fun for the novelty-seeker. But the star pieces here were pure Chanel, un-themed save for their classic elegance: a long black column with a sexily tied narrow trailing scarf, a cream sequin-edged matching jacket and dress, and the unmistakable frothy silk blouses of the rue Cambon. In spite of all his extensive erudition on the art, culture, and personalities of the Venetian past, Lagerfeld concluded, “I don’t use it to make costume. I was actually more interested in the café society of the thirties and the life Chanel lived here, which is gone now.” True, but as guests wend their ways home after two days of roaming the museums, churches, bars, restaurants, and nightclubs of Venice, they’re returning with tales of a happening few would believe could really take place in 2009

Popularity: 100% [?]

Resort 2010

Riccardo Tisci showed a resort collection which took cues from North Africa. What this translated to at Givenchy were beautifully draped, gauzy pieces offset by more statement making head-to-toe printed looks. Russian newcomer Ranya Mordanova modeled the collection, she also stars in Givenchy’s Fall 2009 ad campaign.

About Givenchy

Hubert James Taffin de Givenchy launched the label in 1952 as a line of simple, light separates. Two years later, the Balenciaga-mentored Frenchman debuted a full ready-to-wear collection. A meeting to fit a young Audrey Hepburn (he was expecting Katharine) marked the start of a legendary designer/muse relationship that spanned forty years; he used her as the face of his first perfume, L’Interdit, and she became the first actress to sell a scent (today, Liv Tyler mugs for the brand’s beauty wing). The house hit a home run with fashion heavies like Lauren Bacall, Jackie O, and Princess Grace, and Givenchy went on to launch a men’s line in 1973. By 1976, the brand included fabrics, furnishings, shoes, jewelry, and a Ford Lincoln Continental. Givenchy joined LVMH in 1988, and after Hubert’s retirement in 1995, it gained notoriety as an incubator of style stars like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Nobody cuts a jacket and trousers like Giorgio Armani. He exploded onto the scene when Richard Gere wore his suits in 1980’s American Gigolo, and today he’s Italy’s most successful fashion designer. Impeccable tailoring renders his men’s and women’s suits among the most sought-after sartorial objects in the world. Muted colors, luxurious fabrics, and ethnically diverse runway models round out the label’s look. Armani excels at glamorous power-dressing that’s more stunning than staid. His red-carpet creations are luxe and opulent, while retaining the sober understatement that helped build his name. In short, a balancing act of luxury and restraint that still makes his high-powered clientele go gaga.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Bruno Pieters has taken his mathematical approach to his collections to a more serious level with his Fall/Winter 2009-10 advertising campaign. Geometry and restraint hold firm in this campaign staring Anouck Lepere, where the Belgium designers collection is seemingly a stark contrast to the surrounds, but on closer inspection is the perfect compliment.

And we must say, seeing Lepere popping out of various life-sized geometric boxes is a far better sight than those Victoria Beckham for Marc Jacobs ones. I love the precision and boldness in this campaign, like a breathe of fresh air from outer space.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Peter Dundas’ mission for Resort was twofold—to take the Emilio Pucci girl to the seaside and to firm up the new image that he began establishing at the house for Fall. The second goal informed the first: Even the beachiest of looks—rolled-hem shorts and an eagle-print T-shirt, say, or a floor-skimming cotton jersey tank dress—had a graphic, sexy, rock chick sensibility that meant they wouldn’t be out of place on the city streets.

Popularity: 12% [?]

The rock chick of Phillip Lim’s Fall collection has landed on the beach. “She’s a pirate,” says the designer, pointing out the patchwork denim, the antique lace, and the “sun-bleached” florals and lamés. Still, this collection was as keyed into what hip urbanites want to wear as ever.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Resort is a season in which designers tend to scale back their creative vision in favor of surefire sales, but that wasn’t Nicolas Ghesquière’s approach for his latest Balenciaga effort. His experiments with volume—as on a series of printed and embroidered frocks with super-short tiered lampshade skirts—were more daring than anything else we’ve seen during the current round of shows and presentations. Ditto his chunkily woven leather sandal boots.

Popularity: 14% [?]

“It’s Parisian,” said Nicolas Ghesquière of the assured melding of drape, print, and tailoring he sent out in the sparkling daylight streaming into the Hôtel de Crillon. The designer had mined the Balenciaga archive, examined the structure of a drape-waisted forties redingote, thought over a later sari-inspired collection, and pulled up three late-sixties scarf prints. He took it from there to design a modern translation in satin, printed silk, and fragile dévoré velvet.

It made for a sumptuous collection that played down his sci-fi tendencies in favor of a softer femininity. The Ghesquière codes were in play, too, of course. The draping (which he’s explored before) emerged first in swagged charmeuse skirts, suspended from a hip-hugging yoke, and then in a fluid, wrapped relation of the jodhpur shape he brought into fashion two years ago. The shoes could only have come from him: patchworked distillations of everything that was going on in the collection, with jersey print, mesh, suede, scarf ties, and a heavy walking-boot tread on the sole.

Popularity: 13% [?]