McQueen does fashion Darwin would have liked

Reuters

ORIGIN OF SPECIES: A model presents a creation by British designer Alexander McQueen as part of his Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection during Paris Fashion Week.

Alexander McQueen's Origin of Species

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A model presents a creation from Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2010 women's collection, Origin of Species, during Paris Fashion Week.

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It's not everyday you can say with certainty "now, that's a fashion show that Charles Darwin would have liked".

But British designer Alexander McQueen's spring-summer 2010 ready-to-wear tour de force on Tuesday – a sort of "Origin of Species" in a few dozen cocktail dresses – would undoubtedly have garnered a standing ovation from the father of theory of evolution.

From reptiles and aquatic creatures to mammals and on to space creatures and finally nebulae and star systems, McQueen synthesised a response to the big questions of "where do we come from?" and "where are we going?"

It all started with reptiles: Models perched on impossibly high platform booties that were convex through the top of the foot, their hair a serpent's den of cornrows, wore short dresses in snakeskin-light chiffon printed with the scales of copperheads and cobras.

Exquisite pleating created strange and wonderful volume on the shoulders, sleeves and hips – which were worked with an almost courtly savoir faire. Bubbly metallic panelling on some of the dresses glinted like scales.

Then came the winged creatures, owls and insects, whose markings morphed into hallucinatory prints on the feathery chiffon.

Next up, aquatic creatures. The palette shifted from rusty browns and mustardy yellows to a spectrum of blues, purples and greys. Along with the dresses, we got deep-sea gear, with neoprene layered over shimmering microfibres. The booties, embellished with metalwork, glimmered darkly, like an oil spill.

Two gravity-defying peaks, like sleek, aerodynamic antennae, replaced the snaky cornrows. Like super-evolved future humans, the girls grew fleshy ridges on their temples.

Then McQueen went intergalactic, sending out girls who looked like distant nebulae, naked but for a cloud of metallic fabric that swirled around their hips and up their midriffs.

And finally, a star cluster? A dress and matching leggings covered with blinding gold bubbles closed the show.

It was breathtaking, and filled with too much fine work and too many grand references to take in at once.

Not only the most ambitious show of the first seven days of Paris' nine-day-long ready-to-wear displays, McQueen's sartorial synthesis of evolution was also the most brilliant.

Like the tenuous light from a flickering candle.

Valentino's spring-summer 2010 ready-to-wear collection of nude tulle and antique lace was all shadows and transparency.

Designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli, who took over from Valentino's successor less than a year after the maestro's retirement in early 2008, continued to sharpen their own vision of the Valentino woman.

"She's kind of a delicate, romantic contemporary fairy princess who's walking in this digital enchanted garden, wearing blossoms, with this sense of lightness. . . but also with the darkness," Piccioli told reporters in a backstage interview after the show.

He said the aim was to infuse looks built out of the most delicate of fabrics – sheer mesh, lace and featherweight chiffon – with a sense of darkness and mystery.

The cocktail dresses were a delicate swirl of lace and stiff, oversized ruffles in the front, with nude backs and short pouffy skirts. Standouts included a jacket in translucent silk covered with silken rosebuds and a jumpsuit in sheer black silk.

All Valentino's trademark elements were there – the oversized bows, the swirling roses – except for the colour red, which has become all but synonymous with the label. Chiuri and Piccioli worked in a reduced palette of black, nude, gray and dusty pink, as they did with the label's autumn-winter 2010 haute couture collection in July.

The shoes were an engineering feat: Fans of stiff black lace swept upward from the vertiginous heels like sugar crystals. Three of the models were made by British hatmaker extraordinaire, Philip Treacy.

- AP