PARIS — The City of Light’s menswear displays opened with a dark and wilfully shocking debut from Lady Gaga’s stylist, recently appointed creative director of the floundering house of Mugler.
The hype around Nicolas Formichetti’s debut effort had reached a frenzy-pitch, with speculation that the pop star herself might attend the show — one of three fall-winter 2011-2012 displays on Wednesday.
But she didn’t, and the show fell oddly flat. The applause was so tepid that you could hardly hear it above the booming soundtrack — a song from Lady Gaga’s upcoming album.
Paris’ five-day-long menswear displays ratchet up a notch on Thursday with shows by luxury supernova Louis Vuitton and Americans Rick Owens and Adam Kimmel.
MUGLER
As might be expected from the man behind Lady Gaga’s headline-grabbing style, Formichetti delivered an attention-hungry menswear collection at the once-cutting-edge house.
Every detail of the show — from the models with faces covered in tattoos to the hair that oozed thick black petroleum — seemed designed to shock.
After all, that’s what Formichetti — the man who put Lady Gaga into a dress made of meat — was appointed creative director to do: to deliver an electric shock that would bring the moribund house back to life.
But beyond the outrageous styling, there was nothing really groundbreaking in the hard-core collection of collar-less black suits in leather, neoprene and microfibre.
A trenchcoat in teal plastic looked invitingly rubbery to the touch, and a coat made from equal parts puffer, leather and canvas seemed refreshingly new.
But it was hard to get excited about minimalist black suits, shorn even of their buttons, or distressed leather pants.
Zoot suit pleated trousers and ultra-cropped coats in tangy orange were even harder to get worked up about. And then there were the elbow-length leather gloves that looked made for handling hazardous waste and the gauzy veils, worn over the models’ oil slicked heads, that conjured Halloween dead brides.
Formichetti said the collection was about a “gang of outsiders” whose difference was “beautiful.”
“Mugler himself was kind of an outsider, someone who never studied fashion and was really out of step with what everybody else was doing,” said 33-year-old stylist told The Associated Press in a backstage interview.
Still, it looked like Formichetti would have to put something besides his star power on the table in order to breathe new life into Mugler, which has struggled since the retirement of its founder, Frenchman Thierry Mugler.
The menswear collection was designed by Romain Kremer, working under Formichetti’s vision.
ETCHEBERRY
The youngest designer on the Paris calendar, 22-year-old Frenchman Thierry Etcheberry, kicked off the menswear displays with a presentation in a tiny art gallery, transformed for the occasion into a performance space.
The 14 looks — raw seamed tank tops in printed suede, oversized cashmere sweaters and tapered pants — were displayed on the branches of a potted tree, which toppled over as the scrum of fashion journalists, editors and stylists crowded into the space. The baby-faced designer said he’d taken his inspiration from Armenian paintings while doing genealogical research on his family from Armenia.
The collection, in muted blues, greys and cream colours, was Etcheberry’s second.