In Paris: Practical clothes vs. crazy ones

PARIS — Sober workaday chic and theatrical extravagance battled for the hearts and minds of the fashion glitteratti on Day 5 of Paris’ marathon fall-winter 2010-11 ready-to-wear displays.

Celine designer Phoebe Philo — a critical darling whose return to fashion after a yearslong hiatus was the event of last season — delivered a collection of sharp, clean-lined work staples for professional women who want to be fashion-forward without looking like their teenage daughters.    

Tunic shirts were paired with cropped pants with the slightest bit of flare, and skirts, with hemlines that reached below-the-knee, were worn with blouses in creamy silk. In a nod to the label’s strong tradition of leatherwork, leather pockets and finishings accented many of the looks.

Though the collection was largely utilitarian, made by a woman for the way working women live now, it was not devoid of fancy. Like modern variations on the tuxedo, little jackets were cropped in the front, curving with a flourish into tails in the back. An extra-long bow on a short-sleeved blouse in ivory silk fluttered behind the models as they walked, like tails on an Indian kite. A coat in black boucle shot with shimmering metallic fibers was pure Mick Jagger.

“I’m not designing for one person,” said Philo, who won a loyal legion of fans during her tenure at Celine’s cross-town rival, Chloe. “That’s what I like about the collection, it’s such a mix of looks, not made for just one person.”

In a multibillion dollar industry concerned with the bottom line, the French capital is widely seen as the last bastion of true creativity, where fancy, flight and madness are accepted and even encouraged. John Galliano, the British eccentric who has long born the torch of overwrought creativity, was in excellent form, with a rollicking theatrical spectacle that involved enormous sparklers, exaggerated layered looks and copious amounts of fur.

The nomadic-themed collection’s layered looks — which heaped vests in goat hair over oversized sweaters, on top of drop-crotched harem pants — looked ready to take on the icy winds of the Mongolian steppe or the highlands of Tibet.

Greatcoats had sculptural skirts that held their bulbous shapes and were embellished with fancy ethnic motif embroidery. The harem pants, in flower prints, were swaddled in scarves and low-slung leather belts. The shoes were trekking boots fitted with an ultra-practical spike heel.

Givenchy’s maestro of masochism, the super talented Riccardo Tisci, plumbed the depths of the Id, serving up a mouthwatering collection of kinky looks concocted from such apparently innocent ingredients as old school ski sweaters and neoprene, the fabric wetsuits are made of.

Tisci, an avid scuba diver, looked to his hobby, serving up skintight pants, parkas and abbreviated skirts in the wetsuit material. The skirts, which had big plastic zippers up the front, were paired with the ski sweaters, knit with folksy patterns in light green, red and ivory.

“I looked to the mountains on the top of the world and to bottom of the sea, because I like to bring together the two extremes,” Tisci, his cheeks smudged with red glitter from the models’ sparkling ruby kisses, told The Associated Press in a backstage interview. “It’s all about the extremes.”

After the ski-scuba looks, Tisci sent out little apron dresses with black lace paneling that was very kinky French maid and slip dresses with ostrich feather bustiers and diaphanous trains.

Karl Lagerfeld, the ponytailed Kaiser of contemporary fashion, also looked to scubadiving for a latex and vinyl-heavy show of vaguely wetsuit-y looks.

Highlights of the collection included a high-necked, cap-sleeved shirt worn with a black vinyl pencil skirt and leggings and a tunic in shimmery material with fancy origami folds at the neckline and a nipped waist.

Sonia Rykiel, the queen of knitwear, broke with popular convention requiring models to wear irritated expressions and march angrily down the catwalk. Her models, sporting whimsical trompe l’oeil dresses and cute knit overalls, jaunted happily down the runway, slapping high fives as they passed one another and even — gasp — smiling!

Outstanding pieces in the strong collection included a bustier dress made from several of the label’s signature striped sweaters tied round the model’s bust and torso and a pair of oatmeal knit overalls-cum-longjohns. Headbands with an oversized yarn pom-pom topped off all the looks.

It was a mixed bag at Hussein Chalayan. The Turkish designer drew on a hodgepodge of disparate influences — think Puritan milk maid, Argentine birdwatcher and knitting enthusiast — turning out a collection in which randomness seemed to be the sole real theme.

If the Turkish designer had a message with this hodgepodge of a collection, it was as indecipherable as the ever-shifting radio soundtrack.        AP