Practical urban streetwear—a welcome rarity in these polite ladylike days—made a powerful re-entry into fall as Nicolas Ghesquière showed a slew of the aviator jackets he does so well at Balenciaga. He used them to open his collection, bonding generous curly goat-hair shearling lapels onto cavalry twill and pairing them with a pleated drop-waist pant, with a voluminous leg tapered to the ankle. Casual top, mannish bottom: It made for a loosened-up progression of Balenciaga s signature attractions.
It got better still when Ghesquière delved, with his usual rigor, into the house archive ("For the first time, I ve done it," he said) to retrieve Cristobal Balenciaga s gazar balloon skirt. Paired with yet more tiny, nipped-waist flying jackets or his signature shrunken knits, the contrast was unexpected, contemporary, cool. Handling retro in a modern way? That s a rarity, too.
Still, Ghesquière can never keep himself away from an eighties reference—whether that means a Mugler-esque suit or a filmy nylon windbreaker—and this season he went there again with a few sporty motocross-cum-flying-suit assemblages inspired by a book about early eighties New York graffiti artists. His B-Girls, however, were followed by a pair of short, fluted coat-dresses, one in tweed with scrolled lapels, the other double-breasted, in black. For all their complex construction, they were outstanding examples of drop-dead simple French chic, made relevant for a new generation.
