If you re hot, don t stop! The buzz around Christophe Decarnin s Balmain is a smack in the eye for fashion doom-mongering. With vintage Madonna on the soundtrack, his Spring show—all bling and rock-chick fabulousness—gave the opening of Paris fashion week a shot of pure adrenalin. For a girl looking for an instant backstage pass, this is the wardrobe that will send her sailing past the heaviest security on sight.
Drummer-boy Michael Jackson jackets with the frogging picked out in crystal, souped-up stonewashed jeans, bandage-wrap dresses, sequin-smothered sheaths, teeny tutus, teetering sky-high diamanté-and-stud sandals: Every after-party dream is answered here. It s the kind of shameless pop-bedazzled energy that won Gianni Versace a reputation for tackiness in the high eighties, but also took him to the top. In other words, yes, it s a cliché, but so well done only a true miserablist could fail to smile.
The thing that separates Decarnin s Balmain from rehashed tat is the execution. The guy has Parisian couture skills up his sleeve—a super-skinny sleeve, finessed upwards into a brilliant new shoulder with a bump-peaked swagger on jackets and dresses. (The eighties never looked like that.) He s also got to be credited as the person who s set the wagons rolling on western (his fringed high-heel ankle boots were last season s most-hunted objects of footwear desire). Now he s following on with something in the same direction: A black suede gown with a rawhide train blazed a trail that copyists will be following overnight.
