Paris fashion - Garden for inspiration

Emanuel Ungaro rose like a phoenix from the ashes on Monday with a ravishing spring-summer 2011 collection of delicate cocktail dresses that were valuable of the Ungaro label.


The ready-to-wear collection shown was a initiation by fire for the label’s new creative director, Giles Deacon, the newest in a long series of designers to pass through the storied Avenue Montaigne house.
The Briton’s date came on the heels of the Ungaro’s terrible collaboration with starlet Lindsey Lohan, and he’s widely regarded as the last and best hope for a house that has been foundering since the 2004 departure of its founder.


So it was with bated breath that the fashion crowd descended en masse on the glass hothouse in a Paris park where the collection was unveiled.Instead of a proper runway show, the label opted to stage a mock cocktail, with models in beaded silk shift dresses and classy tweed suits sipping Champagne on a grassy knoll.
A general atmosphere of approval filled the hothouse air, with journalists and buyers murmuring positively about the delicate, airy concoctions of sheer silk, beads and ostrich feathers which — finally — struck the delicate balance between youth and classiness that the label had long been seeking in vain.


Stella McCartney
Stella McCartney looked to the late ’70s for a relaxed spring-summer 2011 ready-to-wear collection Monday of high-waisted trousers, masculine blazers and pleated skirts with bold, leg-baring slits.


Leonard
It was Leonard’s moment. With the bohemian 1970s vibe in the air in New York and Milan, the Paris-based fashion house, which has for decades ignored the ever-changing winds of fashion, churning out its trademark oversized flower prints season after season, found itself spot on trend.


Valli
Italy’s talented Giambattista Valli tamed his inner tiger, fielding a spring-summer 2011 ready-to-wear collection on Monday that saw more domesticated fabrics nudging out the roaring animal prints that usually dominate his work.


There was still some leopard, mainly on his trademark boxy retro, color-blocked cocktail dresses, but white sheer silks with baroque curlicue appliqués in silver dominated the collection.