Jean Paul Gaultier Haute Couture, Spring 2012.

The fashion world isn't known for its careful handling of sensitive subjects, so a couture collection inspired by Amy Winehouse, a mere six months after her death, wasn't as surprising as it might have been in a different industry.

They say Winehouse had iconic style, but much of that was down to hair and makeup. Her particular brand of kitschy rockabilly-lite came into its own after she hit the A-list (and therefore probably had a stylist), and wasn't far off the street-style of hundreds of other Camdenites. The beehive wig and cat-eye makeup are memorable enough that they make for a recognisable Amy Winehouse look when combined with almost any outfit.

Gaultier is known for his corsets; for elaborate sexiness. Winehouse was known for trashiness, imbued with the infamy of all talented young addicts who die young in the public eye. This collection managed to take enough inspiration from Winehouse that the influence was visible in at least half of the outfits, but avoided heavy-handedness. It succeeded for the same reason as why most Couture designs inspired by, say, Marilyn Monroe or Grace Kelly, are doomed to critical failure these days. Marilyn and Grace are both remembered for wearing sumptuous gowns and movie-costume formalwear (and in Grace Kelly's case, literally becoming a princess) so any couture line drawing inspiration from them is going to end up looking like unimaginative pastiche. But couture's need for luxury and experimentation meant that a direct copy of Amy Winehouse's pencil skirts, polka-dots and Camden Market attire was out of the question. It had to be tempered with the high-end gloss of classic Gaultier.

There were almost 70 looks in this show, meaning that it was more likely for anyone watching to find at least a few things they liked. I tried to pick out a fair sample of the collection as a whole, as opposed to just a few of my favourites (or most-loathed) as I normally would.

The vinyl leggings make this outfit entertainingly tacky, almost Halloween costume-ish, but I suppose it's conceivable that Winehouse might have worn it onstage. Her main fashion rule seemed to have been "make it tight", after all.

Tellingly, my first assumption was that this next outfit must have been taken from some paparazzi shot of Winehouse in a hotel bathrobe or similar. Is there a famous "Amy Winehouse in a dressing-gown" tabloid story? I have no idea. It seemed like a curious inclusion in the show, which aside from this was split evenly from direct Winehouse outfits (ie, 1950s pedal-pusher leggings, bodices, and pencil skirts) and straight-up Gaultier Couture.

Unsurprisingly, this kimono was one of my favourite looks. Unwearable in the context of everyday life, of course, but this is Couture, dahling.

There were a lot of veils in this collection, and this particular dress appeared both with and without, reappearing at the end as the traditional Couture wedding dress finale. A beautiful example of Gaultier structure-work, although that meant it looked as if it could have come from any number of his previous collections.

Mafia wife chic? Not far off Winehouse, I suppose. The colour scheme on the outfit below is far from appealing to me, but the look as a whole has a certain extravagant tackiness to it that makes me marvel a little. There have been quite a lot of scarf-dresses on the catwalks in recent months, but Gaultier gave this one enough structure that it doesn't look like the all-to-easily-faked scarf dresses of whoever it was who co-opted a truckload of Hermes for their show last season.

Andrej Pejic: a current favourite of Gaultier (among many others) and here paired interestingly with a dress that clearly both adjusts considerably around the torso (lacing everywhere, in an homage to... every Gaultier womenswear collection ever, I should think) and has enough bulk around the hips to disguise the fact that he's not quite the same shape as the other models.

Beautiful.

By the latter half of the runway show, the theme was leaning more to the Couture end of the balance, especially since the veils showed up. Ordinarily I find translucent veils rather pointless since they're so inextricably linked with weddings, not to mention highly impractical and rarely worn. But almost every veil shown here was beautiful, adding another layer of patterns to otherwise simpler outfits. The outfit below would've been a fairly standard Gaultier dominatrix look, were it not for the intricate patterns embroidered (woven?) into the veil. Also it livens up that good ol' virgin/whore juxtaposition that the fashion world has been so fixated with since Madonna -- the New York one, that is, not the one from Galilee.

The gold-detailed veil below was one of my favourites. I'd be psyched to see this sort of thing in more real-life outfits, possibly in a skirt since I find the current trend for black mesh/translucent skirts to be very unattractive. If the mesh or tulle could be used as a backdrop to hold some sort of iridescent or colourful pattern, it'd stop the wearer looking like they'd forgotten to put on their overskirt.

While writing this, I realised that one way in which Amy Winehouse is an excellent choice for Gaultier is lingerie. Like Tracey Emin, Amy Winehouse was a great proponent of the "if you're wearing a good bra, show it off" school of dressing -- a philosophy to which I also ascribe, although perhaps not for every scenario (viz: job interviews; funerals). This dovetails conveniently with Gaultier's devotion to vintage underwear styles and visible corsetry.

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Spring 2012 Haute Couture: Dior, Mabille, Valli, Givenchy, Versace, and Armani.

Christian Dior

It's rare for me to agree with anything the Guardian' Fashion Editor Jess Cartner-Morley writes, but today's "Has couture lost its edge?" article was pretty spot on. So far the shows at Couture Fashion Week have been lacklustre, when ordinarily they'd be the highlight of the fashion world's year. That's the danger of working in an art form that relies upon funding from retail business and work from hundreds of disparate corporate employees worldwide. In times of economic difficulty, imagination and creativity have to fall by the wayside in favour of saleability and broad appeal. The Dior show was a textbook  example of this: sumptuous quality combined with a back-to-basics approach to the classic New Look silhouette -- a collection that could have been released at any time in the last 60 years, and sold well in any of them.

I have less criticism for Dior than I do for many of the other designers who resorted to trotting out entire collections of tired gown clichés this season. The New Look is Dior's heritage and legacy, and the quality of their Couture is so high that I can excuse a season or two of relatively bland designs. Plus, when Dior stages a Couture show they really know how to go for full-on glamour and allow the models to work it for once, instead of making them strut and down like seething, expressionless droids.

All pics from Style.com

Alexis Mabille

Another example of beautifully-made gowns that are ultimately rather dull. This show had something of the designer's sketchbook about it -- colour-coded outfits wherein almost every model was wearing a relatively normal-looking dress such as one might find at any high-end store, plus matching facepaint and an enormous flower head-dress to spruce it up. It all seemed rather expected -- a sense of colourful richness but with very little thought behind it, and no theme outside the blindingly obvious statement of colour-coded formalwear and extravagant hats.

Giambattista Valli
I picked these two outfits since they so efficiently illustrate the many similiarities between the Giambattista Valli and Christian Dior collections. A largely monochromatic palette with a few hints of pastel colour thrown in, narrow-waisted hourglass figures, and a multitude of sheer skirts. Superficial similarities, but close enough that having looked at the Dior show first, Giambattista Valli left me feeling thoroughly bored. While Dior was very obviously Couture -- and quite married to the classic full-skirted New Look silhouette -- many of the Giambattista Valli designs could have come from a ready-to-wear show, since they were little more than classically feminine evening dresses or pencil skirt combos made with transluscent fabric to inject a little daring into the proceedings.

Givenchy
Thanks to the presence of the basketball, this immediately reminded me of Alien: Resurrection. Sigourney Weaver's brown leather costume wasn't a million miles away from some of Givenchy's scaly, bug-like designs this season, and the basketball scene is one of the most iconic scenes in that movie. Givenchy was the first departure from outright prettiness that I'd seen this season, and it was a welcome change.

The sci-fi comparisons aren't unfair. Like Versace, Givenchy's show was partially inspired by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, combining the the grim and practical with the floor-length glamour of 1930s evening gowns. I will express no surprise whatsoever if Rooney Mara ends up wearing something from this collection to the Oscars.

Versace
This was Versace's first Couture show since 2004, and it might have been a wise idea to leave the public showings for another year. The cheap backdrop and garish lighting gave the whole thing something of a gameshow feel, and the designs themselves -- supposedly themed around the movie Metropolis, which was decidedly not known for its bright colour scheme -- mostly looked like B-grade Lady Gaga costumes. And Lady Gaga doesn't do B-grade. 

Outfits like this almost smacked of degree shows and trainee designers -- it's nothing more than an extremely simple evening dress, plus wire contouring on one side to give it that space-age look. A watered-down version of mid-90s Thierry Mugler's brightly-coloured, structural extremism. Several of the designs almost looked (dare I say it) cheap, which is the ultimate no-no for Couture.

Armani Prive
Snakeskin and business-casual: not a combination you hope or expect to see outside of garish '90s TV. But this time I think it worked, partly because there was no serious suggestion that this was real officewear, and partly because the snake theme was so evident throughout the show. Evident, but unlike the aimlessly colour-coded outfits at Alexis Mabille, not without substance.

Every single outfit had some aspect of the snake to it. All were sleek and coloured around green jewel tones and glossy black, but the fabrics ranged from literal (fake snakeskin) to more experimental (snake print, fishnet that from afar gave the impression of mottled scale patterns, overlapping sequins, and interlocking slats of fabric that resembled an extreme close-up of scales).

The only actual snakes present were in tiny details. If any of the models had actually been dressed as snakes instead of merely holding a couple of snakelike characteristics, the show would have tipped over into the realm of obviousness.

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Fall 2012 Menswear: Givenchy, John Galliano, Ann Demeulemeester, Berluti, Commes des Garcons, and Walter van Beirendonck.

Givenchy
The title of this show was The American Dream, but before I learned that I assumed it was more of an American sports theme than anything so metaphysical. The striped shirts were close relatives of the rugby jersey, and the skirts reminded me of cheerleading skirts thanks to the star patterns. "Leather sweatshirt" isn't really a look that works in real life, but by and large I approve of this show since it avoided the obvious red-white-and-blue stereotyping of a typical USA-themed collection. As is typical, the skirts were balanced out by heavily masculine touches over the rest of the outfits -- clumpy shoes, bullish nose-rings (inspired by the Minotaur, because apparently that's a thing that people are inspired by), hints of sportswear, and a lack of close tailoring. The concept of designers feeling the need to compensate for skirts in menswear collections is one that I find irritating, but easy enough to understand.

And no, this isn't a kilt. Kilts don't have pleats at the front.

The progress of man-skirts from the far outer reaches of high-end menswear to everyday high street fashion is slow-going, but I'm heartened to see more of them on the runways every year. The stigma of wrapping some cloth around your waist is idiotic -- especially since skirts or kilts can often be more flattering than trousers to certain body types.

John Galliano
Galliano is dead, long live Galliano. John himself is off being rehabilitated from his drunk/racist ranting ways, and the new boss seems to be taking pains to distance himself from Galliano cliche -- a canny decision on his part, for both marketing and stylistic reasons. The label's previous reliance on creating clothes that look exactly like Galliano's own wardrobe (and frequently styling their models to look like the man himself) isn't going to cut it now he's been shunned by the fashion world, so a new direction was needed. The campy nature of many of the looks in this collection stayed true to the Galliano ethos (Fashion ethos, that is. Not, you know, the other one.) without the need to trot out thirty Galliano clones.

This collection had strong 1930s influences, in particular from the illustrator J. C. Leyendecker (about whom you can read here on Hello, Tailor). The metal-plated shoes were reminiscent of armour, but aside from that the '30s looks ran strong -- gangster suits, wide-legged trousers, and military looks such as the jodhpur outfit pictured above.

Ann Demeulemeester
Shirt-dresses, skinny trousers and slim-cut jackets -- top half Jeremy Irons or Daniel Day-Lewis, bottom half obnoxiously trendy music-video director. 

Berluti
It's hardly groundbreaking suit design, but I had to post some of this collection since the photoshoot was so oppressively Edward Cullenesque. Lots of pale, beautiful men wearing exquisite yet rather melodramatic dark suits, posing against what looks like the backdrop of a high school drama department.

This purple suit would probably look cheesy and awful on most people, but thanks to the fact that it's being modeled by a menacing-looking guy who resembles Lex Luthor's psychotic dad from Smallville, it demands your  attention.

And finally, a guy who looks like a Madonna video's idea of a mafia kingpin.

Comme des Garçons
Supposedly this collection was meant to look like the New York Dolls (plus Robert Smith/Joan Jett hair) but I felt it was far more Japanese thanks to faux-Victoriana streetstyle outfits such as the one below, and the overall look of urban subculture androgyny.

There were several of these slouchy black/slate outfits, and all of them reminded me of that particular Japanese style that's made up of monochromatic layers of wrinkled shirts and sweaters. I'm not very well-informed with regards to the vast family tree of Harajuku-rooted fashion sub-sub-subcultures, but I'm sure I've seen this one around.

Walter van Beirendonck
Walter van Beirendonck is a magical being. I can only hope that somewhere in the world there's such a thing as a combination ice cream parlour/rubber fetish club, since that's the only place his designs are ever going to look at home. To give you some van Beirendonck precedent, here's a picture of one of last year's creations:

Oh yeah. And that wasn't a one-off. He did a whole bunch of those outfits, in different shapes and colours. It was like Half Man, Half Ice-Cream Scoop. However, like any designer worth their salt, Mr van Beirendonck has made sure to develop his look this season, specifically taking his checked suits to the next level by...

...that. A selection of innocent "baby's bedroom wallpaper" colour-schemes combined with fetishwear accents such as neck padlocks and... pastel-coloured gimp masks with either huge septum piercings or stylised moustaches.

Pale-pink thigh-highs and a matching pleather shirt -- what every man wants! Honestly I would love to know who wears van Beirendonck designs -- certainly not the designer himself, who comes out at the end of each show sporting jeans, sneakers, and a luxuriant grey beard.

I'm not even sure what's going on with this last one, but the jacket looks like it'd take about half an hour to get into. Either that, or it's actually a wearable inflatable life-raft with built-in insulating fur blankets for cold-weather trips.

pics from Style.com

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