Raf Simons Shines at Christian Dior (OnStyle Notebook) - Wall Street Journal (blog)

Getty Images

A look at Dior

PARIS — It must be glorious to be Raf Simons. It has been many decades since a designer so dominated fashion that every eye looked to them to indicate of the new “it.” With his keen sense of proportion and color, that has been Mr. Simons’ role since that 2012 haute couture show for Christian Dior in which he introduced pants under up-down gowns for evening. As the label did more than 50 years ago, Dior is defining the new New Look. Bravo to LVMH, who had the insight to snap Mr. Simons up.

His Spring 2014 look involves pairing jarring colors, such as lifeguard orange with palest lavender, and a busier aesthetic with pleats running catty-corner and bubble skirts that are barely tamed with a pencil-skirt bottom. In several of his best surprises, he tailored perfect black suits, then embedded brilliant patterned pleats, only to be seen from behind.

Mr. Simons is evolving from the minimalist aesthetic he brought from his previous post at Jil Sander. He stopped just this short of too-busy. And he added a surprise at the end, stealing a page from designers Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce, who routinely dress every model for a second turn down the runway, presenting an extraordinary vision of a uniform finale collection rather than a traditional second run-through. For Dior, Mr. Simons’ finale collection involved juxtaposing masculine and feminine: he interspersed vintage Dior ballroom silhouettes in brocades with metallic threads, and black tailored looks with houndstooth shields at the breast.

The gold python motorcycle jacket in Alexandre Vauthier‘s showroom here seems to be just waiting for Rihanna. It would be the umpteenth time the Paris designer has dressed the rock star, and so many of her colleagues – thanks largely to the breast half-reveal, an art his fashion has perfected.Though his name isn’t yet in Klieg lights, Mr. Vauthier knows the curves that draw attention to a woman’s body on a red carpet. After years of focusing on the tiny haute-couture market, he’s now mixing in ready-to-wear.

Why leave those looks to starlets?

It is a fact that there are fashion designers who further the art without becoming darlings of the magazine editors who determine stardom. Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof define that demographic. So loyal are Talbot Runhof clients that the Berlin-based haven’t always bothered to have a runway show, but they did for spring 2014, after a burst of inspiration from Barbra Streisand, no less. So of course, there were expertly chic and wearable piano key pattern dresses, which seemed fresh after so many florals. As Steve Jobs said, “Think Different.”