PARIS FASHION SHOW : WONDERLANDS

PARIS : Haunting music greeted drizzled-on VIP guests, including singer Janelle Mone, who braved torrential rains in Paris to get to Valentino's experimental show near the Invalides monument on Sunday.

At Issey Miyake , a lone artist stands out to create an artistic installation on a cast white sheet of wall paper that had guests reaching for their cameras. Here are some of the highlights of the fall-winter 2020 ready-to-wear shows at Paris Fashion Week.

Valentino's designer Pierpaolo Piccioli has been in an experimental mood of late.

In Sunday's ready-to-wear show at Paris Fashion Week, this was more than apparent as the Italian-born designer dramatically departed from the house's oft-angelic signature designs. It was a nice change. In the place of purity this season was subtle kink.

See through black mesh gowns followed sheeny thigh-high black leather boots, while split-leg bustier gowns bore inches of flesh and some visible nipples.

Even the Renaissance-style capes, a Valentino touchstone for ages, were crafted this fall in a provocative sheeny black on a model with a dark eye make-up, stomping black wedge boots and long blood-red leather gloves. This angel had fallen from heaven long-ago, the show seemed to say.

Aside from the kinky elements, there were lots of great fashion-forward plays on shape. A black scarf insert fell off the back of one shoulder with an off-kilter air, like the single fallen wing of a dark angel.

Visual Poetry : With a black felt-tip pen at the start of Issey Miyake's Paris fashion show, an artist sketched out a human shape on a paper sheet with speed and impressive precision. Then, to gasps, from the audience, that shape and others next to it were cut out.

As sections of paper fell to the ground, models appeared from behind the holes.

It was an imaginative start to designer Satoshi Kondo's fall show, which began with a geometric series that riffed on this idea of thick lines cut on clothes. All sorts of shapes and square sections flickered out. the collection soon expanded into bright hues with sheeny silk fabrics, weaves in extra-fine nylon yarn and colorful knits.

Several busy jazzy prints one in particular in apricot seemed a little unnecessary and distracted from the beautiful shapes in the designs. But Knodo made up for it with a deft play in form using the codes of Japanese maison.

Silk dresses curved back around at the bottom like a sort of parachute sleeve and formed a cape-hybrid. It filled the air as the models walked, and in the beautiful motion, it seemed as if the models might take flight.

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