At Valentino on Tuesday, March 10, the house’s creative directors, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli sent out lavish ladies-who-lunch fashion despite the recessionary winds. Where Paris catwalks have featured lots of working women and sexy power CEO’s, Chiuri and Piccioli opted in their ready-to-wear debut for a more languid femme.

The silhouette was lean, the shapes compact, but throughout there was an permanent air of a grand dame descending to instruct her servants and not a dynamic woman going out to confront the world. Jackets with arm-impeding cape sides did not seem to allow much space for actually shuffling papers across a desk.

That’s not to suggest that Chiuri and Piccioli are not adept tailors, whose opening cocktail looks had a refined gentility and pizzazz worthy of the house’s founder; in particular the sinful look sported by Russian model Sasha Piovarova. And with their hand painted, graffiti-like print, fabrics took the Valentino girl to a newer, artier world than the one designed by the house’s founder.

Valentino announced his retirement from the company in September 2007, seven weeks after celebrating his 45th anniversary in fashion with a sumptuous weekend in Rome. His departure came three months after equity fund Permira won a takeover battle to acquire the Valentino Fashion Group, in a deal that valued the designer’s fashion house at $380 million.

Chiuri and Piccioli, two former assistants of Valentino, replaced the founder’s initial successor, Alessandra Facchinetti, last October after the new owners decided she had strayed too far from the master’s original oeuvre.

The new design duo had a savvy sense of the staging of this show, held in the Palais de Tokyo’s Galerie des Moulages, a truly magnificent, soaring space with models of Gothic arches, flying buttresses and pinnacles. The smart and intriguing casting of mega stars and new faces strutted out on a silver mirrored runway, reflecting the Eiffel Tower through the giant windows of giant curved hall.

In their program notes, the pair called for a “more relaxed dimension” to elegance, but these clothes were formal with a capital F.

Chiuri and Piccioli delivered the goods when it came to accessories with frosted snakeskin platforms and some eye-catching rosette encrusted snakeskin bags. They also scattered crystals all over the collection, edging black bobtail boleros, as trim on scalloped back yellow satin dresses or even as a circuit board pattern on dashing mink coats.

The soundtrack was a mix of a dub version of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” and Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown,” which left most members of the audience smiling ironically because West, who has attended nearly every big show in New York, London, Milan and Paris this season, was not at the Valentino show when they boomed the rapper’s music over the catwalk.

Though the collection had plenty of chic ideas, the design duo seemed too locked into to the founder’s concept of fashion at the very moment when all the signs suggest a fundamentally new era.

If any fashion show these past weeks said it loud and clear that we are in the age of escapist fashion it was the fall 2009 collection of Christian Dior seen Friday, March 6, in Paris. John Galliano created a ’20s inspired Fall collection filled with Indian and Asian nuances for Christian Dior. He played it safe with streamlined, feminine cuts but made up for it with bold colors, textural fabrics, and most prominently — bold prints. “I’m sure Mr.Dior would have loved these prints,” said Galliano when talking about his use of Ikat prints.

If the last Depression taught us anything, at least aesthetically, it’s that people want to forget about their everyday blues, so magazine covers of that era feature woman as Alpine ski goddesses or fearless aviator explorers. Dior’s creative director John Galliano did not have any active wear on his catwalk in the Tuileries Gardens tent, but the escapism was as loud and clear as the grinding Laurent Wolf dance cut that climaxed Jeremy Healey’s dramatic soundtrack.

On the catwalk, Dior looks for autumn were heroic yet chic. Batik beauties in curvy, beehive sleeve jackets or tops, tulip skirts and Tartar princess spherical hats began a hike up the Roof of the World.

Covered up in coats with oriental embroidery, Orson Welles’ femme fatales slinked from Ascot across to Shanghai. Beaten silver Nepalese pendants, layered over “Empire of the Sun” frocks caught the mood of elegiac summers, those of a certain gentility. A great ocre Astrakhan vest over billowing silver satin pants was an ace look.
“I don’t want to work today… I don’t want to waste my time,” belted out the final song of this splendidly presented show. The memorable hair, a Marlene Dietrich Expressionist look with a waxed skullcap of hairpins, was a striking coup by Orlando Pita.

Several score of PETA – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – noisily protested outside the gate of the city’s central garden. PETA’s presence notwithstanding, it’s probably fair to say that fashion’s elite appears to feel the storm of anti-fur feeling may be abating, and that their argument – that fur is a renewable material – is slowly winning more supporters.

When one things of living fashion icons, certain people come to mind: Madonna, for one; Gwen Stefani; maybe even Michael Jackson. But one Hollywood star cat had more catwalk appearances this season than all of them combined: Pamela Anderson! Pamela has actually been getting most of her exposure these days from making appearances at fashion shows internationally, both in the front row and on the runway.

She showed up at last year’s Spring/Summer Vivienne Westwood presentation with a strange masked man on her arm. She danced around in a sparkly gold thong bathing suit for Richie Rich. And this week, Pammy worked the catwalk in several different looks for Dame Westwood herself, even closing the show, proving you’re never too old for fashion.

But some folks aren’t happy about Vivienne’s choice of models. Westwood is an eccentric, as is Richie Rich, and neither have been known to turn down a celebrity model, so don’t expect this to become a common thing. Anderson is probably not welcome on the catwalks of other deigners!

At the DSquared2 Fall 2009 fashion show in Milan on Monday the 2nd of March, heads turned in confusion as models shuffled with what some might not consider a classic fashion accessory – the Starbucks cup!

As the double-the-pleasure boys of Milanese fashion, Dan and Dean Caten conceived their fall collection as a kiss-off to the recession. “So what?” was the apparent attitude of their girls, who arrived straight from last night’s party, nursing their hangovers with a grande Starbucks, huge sunglasses and a shameless mix of evening gowns and bits borrowed from the boys they spent the night with.

Really? Is this high fashion? Do you feel more stylish when walking around with a cup of coffee? Is it a status symbol? Well, we guess next time you go to Starbucks, you should think about working that cup. Strut down that street like it’s a catwalk!