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When a brand is this closely identified with its founder, even a change of facial hair has commercial implications. Karl Lagerfeld’s new beard has his team mulling whether to tweak the Lagerfeld caricature that pops up on everything from handbags to iPad cases.
His main collection is immune from such risks. Ranging from strict tailoring to logo-heavy ath-leisure, the fall line drew inspiration from architecture, with references ranging from Art Deco to Zaha Hadid. A black cape coat featured a stitched satin lapel, while the seams of a LBD recalled perspective lines.
Lagerfeld’s name was writ large on everything from sweatshirts with elbow splits to a cheerleader top with a matching skirt, and appeared as a ticker tape motif on jeans and handbags. Also dropping next fall: Lagerfeld’s collaboration with Kaia Gerber, with a West Coast-meets-Left Bank sensibility.
The designer is famed for his ability to take on the personality of the brands for which he designs, whether that’s Chanel and Fendi now, or Chloé in the Eighties. But at the house of Lagerfeld, it’s rightly all about Karl.

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The Paris fashion industry is hungry for the next big thing, and judging from his oversubscribed fall show, Glenn Martens’ Y/Project is on many people’s short list.
Martens has been igniting the local scene with his playful approach to women’s wear, born out of what was initially a men’s wear-only label, after its founder Yohan Serfaty died in 2013. Items like super slouchy denim boots and oversize spiral pearl earrings have won him fans including Beyoncé and Rihanna.
Since Y/Project won the ANDAM Grand Prize last year, the spotlight on the brand has grown more intense. Could it be the next Vetements? Certainly, Martens has the same penchant for hybrid clothes and oversize volumes as Demna Gvasalia, who was a few years above him at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
His added ingredient? A tongue-in-cheek humor that lent his show, held at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, a campy appeal. Consider the high-heeled versions of the thigh-high Ugg boots he debuted at his men’s show in January, or the corduroy pants with a burlesque-style embroidered fig leaf over the crotch.
The designer worked a fringed curtain into a spiraling pencil skirt, topped with reams of loosely draped lilac taffeta, and spliced strips of fake

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Isabel Marant did not invent the cowboy boot. Nor is she responsible for its newfound fashion relevance — that is owed to Raf Simons at Calvin Klein and a bit to Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy. But it will be by Marant’s hand that Western boots — specifically, the steel-toed booties and robust thigh-high styles from her fall show — will be on the feet of trend-absorbing, fashion-loving women far and wide next season. If cowboy boots were a stock, now would be the time to buy in.
Her Western-inspired fall show was a barn-burner of very hot fashion, a display of Marant’s razor sharp instincts for what a broad swath of women — and now men, too — want out of their clothes: a sense of freedom, comfort, sexiness, sophistication and fun. Even before “Jolene” came on the soundtrack and got toes tapping on the plywood floor, it was obvious there was a Southwestern charm to the lineup. The first model out was Anna Ewers — nothing between her short blanket-striped trench with a sharp leather collar and tawny cowboy booties but her toned legs. A Seventies brown-and-black fur jacket with shiny leather lapels and long fringe that might’ve belonged

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Uma Wang transported her audience to a different time and place, strange and wonderful, though she wasn’t altogether sure exactly where. And that was exactly the point. Hers was a story about the fabric — textiles that looked worn, frayed and faded, like lost treasures yanked out of a dusty trunk and bestowed a new life.
It looked like several pairs of jodhpurs went past, poking out from under the layers, but who could be sure. Long suit coats were split into three long panels in the back, which flapped in all directions. Shoes were made of fabric, with large, wide tufts that shot out in front, scraping against each other as the models shuffled past. There was also something resembling a Dutch bonnet, worn over a stiff, crinkly ivory dress, with loose lace trousers poking out from below.
It was a clever trick, showcasing the fabric by using it for silhouettes of an unidentifiable era and inserted into a weathered universe — part past and part future.
“I wanted people to be a little bit confused,” explained Wang after the show.
Her heroine was from “nowhere, maybe Mongolia, maybe Japan, maybe China, maybe England, maybe wherever,” she added. Wherever she was from, she

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Bad taste is being embraced by fashion, including Francisco Terra. He attempted to answer the question “What is bad taste?” with his fall collection. “By blurring the lines between vulgarity and elegance, this season seeks to give a higher status to what is commonly considered distasteful,” the brand’s show notes said.
The designer also had in mind the “Bad Taste Ball season” his parents attended in Brazil in the Seventies, when as a child he’d watch movies with dreamy aesthetics. Such contrasting memories collided in the creation of the gender-fluid line, which was a mash-up of fabrics like corduroy, tweed, silk and velvet, textures and prints.
Silhouettes were heavy on boxy deconstructed, then top-stitched, seams – giving an inside-out feel – and ruffled and ruched skirts and dresses.
Not as flouncy and more striking were the smattering of knitwear pieces, like the oversized sweater with flower motif at the neck, and the streamlined, gray V-neck top paired with an asymmetric white skirt and floral leggings.

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In an era when Time’s Up and the Trump presidency are two major narratives dominating the news cycle, the role of fashion, specifically red-carpet fashion, could either be diminished or amplified. Given that it is Oscar Week, the culmination of months of campaigning and wardrobe planning that leads up to Hollywood’s biggest night March 4, it is the latter. Those once-behind-the-curtain operators known as celebrity stylists now find themselves more in the spotlight, just as their Academy Award-nominated clients do.
That’s not a new story, it’s a cycle that’s been replayed over and over for decades now. What’s changed is the social and political climate now holding people in all industries accountable for actions ranging from sexual harassment to assault, and the entertainment industry’s unification as a means of affecting change.
The all-black dress code at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs made a simple yet effective statement, and signaled that fashion, in ways big or small, can aid in amplifying larger movements. It can also rightly claim the spotlight purely on its own aesthetic merit, as we may see on Sunday. All of this generates millions of dollars in the industry, for the brands, the stars, their teams of agents and

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ON THE MARCH: Among the guests at the Chloé show in Paris on Thursday was Rowan Blanchard, fresh from the Los Angeles premiere of Ava DuVernay’s “A Wrinkle in Time,” in which the former Disney star appears opposite Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling.
Blanchard said the film was indicative of a sea change in the kind of projects that get greenlighted in Hollywood.
“I think that it’s a time for films to love their audiences back,” she opined. “Especially at this time, in this industry, when we’re forced to reevaluate so much, it’s really important to invest in projects that are led by women and people of color and that are representative of something more.”
The 16-year-old actress, who is a public activist in areas such as feminism, human rights and gun violence, plans to attend the March for Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C., to demand stricter gun laws, following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida that left 17 dead.
“It’s nice to finally feel respected by adults in a way, but teens have been doing the work for a long time. Teen activists led Black Lives Matter, led the DREAM Act, I think that

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LONDON — Can Burberry’s new Italian duo work their magic once again?
Marco Gobbetti and Riccardo Tisci, the men who helped transform Givenchy into a star brand in the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton stable, are reuniting after 10 years apart at the helm of Burberry with the ambition of refashioning it for a new generation of luxury customers.
Gobbetti has proven himself a man of his word by pulling in Tisci, a prize couturier with streetwear in his veins, to breathe new life into Britain’s biggest fashion brand, a publicly quoted behemoth that’s been struggling to grow in line with its luxury peers and exploit its strengths, especially in the big margin accessories business.
The decision to hire Tisci as chief creative officer, replacing Christopher Bailey, may have blindsided some, but it makes sense given Gobbetti’s strategy to fire up sales growth, fix Burberry in the luxury firmament and take on a designer for the long haul. In November, Gobbetti told the markets he wanted his designer pick to stay for at least a decade, to lay down a new luxury template for the brand, and appeal to the new, laid-back luxury customer who’s dressing ever more casually.
Although Tisci wasn’t the obvious

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BACK TO SCHOOL: The setting for the Carven show Thursday afternoon, the Thirties Lycée Camille Sée, in the 15th arrondissement, had certain guests reminiscing on their school days.
“It brings a lot of emotions back,” said Morgane Polanski, who for a time attended a similar public school nearby. “I had a few friends who went here actually, I never thought I’d be here for a fashion show. There was never a runway at school.”
Polanski is currently working on her third short with her firm Stroke Productions. Her second, called “The Stroke,” will be showing at the Beverly Hills Film Festival next month.

Selah Marley 
Stephane Feugere/WWD

“I hope it will erase all my bad memories of homework and math lessons,” said up-and-coming French songstress Clara Luciani. “My school was in the south of France so it was nothing like this,” she said. Luciani’s first album, named “Sainte-Victoire” after the mountain outside Aix-en-Provence, is due out next month.
Also sitting front row were Selah Marley, dressed in head-to-toe Carven — including the quirky footwear seen on the runway, and Japanese twin sister music duo Amiaya.

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