Is Kering bullish on Saint Laurent? The brand’s future headquarters telegraphs yes: 3,000 square meters, or 32,300 square feet, on Rue de Bellechasse into which the company will move next year. Right now, it’s a three-sided work in progress centered by a courtyard where Anthony Vaccarello showed his sophomore collection. (Yes, it was cold, but the outdoor heating kicked in eventually, and the house provided blankets.) The raw grit of the construction site contrasted with the pristine industrial seating — metal risers supporting thick, dark green slabs that were indulgently deep but not just for show. Before the show, François-Henri Pinault noted the marble is destined for permanent use, as showroom table tops. Waste not, and if you can do so while adhering to the chicest of design standards, all the better.
As for the clothes, they’re not about chic. Looking chic is the furthest thing from the mind of this Saint Laurent girl and, it seems, delivering it, the furthest from Vacarello’s. The grail here is delivery of an aggressive cool of the sort that dares you not to get it. In fact, it double-dares you. First with clothes pretty much limited to a market of Instagramming pop stars and well-heeled

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Simon Porte Jacquemus called his fall show “L’Amour D’un Gitan” or The Love of a Gypsy.” A more fitting title would’ve been “Fun and Games With Sober Tailoring That Will Probably Make You Miss the Saint Laurent Show.” The bulk of the lineup was black, navy, white and gray — a polka dot here, a pink shirt there — and was shown at the Paris Event Center, clear across town from YSL’s chosen venue. It was practically next season by the time the deliberately slow finale traversed the football field length of the pink runway, causing many editors, including this one, to miss the Saint Laurent show. More logistics, less pink runway next time, please.
Back to the clothes. They weren’t for gypsies, but a woman in love with a gypsy. She herself wasn’t bohemian per se, but she was carefree enough to carry an upside down pink bag with her sculpted coat with a portrait neckline. The looks had roots in another era — Forties/Fifities — with exaggerated, strong sleeved and shouldered tops over slim ruched toreador pants and many oversize men’s coats nipped, tucked, curved and scrunched to look genuinely borrowed from a much larger man and artfully improvised

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Jour/né designers Lou Menais, Léa Sabban and Jerry Journo dedicated their show to India, but British eccentricity was the linking thread, in a wardrobe hooked on Wes Anderson’s “The Darjeeling Limited” and the end of British colonial rule on the subcontinent.
Their eclectic, merch-friendly spin centered on contemporary updates on the tweed suit — worn with knee-high men’s socks — interspersed with slim wrap dresses masquerading as men’s silk dressing gowns, belted coats in boiled wool, vivid jacquard cardigans and the like.
The exoticism of India came through only in the occasional pop of color like the total-look hot orange ribbed sweatshirt and skirt, and crafty patchwork suits with colored ribbons in a palette of burgundy and navy shot with green, turquoise and mustard, which were lovely.
A sporty theme was woven throughout, pairing baggy pants in pale pink Lurex with off-the-shoulder ruffled blouses, and houndstooth hoodies encircled with pearl-strand belts. Then there was the brand’s Nike hook-up: customized white Nike VaporMax 2017 sneakers tricked out with rows of pearls.

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The setting — the Folies Bergère theater — served as a fitting stage for this uplifting, contemporary ode to artisanal craftsmanship dusted with shine and sparkle.
“I love Paris, it’s been my aim since the beginning to make people discover my city and all its treasures,” said designer Christelle Kocher. “This place has been forgotten; it’s a really old theater with an amazing history. Josephine Baker used to perform here, and Charlie Chaplin….” Kocher said she sought to bring some “poetry, beautiful emotion and preciousness” to the place.
Mission accomplished. Kocher’s models descended the grand staircase of the theater’s foyer, their crystal-embellished street-meets-“couture à porter” ensembles twinkling, even from a distance. The designer built on her legacy for blending the casual energy of streetwear with couture craftsmanship, tumbling together her signature high-waisted track pants and oversize polo shirt silhouettes with handiwork-intensive items such as ruched blousons studded with crystals; wool and cashmere patchwork knits with French lace accents, and an organza parka with multicolored feathers trapped inside, creating the puff.
The rich, anything-goes palette flitted from tan to hot pink, red, turquoise and lilac with a lot of the silhouettes built on tonal arrangements, fishnets and hair included.
Heart-stoppers included a scarlet jacket in strips of astrakhan that resembled thick corduroy,

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PARIS — Loewe will paint the town Gisele in advance of its women’s ready-to-wear show March 3.
Images from a fall campaign featuring Gisele Bündchen will start to go up across Paris on Wednesday, including 3,000 fly posters and 500 news kiosks in the city.
Two images of the Brazilian model shot by Steven Meisel will preview a look from the forthcoming collection by creative director Jonathan Anderson. In the background of one image the set designed by M/M Paris for the March 3 show is visible featuring a cloudlike object made from 9,000 black silk ribbons.
The campaign, shared exclusively with WWD, also unveils the latest edition of the house’s Puzzle bag — this time printed all over in a blue-and-white cloud motif. The motif reappears in a fourth image, a still life by Miesel featuring an assortment of metal, glass and organic objects.
While the house has previewed its collections on Paris newsstands in past seasons, the massive fly poster campaign, which uses only the image of Bündchen in a dramatic hat, is a first for the brand.

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ONE WORD: PLASTICS: The Story of Stuff Project is trying to fend off microfiber pollution with a new online video and petition aimed at major apparel brands.
With a community of one million, the San Francisco-based group was started 10 years ago by Annie Leonard, who is now executive director of Greenpeace USA but continues as a strategic adviser and board member. This week’s microfibers-focused initiative builds on a series of videos including the original one “The Story of Stuff,” which has been viewed by more than 30 million people.
Nine months in the making, the two-minute short was produced and illustrated by Ruben DeLuna Creative with the hope that companies will wake up to the issues, said The Story of Stuff Project’s executive director Michael O’Heaney. “We wanted to make sure we had the right content and the right tone — the idea is to encourage apparel companies to take note of the issue and start to work on solutions; help the public understand the issue but not antagonize the industry.”
Twenty-five companies will be targeted “to attempt to have a conversation,” he said, declining to identify any of them. The three objectives are for companies to acknowledge the issue, invest time and resources

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 FRESH CREAM: Taking a time-out from modernism, Nicolas Ghesquière has chosen a glass-roofed courtyard at the Louvre museum to show his fall Louis Vuitton collection.
All cream-colored stone and dotted with potted trees, the Cour Marly is home to an array of neoclassical sculptures originally commissioned for the gardens of Louis XIV’s country residence, the Château de Marly.
Ghesquière has erected sleek structures to stage ready-to-wear shows in the Cour Carrée outside the Louvre and the Louis Vuitton Foundation, and has a penchant for midcentury architecture as a backdrop for his destination cruise shows.
The brand, owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, has scheduled its show for March 7, the last day of Paris Fashion Week, at 6:30 p.m.

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A$AP Rocky, who is arguably fashion’s favorite hip-hop muse, is teaming with Guess on a second capsule collection for its Guess Originals x A$AP Rocky line called “Guess Club,” which hits stores such as Opening Ceremony and Black Market on March 10.
Last February, the rapper, whose given name is Rakim Mayers, linked with the denim powerhouse to debut a Guess Originals x A$AP Rocky capsule, based on the company’s archival pieces from the Eighties. According to Guess founder and chief creative officer Paul Marciano, fans were camped out in front of Guess boutiques around the world to purchase the pieces, which sold out in hours.

A T-shirt from the Guess Originals x A$AP Rocky “Guess Club” collection for spring. 

Mayers called WWD last week from London, where he had just landed from Milan, where he sat front-row at the Gucci runway show. “The first collection was so well-received, we had an amazing turnout,” he said. “People actually understood my reasons for wanting to collaborate on that nostalgic collection. Growing up with an urban hip-hop background, Guess was part of that, in the ‘Menace II Society’ films and in my household. It was my own twist on archival pieces.”
It’s likely to be the

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VICENZA — With its knitwear expertise, Maglificio Miles is one of Italy’s hidden jewels in the crown. It’s not surprising, then, that Sonia Rykiel, dubbed the queen of knitwear, would forge a long-lasting collaboration with the company and a personal relationship with its founder, Silvia Bocchese.
Together, they created memorable fashion pieces that built the reputation of the French brand over the years. Fascinated by Miles’ techniques and top-level machines, Sonia Rykiel’s creative director, Julie de Libran, continues to work with the company, marveling at its ability to turn her ideas into reality.
“This is the best,” said the affable de Libran of Miles, connecting her thumb and index finger into a circle, in an eloquent and universal gesture of approval.
With Miles, Libran has created a capsule collection called Rykiel Forever, that pays tribute to the late designer and re-creates her archival eye-catching striped knits with contemporary proportions, colors and fit.
“I felt that so close after the passing away of Sonia Rykiel, it was very important to celebrate the creativity and beauty that we have in-house,” said de Libran. “We have almost 50 years of archive that I did not want to be lost. People have been expressing love and attention for the

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For our spring fashion issue, ELLE’s team of intrepid style seekers hits the road in search of the best-dressed women in two booming creative-magnet, tech-friendly capitals: San Francisco and Austin