"It's only a game," teased the invitation to Alexander McQueen's show, a joker card. Sure, fashion is just a game, but when the players are Karl Lagerfeld of Chanel, Phoebe Philo of Chloe, Jean Paul Gaultier of Hermes, and even that bluffer John Galliano, the rest might as well be playing Old Maid.
In a spree of excellence over the weekend, the French collections displayed world-class finesse, making the New York shows seem not only a distant memory but also, as one American store executive said, speaking on condition of anonymity, "like a bridge collection."
At the same time, the shows here have pointed up a curious new tension between the luxury rivals LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which is struggling to find talent, and Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, which owns Gucci Group. For all the doubts that the suits at P.P.R. wouldn't be able to appreciate strong-willed designers like McQueen and Nicolas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga -- or even milder ones like Stella McCartney -- it is the Gucci Group brands that have generally shown more imagination. You don't sense that class has been tempered by the demands of commerce.
Although McQueen closed his superb show on Friday night with Suspicious Minds, its refrain "we can't go on like this" seemingly directed at P.P.R. executives in the front row, the choice was more likely his way of winding people up.
One can't forget that McQueen and Galliano are British; if the French can lie with a straight face, the British can pull your pants down. Nothing is sacred. People leaving the Galliano show on Saturday night looked slightly stricken, as if, after seeing his grass-hut hats, pink flamingo sweaters and dotty evening dresses (chased by a small inflated zoo of animals), they had swallowed a wasp.
That tricky Galliano
But think of the action at Galliano in terms of a Guy Ritchie movie. The characters in his chaotic films are always trying to trip someone up. There were lots of great looks in the Galliano show, looks that cool girls will get in about half a second -- skirts in psychedelic Sgt. Pepper prints, a white shag jacket with a dull tartan belt, oversize T-shirt dresses draped with hosiery-colored chiffon. But Galliano can't abide playing things straight. As fashion turns pretty (ghastly word), he has to trip it up.
For McQueen, something else must happen. He has too much pride to make clothes that don't meet his conceptual dreams. It's not for nothing that he presented his show, its initial inspiration the film Picnic at Hanging Rock, on an illuminated chessboard, the models standing in a Vanessa Beecroft-type formation. Themes ranged from Edwardian children's jackets with delicate ribbon trim and ticking-striped shirts to deceptively light teacup skirts, though the stellar piece was a layered chiffon gown with hobby horses spiraling in applique around the hem.
But it takes another kind of discipline to become a full success, and that's what McQueen must strive for, too. "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," to use the title of Delmore Schwartz's seminal short story: McQueen is too good, too vital to fashion, to become, like Schwartz (or, in fashion, Paul Poiret), a lurid example of failed genius.
"Shh, don't mention Poiret," Lagerfeld said during fittings at Chanel. "It's bad luck. Poiret went out of business." Lagerfeld was referring to the starry nighttime ceiling he had created for the post-show party at his home to salute Nicole Kidman and Baz Luhrmann and their new Chanel No. 5 commercial. Poiret famously held a ball with an inflatable rubber sky.
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