It wasn’t until sev­eral images into the run­way show at Alexan­der McQueen that I real­ized all the shapes had an oceanic wave to them. Click­ing over to the reviews, my obser­va­tions were con­firmed (I rarely read the reviews first — it is like open­ing the last pages of a book before actu­ally read­ing it). Fab­rics in mul­ti­lay­ers of trans­parency and weight flut­tered, or rather, floated, along the run­way and at one point a sil­ver harness-like orna­ment was intro­duced into the col­lec­tion as if to cast a net over all the mat­ter drift­ing away. Los­ing con­trol and reclaim­ing it is a global con­cern these days and was made alarm­ingly clear yes­ter­day by Ben Bernanke.

Then there is the dice-tosser at Chanel, designer Karl Lager­feld. Pearls have defined the brand prac­ti­cally since its incep­tion — strands of them hang­ing around the neck har­ness an image that is now appro­pri­ated by prac­ti­cally every cloth­ing designer around the world. So Mr. Lager­feld did what artists (and writ­ers) are encour­aged to do: cast your ideas off, let them loose and see where they go. Pearls were strung along a bare torso and strewn, large and small, through­out the hair. The mes­sage was clear: you can have your strings of pearls but that doesn’t define Chanel. Chanel isn’t a sin­gle idea, just like the pearl isn’t just a gem. It has a unique sur­face and color. It is an organ­i­cally cre­ated object of desire. Like a woman.

Alexan­der McQueen Spring 2012

Chanel Spring 2012

Chanel Spring 2012