Tuesday, March 7 Paris Fashion Week may have wrapped, but New York’s fashion director Amy Larocca still has a final few words to say about it.  10:30 a.m.: The Chanel show is huge. It’s in the Grand Palais, and the Palais is packed. The sets are always elaborate, and this
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A special weekend wrap-up of Paris Fashion Week from New York’s fashion director Amy Larocca. Saturday, March 3 10:30 a.m: After all these fashion shows, friends always ask who The Next Big Thing is, and, for a few seasons now, the answer has been Haider Ackermann. He has an incredible touch
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 Get excited: Here is the first Paris Fashion Week diary from New York’s fashion director, Amy Larocca.

Wednesday, February 29

Morning: It’s nice to be in Paris. It just is. The shops are dazzling, the cafés are full. I spend the morning at the Luxembourg Gardens and then walking around the Palais Royal, where I poke around the shops. There is a truly terrifying wax figure of Rick Owens in his store that actually makes me jump, and there are beautiful scarves in Epice — and of course there’s loads to covet in Stella McCartney and Pierre Hardy. There’s also that Japanese shop (Journal Standard) that reminds me of 45 RPM where a T-shirt is (no joke) €690. In the window of Marc Jacobs, there’s a “wanted” sign (the picture reminds me of the Unabomber) for the thief who stole the spring 2012 collection samples from a truck. I cut over to St. Honoré and go into Vanessa Bruno on the Rue Castiglione. The salesman tells me that if I want anything, I should just buy it now because Fashion Week is about to start and all the people, they will stop by the shop and touch everything and buy everything and so on.

3 p.m.: I can’t think of a better way to start Paris Fashion Week than with a Dries Van Noten show. For starters, it’s in a beautifully ornate nineteenth-century hall in the Hotel de Ville (the locations in Paris are endlessly mind-blowing) and also … it’s Dries Van Noten, one of my favorite designers in the world. The music is Bon Iver’s “Woods,” and it is still and calm and beautiful, and so are the clothes. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but there’s one look that I can’t get out of my head because everything about it is just so exactly right: an anorak with a fur trim, paired with a white turtleneck, a soft, oversize sweatshirt, and a heavily embellished skirt. 

5 p.m.: A drive across the Place de la Concorde as the day’s gray clouds are burning off, and then up the stairs into the Grand Palais for Rochas. Marco Zanini is especially great at knits, and a master of what I like to think of as “nerd chic.” I love it. Cozy sweaters, knee-length skirts, Philip Johnson glasses, thick tights, and stack-heeled sandals — it’s what a graduate student (dissertation on Roland Barthes) at the Sorbonne would wear in the world’s most stylish new wave French film. 

7:30 p.m.: I cook spaghetti for Pari Dukovic, our portfolio photographer, to catch up on things, hear about his results from Milan, and plan our week in Paris. He’s had amazing backstage moments with Van Noten and Zanini who, sweetly, was apparently moved to tears with each congratulations while surrounded by friends. We agree that it was a quiet, slow, and yet rather thrilling first day. And that we can’t wait for Balenciaga in the morning. 

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,paris fashion week fall 2012
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Here is New York Fashion Director Amy Larocca’s final entry from Milan. Check back for her Paris adventures.

Monday, February 27

9:00 a.m.: Breakfast at the Principe Hotel. Sitting in the lobby waiting for my appointment, I am reminded of the whirling hotel scene from the Robert Altman movie Pret-A-Porter. It’s just like that, with everyone wheeling their bags down for checkout and making very specific orders for very specific coffees.

10:15 a.m.: Re-see at Dolce and Gabbana. It’s even more beautiful in person. One of the great moments of any fashion week anywhere is the Dolce finale, where 50 models take the runway in a group, all wearing one-off pieces that tend to fall into the underwear category. This season, it was all hand-embroidered black tulle with thick gold thread. At the re-see, you get a nice, close look at all 50 looks, as well as the regular runway collection. Even though it’s ready-to-wear, this is Italy and it might as well be haute couture.

11:15 a.m.: One of the things I like very much about Milan is that there’s tons of graffiti on the buildings. On my way to the Armani show, I see an enormous, Shepard Fairey-esque Gary Coleman.  

11:30 a.m: At Giorgio Armani’s main collection, I am delighted to see our Cut TV correspondent (!) Coco Rocha open the show. There’s always applause at an Armani show. Certain outfits and certain models are invariably clapped for. I try to predict which ones, but I tend to not get it right. I’m not surprised at the applause for a silk organza top in a beautiful shade of coral — it has a neck like a lily — but some others leave me confused (like, why these Bermuda shorts and not those?). There are pink and orange lights on everything, and the models are wearing very dramatic hats cocked to one side — all the better for when they hit the middle of the runway, at which point they give elaborate, sideways glances. 

1 p.m.: Roberto Cavalli walks around the runway with his pet German shepherd and closes the show with a purple, completely bedazzled Naomi Campbell. And that is how we say Ciao, Milano.

6:10 p.m.: I’m on an Alitalia flight to Paris along with 4,000 models, Dean and Dan Caten, and a pile of tired editors all looking forward to Tuesday, fashion’s day of rest. I’ll be back Wednesday, when I start Paris Fashion Week at the Dries Van Noten show. 

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New York’s Fashion Director continues to deliver the play-by-play on what’s going down during Milan Fashion Week.

Sunday, February 27

9:30 a.m.: Re-see at Max Mara and SportMax. Learn that the Max Mara collection was inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, which sheds some light on the soundtrack. Whatever the inspiration, Max Mara makes the most fantastic coats, and there are plenty here. Sportmax was inspired by martial arts, and it is all really sleek and sporty, and there are the best-ever turtleneck sweaters with rounded seams. None of this explains the soundtrack there, however, which was too dirty to write about.

10:30 a.m: It’s always sunny at the Marni show, and this morning doesn’t disappoint. Now this is a moment when it’s actually acceptable to wear sunglasses indoors. The street-style photographers go bonkers here — well, it’s getting to the point that they go bonkers everywhere, more on that in a second. I’m mixed on the ankle-socks-and-high-heeled-sandal combo that’s been happening lately. When it’s good, it’s very, very good, and when it’s not, it’s just not. The clothes do that amazing Marni thing of layering beautifully, and I always love a wacky Marni fur. I also think Consuelo Castiglioni has some of the best style around. 

11:30 a.m.: Jil Sander re-see. The clothes are even more beautiful close up. They might even be the prettiest clothes in the world right at this very moment. 

2 p.m.: Once you get inside the door at Dolce & Gabbana, which is a complete nightmare for anyone who is crowd-phobic (my only consolation while getting shoved and jostled is that Emmanuel Alt is being shoved and jostled very close to me, so how could I take it personally?). However, this is consistently one of the most fun shows of the entire fashion month. The hall is decorated with rose-covered chandeliers, garlands, and one extremely rococo mirror. The music (“‘O sole mio!”), the mood — it’s all so Italian in exactly the right way. What I love so much about Dolce & Gabbana is that it manages to be tongue-in-cheek and beautiful at exactly the same time, without straining in either direction. The lace dresses, the gold embroidery, the spectacular earrings in which the models looked like Renaissance paintings … yes, yes, yes to all of it. 

4 p.m.: Missoni shows in a courtyard at the university here, and it’s a spectacular location. Much is made of Milan being less beautiful than, say, Paris or Rome, but in this courtyard, it’s hard to pay much attention to that argument. The show is long — with models in various iterations of Missoni knits and scarves — but the whole thing looks snuggly and good. Another mysterious soundtrack: at one point, someone screams, “My mother never taught me to cook and that’s why I’m so skiiiiiinnnnnnyyyy.” And I’m pretty sure I hear the voice of Woody Allen at one point.

6 p.m.: The Ferragamo collection is shown in the Borsa, and right now there is a giant statue by Maurizio Cattelan right in front. It’s a huge (36 feet huge) middle finger. It is, as many have noted, pointing out from the Stock Exchange, rather than in. Cattelan says the whole thing is mainly about immigration, but it’s hard to think that’s all it’s about right now. Anyway. Inside Ferragamo, there are some very pretty bohemian dresses. 

7 p.m.: Italian designers are into diversifying: They’ve got hotels, restaurants etc., and tonight Dolce and Gabbana throw a cocktail party at their Gold restaurant. Monica Bellucci is there (or so my driver, who was waiting outside, reported — I never see her, just the dazzled paparazzi she leaves in her wake). There are paper cones of fried snacks going around, including what I’ll call the world’s most delicious pizza-flavored hot pocket even though it has a proper Italian name and can definitely not be found in your grocer’s fridge. 

8 p.m.: A sampling of rumors from cocktail hour in the lobby of The Four Seasons Hotel: Raf is going to Dior. Raf is going to YSL. Hedi is going to YSL. Stefano is going to Dior. Raf has been looking at studios in downtown New York, out of which he will launch his own collection. Jil Sander (the company, not the person) isn’t even going to bother producing Raf’s last collection because they are so angry that Raf quit. Jil Sander fired Raf. And so on. There are a lot of people saying, “But I just don’t understand!”

8:30 p.m.: Turns out if you’re late to Versus (see  cocktail hour, above), you are ushered in through the back garden, which is full of soaring trees and a fantastic little gazebo. I think, for not the first time, how smart it is of Donatella to team up with Christopher Kane. 

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notes from a fashion director
,milan fashion week fall 2012
,runway shows
,fashion shows
,marni
,versus
,jil sander
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