Marc Jacobs leads the charge
Curves make a comeback at the Paris fashion shows
The word from Paris: Curves are making a comeback.
While the runways at the just completed Paris shows were full of waif-like models, some influential designers showcased collections that accentuated a fuller-figured body, with fitted tops that draw attention to breasts and skirts nipped at the waist. Leading the charge: Marc Jacobs, who called his show for Louis Vuitton, "And God Created Woman," in tribute to the 1956 classic French film starring the young and voluptuous Brigitte Bardot.
In today's New York Times, fashion writer Cathy Horyn wrote:
"From the first outfit, on the curvy model and actress Laetitia Casta, to the last, on the swimsuit legend Elle Macpherson, there was an impressive sense of the physical — corseted breasts, bare arms and legs, womanly hips under full skirts. In a way, the body was the main event. Realistically, most of those skirts are too old-fashioned and clunky to wear. You’d be exhausted before you went a block. The wool corsets would look just as pretty with a pair of pants.
But to me, this collection wasn’t as much about returning to the glories of Bardot as it was about presenting an artificial and super-enlarged beauty — and where else could Mr. Jacobs go but to an era when women were still built like women, right down to their girdles?"
On style.com, Sarah Mower put it this way:
"Not to put too fine a point on it, this was one fashion show heterosexual men are going to understand. Breast-wise, it put it all on a plate—or rather a corseted, cantilevered, frill-edged balcony.......Not that the rehabilitation of the embonpoint was vulgarly done. Jacobs framed it more as a fresh, feminine, ingenue look, with hair scraped back into high, bouncy B.B. ponytails; clean makeup; and square-toed, block-heeled pumps trimmed with flat bows—another angle on the Mad Men era but this time with a charming Frenchified accent."