Dsquared² Spring 2011 menswear

Julian Kaye, Richard Gere's character inAmerican Gigolo, was the man of the hour for Dsquared² designers Dean and Dan Caten. Audience members found Julian's eviction notice from the Beverly Hills Residence Apartments, plus his business card, on their chairs.

BIANCA BALTI

Time for him to hustle—with Dsquared² ready to supply the wardrobe. It was a typically great setup from the twins, and they were faithful to their theme. The only problem? Julian's wardrobe was an expensive study in anonymity—in his line of work, it was a bad idea to stand out.

EVANDRO SOLDATI

So a pink shirt with immaculate boot-cut blue jeans was just about it. Likewise the check shirt and navy blazer, or the pale blue jacket with the apricot tee and white shorts (that would be Julian's rig for a call-out to a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel).

PATRICK KAFKA

In the past, Dsquared²'s themes have given them full license to compose harebrained hymns to porn-star excess. And nobody did it better. This season, it felt as though theAmerican Gigolo scenario was intended to give them a platform on which to display their grown-up aptitude for tastefully "classic" menswear.

And if that's the case, then they could count the show a success. They know how to cut a silk mohair tux. But when even Brazilian super-mannequin Evandro Soldati, in a cream suit with lilac shirt unbuttoned down to there, looked tame, you could feel in your gut that, by the standards the Catens have set themselves, they'd missed the mark.

OSCAR SPENDRUP

MIGUEL IGLESIAS

FRANCISCO LACHOWSKI

ARTHUR SALES

VLADIMIR IVANOV

BIANCA BALTI

VLADIMIR IVANOV

PATRICK KAFKA

EVANDRO SOLDATI

OSCAR SPENDRUP

VLADIMIR IVANOV

MIGUEL IGLESIAS

FRANCISCO LACHOWSKI

ARTHUR SALES

BIANCA BALTI

Dean and Dan Caten with Bianca Balti

John Galliano Spring 2010 Men´s.

Something unexpected happened in John Galliano's latest show.

It was the usual wall-to-wall spectacle, with the usual cast of thousands, painted and garbed to resemble anyone but themselves.

But, for once, it sort of made sense.

The theme was Napoleon's rise and rise, and—the Napster being a character whom Galliano effectively identifies with—the show's arc had a real cinematic drive.

An early highlight was the transformation of skinny white boy Cole Mohr into a flashing-eyed, olive-skinned corsair, but the real business was the outerwear that the corsairs got to wear.

A new chapter brought flower-wreathed Hellenes in an idiosyncratic mix of tailoring and…not-tailoring.

Cole Mohr

Impressive indeed was the way that a sarong was actually the new Galliano shirt (his signature newsprint over-printed with flowers) knotted around a model's waist.

Ash Stymest

Muslin-shrouded desert rats looked like wraiths in their sand-colored suits, but there were also denim jackets with cuffs crusted with embroidery.

Napoleon's Sicily sojourn featured one more opportunity for someone to display Simon Nessman in briefs, this time with a gilded torso (do designers make a bathing suit specially for him?) followed by a finale that impressively re-created the Napoleon of Abel Gance's 1927 movie, and gave him the outerwear of the season—a romantic, floating, multilayered frock coat—to wear.

Paul

Galliano's eye for detail is always admirably served by his team, but this particular outing managed to have its eye on the production and the product.

Romulo Pires

Julian Hennig

Jakob Weichmann

Gen

Simon Nessman

Nils Butler

Vladimir Ivanov

Patrick Kafka

Taylor Fuchs