Balmain, the coolest cool label in existence, just walked in Paris. For spring, designer Christophe Decarnin gave us jungle chic — tattered tees, skirts with built-in loin cloths, and a number of things that looked to have been shredded by the jaws of mighty jungle creatures. The fashion flock felt, and largely liked, the force of his trendiness. But this season he went back to the strong-shouldered, sequined minidresses without holes that made him the bee’s knees of Paris Fashion Week. His third look was a gold gown with a slit up to there — another Balmain signature. But he also showed something different for him that’s shaping up to be a big fall 2010 trend: pantsuits.
Leave it to Balmain to make officewear cool and fun. Granted, these looks are only cool because they’re inappropriate for the office. (Right? We roll in to work in jeans looking like crap most days, so we’re not the foremost authority on business casual.) The suits were even paired with little blouses with floppy bows on them. Bows! We hate bows but we like these, probably only because they don’t look like bows. We also like the boot-cut pants and brocade — even the boot-cut pants in brocade,which are completely silly-looking and tacky — but if we were the kind of women who could afford to buy pantsuits that we’d only wear either to the club at night or to freak out some squares at a cocktail party, we’d want that one. And that’s why Balmain does so well.
