Fall 2011 trends

There was a moment at the Thierry Mugler show,just as Lady Gaga took the stage smoking a cigarette, when the entire season seemed to splinter into two starkly different halves: grandstanding showmanship ver­sus grandly elegant clothes. Onstage, the audience was treated to a stylist and a pop sensation’s purview of fashion—for them, a universe where looking interesting and avant requires extreme measures. Which stood in contrast to what we saw elsewhere, which was, to put it simply, everything that is right with fashion at the moment: the beauty and simplicity of elegance, done in a way that women can readily interpret.