Kenzo at Paris Fashion Week

Kenzo at Paris Fashion Week

By Hilary Alexander, Fashion DirectorLast Updated: 10:07AM GMT 22 Jan 2009

Alice in Wonderland: Storybook fantasy at the Kenzo spring/summer show
Antonio Marras, the designer behind Kenzo, presented a storybook fashion fantasy in his latest collection, inspired by Alice in Wonderland
In pictures: Kenzo s/s 2009 collection
The designer, Antonio Marras, invited his audience into a storybook fashion fantasy, inspired by 'Alice in Wonderland' and Victorian flower-collectors, in his spring/summer 2009 collection for Kenzo, at the Paris prêt-à-porter season.
Bouquets of flowers, botanical embroideries and satin, chiffon and gabardine in mossy and pastel shades, recreated the dreamy sauntering of "Alice" in a sun-withered garden.
Against a set of larger-than-life wildflower books, piled up as if on a drawing-room table, the models paraded in watercolour florals and brighter, herbaceous border-patterns. They resembled "flower fairies", with their piled-up hair strewn with feathers and their faces made-up with sparkle eye-shadows and shimmering rose blush-on.
Smock-dresses came with delicate bodices embroidered with crystals and pearls. Longer, empire-line dresses, with rise-and-fall hemlines which disclosed petticoats of lace and flounces, had shoulder-straps embellished with tiny shells and beads.
Puffball dresses were crocheted in gold-tinged yarn, scattered with sequins, over tutu-underskirts, while jewel-embroidered knits were worn with loose-cut trousers, tapering to the ankle.
Semi-sheer organza and layers of tulle echoed the passion for transparency which has been a recurrent theme of these Paris collections.
In the show's finale, the books on the set opened, as if by magic, to reveal "pop-up" cutouts of flowers and butterflies.
Marras, 47, who also shows his own line at Milan Fashion Week, is one of fashion's most poetic and creative designers. Married, with two young sons, he divides his time between his birthplace of Alghero and the fashion capitals of Milan and Paris. He showed his first Kenzo women's collection in March, 2004.
On Tuesday last week, it was announced he had been appointed to take over creative direction of all Kenzo collections including menswear, children's wear, accessories and homewares. His career as a designer hired to inject fresh blood into a brand, has been happier than that of the Italian designer, Alessandra Facchinetti, who has been displaced from the famed house of Valentino after only a year.
The axe fell in Paris on Friday, soon after she presented her second ready-to-wear collection for Valentino, which was acquired by the private equity firm, Permira, in mid-2007.
The Paris season, last of the four fashion weeks which preview next spring/summer, ends on Sunday with shows by Louis Vuitton, designed by the American, Marc Jacobs; Lanvin; and Miu Miu, designed by Miuccia Prada.