Thirty-nine-year-old Clarisse Hieraix has been debuting her collections via well-staged presentations for the past two seasons. Yesterday, however, the designer stepped up to the fashion-show format and paraded her Spring ’13 couture looks down the runway in Paris. Hieraix belongs to the hyper-focused, nose-to-the-grindstone breed of up-and-coming talent, and her Spring collection, which the designer described as a “courtship parade,” made a compelling bid for a happy marriage of opposites: minimalism and (controlled) exuberance, transparency and substance, fluidity and structure. Take, for example, a satin perfecto with sharp lines and upturned shoulders paired with a swingy anise-green miniskirt pleated like a ruff. Then there was a series of precise little cocktail dresses, which included one in black velvet. The swell of its hips was flatteringly coaxed out at the sides, and delicate layers of petticoats were held up by a little bustle. Another one in red boasted a large sprig of coral, which punctuated the bust. One model wore a lacy redingote-meets-crinoline jacket that swung around her body like an open cage. As it happens, the night before the show, that piece was still a long coat, but in the eleventh hour, Hieraix decided something was amiss and lopped it off mid-thigh. “It wasn’t about any particular time period, but I’ve always been fascinated by crinolines,” the designer said backstage. “I think there’s still a lot to do there.”
—Tina Isaac
Photo: Victor Virgile/ Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
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