Bag Your Style, Fashion as well

As designers across the board this season buckle down to readdressing daywear, Jean Paul Gaultier followed suit at Hermès–literally–by reappropriating masculine workwear for today’s woman. With Bond music playing in a venue blanketed by fog and designed to mimic a telescopic tunnel as Big Ben chimed, the models looked sharp and tailored in their leather suits with derby hats (think more M than Pussy Galore). According to Gaultier, the show centered on a feminine English hero–a Mrs. Bond or Emma Peel from the “Avengers” (who Lily Cole played in the show).

Gender-blending and masculine silhouettes tailored cast in a wintry palette funneled into turtle-neck T-shirts, sleeveless duffel coats, T-shirt dresses, three-piece suits, second-skin pants and zip-through shirts. Masculine dress, save for pops of a leopard print, came into play through wool Crombie coats, wide-leg pant suits, vests and formal shirt-and-tie combos, while the feminine touches arrived as leopard print silk dresses, pussy bow blouses and prim pencil skirts. There was a strong outerwear focus, with the classic trench, a leather parka, the camel duffel coat, a blanket fringed mohair coat and a luxurious white mink four-pocket jacket. For evening there were long jersey columns featuring a ruched centre panel with a strip of raw alligator leather.

Accessories were both whimsical and chic: bowlers and top hats, umbrellas, gloves, buckled wide leather belts, skinny multi-wrap belts, leather ties, pocket watches and of course the classic Kelly bag in regular and miniature sizes and refashioned in studs, sheepskin and strapped to umbrellas.