What’s the Big Idea?

PARIS--It is an exquisitely difficult job to advance fashion, please a wide range of tastes and deliver original clothes with lasting impact.

With a significant shift toward full and oversized silhouettes for next spring, women may welcome the freer fit--and not fret about an extra croissant or two.

Though fashion has long been quoting retro references verbatim, the best spring clothes here are looking fresh and distinct, even though they trigger flashbacks. Halfway through the collections, miniskirts, sheer evening dresses and resort-ready looks abound. Holdovers from the ‘80s such as oversized shirts and tight, high-waisted, cropped pants have invoked despondent sighs, mostly about how quickly fashion cycles return but few comparisons to the economic advantages of the yuppie years. Those blown-up shapes are back because it’s simply time for the narrow silhouette to change.

Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton used the balloon as a symbol of the inflated silhouettes he showed on Monday. A dozen huge, round or cartoon-character-shaped balloons printed with the new, multicolor LV logo floated outside the Parc Andre Citroen. They were a nod to the recent balloon installation of his latest guest artist, Takashi Murakami, whom Jacobs invited to tweak the LV logo. Models carrying the new logo bags marched out with the first dozen dresses, each in a color in the new logo. Though a stiff, neoprene coat and a ruffled micro-mini stood away from the body, Jacobs stuck to sleek tight cuts for high-waist pants, striped sweaters and lace dresses. Though at first glance his clothes seem proper and conservative, a second look shows that a prim skirt, a swingy trench coat and a ladies-who-lunch suit were cut from rubber.

At John Galliano’s namesake show, models had their hair wrapped over a trio of balloons, a perfect look to accompany his supersized ‘80s bombers and ruffled hoop skirts. The inflated looks also contrasted with the items that likely will be the big sellers--trim, fitted leather military jackets with a stack of bands that zip off the sleeves. Galliano probably has a whole range of elegant pieces in the multicolor silk prints that he showed as scarves and burkas on the runway. His Sunday show was a dazzling production, if only for the multicultural finale that showered the clothes, the stage and front-row VIPs with colored chalk dust.

True, all the changes coming next season sound quirky, capricious and complicated, but avant-garde designers have embraced the classics to good effect. Clever styling on runways has proven that spring’s romantic/utilitarian/exotics will require careful attention to details. Micro-shorts, skinny cropped pants, slim minis and full, knee-length skirts each demand a different kind of shoe or boot, though most here are skyscrapers on soles. Bags large and small, belts wide and narrow and ribbons and scarves in vivid, contrasting tones often give the outfits their panache. The days of tossing a black jacket over black pants are gone, unless you work in a mortuary, or the fashion industry, where it remains a uniform.

Yet legions of those noir-loving fashion pros swooned over Alexander McQueen’s colorful show on Saturday. In a large music auditorium on the outskirts of the city, McQueen screened a three-part video that enhanced the show’s three fashion acts: medieval shipwreck, ultra-gothic black and vivid ethnic feather prints.

He brilliantly delivered clothes with understandable proportions and inventive personalities. In other hands, a corset vest might seem romantic and innocent, but McQueen’s turned edgy with leather belt straps lashed across the front in the shape of a cross. He disguised the utilitarian origins of a cropped, white military jacket under a sprinkling of coin-size silver paillettes. While many have tried and miserably failed to create sexy harem pants or knickers, McQueen succeeded with cascades of silk that gently wrapped the legs and tapered to the knee. His swirling, swinging feather-printed dresses in a rainbow cascade of colors subtly recalled the 1980s, the last time prints were in fashion and the last time clothes seemed to have a distinct, original personality.

The British designer, who will open a store soon in Los Angeles, played up his bad boy image in his show’s second act: an all-black gothic escape that was like those horror flicks where teens turn into vampires and zombies. Still, he can’t hide that his precision tailoring appeals to women with a wide range of tastes, ages and professions.

If McQueen ever leaves fashion, he should create stage shows with Galliano, who also designs for Christian Dior. Galliano’s campy, paratrooper drag queens at Dior with their rhinestoned eyelids, pink glitter lips and lace-applique eyebrows were great distractions from the fact that his catwalk looks won’t be recognizable when they’re worn on the street.

Oh, many whispered, that Crazy John, his red-hot streak of creativity has finally burned out--he’s gone too far. Who cares? It was great theater, particularly with stars Laura Dern, Christina Ricci, Claire Danes and Penelope Cruz in attendance. Just enough of their fellow celebrities will don the runway exaggerations for InStyle (or tabloid worst-dressed lists) that it won’t matter if Dior never sells a crazy, parachute silk, wing-backed, cinch-waisted cropped jacket with bows, misplaced pockets and rhinestones. Fashion victims will celebrate if they score a neon leather belt with the Dior logo spelled out in sparkly letters 8 inches tall across their backsides. The platform sandals were so impossibly high that several models nearly fell and one confessed an hour after the show that her legs were still shaking.

So what? Magazines and ads will tout the dramatic imagery. In stores, Dior customers will be offered the slim denim skirts, macrame-back jersey dresses and amply cut alligator or silk gauze bomber jackets that were piled into layers and seemed to occupy one-tenth of a second on the runway, the exact length of time before overexposure sets in.

It may seem a simple thing to straddle the line between avant-garde and classic. If it were, Helmut Lang wouldn’t be in a league of his own. In his first show here since moving to New York nearly five years ago, the Austrian designer modernized his own minimalist ethic with gussets of sheer chiffon or latex that shined like silk under sleeves. His neat, black classics could shift from the office to the nightclub by adding one of his zipper-edge harnesses or a dress shirt stripped of everything but its collar, placket and buttons, like some sort of shirt necklace.

Lang’s rival for most-classic tailor may be Martin Margiela, a card-carrying member of the Belgian avant-garde who delivered soft luxury sportswear for Hermes. In a black, white, gray and taupe palette, Margiela created perfectly proportioned batwing blouses and shirtdresses, sleeveless jackets and coats and clever cardigan sweaters knitted low in the back to become halter tops. Banana Republic will make a mint knocking him off.

An unusual array of designers have embraced the new fuller silhouette, with a notable exception. Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga introduced sleek leggings and clingy, color-blocked mini scuba dresses with deep-sea prints. In their silky, shiny, sleek and black pants and tops, the models looked like seals on heels. Ghesquiere’s ultra-high-waist leggings and pants with long waist darts looked exaggerated, even on the perfectly proportioned Gisele Bundchen. If he once again has predicted the next fashion wave, we’ll soon be back in black denim jeans and bike shorts--as if they weren’t bad enough the first time.

Working women, the artistic ones at least, may discover some unexpected professional attire in Dries Van Noten’s unlikely mix of 1950s silhouettes, punk accessories and an intriguing mix of African folkloric and acid colors. He playfully “embroidered” jackets and even leather belts with rows of small safety pins, the reigning symbol of punk. But the collection wasn’t about rebellion.

“The ‘50s were a very optimistic period,” he said backstage. “We need optimism right now.”

At the very least, we can all be happy that fashion is abandoning purposefully ugly or aggressively trashy clothes. Some guys, such as Alber Elbaz, just like to make a lady look like a lady.

After moving from four jobs in just about as many years, the peripatetic Elbaz seems to have a solid future at Lanvin, where he too worked with an African palette accented by Old World crystal jewels. Using satin ribbons, pleated sheer gauze and clusters of crystals, Elbaz fashioned short chemise dresses for day and night, and intricately gathered dresses that fit loosely at the waist. Executive women could wear his raw-edged, linen skirt suits.

Customers come first in the work of Celine designer Michael Kors, whose upbeat collection was ready to travel. Carefree crinkled linen and cotton cut into sleek trench coats, tunics and trousers look great when they’re messy. Shimmery silk prints and hammered gold-coin chandelier earrings, bracelet cuffs and belts added a luxury vibe to his easy-wearing lineup.

Three seasons into his gig as creative director at Emanuel Ungaro, Giambattista Valli respectfully evoked his master’s signature polka dots, florals and hot pinks.

Though it’s hard to picture a run on Crayola-bright matador jackets and cropped white jeans under densely ruffled dresses, Ungaro, and now Valli, have a way of making them sensual and simple.

For his namesake Lagerfeld Gallery collection, Karl Lagerfeld put denim micro-shorts beneath his sheer dresses, a practical but sexy continuation of his new alliance with Diesel jeans. Though men have long (and awkwardly) combined jeans with tuxedos, Lagerfeld gave the idea a feminine twist with pleated tuxedo shirts, shrunken tux jackets and ankle-sweeping beaded tunics worn in combination with black-washed shorts or white denim miniskirts or rolled-cuff jeans.

The history of dressed-up denim is dubious, and its future uncertain, even with Lagerfeld as a guide to good taste. One can only imagine the disastrous knockoffs to come.