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Paris Fashion Week 2014: Hussein Chalayan nails it

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PARIS -- Designer Hussein Chalayan, one of fashion’s biggest thinkers, never ceases to amaze. On the runway he’s shown remote-controlled dresses, collapsible wood coffee-table skirts and many more innovative designs.

And on Friday he surprised us again, albeit in a much more banal way, by showing a dress with a front panel covered in rows and rows of colorful fake fingernails. It was genius in a lowbrow way -- and guaranteed to make sure everyone was paying attention at the morning show. There were double and triple takes.

The rest of the collection was sportswear with an avant-garde twist, including leather jackets with zip-off panels, hybrid culotte-skirts (just one pants leg!) that somehow managed to look chic not weird, worn with boxy jackets that buttoned low.

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Dresses were embellished with panels of draped velvet or lame in architectural-looking prints, which created a modern yet feminine look. The collection was commercial but interesting, and that’s a magic combination.

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booth.moore@latimes.com

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