Paris Fashion Week: Carven, Roland Mouret, Paco Rabanne and Vetements

from Paris’s Fashion Week.

Carven showed young and sophisticated miniskirts and Roland Mouret went A-line

1. Carven: Where the Minis Are

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Carven’s new design duo was announced this week, but they’ve been working secretly on the collection they showed on Thursday for several months. Adrien Caillaudaud and Alexis Martial got their shot at the job after a spate of designer musical chairs that began last fall when Peter Copping left Nina Ricci for Oscar de la Renta.

Guillaume Henry left Carven to take the big job at Nina Ricci, which left Carven to turn to the Mr. Caillaudaud, a former accessories designer for Tods and Jil Sander, and Mr. Martial, who left his job designing Iceberg for the new gig. Let the dominoes fall.

Carven will be where to turn for miniskirts, for anyone who isn’t on board with the season’s longer skirt lengths. The looks are young, colorful, and sophisticated, but it’s a tricky market position using luxe fabrics—there were jacquard bomber jackets and eel-skin trench coats—that mean this collection is aimed at the rich girl set. —Christina Binkley

2. Roland Mouret: A-Line Is for a Statement

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Fashion shows rarely tread into political territory, but designer Roland Mouret’s collection was inspired by the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, the designer said. His muse, he said, was a woman of words who speaks and writes freely.

The ability “to open your mouth, that quality [that] we take for granted,” was at the heart of his collection, he said. Mr. Mouret said he was particularly influenced by recent events in France, following terror attacks at French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in early January.

The designer explained that he used larger-than-usual volumes, such as A-line skirts—to express the political dimension of his collection—by reflecting a lack of restrictions and freedom of expression. A-line skirts added new shapes in a line that is usually consciously tight to the body, but held to the French designer’s usual code of geometric shapes and elegantly tailored dresses. —Nadya Masidlover

3. Paco Rabanne: Mod Squad

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Julien Dossena is a rising star in Paris—someone we’re likely to hear a lot more about—and he’s deftly breathing new life into Paco Rabanne. References to that mod label’s ’70s heyday are all on his runway, but done with modern street savvy.

The killer look in his fall collection was a reference to Mr. Rabanne’s famous aluminum dress, but Mr. Dossena’s used flexible plastic discs, and lined the pants, tops and dresses with jersey for comfort. (Mr. Rabanne’s aluminum garments were famously uncomfy.)

“It’s good luxury-weight plastic,” said Mr. Dossena backstage, noting that it’s flexible and will be no problem to walk or sit in the pants. “We looked at so much plastic.”

Mr. Dossena wisely toned down the overly busy designs of his spring collection, though there were perhaps still too many details such as shin-level pull-strings on pants, and overly plentiful straps, which distracted from the tailoring and intriguing textiles such as rubberized leather. —Christina Binkley

4. Vetements: What Alice Would Wear

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PHOTO: VETEMENTS

This season, the new whispered-about, gotta-see-it label in Paris is Vetements, which held its underground show off the official calendar in a club in the Marais on Thursday night. Shortlisted for the LVMH prize and designed collectively by alums of Margiela and Louis Vuitton, the label is talent loaded and garnering wide attention. Kanye West wore one of the label’s recalibrated hoodies to the Lanvin show on Thursday.

Vetements (which means “clothes” in French) also appears to be gunning to take over territory that Margiela once owned: an archly off-kilter, anonymously designed label that reworks the rules of excellent tailoring. It’s the Alice in Wonderland of Paris fashion.

In the fall collection, sweatshirt hoodies were cut to poof out with volume at the shoulder blades. Suits were enormous, their dimensions exaggerated and crooked so that shoulders drooped from one side.

The jeans could easily have been overlooked. They were Levi's 501s, one of the design collective’s members explained during a preview at the LVMH prize cocktail, that have been re-cut to achieve perfect tailoring but with bizarrely with mismatched seams. —Christina Binkley