Fashion Review: Walking the Fashion High Wire

PARIS — Out the women came, carrying one another on their backs. Up the women went, hoisted by each other’s hands. Over their bodies curved, all different sizes and strengths. Maria Grazia Chiuri had hired the all-female acrobatic troupe Mimbre for her Dior show, and they stacked themselves into various innovative kinds of human pyramids…

The Fix: Beyond the Built-in Bookcase

Like a bespoke suit tailored to flatter your body, custom-made built-ins can enhance the appearance of a home — elevating the design, offering creative solutions to everyday problems and disguising unsightly features like exposed pipes or air ducts. “If you do it right, the built-in becomes a hybrid of a work of art and a…

Celine’s New Wave Man

PARIS — The kids will be all right. Hedi Slimane will see to that. The designer who almost single-handedly altered the shape of men’s wear when, in the early years of the century, he introduced the skinny suit at Dior Homme and who afterward rescued Saint Laurent from the slag heap of market irrelevance with…

The Treasure Behind the Wall

Alex Bolen, the chief executive of Oscar de la Renta, planned to have his new store in Paris open around this week, just in time for the couture shows. He planned to have a presence in the city even if he didn’t have a show. He had it all figured out. Then, last summer, in…

A New Designer Is Named to Reinvent Lanvin

The restructuring of Lanvin, the oldest French fashion house in continuous existence and one built on the premise of classic femininity and strength, is finally complete. On Monday, the brand’s new owner, the Chinese conglomerate Fosun International, and its new chief executive, Jean-Philippe Hecquet, named their new creative director: Bruno Sialelli, a relative unknown from…

In Paris, the Hunt for Real Emotion

PARIS — When, at 12, Grayson Perry began covertly dressing in women’s clothes, he assumed in his innocence that the impulse must have something to do with wanting to be a member of the opposite sex. For decades he pursued his cross-dressing adventures, first in private and then very publicly as a Turner Prize-winning artist…

Do You Take This Robot …

When Akihiko Kondo, a 35-year-old school administrator in Tokyo, strolled down the aisle in a white tuxedo in November, his mother was not among the 40 well-wishers in attendance. For her, he said, “it was not something to celebrate.” You might see why. The bride, a songstress with aquamarine twin tails named Hatsune Miku, is…