Paris Fashion Week highlights: Elie Saab

By Emily Borrett.

[Show as slideshow]

12►

Fashion house Elie Saab has been a firm favourite with fashion pack-leaders such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning and Blake Lively at pretty much every red-carpet event that’s happened over the past year, so the standard expected for their SS2011 collection at Paris Fashion Week was always going to be high. But they outdid themselves with what they presented on the runway.

The label is getting well-known for their sugary, sparkle-encrusted candy-coloured dresses that have been coveted on the red carpet a lot recently, and the beginning of the collection promised to be much of the same, as a model walked out in a pair of lilac tapered trousers, tied in a sash-bow at the front, and matching blazer worn over an embellished lilac vest. Good enough to eat. Following suit was a candyfloss-looking pleated chiffon gown in a matching pale purple, and stunning coral embellished minidress bow detailing around the navel area that I’ll probably be seeing in my dreams for years. Very, very girly, yes, but the collection avoided being nauseating by having a few more modern, understated basics thrown into the mix – notable was the fitted cream dress with very Balmain-style padded shoulders, and the sky-blue fitted maxi. It’s colour was so dreamy, it didn’t need any fussiness or detailing – and so it didn’t have any. Perfect.

Other designers have surprised and shocked us with drastic changes in their collections’ aesthetics this week, but Elie Saab has stuck to what it knows: beautiful, girly cocktail dresses and separates. You can look at it two ways: you can say that it’s unadventurous and more of the same, or you can say that they’re just on to a Very Good Thing. Maybe sometimes sticking to what you know isn’t so bad at all.