(Photo: FirstView)

Christophe Decarnin at Balmain
Every so often the fashion world falls obsessively in love with a designer because he is making exactly the clothes the cool kids would like to be wearing that very minute. That designer now is Balmain’s Decarnin. He claims Roitfeld mère (the French Vogue editor) et fille (the New York transplant and art director) as clients and muses; their influence is manifest in the sexy minidresses, rock-influenced basics like distressed jeans and tuxedo jackets, mullet-cut ball gowns (short in front, long in the back), and extreme shoulder pads that are giving this old house a new relevance and sense of now—thanks to the eighties trend still coursing through fashion. And because Balmain has been one of the great French couture houses for decades, all these casually, perfectly hip clothes are finished with beautiful technique, giving them weight and seriousness.