Daily Front Row

2012 March 1

Paris Fall 2012: Manish Arora, Sharon Wauchob

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Manish Arora Fall 2012
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(PARIS) Manish Arora
The once mute Brooklyn-based graffiti master Judith Supine served as the inspiration for Manish Arora's rainbow-hued airbrushed assortment. Growing up, Supine didn't utter a peep until one month after his seventeenth birthday. In the interim, he learned to communicate with a spray can, a glue stick, a pile of cheap paint, and a pile of dirty mags from bankrupt porn shops. The result: gritty neon mixed media collages with titles like "Nothingness in a Dress" and "Give Up the Ghost and Put on the Face." Arora piggybacked Supine's Surrealistic élan at the Cité de la Mode--most notably with fifties-style, nipped waist dresses embellished with sequined shag or washed in watercolor resembling aerosol art. In a more literal spin? Pencil skirts, punky bombers and black tees were superimposed with Supine's green-headed goblin gals from famous works like "Eyes Without a Face." These were all highlighted against a "Life is Beautiful" backdrop spray painted in-house at the start of the show by black-clothed street taggers, leaving more than one editor feeling a little foggy.

Sharon Wauchob
After a well-received collection for Edun during New York Fashion Week, Sharon Wauchob switched gears for her eponymous line. The Irish designer riffed on her trademark flapper with one dropped-waist dress after another. Neutral, light-as-a-feather frocks with pleated bottoms and paneled tops grazed just below the knee. These dainty delicacies worked well for the most part as in a cranberry and black creation coupled with an asymmetrical leather and shag vest. Wauchob could have easily slipped into no-man's-land with her loose, mid-calf silhouette, but managed to dodge the dowdy with a barrage of highly edited coats, from a streamlined dove cocoon-topped coat, to a long and linear black leather vest adorned with a shaggy pelt.