it felt like the real mood of the collection was dictated by Slimane’s L.A. sojourn. The pared-to-the-bone rock-chick look—with its legging-slender pants and tiny sequined jackets—was one facet. The other, deeper reference was the city’s plangent, occult pull. The women on Slimane’s catwalk today looked like the witchy covens who’d surround rock groups in the sixties/seventies heyday of the Strip. Or maybe even earlier, when the artist Cameron seduced the stalwarts of the Ferus Gallery. The floor-sweeping, full-sleeve dresses had the deeply gothic tinge that is peculiar to L.A. With the models’ faces uniformly shaded by wide-brimmed hats, it seemed that witchy seduction was the agenda of the evening. A bizarre way to stake a claim to one of fashion’s most unimpeachable legacies, maybe, but it felt perfectly in tune with what one could legitimately claim to be Slimane’s California obsession. And the clothes struck a major chord with the babes in the audience—the Kills’ Alison Mosshart claimed she was ready to take a fourth job to afford them.
