FASHION DESIGNER TRENDS

In Fashion, the Beauty (and Challenge) of Looking Back   THE ARCHIVES OF BALENCIAGA, the 100-year-old fashion house, are held in a raw concrete warehouse space in Paris. There are 6,000 items in total — sculptural silk ball gowns and cocoon-shaped coats and a tobacco-brown chenille-embroidered lace coat once owned by Wallis, Duchess of Windsor — all shrouded in calico garment bags. Especially delicate pieces are wrapped in acid-free tissue paper to protect against dust and moths and are laid to rest in cardboard boxes referred to in the business as ‘‘coffins.’’ Balenciaga’s haute couture maison, formerly located on the Avenue George V, was a chapel dedicated to the worship of fashion as art; here, in its cavernous catalog of designs past, the atmosphere is of a crypt — or even a shrine. When I visited the archive in the spring of 2017, the debut fall 2016 collection of Balenciaga’s latest artistic director, Demna Gvasalia, had just arrived. The conservation team, led by arch...

Chasing Fashion’s Cutting Edge Dustin Pittman’s gaze roamed the bustling back office of Century 21 on Cortlandt Street, where Kim Shui was prepping her fashion show. In an instant, he found his mark. She was China Lee, who would be modeling one of the giddily mismatched plaids and brocades Ms. Shui planned to unveil a couple of floors below. Moments later, Mr. Pittman was hustling Ms. Lee into a nearby restroom, propping her against a suitably uncluttered wall and, camera raised, sweet-talking her into a series of poses, some coy, others as steamy as a night in Belize. “I want a little bit more you, not model-y,” he said. “Kind of play with the dreads. Look at me, intense — that’s nice, fire in the eyes, that’s it, that’s it.” Ms. Lee complied, tossing her braids this way and that. In a scant five minutes, Mr. Pittman had what he’d come for. “She lost the veneer,” he said. “Now you can see who she is.” If he’s brash, even a little over the top, well, that’s a privilege he has earn...