PARIS, Oct 10, 2001/ --- One of the most exciting new talents to emerge during the Spring 2002 Paris season is Anne Valerie Hash, a young French designer who manages to make deconstruction both beautiful and practical.

The diminutive Hash showed her a collection of couture and ready-to-wear pieces Sunday upstairs in the Onward Kashiyama boutique in St Germain.

Prior to launching her own label, Hash worked for a slew of fashion houses in various capacities after graduating from Paris' prestigious Chambre Syndicale School of haute couture.

"I worked in the studio at Chanel, the atelier at Christian Lacroix and Christian Dior with Gianfranco Ferre and in the press office of Karl Lagerfeld. But I was never more than three months any one place. If you work too long for any designer you adopt their style and I didn't want that," smiled Hash.

Hers is certainly an authentically different voice. Her big idea is deconstructing men's clothes, before rebuilding them into fresh and feminine clothes for women. Men's wool herringbone pants morph into dresses, cut up lab coats re-emerge as artfully cut white shirts and lapels turn out to be waistbands from men's trousers.

Hash's 40-piece collection was always arty but never impractical. Hash, who has previously staged two ephemeral couture shows, plans to present a catwalk show at the next couture season in January in Paris.

Anne Valerie Hash

Anne Valerie Hash (center) with models