PARIS, Jan 27, 2007/ FW/ --- After a career of forty years and seven seasons in the off calendar during Paris Haute Couture, Japanese designer Yumi Katsura has decided to offer Ji Haye –a Paris-based Korean designer who had been showing under her own name as a guest member of Haute Couture until the Fall 2004 season- the creative direction for her Couture line. This is why the collection presented in the very elegant Salon Opéra at Paris Grand Hotel on January 24th certainly marked a turn in the Japanese house’s history.

The collection was themed on Marie-Antoinette and her favourite flower, the rose, enriched here by the volumes derived from the Japanese Obi. Yumi Katsura’s tradition of audacious colours was here interpreted by Ji Haye on the basis of the colours of Versailles (ardent yellows, absinth greens, porcelain blues, blotting-paper pinks) on the best silks.

Uneven in quality, the collection was poorer in the execution of jackets and tailored outfits, much better on some evening dresses. Although the press notes claimed that there was no kimono in the dressing-room, one of the standouts was indeed an interpretation of the Japanese traditional outfit consisting of several layers of white silk organza delicately hand painted with the ever present medallion -called ROR for Rose Obi Rose- that gave more coherence to the various numbers on the runway.

Another standout was certainly, in the tradition of the best Ji Haye evening wear a long dress of white shantung embroidered with pearls of bakelite with a big volume from the knees to the feet consisting of white preserved rose petals caged in green tulle to create a foam effect.

The structures of the dresses and their proportions were sometimes very interesting like on a porcelain blue duchesse satin and yellow organza bustier dress, sometimes too heavy like on a mermaid dress of multicolour scales, embroidered with “Yumi” roses.

The atmosphere of the show was more based on the merry vision of Sofia Coppola’s movie “Marie-Antoinette” than on the tragic destiny of France’s last queen. Any parallel between the execution of Marie-Antoinette by the French revolutionaries and the execution (by the Japanese), a century later, of Korea’s Empress Myeongseong could have made a statement in the collection. It might have seemed pertinent for a Korean designer living on French soil now at the head of a Japanese couture line. But Ji Haye did not dare go so far, probably fearing to tread over the threshold of the politically correct.

Let us wish that Ji Haye, who had known a very promising debut in Paris Haute Couture in her very beginnings under her own name, and whose collections then seemed to fade away slowly, will be courageous enough at the head of Yumi Katsura Couture to bring more novelty and impertinence in the collections. She might just not do so, if more room is not made for her to feel comfortable enough, as seemed to indicate the designer’s bow which, after the finale, Yumi Katsura herself took, alone. It could come from an Asian way of thinking: the brand before the real designer. However, it does not really correspond to the Paris traditions of Haute Couture, where the individual is seen as more important than the collective embodiment of the brand, even when it takes the form of the house’s founder. A good compromise, respecting the various cultures’ etiquettes, would have been a common bow by Yumi Katsura and Ji Haye.