PARIS, Feb 27, 2006/ FW/ --- Jean Charles de Castelbajac took a sabbatical recently and it seems that with a little time on his hands, his thoughts, like so many others recently, have turned to England. The invitation to his come-back show featured a tone-on-tone black Union Jack flag and the tag line was lifted from the British royal family; ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’.

This strange motto, translating roughly as, ‘shame on he who thinks badly of me’, comes from an obscure incident hundreds of years ago involving a queen, a garter and her favorite courtier. It was much more relevant today however as a sentiment expressed by French fashion in general towards a favorite of theirs. Everyone was rooting for him but in the end the show was a little disappointing.

Inspired by Pop art and the London of the 1960’s, the show was as awash with color as one would expect from this designer but the cultural references that he hit upon were nothing if not clichéd. A case in point being the outfits made to resemble Buckingham Palace’s guardsman uniforms; beaver skin hats, red braided uniform etc.

Another key look was a series of shift dresses, an upper section added in the form of a bolèro. This upper part was fashioned to mimic ‘typically’ English things such as a soccer player’s jersey or a city gent’s shirt, tie and pinstriped suit. The skirt section was emblazoned with the two-tone face of a famous English person. Shakespeare, Queen Victoria and Kate Moss were all honored.

The clothes may not have been too bad in their form but, by train, central London to the heart of Paris takes less than three hours and so it was a shame to see a designer reheating the same old intellectually lightweight stereotypes. Fashion may not be the purest form of art but a good designer can still cause people to think – this encouraged just the opposite.

When de Castelbajac concentrated on designing clothes rather than tourists’ snapshots he had a lot more success however. A series of ribbed cream knit mini-dresses, shorts and long cardigans were sexy, sophisticated and spoke of today. It was just disappointing that so much of the collection wanted to play with formulaic takes on the past.

Jean Charles de Castelbajac will be back with better collections than this. Maybe he was just a little rusty.

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac