THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND THE SHOULDER TREND

Balmain.

The Spring 2009 collection featured glamorous cocktail dresses and uniform jackets with exaggerated shoulder pads that referenced the 80's power shoulder and futuristic space style at the same time. Fashion execs, celbs, and fast fashion chain stores cought on immediatley discussing, wearing, and knocking off the acclaimed collection last summer. This season Christophe Decarnin, Balmain Creative Director, continued to include his most noticible design detail, the new power shoudler, updating it's shape to  delicately angled points. A lot of the looks have already been featured on the red carpet and in magazines, but it's always cool to see how a designer presents the pieces and compare them to how the world interprets them.

The Balmain runway show also mixed in casual staples, like an over sized white t shirt, with high shine separates creating very wearable, cool girl, high street looks. Reoccurring design details, outside of  "the shoulder", included small, Chanel like quilting, and split leg herem pants. 

 

 

The Spring 2010 collection didn't disappoint either! Decarnin seemes to have pulled inspiration from vinatge warriors.  Graceful Gladiator meets tattered Civil War hero dipped in shine : D.
Runway pics after jump.