At Louis Vuitton, Alexander McQueen and Miu Miu: Romancing the Individual

PARIS — Farewell, autumn/winter. Crocuses are poking through the earth in the Bois du Boulogne, and the thaw has finally hit New York. Even in that bubble known as fashionland, the season has come to an end.

It went out with a biosphere and a bouquet of kitsch; some Beefeater guards and a red, red rose — a reminder, really, that for all that it is about global business, it is also about identity and imagination.

It’s Giambattista Valli’s ability to see a puffa coat and, using Harris Tweed and shearling, feathers and horse-shoe print, transform it into an extravaganza of equestrian-inspired tunics and overcoats at Moncler Gamme Rouge. It’s Miuccia Prada’s understanding that candy-colored oversize houndstooth and Crayola-bright faux crocodile (and snakeskin and leopard spots and glitter and gems) can be worn with a wink and a smile, as they were at Miu Miu.

What? You don’t want to be a walking piece of wardrobe pop art? A human ode to the appeal of irony in an apron dress?

That’s O.K.: Somewhere in the world there is someone who does (maybe the artist/author/director Miranda July, or the eightysomething feminist film director Agnès Varda, or the young actresses Mia Goth and Imogen Poots, all of whom were in the Miu Miu front row).

Which is the thing about this season: Its hallmark was the acknowledgement of the individual. That’s another way of saying it had a dearth of trends: burgundy, lamé (or Lurex), tweed of all types, leather leggings — such is the list. But that’s just fine.

At a time when large chunks of the world are closing ranks and buttoning up, when Marine Le Pen and the Front National are on the ascendant, and the anti-immigration U.K. Independence Party is forcing the agenda in Britain, fashion went in the opposite direction. It wore its politics on its many sleeves, from Sarah Burton’s poetic Alexander McQueen to Nicolas Ghesquière’s self-confident modernism at Louis Vuitton by way of Iris van Herpen’s terraforming of the human body.

You know something has loosened up when instead of the usual footwear torture-fest, Ms. Burton puts stretch leather boots with perspex heels on the McQueen runway. Though her subject was a paean to the rose, there was nary a thorn in sight.

Instead, in the arched stone bowels of the Conciergerie, the historic prison that once housed Marie Antoinette and the Comtesse du Barry, out came frayed patent jacquard coats etched in blooms, buds of pale pink and red leather slipdresses with finely pleated skirts, and lacy skeleton knits, a veil of fabric over the waist like the ghost of a corset now shed.

Shredded organza dresses exploded in millefeuilles of flowers at the hem, and cobweb gowns fluttered from neck to floor, raining decaying blooms on the body, and touching not just the skin, but the soul: a memory of what was, and what might be again.

It’s the opposite approach to that of Ms. van Herpen, the much-feted young Dutch designer who gets turned on by physics, can title her collection "Hacking Infinity" with a straight face, and whose idea of fabric research involves stainless steel weaves. Really.

The latter turned out to be an ultrathin metallic material with an iridescent sheen that resembled oil slicks on the ocean and that could be molded at will into little dresses and delicate fan-like tops. Even the shoes were feats of technology: 3-D-printed explosions of crystals cantilevered at a vertiginous angle.

Some of it was beautiful, especially columns that looked like liquid spills of molten bronze; some was uncomfortable (spiky Plasticine weaves like minidress exoskeletons); and some was just startling: a holographic belt that re-sized a waist and played tricks on the eye. Ms. van Herpen is fully capable of making a nice jumpsuit — she did one, in ruby silk — but why should she, when she can make a point instead?

Science is often considered the polar opposite of fashion: a discipline that is cerebral, not emotional; quantifiable, not tactile. People also once thought the world was flat. This is how you move on.

Or one way, in any case; another belongs to Vuitton’s Mr. Ghesquière, who has liberated his brand from theme, reference or decade (and largely, though not entirely, logo), to exhilarating effect.

Building a complex of geodesic domes outside the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the better to watch the world and its women go by, he offered up oversize shearling furs and undersize leather skirts; no-nonsense linen trouser suits and jellyfish brocades; puff-sleeved close-to-the-body minidresses and ribbed denim knits, the hems given just a fillip of flare. A crystal tank top over an abbreviated gold-and-silver sequin skirt fit into no box, and was limited by no border.

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