>> INSIDER WIRE —Legendary for their skyscraping heels, the Vogue Paris team threw an unexpected curve ball over the weekend.  Carine Roitfeld, Geraldine Saglio, and Emmanuelle Alt all showed up at Gareth Pugh in little black flats — I wonder if there was a memo? [Jak & Jil]

Severely sexy and more than a little brassy, Decarin's Balmain is no dusty old Parisian house and his renovations are sure to catch the eyes of hungry starlets looking to get attention. Puffy ballerina minidresses, sequins, acid washed ripped tight jeans, diaphanous leg bearing gowns, and just a little bit of lacy bondage made for a very eye-catching collection.

Delirious fluttering romance has never appealed much to us, which explains why we can't stand Jane Austen or expansive Edwardian romances, but we do love a knowing reinterpretation of the genre hence our affection for steam punk and Dodie Smith's dark commedic romance I Capture The Castle.

Olivier Theyskens too seems to share our desire to make something more of the magic of Edwardiana. But Nina Ricci's Spring 2009 collection isn't simply in the vein of over done gowns and dusty organza, there is deeper and more haunting history of Theyskens' work here. As in I Capture The Castle, many of the hallmarks of the romantic era are there, brooding beauties, gauzy flights of fancy, and yet there is a sense of decay and displacement as neither the collection nor the novel are in the proper timeline required to be taken at face value. The backdrop is right for romance but the time, place, and viewers are not. And therein lies the strength of the Spring 2009 collection. We have the woody colors, the billowing sleeves, and then we have bared legs ripping us out of any hoped for historical place holder.

If the construction were not so impeccable on the fly away dress panels connecting the hose we would wonder at a kind of deliberate deconstruction at work in order to show the legs in the midst of otherwise full gowns. It gives the sense of a tearing away at the original to create something new, not a simulacrum of an age gone by, but a sad renewed sense of the "now" even as the world (as is the case of Smith's protagonists in I Capture the Castle) moves on without them. Brooding, sad, and deeply romantic Theyskens' collection for Nina Ricci is hardly commercial enough to appeal to many. It doesn't veer enough to the side of authentic period romance to make sense to anyone that isn't just a little twisted in their own interpretations. We imagine Olivier Theyskens as something of Dodie Smith's Cassandra Mortmain, living between two worlds, a genius without any appropriate ending.

An Vandevorst and Filip Arickx are known for their white shirts, that most basic of clothing items, and yet their ability to rework what constitutes the platonic ideal of shirt impresses each season as they evolved from tailored masculinity for Fall 2008 to straight up sex appeal with their lingerie inspired Spring 2009 collection.

Beautiful white day shirt dresses and more lacy boudoir fare like full length slit slips combined with garter belts and sheer back-seam stockings to dramatic effect. A piece of particular note combined laser cut legging and a white tunic. Their "just been fucked" hair and red red lips went straight for the va-va-voom. Thankfully warm oranges and cool greens provided some day wear as well.

Bruno Pieters' austere geometry had little in common with the cheerful Lie Sang Bong's studied precision, his Spring 2009 collection had a kind of strict tailoring that came close to being a dour rebuke of the female form with boxy coats and square shoulders. This is not to say that the collection did not have a lot of sex appeal, even with precise cuts and a monochromatic palette we still got to see a lot of leg. But that kind of crisp sexuality is enough of a throwback to 80s power dressing to make it feel not precisely modern. Though admittedly we like the collection enough to see ourselves in it but we will fully admit we have throwback tastes from time to time.

Korean designer Lie Sang Bong could only ever show in Paris with his penchant for the curious and his admirable ability to bring together seemingly clashing aesthetics from plain white structured shirt dresses to loud geometric suits. And yet his Spring 2009 collection was all part of a continuum of precision even as the bright colors in linear procession filled the eye with wild possibilities. But the collection ever went over the edge into chaos. You can see a graceful formalism in his sheer bubble skirts and even his flowing evening gowns were restrained by orderly symmetry.

Congratulations to Suzy Menkes our favorite fashion samurai for her 20 years at the International Herald Tribune, fashion wouldn't be the same without her incisive, intellectual and down right funny writing. Plus who doesn't love that she gets her write ups done nearly as quickly as your average blogger?

Net-a-Porter and McQueen are solving the how to seat everyone in the age of new media and just doing the damn show online. Democracy NOW! Except for the price tag of course.

Could the outlet mall be the future of luxury? Value Retail does luxury on the cheapish.

Indian jewelers are reinventing traditional styles for a new generation.

Sophia Coppola directed Christian Dior’s Miss Dior Chérie fragrance newest commercial. The ad, scheduled to go worldwide early next year, stars Belorussian model Maryna Linchuk.

Galleries Lafayette is opening a store in Casablanca.

Burberry is opening a children's store in the Westchester Mall in NY. Doesn't their first freestanding kiddie store in Hong Kong look darling?