>> Raf Simons had a tough act to follow after his stunning fringe-filled Spring 2009 Jil Sander collection, but he pulled it off.  The first half of the Fall 2009 show was filled with simple dresses, tailored coats, trousers, and flats in a predominantly neutral palette, and then a flash of colored strobe lights came on and the real experimentation began.  As Cathy Horyn put it, Raf "tried to defy gravity" — stunning curvilinear shapes poked out from the hip of a dress or snaked around the neck of a coat; a contrastingly bright yellow peeked out from the lining of a dress.  Two pieces will for sure get play — the structured orange dress on Vlada Roslykova and the black dress on Nimue Smit with asymmetrical shoulders — padding on one side, points on the other.  The only question that remains: why was Lithuanian newcomer Auguste Tomasuite (aka Auguste Abeliunaite) crying on the runway?
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>> For Fall 2008, three of the big campaigns that every model wants to catch — Prada, Balenciaga, and Miu Miu — all went with one big name — Linda Evangelista, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Vanessa Paradis, respectively.

Come Spring 2009, all three labels have decided to switch things up by using a large number of new faces — Prada is using eight models (Anna Jagodzinska, Giedre Dukauskaite, Katrin Thormann, Nimue Smit, Sigrid Agren, Toni Garrn, Viktoriya Sasonkina, Ymre Stiekema); Miu Miu is using eight models as "accessories" to campaign star Katie Holmes (Darya Kurovska, Elena Lomkova, Imogen Morris-Clarke, Katie Fogarty, Myf Shepherd, Sophie Srej, Tilda Lindstam, Yulia Leontieva); and Balenciaga is going with ten models (Amanda Laine, Anabela Belikova, Anna Jagodzinska, Anya Kazakova, Diana Farkhullina, Elsa Sylvan, Hanne-Gaby Odiele, Iris Strubegger, Katie Fogarty, Kinga Rajzak).

Surprisingly, there are only two girls overlapping between the campaigns: Anna Jagodzinska in Balenciaga and Prada and Katie Fogarty in Miu Miu and Balenciaga, and especially in Miu Miu's cast, some girls — Tilda Lindstam, Yulia Leontieva — are very new faces. Although some are skeptical, especially in the case of Miu Miu, that all the models cast will make it into the final shots, it's notable that all three labels, which usually go with one face, have all decided that power comes in numbers this season.  Get to know the chosen faces in the gallery below.
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