Elie Saab Haute Couture Fall 2010

Maestro of the red carpet.

Style sets the stage:

"Before the show, Saab said, "If a woman doesn't want 'rich,' she doesn't come to couture." So rich was what he gave her, from the moment Karolina Kurkova sashayed out onto the catwalk in a gown of deep red guipure lace swathed in silk tulle. The dress that followed her was short but scarcely simpler, with its bands of chiffon and lace liberally doused with sequins.

The designer claimed he was breaking some personal ground with his focus on classical draping. There was lots of asymmetric single-shoulder action, and he was also keen to pay more attention to the back of his dresses. That's where the décolleté was this season, which often left the front decorously covered up to the throat. Put that together with the color scheme; the broad-shouldered, bat-winged proportions; and the embellishment of the fabrics, and the collection felt heavy, even slightly old-fashioned. Saab is a proven master of red-carpet dressing, but these clothes sometimes made one wonder in exactly what decade that carpet was being unrolled."

When it comes to the intersection of Haute Couture and the red carpet, a handful of names reign supreme: Basil Soda, Zuhair Murad, Georges Chakra, and Elie Saab. A red carpet couturier is naturally going to offer fairly middle of the road designs that don't tend to challenge any conventions. Nothing wrong with that. Who's going to complain that a collection is too pretty (aside from bitchy fashion editors looking to prove their edginess)? We don't find anything here to be all that exciting, but we can't deny that everything is beautiful and rich-looking. We're not crazy about that seafoam color and one or two looks veer awfully close to Caftan-Land, but as a whole, it's one big collection of pretty.