Armani Glamour at Midday

Photographs by Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times Three looks from Giorgio Armani’s fall couture collection.

PARIS — Shortly after 11 a.m. I left my hotel and rounded the corner into the Place Vendôme, crowded with tourists in shorts and sandals, and, streaming slowly past the Ritz, a line of black sedans delivering guests to the Giorgio Armani couture show, in the far corner of the square presided over by Napoleon’s statue. The sun was glaringly bright, adding to the contrast between the regular folks and the fashion people. Near the curb I watched a cameraman squat low to photograph a woman as she scrambled out of her car. Not the most favorable position — for her. More photographers waited in the shadows of the corner and along a short length of black carpet, set off by velvet ropes, by the entrance.

Inside it was a dark cave of competing scents and waiters offering drinks. The runway was narrow, metallic and full of people aiming cameras at Daphne Guinness and Claire Danes; one’s movements were reduced to a caterpillar’s twisting from branch to leaf. I found my seat next to Vanessa Friedman of The Financial Times (which, by the way, has an interesting piece by Ms. Guinness explaining why she bought Isabella Blow’s clothes and hats).

Carmen Kass opened the show, which was a little bit of a surprise, though not as surprising as Mr. Armani’s focus on day clothes in his fall couture collection. He tends to have lots of special pieces, mostly evening and red-carpet, in his couture shows, but obviously not every hour occasions sparkles, and besides, his roots are in tailoring. So it was a pleasure to see what he proposed for day up to the cocktail hour. The looks included small, asymmetrical-front jackets in biscuit, beige and tobacco brown, some with a glassy effect in the fabrics; skirts that fell below the knees and had a bit of a flare; and some slim, pretty wool dresses with a swag of draping. One of the best looks in the show — modern, different — was a sleeveless wool jumpsuit with a half-draped front.

The evening dresses, simple in line and floor-length, featured dense embroideries in sequins and crystals — again, in those biscuit-to-bronze tones. Over all, the clothes had something of a faultless elegance that seemed to ignore the shifts occurring out in the bright sunshine — among them, the demand for mobility.

On Monday night I dropped into Chanel to see Karl Lagerfeld and watch some of the fittings. The Chanel show is later on Tuesday. He said he had some hemlines below the knee, but in any case he doesn’t believe in long dresses for evening. “It doesn’t look modern,” he said.