Tonight, Josephine!

Reasserting its place at the forefront of the fashion world, this season Paris' pride seems to have channeled the spirits of two faces of Frenchness — Emperor Napoleon and Empress Josephine. In previous seasons that reference would have been obvious with frogging, braiding, officers' coats, and Empire-line dresses. But this was the season of subtlety. The Emperor's influence was everywhere in fine, narrow little jackets (a season essential): with a curling collar atop a loose white dress at Stella McCartney; cut away into swallowtails with a Havana vibe at Lagerfeld Gallery; with a cute thrift feel at M+F Girbaud; in subtle stone shades at Akris; and with telling striped lining at Ann Demeulemeester. Martin Margiela subverted the theme with varsity motifs and Chloé, Balenciaga, and Keita Maruyama used strategic seaming and buttons to take the Napoleon-at-sea route.

Josephine's influence lay more in the use of soft tones from the time she was empress of Napoleon's doomed domains. A play on tone was a major feature as two or more shades of the same color, especially non-colors like sand, smoke, and eau de nil, played out on the same outfit. Vivienne Westwood draped two tones of gray on a skirt, developing the idea into a ball gown replete with two shades of gray and pink side by side. Viktor & Rolf, in the second half of their runway extravaganza, bounced sweet shades of party pink off each other and Véronique Branquinho's muddy shades in flannel and jersey flowed along sensually. Alexander McQueen and Chanel did opaque on sheer in the same color for a similar tonal effect, Jean Paul Gaultier conjugated brown in big skirts, and Akris, Sharon Wauchob, and Chloé worked on tone-texture amalgamations.

-Karl Treacy