Nicolas Ghesquiere Balenciaga. .

Byline: Mark Holgate

Nicolas Ghesquiere hasn't met a fashion cliche that he couldn't undo. The 34-year-old Frenchman in charge of the house of Balenciaga has variously taken on: shoulder pads (on Dynasty-redux suits, fall 2000), cargo pants (loose, cropped, and worn with patchwork tanks, spring 2002), and the gold-buttoned navy blazer, that staple beloved of all Frenchwomen d'un certain age (spring 2005). But when he tackled what has got to be the hoariest of hackneyed fashion ideas-the go-go sixties-for fall, he truly had his work cut out for him. Ghesquiere chose Mia Farrow (circa Rosemary's Baby) and Francoise Hardy (circa 1966) as the collection's starting points.

So far, so expected. But nothing is ever that straightforward with Ghesquiere. He zoomed in on the fact that Andre Courreges, the architect of space-age minimalism in the sixties, once assisted Cristobal Balenciaga, who in his 1950s heyday was most famous for the elegance of his sculptural couture. Ghesquiere drew these strands of inspirations together, then tinged the mood with a touch of his beloved science fiction, in particular the author Philip K. Dick (who wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which became Blade Runner on the big screen). Balenciaga's take on the twentieth century's most swinging-not to mention most-cited-decade was, in other words, in no way banal.

There were fantastically sleek A-line coats swathed with fur; short gazar dresses with flipped hems and flutters of feathers; and narrow high-collared jackets worn with even narrower pants. "In my eight years here, this collection represents the most elegant meeting of Balenciaga's legacy and my own ideas," says

Ghesquiere. He's also experimenting with ways in which to "brand" the house of Balenciaga, which until now has retained a somewhat rarefied or ...