Ready To Wear, And Just As Ready To Doff

Olympia Le-Tan, girl-about-Paris and the originator of those clever needlepoint “book” bags you’ve been seeing on street-style blogs for the last couple of years, launched her ready-to-wear collection on Saturday night—in the kitchen of Paris’ Musée Nissim de Camondo, a sumptuous early-twentieth-century private home modeled after Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon. The location wasn’t the only thing unconventional about the presentation. Instead of parading around in their outfits, the models performed a raucous striptease, peeling down to black satin bras, briefs, and hosiery. Before the clothes came off, one dancer wore a T-shirt that spelled out “clever girl” above a supertight pencil skirt. Another had on a fit-and-flare striped dress. Le-Tan herself had donned a long-sleeve number with a white Peter Pan collar that was as sweet as the form-fitting silhouette below it was sexy. In other words, the clothes are just as cheeky as her cross-stitched clutches, which were arrayed artfully on the eighteenth-century settees and under glass vitrines upstairs.
—Nicole Phelps

Photos: Bruno Werzinski