Hermione Granger: Fashion Plate

Arriving in London Thursday afternoon, after seeing the couture collections in Paris, was a surreal experience — and not just because of the breaking news that The News of the World was being shut down by Rupert Murdoch because of the hacking scandal. Outside my hotel, thousands of teenagers were swarming their way toward Leicester Square, hundreds of policemen herding them on their way, and at least three or four helicopters hovering overhead. What was going on?

Dave Hogan/Getty ImagesFrom left, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.

Turns out it was the world premiere of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” the final installment in that film series. (The kids decked out in old-fashioned school uniforms should have been a clue.)

Dave Hogan/Getty ImagesMs. Watson at the after-party for the movie premiere.

While most of the fans were no doubt there to get a glimpse of Daniel Radcliffe, Harry himself, the consensus in Friday morning’s newspapers was that Emma Watson may have stolen the show. Appearing on the red carpet in a sweeping pale gray gown designed by Oscar de la Renta, her hair cut short in a pixielike bob, Ms. Watson continued her transformation from geeky tween film star to fashion icon, a journey that recently included a glamorous cover shot in the current issue of American Vogue.

Later that evening, the 22-year-old actress did a quick change and attended the after-party in a sparkly knee-length Elie Saab dress from the designer’s spring 2011 couture collection.

Submit Your Photo: Street Style

Each week the Styles section will be soliciting street fashion photos based on a theme. This week, it’s nautical or espadrilles.

Be your own street photographer by showing us your style or someone else's in your current climate. Each week the Styles section will be soliciting street fashion photos based on a theme. The best photos will be published on Nytimes.com/fashion at the beginning of each week. This week, it’s nautical-inspired looks or espadrilles. (@Instagram photos are welcome!) Submit here.

Gaultier: Let's Dance

The ballet world is a durable fashion theme, and Jean Paul Gaultier took it for a spin this afternoon as the fall haute couture season closed. Actually, Mr. Gaultier seemed more interested in the characters who populated that world, some of them Russian émigrés.

There was a strong Russian undercurrent in the clothes — rustic masculine tweed jackets and coats with full petticoated skirts, a gorgeous pistachio Fair Isle sweater in knitted fur with a sweeping gray silk skirt, and lavish nylon parkas for the male models who appeared in the show (from among the Gaultier regulars). He reworked the classic trench coat — and before you say “Again?,” some of them were tempting, notably a long draped trench dress in beige jersey. He did a playful, full-skirted chiffon dress striped with fur and fringed in between with coq feathers, and one or two satin corseted looks that made overt reference to dance. But this collection, while heavy in spots, really alluded to the personal style of that worldly brigade.

The 'It' Girl, Now a Woman

SHORTLY before Chloë Sevigny took off for an acting role in Europe (portraying a pre-operative, male-to-female transsexual assassin in a new mini-series called "Hit and Miss"), a job that would keep her away from her East Village apartment for several months, she visited a neighborhood holistic food store to buy birdseed for her canary. When the saleswoman asked if she was a member of the store's frequent shopper discount program, Ms. Sevigny said yes and gave her name.

"I knew that was you," announced the customer behind her in line. "I was going to say something. I recognize you by your style."

Recounting this episode a few hours later, over plates of hummus and marinated kale at a cafe near her home, Ms. Sevigny laughed her loud, un-self-conscious, wheeze-honk-honk laugh, and said, "I mean, who says that?"

Well, frankly, if you have been near the fashion, art, skateboarding, grunge or night-life scenes of New York City at any time since roughly 1995, when Ms. Sevigny made her breakthrough in the Larry Clark film "Kids," you might have said the same thing about her idiosyncratic style. She is someone who, now 36, appears as equally confident wearing a pinafore as a prairie dress as a Saint Laurent pantsuit. On this particular day, in early June, she wore faded Levi’s denim shorts that were cut off so shortly as to leave the inside lining of their pockets exposed several inches below the fray, a tight ribbed cotton T-shirt with a scoop neck and cap sleeves and black leather booties. Her hair was unwashed. You would not have confused her with Jessica Simpson.

It was once said of Ms. Sevigny, when she was 19, after Jay McInerney wrote a profile about her in The New Yorker, that she was the coolest girl in the world. Laurels of her part-nerdy, part-perverse sense of fashion have been bestowed at her ever since, prompting Bob Morris to ask, in The New York Times in 2000, "What is it about the young indie actress Chloë Sevigny that has turned the fashion world into a pack of dogs howling about her as if she were a full moon, or a lamb chop?" Her fabulous poses and linguistic mannerisms are so well known that they have become the popular subject of an online video parody by the comedian Drew Droege, who dresses as Ms. Sevigny and recites ridiculous insider fashion references like "this ironic art smock by Balenciaga Le Dix by Nicolas Ghesquiere."

Though you see her everywhere, at art openings and at fashion shows, you don’t get the sense she is overexposed or pie-eyed about the scene. Balenciaga does still send her bags of clothes sometimes, she said, but they don’t fit.

"I hate going to fashion shows,"she said, wheeze-honk-honk. "I find them boring."

Nevertheless, it seems like people have been constantly discovering, or rediscovering, Ms. Sevigny, ever since she was cast in a Sonic Youth video with Mr. Jacobs when she was just a teenage intern at a fashion magazine. She was famously offered a leading role in "Kids" while hanging out with a group of skateboarders that included Harmony Korine, the film’s screenwriter, in Washington Square Park, brought to mainstream attention when she was nominated for an Oscar in 2000 for "Boys Don’t Cry" and more recently praised as America’s favorite sister wife on "Big Love." Now the fashion world is into Ms. Sevigny again, a result of a popular clothing collection she introduced with Opening Ceremony, the downtown retailer, in 2008.

No profile of Ms. Sevigny over the years has failed to note either her distinctive laugh or the impression that she is little bit coy about her coolness, but also mostly genuine. Both are qualities that make people like her. It also helps explain why her fashion designs, now sold in 100 stores around the world, have been so successful. They hold the promise of Ms. Sevigny: looking cool without looking like you are trying.

Days of Strangeness at Dior

Things must be unusual these days at the House of Dior, judging by the high fashion show they saw this afternoon at the Musee Rodin. All sorts of weird vibes, along with a lack of design leadership, have a way of surfacing in clothes. A runway is like a shrink's couch; stuff comes out.

For some reason I had the idea that this collection would be an interim deal until Dior could hire a successor to John Galliano. Not having a show would have been unthinkable because the Dior machinery has other products, like fine jewelry, to keep promoting, & the hoopla of a couture show, small or not, is a great way to keep distracted people at least small interested.

Oh, yeah - Dior. So I was a small surprised that the house gave a lot play to Bill Gaytten, a studio assistant, who came to Dior in 1999 with Mr. Galliano. You would think that the management - Sidney Toledano, the chief executive of Dior, & his boss, Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton - were road-testing Mr. Gaytten for the job. (He was recently named creative director of the Galliano brand.)

I've known Mr. Gaytten for a decade. I met him in the Dior studio with Mr. Galliano & Steven Robinson, a close collaborator of Mr. Galliano's for lots of years, who oversaw virtually every detail of the collections. (Mr. Robinson died unexpectedly in 2007.) It appeared to be an excellent creative team, backed up by Dior's ateliers, & Mr. Gaytten's strength was in pattern-cutting. I am liking Mr. Gaytten. He's a sweetheart, but he is not a designer.

Backstage, Mr. Gaytten said it was time to do something a bit more modern at Dior. & when asked if he wanted the creative director job, he said, "Yeah, I do", & added, "I'm not a fool."

The collection introduced today, with modern architectural shapes as the reference (at least that explains the dumb cubes & balls embedded in the model's hair), was a hodgepodge. I had the feeling that Mr. Gaytten, without providing much guidance, let the studio hands play with free-form shapes. There were multicolored jackets with full pleated skirts in contrasting squiggle patterns. The tutti-frutti palette, with jolts of turquoise, recalled the Memphis design movement. Other dresses in metallic silk, with overlapping squares, made you think of Frank Gehry's buildings. That immaculate Dior polish was not evident. Some long flowing dresses in hand-painted silk looked contemporary , but for the most part the garments looked like over-bright costumes.

But any way you try to romance this collection with modern architects, it looked to me as though lots of hands were in the pie as well as a number of them might have belonged to management, which is seldom a lovely suggestion. You wind up with a mess. I can't imagine Karl Lagerfeld not being 100 percent in charge at Chanel (I had a peek last night at a number of his couture dresses, & they're awesome discuss simple architecture). & the same goes for Azzedine Alaia, who will show on Thursday.

Where Did the Fun Go?

A few years ago, as the success of the recession, the Chambre Syndicale, the authority of the French fashion, decided to separate the men from shows and high fashion in June for a week. The two sample groups followed each other, as they still do in January. A week of free time in Europe is no longer considered for publication with the joy of living in the past, so they tend to divide time between work and pleasure. Right now I'm in a village in Burgundy, staying at La Source des Fees, a vineyard owned by Thierry Philippe Nouvel Greffet. The place is as beautiful as it is relaxed, with fine dining, and every night brings new customers - Dutch, Swedish, French. It is the beginning of the summer.

Nathalie Lagneau / Catwalking

A look of men wear Lanvin show in Paris. Perhaps because of the distance from the sample of men, it is easier to see what they lacked. The other day I wrote about the sensuality in the collections of Givenchy and Comme des Garcons. But I think in general what is missing in the Paris and Milan shows spring is a sense of fun. I had a chat with Carla Sozzani, Milan retailer after Lanvin, noting that the creative spirit that led the designers in the past business was partly meant for both the design of incredible things, as did his own bosses. But while many young designers who still have that mentality, the field is dominated by the big brands. They want results, Sozzani said.

Kristy Sparow / Getty Images

Looking to show signs of wear men Raf Simons.
Loïc Prigent The reporter also noted a difference in recent years among young assistants who work for large houses. In the past, I would ask where they planned to party after a show. "They say:" We can not leave because we started working on a collection

of sperm in the morning, '  "he said. Whether for fun.

Chris Moore / Cat walking

A model to show signs of wear of the men Prada in Milan.

The lack of pleasure is just one of the victims of a system that has become absurd full pressure. But his absence is evident in the collections - and what consumers really want from fashion fun, but some clothes? Chatting the other day with American designer L'Wren Scott, who lives part of the year in Paris, said the sample of men: "There were a couple of collections happy where he was the vitality and color." And that is talking about the spring and summer clothing.

Ms. Scott noticed because they are often asked about his male friends of custom pieces, and she has always designed suits and shirts for her boyfriend, Mick Jagger, also seeks to find in other collections.

Shopping Snapshots

Polka dots, a fashion perennial, attracted a new round of attention when Marc Jacobs, who played around with circles for spring, went hog-wild on his fall runway with polka-dot pillbox hats and hosiery, and everything in between. Dots continued to pop up — at Stella McCartney, Gucci and Lanvin.