Paris Fashion Week: Gareth Pugh

It was leather, leather and more leather on the catwalk for the man who is being touted as a successor to McQueen

This weekend one newspaper touted Gareth Pugh as the designer set to take over at Alexander McQueen. Who knows: that bet might just come in. But whoever ends up charged with continuing the label will have to be able to cede much of his (or her) own creative identity, and focus instead on propagating a brand value defined by McQueen.

Pugh, though, is his own man, with his own style. This season, that style is black, gothy, and sci-fi-evocative. And it is very leather-heavy. From the severe trouser/tunic combo (Princess Aura in Flash Gordon) to more decorated, welted versions (Princess Irulan in Dune), leather was the dominant (ahem) material here. Add to these tight little black leather dresses with swooping, ingeniously constructed ornamental fins (to bolster the thorax) and high, leather boots.

Pugh de-leathered for a hyper- elegant grey draped dress that could almost be workwear, some transparent foolishness, and two dresses (one long, one short) embellished with tranches of arcing chain that jangled and swished alluringly as their tenants walked by. The models’ foreheads were inexplicably ashed and blackened, the techno stupidly loud, and the occasional male model wore a jerkin- flares combo last seen at Megatripolis, circa 1996. Underneath his noir hoo-ha, however, Pugh pulls some very elegant shapes. Of his own.

Luke Leitch, The Times 08-03-2010