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Rue du Mail: Dancing and Cabaret Are Not Dead

If anyone in Paris is a designer's designer it is surely Martine Sitbon, whose staged her fall 2009 collection of her brand Rue du Mail on Wednesday, March 4,the opening day of the eight-day French season.

This season life is a cabaret for Sitbon, as her vision of contemporary cutbacks does not stop her women from wearing arty chess pieces cocktails, and lots of dance clothes.

Sitbon has always held a slightly special place partly because, no matter how much she experiments, the end results are always feminine. Also, few designers are as assured as Sitbon when it comes to mixing urfaces. Whether she combines silver sequins, boiled wool, battered gold jacquards and ribbed mink, the combo is downtown yet classy. She can assemble the somber - navy blue, black and map gray.

Sitbon jumped back and forth between the pencil warrior look such as legging-pants over tight tops and handkerchief helm Spencers to layered and splayed cuts and mixed chess piece style disco groovers.

"It was about wandering around in the imagination, imagining new forms," was the explanation from Marc Ascoli, Sitbon's partner.

Locks of hair fell across the rock femme fatale models throughout this show, but its upbeat vision was clear.

* Rue du Mail: Sexy And Seditious * Rue du Mail: Masterly Mature Chic		* A Very Betsey Birthday Bash * Martha Davis: Industrial Design Meets Shoes