Saturday Night Future

In style terms, the time couldn’t be better for the first release of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1974 sci-fi epic World on a Wire. The film’s aesthetic—part bohemian Europa, part futuristic bubble world—is a neat counterfoil to the increasing prominence of the 70s-tinged retro-futurism seen on the recent runways of Paris, Milan and New York. Former Chloé designer Phoebe Philo encapsulates this emerging trend: In her past two collections for Céline, the pioneer of boho-chic has merged her penchant for wide-leg pants, flowing skirts and warm shades of tan and beige with a forward-looking minimalism, striking a bold note with graphic black-leather trims, modernist shapes and plain, unadorned fabrics. At Balenciaga—the house which, under Nicolas Ghesquière, has been bringing science fiction to the runway since the mid-2000s—the characteristically robotic silhouette has softened somewhat for fall 2010, with pale pastels, fur paneling and geometric prints that seem to meld the sterile space-age world of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with the cut-and-paste eclecticism of Rei Kawakubo. Young-gun designer Alexander Wang sliced through the loose workwear of yesteryear, showing long camel trench coats with startling cutout shoulders, while Frida Giannini at Gucci caught Saturday Night Fever, going for all-white pantsuits adorned with square-cut panels and worn over shimmering tech turtlenecks. Finally, Marios Schwab was the latest to meld ’70s chic with the final frontier in his debut collection for a resurrected Halston, introducing some of his characteristically body-conscious, structural obsessions into the draped pantsuits and long evening gowns that are the house’s eternal trademark.