It's the final day of the spring/summer 2018 haute couture season. There have been some stellar shows, proof that the 150-year-old haute couture couture system is still worthy of preservation and attention. If CLARE WAIGHT KELLER had a bit of catching up to do after her coolly received ready-to-wear debut at GIVENCHY, her Spring 2018 couture collection felt like redemption. It was a strong testament to the legacy of HUBERT DE GIVENCHY while retaining a sense for what women wear today. There was sleek, dandified tailoring punctuated with deep color—saturated reds and blues. The collection had the right mix of structure and flow, hard edges and fragility coming together in sharp silhouettes, latex, and feathers. There was harmony in this one. I hope we see more of this sensibility in Givenchy's ready-to-wear collections. VALENTINO has been going from strength to strength under PIERPAOLO PICCIOLI. This season the label's columnar silhouettes and rich colors were present but had given way to a bit more fluidity—it looked to me like the femininity in VALENTINO GARAVANI's designs were even more present... MARGIELA ARTISANAL was one of the best expressions I've seen (other than PROENZA SCHOULER's spring 2013 collection) of our scroll-through, hyper-connected times... RACHEL TASHJIAN writes that CHANEL-heads exhibit the same behavior as any super-fans at COMIC-CON. Agreed. Chanel spring 2018 was about the enjoyment of fashion and renewed optimism. I wondered if, after seeing the self-contained prettiness of KARL LAGERFELD's garden couture show, there might be a return to a kind of conventional prettiness in fashion. There's an odd comfort in it. After it's been parodied and vulgarized in grunge, GOTHIC LOLITA subcultures, and shows like GOSSIP GIRL, would the simplicity of "pretty" speak to the tensions of today?... From fake news to fake sneakers, not everything may be as it seems. Facts are immutable, but with backlash over copying and bootleggers making "knockoffs" with no originals, authenticity—as a matter of style—is up for debate. FashionSET: The Real Thing: Bootlegs, Backlash, and the Borderlands of Authenticity... In brief: Open for business... THE MARK HOTEL is launching an e-commerce site... How WWI brought success to zippers.