The Designer Musical Chair Cheat Sheet

With the morning news of John Galliano approaching, annexing and taking over the throne at Maison Martin Margiela, it’s official: this past season in Paris was perhaps one of the most anti-climatically climactic of recent memory.

Vanessa Friedman, reporting for The New York Times, astutely pointed out in the Sunday paper that without any real version of calamity occurring overseas (typically, designers begin to shuffle when companies contract that new-direction bug), the season has been exceptionally malleable.

And quiet, too. When Alexander Wang landed at the helm of Balenciaga, the fashion world felt as though it was on the brink of blowing up. Ditto to Raf Simons’ transfer over to Christian Dior, Alessandro Dell’Acqua’s landing at Rochas and, of course, Nicolas Ghesquière’s move (and perhaps, too, the preceding departure of Marc Jacobs) to Louis Vuitton.

But maybe some of the motions of last week in Paris went over your head, so here’s a quick cheat sheet. This way, next fashion week, when you’re talking about how much you loved the lacework at Oscar’s most recent show, you’ll know it wasn’t actually his show.

Julie de Libran, previously of Prada, Louis Vuitton and her own, eponymous couture collection showed her first collection for Sonia Rykiel last week in Paris.

Peter Copping, creative director at Nina Ricci, has officially accepted a position at Oscar de la Renta.

As a result, Guillaume Henry — the designer behind Carven, will be taking over for Copping at Nina Ricci.

Who is to take over at Carven is still yet to be disclosed.

Amid all of this, Christophe Lemaire, who’s been designing womens ready-to-wear at Hermés since 2010, showed his last collection for the house and will be replaced by Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski, most recently of The Row.

Jean Paul Gaultier showed his last collection for the eponymous house and, once again, as of this morning, Galliano is the new Margiela. I repeat, Galliano is in at Margiela.

Buckle up!

Runway Images via Style.com