In the collections of Alexander McQueen and Rei Kawakubo, the designer of Comme des Garcons, everything is obvious. Their latest shows are like big, amply furnished, smoothly rhymed poems.
Ms. Kawakubo, on the eve of Lent, put models in Mardi Gras masks and sounded the gender theme with dresses attached to the fronts of men's jackets. Mr. McQueen returned to the Scottish highlands, winding up his show with a hologram of Kate Moss vaporizing into a curl of smoke.
Although Ms. Kawakubo and Mr. McQueen are among today's most original talents, the form they use to express their ideas makes them old-fashioned. This is not offered as a criticism, but rather as a means of understanding how their creativity can be enthralling yet at the same time leave us wondering if their clothes are modern.
From the 1950's onward, one of the qualities that has given art, as well as music and poetry, a contemporary feeling is the ability of the artist to impart enormous meaning from a dominant gesture. In fashion a good example of this is the use of black in the 80's by Japanese designers, including Ms. Kawakubo. At the time, all that black seemed horribly sad and even violent, but it was also a less complicated way of expressing modernism than the geometric shapes of Courreges and other 60's designers.
Another example, from the current collections, is Olivier Theyskens's intensely focused use of sensual fabrics, like velvet, to denote the essential difference between masculine and feminine clothes. He homed in on one gesture to make his point.
Few designers of his generation possess Mr. McQueen's technical skill, and it was liberally on display with coats and suits in brown herringbone wool that gracefully brought out the curves of the body. Tartan mini-kilts were cut to give a sense of swagger, and there were slim dresses in red tartan with black lace hems.
The collection was richer, more romantic than last season, with muted gold military embroidery on dresses, chiffon blouses printed with musical notes or abstract butterflies and skulls, and close-fitting evening dresses in black velvet or jet-beaded claret velvet.
But Mr. McQueen is a storyteller, and that puts him on the outs with modernism. Most of his collections are overlaid with historic references -- this season to Victorianism, falconry and ''Macbeth'' -- but instead of informing him, they serve as a kind of barrier. What if he didn't have them? What if he turned his magical seams in the direction of the future? Mr. McQueen is gifted. He knows how to cut clothes. He doesn't need the rest.
Ms. Kawakubo presents a different problem. Although many of her suits were artfully constructed, especially one in brown wool with a black corset worked into the jacket and others with festal ruffles scurrying around pant legs, they didn't yield fresh insight about the man-woman theme. She doesn't acknowledge the newer attitudes that women display in their conduct, among them cold indifference.
In her view women are still appendages to men -- literally, with frocks attached to jackets. She may not believe that, but that's how it appears.
In a witty show that had models posing in revolving doors, Martin Margiela applied the techniques of upholstery to fashion, adding for good measure the dusty patina of goods left too long on display. It's a totally screwy idea, but it gave a great 3-D quality to pants and dresses, their hems rounded as if to receive a seat cushion. I averted my eyes when the naked half-torso of a department store dummy went past, its feet in woolly socks and pumps.
Who represents American gothic better than Joan Baez? That voice of the disaffected was on the soundtrack at John Galliano's show, the perfect accompaniment to a long black shearling coat, tight waxed jeans, sweet dresses in black cotton, and a pair of heavenly white dresses with soft, billowy backs.
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Photos: ALEXANDER McQUEEN -- From left, a Victorian-style blouse worn with a mini-kilt over pants; a holographic image of Kate Moss floating in yards of rippling fabric; a nubby tweed coat with wide lapels, shown with a feathered headpiece. (Photo by Charles Platiau/Reuters); (Photographs by Jean-Luce Hure for The New York Times); MARTIN MARGIELA -- Distressed leather pants, a soft jacket, a T-shirt and chunky socks.; COMME DES GARCONS -- A pantsuit with a corset worked into the jacket.; JOHN GALLIANO -- A printed cotton dress worn with rough-looking work boots.