16th Century Chic - Gareth Pugh's Elizabethan and Shakespearian Couture (GALLERY)

Paris Fashion Week kicked off over the weekend with the quaint and very dramatic Spring/Summer collection by English fashion designer Gareth Pugh.

Inspired by William Shakespeare (1564--1616), Queen Elizabeth I (1533—1603) and John Everett Millais’ painting of a drowning woman named Ophelia (c.1851), Pugh’s collection is rife with Elizabethan ruff collars, multi-layered skin-tight dresses and other equally dramatic outfits, all in monochromatic black and white.

I thought I’d end this article with some kind of Shakespearean line but that’d be kind of lame.