Don’t miss the New York Times’ Cathy Horyn talking to Karl Lagerfeld and writing about the Paris couture shows today. Things is tough all over, and as she reports, Christian Lacroix’s collection (see it on style.com here) was a lot like what you wore to your first black tie event the year after you graduated to college — that is, borrowed, recycled, and somewhat magically pieced together with whatever you found on your floor, and in the back of your roommate’s closet.

It’s oddly comforting and somehow exciting to think about the once opulent European couture houses rethinking their materials and focusing on waste and sustainability.

It all brings me back, once again, to the Theatre de la Mode exhibit that—and this part never ceases to puzzle and please me—resides at the Maryhill Museum in Goldendale, Washington. Click here and then scroll down to read about it, and don’t miss the audio tour. If you’re traveling to the Columbia River Gorge area this summer, you really should plan to visit the museum and learn about the post-WWII miniature couture pieces and the potential that fashion has to rev up an exhausted economy. (And besides all that, the museum is a wonderfully historic place out in the middle of just about nowhere, and the Maryhill Overlook outdoor sculpture piece is pretty amazing.)

[The image here, one of the most simple and beautiful I’ve seen in a while, is from a NYT slide show that accompanies the above linked couture report and was taken at the Lacroix show.]