French pleat

But it was not, he said, inspired by Hitchcock heroines nor even the kitsch aliens in Tim Burton’s “Mars Attack,” although that eerie music was on the soundtrack and the outfits looked so very 1950s: full calf-length skirts, Lurex knitwear, head scarves and French pleat hairdos.

And when the models came out, snooty heads held high, with French pleat or knotted hairdos, they mimicked a bourgeois dressiness.

At Gucci ’s show, which kicked off the Milan summer 2011 collections on Thursday, the creative director Frida Giannini picked up the coifed French pleat hairdo, the glossy red lips and the high-heeled salon shoes — and ran with them.