Ungaro does rock-’n'-roll flamenco

PARIS — The Spanish flamenco dancer got a rock-’n'-roll makeover Thursday at Emanuel Ungaro, in a menswear collection that popped with pink polka dots and fluttered with fuchsia scarves.

Designer Franck Boclet said he had aimed to create a sexy but masculine look, and, surprisingly, the Paris-based label’s spring-summer 2010 collection managed to attain both at the same time.

The silhouette was slim, with high-water pants paired with blazers in crinkled fabrics with rigid collars held at attention with metal wire piping. Flamenco-friendly fabrics like polka dots and ginghams abounded, as did more rockabilly materials like leather and deep indigo denim.

Leather paneling lent a second-skin vest a hardcore edge. Cropped, ankle-skimming straight legged pants were simultaneously flamenco and rock. Round Clark Kent plastic framed glasses gave the models a nerdy edge that was decidedly neither rock nor flamenco.

“I love clothing that are at once classic pieces with a rock or dandy touch,” Boclet told The Associated Press in a pre-show interview. Boclet, whose own trademark look marries rock pieces with classics, said he was designing for men like himself — who dare be chameleonic. And those who dare wear fuchsia, the signature color of the house of Ungaro.

“Before I started working here, I scoffed at the idea you’d see me in pink,” Boclet said. “But now, I come in here looking like a flamingo.”

Some of the models, too, sported a flamingo look, wearing raspberry-colored trousers, sportscoats and spotted scarves.

Not a look for every man. But a good one, it appeared, for those — like Boclet — who dare do pink.