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“It really does feel like Paris is at the centre of the planet at this moment. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s the Olympics or maybe something in the air,” said Pharrell Williams under the gildings of the Ritz Paris on Monday. He was speaking at the Vogue World press conference where Anna Wintour announced that the next edition of the event will take place in Paris on 23 June, the night before couture week starts and a month before the Paris Olympics, in the Place Vendôme. The audience was full of the industry’s key players, including designers and CEOs like John Galliano, Simon Porte Jacquemus and Balenciaga CEO Cédric Charbit.
Much of Paris is already thinking ahead to this summer. Securing venues in the lead-up to the Olympics seems to be a challenge this season, as the city has turned into one big construction site. (Some show venues were raw spaces of former clothing stores that shut down, including Dries Van Noten in the demolished space of C&A on Boulevard Haussmann and Marie Adam-Leenaerdt in a former Kookai store.) And while this is cause for concern for the men’s and couture weeks in June, Bruno Pavlovsky, president of Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM) and president of fashion at Chanel, was reassuring at the Vogue World conference: “I am happy to announce that most of the fashion houses have already confirmed their presence in the official calendar for next June.”
This season, designers are straddling commerciality and creativity, as well as searching for optimism. Rick Owens turned inward, opening his home for the second time to host the womenswear segment of his “Porterville” collection, where he also showed the menswear portion in January. The toned-down shows were a reflection and sign of respect for everything that’s going on in the world surrounding this season, which the show’s digital invitation referred to as “these barbaric times”.
The mood as a whole hasn’t been darkened. Paris Fashion Week is known for blockbuster shows, brimming with celebrities, as brands seek to drive social media buzz with audiences at home. Dior’s show created a stir among fans at the Tuileries, courtesy of Chinese celebrity Xin Liu, as well as Jisoo, Jennifer Lawrence and Natalie Portman. Saint Laurent on Tuesday night had Blackpink’s Rosé, Kate Moss, Charlotte Rampling and Diane Kruger among guests. Off-White’s show on Thursday morning featured an all-star cast, including Precious Lee, Jourdan Dunn, Joan Smalls and designer Mowalola, while showgoers clambered to film young starlets Halle Bailey and Willow Smith dancing in their seats to closing track ‘Bootylicious’ on the front row.
At Acne Studios’s show on Wednesday night, young stars like influencer Emma Chamberlain and model Alva Claire sat atop sculptural seats in the middle of the show space, made from recycled tyres, as Emily Ratajkowski and rising K-pop group ILLIT looked on from the front row. The show was inspired by “a fast woman, sculpted and futuristic”, according to creative director Jonny Johansson, featuring sculptural leather dresses and separates, high-impact fur and slick denim. Chloé had a flurry of celebrities, including mothers and daughters Jerry Hall (a muse of Karl Lagerfeld in his time at Chloé, who stars in the new campaign) and Georgia May Jagger, Pat Cleveland and Anna Cleveland, as well as Sienna Miller, Alexa Chung and Kiernan Shipka.
In contrast, at The Row on Wednesday morning, there was a no-phones policy, with guests encouraged to take notes instead. The industry applauded the move (ironically on social media), for flipping the script on what a show is for and who should see it. Elsewhere, it raised hackles for those who argued that access today is everything.
Paris centres new sides to womanhood
Milan had a heavy focus on outerwear this season. In Paris so far, designers are more preoccupied with what lies beneath. Following on from last season’s bare legs and panties, this season is about bare breasts. Of the 48 looks at Saint Laurent, “only 12 didn’t have breasts front and centre”, the New York Times reported. The girls were also out at Ester Manas, Cecilie Bahnsen, Courrèges, Chloé, and Acne Studios, and the count is still on.
The much-anticipated debut of Chemena Kamali at Chloé didn’t disappoint. “We are already seeing momentum based on the number of requests we receive from stylists,” Chloé CEO Laurent Malecaze told Vogue Business before the show. The collection impressed. Alaïa creative director Pieter Mulier, who attended the show (Chloé and Alaïa are both part of Richemont), praised the femininity. “A new star at Chloé,” he said. When Kamali took her bow, her son ran into her arms, a very sweet moment that became viral on social media.
As Vogue highlighted in its latest issue, there’s been much discussion lately around the lack of women designing for women in creative director roles. “It’s not necessarily that we’re restricted by our gender today, but I do think that women — particularly at a more advanced stage of their career — face additional challenges that male designers do not,” Kamali told Vogue’s Mark Holgate in an exclusive interview ahead of the show.
While luxury often centres on the sample-sized, affluent woman, designers in Paris have explored new facets of womanhood this season, perhaps to appeal to a broader consumer or differentiate from the norm.
Wednesday’s Undercover show, held in a hall on Sorbonne University’s new campus, was built with the everyday working woman in mind. The collection featured reworkings of “everyday” garments into tinsel-trimmed jeans, jumpsuits, voluminous coats, dresses and other staples, and the models carried shopping bags filled with groceries, flowers or a baguette as if walking home from work after a long day. In lieu of show music, models walked to a poetry reading by filmmaker Wim Wenders about a day in the life of a single working mother (leading to some misty eyes in the front row).
At Courrèges, designer Nicolas Di Felice took the audience’s breath away with a show centred on female pleasure. In the soundtrack, a woman chanted “Take it, take it slow”, as the looks became progressively skimpier, with models' hands tucked into a strategically placed front pocket. Following Courrèges’s previous show concepts, from falling sand to a cracking runway, this time, the catwalk was covered in Lycra, which inflated and deflated like a heaving chest in the middle of the room. Di Felice doesn’t typically do avant-garde showpieces, instead focusing on edgy, wearable dresses and separates that are designed to be sold and worn.
A more sellable bent was also at the forefront of Vaquera, which opened PFW on Monday evening following the graduate show at Institut Français de la Mode (attended by the First Lady of France, Brigitte Macron). Vogue Runway and Vogue Business global director Nicole Phelps deemed it the brand’s “best show in some time”. The collection was inspired by money, or rather a lack thereof, featuring dollar signs and Andrew Jackson prints. The show itself highlighted Vaquera’s conscious effort to become more commercial. Where in the past it was difficult to glimpse the clothes as models stormed the runway in the dark to thumping techno, this runway was well-lit, and models slowed it down, languidly posing in front of a white backdrop halfway around the space.
On Tuesday, young label Ester Manas made a welcome return to the Paris schedule after taking a strategic pause post-Andam win. On seats, guests found greeting cards and notes from the brand, each reading “missed you”, which showgoers promptly shared on social media. The show brought some much-needed size inclusivity to the Paris runway, featuring models of all sizes in lingerie-inspired dresses, trench coats and teddy bear knits. The designers, known previously for their ruched, figure-hugging dresses, have been busy developing new categories like outerwear and lingerie, which takes time and money to create and grade for the brand’s full sizing range (up to XXXL).
Other highlights of the first half of PFW include Dries Van Noten’s collection featuring a bright colour palette and some unlikely combinations, such as grey marl sweatshirt fabric with iridescent sequins, and the second show of Belgian designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt, who is also an LVMH Prize semi-finalist. “Adam-Leenaerdt isn’t making a lot of noise yet, but for those who are interested in the fine details of tailoring and investing in them, she could be a stealth asset,” wrote Nicole Phelps. Korean label EENK, which Nordstrom women’s fashion director Rickie De Sole flagged as one to watch last season, held its second presentation at Palais de Tokyo, as the brand aims to be Korea’s first high-luxury heritage house.
And at Schiaparelli on Thursday evening — its third ready-to-wear show — the efforts of creative director Daniel Roseberry to instil and define the identity of the more everyday Schiaparelli customer were on display. Behind the scenes in the lead-up to the show, Roseberry spoke about the importance of creating that woman. “When you close your eyes, and you think about the house, and you think about the Schiaparelli woman, you need to be able to think about the everyday-ness of the brand as well. Not just the extraordinary moments,” Roseberry said.
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