Three talking points from a sombre Paris Fashion Week
If each era gets the fashion it deserves, some of us have been misbehaving. Awkward proportions, clompy boots, dour colours and Millets-inspired outerwear. We might be comfortable and warm, but we may not want to keep the photographs. It wasn’t all like that, but the week’s main talking points, Balenciaga, Loewe, Vetements and Saint Laurent gave opposing, jagged impressions of the city of light.
Since the attacks last November, Paris is gradually, notionally, returning to normal. But one constantly encounters people who knew someone who was at the Bataclan on the night of November 13th, or who should have been at Le Petit Cambodge, the Cambodian restaurant on the Rue Bichat. But beneath the bustle, the atmosphere is jittery. The economy is stagnant. That traditional Parisian surliness has lost its swagger and acquired a despondent aftertaste.
All of this is eerily mirrored back from the reflection of those shiny catwalks. At some of the crown jewels of French fashion, it appears there is no one to do the polishing. Dior and Lanvin still haven’t found new creative directors. This has been making retailers mighty anxious, especially now that China seems to be reneging on its potential as an insatiable luxury market.
1. Balenciaga is back in fashion
Balenciaga has found a new designer however. Demna Gvasalia, is a Georgian, who also heads Vetements, a collective of seven designers, whose canary yellow €250 t-shirts emblazoned with DHL (did they breach a copy right there?) and £880 frayed jeans have become best-sellers.
Gvasalia previously worked at the avant-garde French label Martin Margiela and his provenance shone in his Balenciaga debut, with compellingly strange Margiela-esque tailoring that pushed the models’ shoulders forward slightly, and made some of the thinner, slouchier ones look as though they had scoliosis. Presumably this will be "modified" for commercial purposes.
The resolutely utilitarian, but luxurious parkas and duvet jackets with Balenciaga logos on the back are clearly hits in the making. Not everyone is convinced (there have been comparisons already with Gap’s outward bound collections and a new popular name for the label: Balenciasda). But there’s no doubt that Balenciaga is once more a talking point. The retailers’s relief was palpable. They’ve found their new cash cow.
2. We're all going to be dressing like teenagers again...
Is fashion going through a difficult adolescent stage? Its wardrobe both on and off the catwalk might suggest so. While Vivienne Westwood's husband Andreas Konsthaler fashioned a 'Sexercise' book for the show invite, complete with rude doodles about Vivienne fancying Titian, we've also spotted enough trackies and hoodies to fill a rubbish disco. And if you haven't hacked off the bottom of your jeans with your mum's best bacon scissors then you can't sit with us.
We're also expecting a telling off from someone - not the Fashion Director 'cos she did it first - for walking down the backs of our Victoria Beckham loafers, a trend that looks set to carry on next term, we mean season. Also on the catwalks for autumn are the next best thing to lying in bed all day - a puffa coat. At Acne they wore them hanging off the back as if waiting for the number 27. Put it with one of those sweary rude slogan tshirts from Vetements and you might as well head straight to the headmistress' office.
3. Chanel remains almighty
Thanks to its continuing policy of buying up otherwise unsustainable craft enterprises, Chanel has tremendous resources. Its spectacle at this season’s Paris Fashion Week, which brought the entire audience onto the front row and centimetres from the clothes, placed every detail under (another mega-watt) spotlight.
But first the big picture. Karl Lagerfeld is having fun with layers and proportions. The tweed skirt flares gently below the knee or grazes ankles (with thigh-high slits: Coco Chanel may have been raised by nuns, she never completely dressed like one).
Jackets, as you might expect from the House of Jackets, are anywhere from waist to hip length, but most elegant when they’re cropped. Freshest were those with short sleeves, layered over slender tweed, long-sleeved tweed or knits sleeves and under shrunken cape-scarves. Capes will be everywhere come autumn – Chanel’s A-line cape dresses, with signature contrasting trims, were a cosy variation on a theme and a neat take on the fashion’s obsession with shrouds.
The mania for quilted jackets made it to Chanel, not surprisingly, since quilting is a house speciality: oyster satin, with embellished cuffs and scarf, this is the Monaco version of polar-exploration clothing.
This love-letter to bourgeois French values is a constant iteration of Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel. His confidence in its validity means he can play with it without sneering. Denim for cocktails? He’s a dab hand. This time he served it as a short sleeved tailored jacket and chucked in a jewelled belt. A black pleated silk strapless dress worn with a short sleeved white t-shirt was another clever high-low touch.
As for those details: lashings of pearls – as necklaces, cuffs and embellishment; flat boots, some with tweed chaps, velvet 2.55s, some with Karl’s cat, Choupette, peeping among the floral embellishments, others with small-umbrella compartments. This is function and frivolity in a gilt chain trimmed delicious package and the proximity of it all made sense of the set piece fashion shows, which at times this month has looked increasingly irrelevant. How good was it? Phenomenal.
Also Read: princess prom dresses