L’oreal star power steals the show on Champs-élysées
THE day Ann Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, ordained No Car Sunday coincided with the busiest day of Paris Fashion Week. Oops! Double oops when Balenciaga decided to show in the back of beyond in what one dismayed attendee described as “the Wolverhampton of Paris”.
Yesterday’s events opened in the magnificent C18 Palais de Justice. On trial: Clare Waight Keller, the newly appointed artistic director of Givenchy, with her first show for the house.
Waight Keller is not the first Briton to helm Givenchy, but she is the first woman. It’s too pat to suggest this was the reason for a breezy injection of softness into the label, but it might explain the novel dose of pragmatism.
Here were slouchy, low-heel pixie boots and tough-but-elegant kittenheel shoes, a small cross-body bag and teeny belt version. She also brings a sense of ease with loosely cut silk crepe dresses and chic wrap skirts with a panel of knife-edge chiffon pleats. The skirt summed up the equilibrium she mostly achieved in this collection – a Parisian urbanity underscored with a beguiling fluidity.
Things got grittier at Balenciaga. Demna Gvsalia, the creative director originally from Georgia, has a tender regard for Eastern Bloc glamour. Hence the faded florals on nylon-looking fabrics and Eiffel Tower charm belts.
Stretchy winkle-picker boots were printed with British pounds and €50 notes. If this wasn’t a comment on Brexit, it was definitely a cheeky wink at Balenciaga’s prices – €50 would buy about one toe. The pieces de resistance were the jackets with secondary jackets attached to their fronts. Were they made like that or was it styling? No one knew, but the fashion crowd loved it.
A million light years away psychologically – and some way geographically – was L’oreal’s spectacular on the Champs-élysées. Not being a fashion label, L’oreal had to borrow clothes from Mulberry, Balmain, Sonia Rykiel, etc. But the frocks weren’t the point.
This was about seeing Dame Helen Mirren, Jane Fonda and Cheryl strut down a catwalk, beaming their star-wattage to all and sundry. The fashion crowd, had they attended, would have hated it. The watching public were in raptures.