A French revolution
Paris Fashion Week a rallying cry for feminism, retro looks, individualism
PARIS— Itwas a season of auspicious beginnings and poignant goodbyes at Paris Fashion Week as new designers entered to breathe fresh life into the Sonia Rykiel, Paco Rabanne and Loewe brands, and the original enfant terrible of French fashion, Jean Paul Gaultier, exited the ready- to- wear stage to focus on haute couture.
On the runways, the collections shown for next spring were a youth quake of swinging ’ 60s and ’ 70s style: flower power prints, army and navy uniforms, flared pants and baby doll dresses, folklore and fringe, eyelet and embroidery galore, seen at Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Dries Van Noten, Sacai, Chloé, Rykiel and more.
But there was a different kind of revolution happening too during the presentations, which ended Wednesday. Designers grappled with the meaning of fashion in the context of feminism and whether it’s even realistic to think that designers can still dictate to women, especially now that street style blogs, Instagram and YouTube stars are challenging the whole top-down system.
At Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld erected a grand boulevard indoors at the Grand Palais and took fashion to the streets. For a finale, he staged a protest— models marching out, fists in the air, with picket signs that said, “Be your own stylist,” “Tweed is better than tweet” and “We can match the machos.”
It was a rallying cry for a lot of things, including individual style, and an acknowledgment that fashion today is not a consensus but merely a suggestion, one that many women ( and some designers) choose to ignore, resisting the idea that there could ever be a new or old look. Coco Chanel knew all of this. One of her most famous quotes remains true, “Fashion fades. Only style remains the same.”
Of course, a big house with a storied heritage has design codes that are written into the lexicon of style — Chanel’s tweed jacket, for example, which is and always will be a classic.
So Lagerfeld began with that, showing tweed suits with full- cut trousers and short- sleeve jackets with wide lapels that conveyed a ’ 70s spirit.
Models wore bold, water color floral pleated skirts, top coats and flat boots covered in matching print; fatigue- green safari jackets and wide pants. Beatnik bags came covered in badges, patches and buttons, and cross- body styles were tricked out like a tweedy Chanel jacket.
Bouclé shifts were dressed up with concrete- colored tile sequins. There were marine stripes, pinstripes, lace doilies decorating the shoulders of jackets, frilly bow blouses, midiskirts, miniskirts, walking shorts, short sleeves, rolled- up sleeves and no sleeves. In other words, there was pretty much anything you’d ever want to wear.
It was, like the Internet, a flood of information and suggestions coming rapid-fire, whichis oneway to keep the copycats at bay. It’s hard to copy a deluge.
But it also reflects theway most women shop today, which is by item, not by a whole look or brand.
Certainly, that’s the way of blog style stars, who achieve fame for their individuality. Leandra Medine of the Man Repeller blog has nearly as much power as Lagerfeld, which is why swarms of photographers gathered outside every show to snap photos of what she was wearing. ( At Chanel, it was a pair of eyelet, wide- legged pants — the same pants silhouette that was all over the runways and won’t be in stores for six months hence, and yet shewas already rocking them.)
Street style is certainly giving runway fashion a run for its money, and designers are taking notice.
Rather than one cohesive look, Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent show was an army of individuals dressed for a hot night out in feathers, fireworks embroidery and glitter platform heels.
Inspired by the late L. A. artist Robert Heinecken, an appropriator and image manipulator, Slimane’s designs seemed to be teasing and toying with our ideas about ownership, newness and luxury. He’s like a DJ sampling tracks.
On the runway, there was the model in denim cutoffs ( sure to cost a fortune) and a slim- line blazer that could have been mistaken for an original YSL design swiped from Mummy’s closet. Then there was the model in a skinny red scarf and green flat- top hat, wearing studded leather capri
pants like something out of “Grease” with a leather bomber that could easily be mistaken for theworld’s greatest Goodwill find.
Then again, what’s new, what’s old, what’s original and what’s appropriated, what’s a bargain and what’s a fortune, what’s fashion and what’s not? Maybe it doesn’t matter. It sure doesn’t to many womenas they get dressed.
But there are those who do want help because they don’t have that innate sense of style that attracts flashbulbs like moths to a flame. We can’t all go to a store and zero in on the perfect jacket for a big meeting or dress for a big to- do, whether that store is Saint Laurent or Zara.
In the vast wilderness of stuff, there is a need for direction. And for that, there is a dynamic trio of female designers who showed in Paris — Céline designer Phoebe Philo, Chloé designer Clare Waight Keller and Stella McCartney — whoare always thinking about how feminine meets functional.
There was a homespun sweetness to the Céline collection. The game- changing silhouette involved wide- leg trousers, slightly cropped, worn with a belted jacket and the next fashionably ugly shoe, a sensible ballet pump with woodblock heels. ( The biggest evidence that fashion has yielded to feminism may be the comfort shoe revolution.)
Philo also showed fringed knitwear looks, including a craftsy butcool black knit midiskirt, slit in front, with a wide panel of fuzzy fringe at the bottom, paired with a crisp navy short- sleeve blouse.
Floral dresses were feminine and easy, one in bohemian- looking blooms, with fluttery sleeves and a ruffled skirt.
Philo created something that was clean, simple and modern but also warm. And that may take a woman’s touch. The clothes felt honest and down- to- earth, which would seem unthinkable for a French fashion brand owned by one of the largest luxury conglomerates in the world ( LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton Inc.). But that is Philo’s genius.
The inspiration at Chloé was modern folklore and “fabrics that tell stories.”
That translated as a patched lace minidress meant, perhaps, to look like it was made from your grandmother’s lace, a blue sweat shirt lovingly sun- faded, worn with a denim maxiskirt; and a cream maxidress covered in fraying folkloric embroidery that could just as well have been a treasured souvenir.
McCartney pushed an oversized but fluid silhouette, with wide sailor trousers and culottes in vanilla hues, and billowy silk crepe maxidresses, flight suits, trench coats, oversized shirts and drawstring shorts in ice cream pastels.
The ribbed knit fisherman sweater, that L. L. Bean preppy winter staple, was given a new lease on life for summertime, morphing into sexy asymmetrical knit dresses knotted and twisted to showoff the back and shoulders.
Sundresses were constructed of suspended floral embroideries put together like a jigsaw puzzle.
The clothes looked comfortable and cool, which should be the essence of what fashion has to offer.