PARIS FASHION WEEK A touch of the Victorian era
Styles unveiled also included plenty of blue, oversize menswear jackets, cowgirl chic
PARIS
It’s no secret that politics infuses fashion — and some critics are interpreting the mania for blue at Paris Fashion Week as a statement of “the blues” about the perceived rise of nationalism across Europe and America.
Here are some other highlights from Sunday’s star-filled Paris shows — including how a nineyear-old fashionista turned heads at Valentino.
Victorian meets Italian Postmodern
What do you get if you combine Victorian-era styles with those of Italian Postmodern design?
Designer Pierpaolo Piccioli gave us a pretty good idea in his gentle and thoughtful Valentino collection Sunday that took both for inspiration.
His high 19th-century collars fused with the geometry of the Memphis Group, a design and architecture group founded in Milan that created furniture, fabrics and objects in the 1980s. Silhouettes were softly geometric and hung loosely from the shoulder.
Colours were also gentle — raspberry, sage green, turquoise, sheeny black with white.
A stylish flash of Cadmium yellow blossomed on a standout silken dress.
An ethnic, multicoloured patchwork coat was handled with subtlety — while long, soft pleats gently lined some of the most beautiful gowns seen this season.
Ivan, the nine-year-old fashionista
Valentino’s illustrious guest list normally causes a stir for its famous attendees. But Sunday’s collection had heads turning for a different reason: Ivan, 9, whose feet didn’t touch the floor as he sat front row in the gilded salon.
Ivan wore a mint green fur coat, Gucci slippers and shades as he admired Pierpaolo Piccioli’s soft geometric designs. He didn’t let his age or the famous attendees intimidate him, and snapped pictures studiously as the collection went by.
“I’m Ivan. I’m nine. I designed the capsule collection for my mom who’s a designer, Natasha Zinko,” he told the AP, defending his decision to wear shades on a drizzly day. “It was sunny when I came here.”
He added he’s been following fashion “nearly a year maybe,” and has enjoyed attending collections by Dior and Haider Ackermann.
His mother said she brought him because she couldn’t find a nanny. “He’s enjoying the weekend in Paris. And, now he’s going back to London to school.”
Honey, I shrank the Celine models
Designer Phoebe Philo seemed to shrink the models in her inventive, proportion-play of a Celine show. A gargantuan, white kneelength necklace accompanied a one-metre canary yellow handbag, while a cape made of oversize sleeves followed a two-metre emerald green fringed blanket, alongside huge blown-up prints.
But the collection, despite its dramatic — and intellectual — musing, remained highly wearable. It’s a rare feat. Oversize tailored menswear jackets made an appearance, fusing into beautifully gathered gowns with Empire-line busts.
One of the best looks in navy, with this Napoleon-era silhouette, was given a sublime contemporary twist with exaggeratedly wide, long flappy shirt-cuffs.
Nina Ricci goes west
It was the Wild West — but not as we know it.
Guillaume Henry saddled up his fashion horse and headed to America for Nina Ricci’s collection late Saturday.
The lauded designer tamed the styles of the American cowgirl for the chic Parisian audience with a beautifully soft colour palette, with lashings of pink and peach. Skirts and coats with hip cutouts evoked cowboy chaps.
Prints with cowboy and rodeo motifs speckled with stars followed buttoned-up shirts, belts with exaggerated silver buckles, checks and hanging pendants with cowboy- style silver clasps.
A standout long coat-pant look toyed cleverly with the rodeo style. Feminine soft turquoise replaced blue denim, and the big Western leather collar was given a feminine twist, flopping softly and delicately.
A nod to post-war style
The golden age of couture — with a quirky twist.
That was on the menu for Bill Gaytten, who designs for the house of John Galliano, and took guests down the annals of fashion history.
It made for a richly reverential show Sunday night that celebrated post-War styles and played with off-kilter proportion.
Black ostrich feather hats, popular in that era — were reimagined in exaggerated width.
Coats that resembled the influential 1947 Bar Jacket, invented by Christian Dior where John Galliano worked for 15 years, were given a tweak with bulbous lower part and military buttons.
And a dull purple gown that had the satine sheen of a classic ’30s Hollywood glamour puss was twinned with baggy pants.