The hits and misses of Paris Fashion Week
Bleached denim, scarf prints, feathers and serious debate. Here are the key updates you need for your spring wardrobe…
After years of kicking the can down the moral high-road, this has been the season when womenswear designers have consciously grappled with what ought to have been a central concern all along: how, sartorially, to equip a 21stcentury woman for every day life.
The furore over Hedi Slimane’s bizarrely dated-looking parade of under-aged yet raddled looking models in their faux-rebellious, Polly Pocket leathers at Celine on Friday or its counter-reaction: the standing ovation that greeted Pierpaolo Piccioli’s unambiguously romantic embrace of the female mystique on Sunday, both, in their push-me, pull-me contrasting ways, demonstrated that this is a very live issue indeed.
Well, we knew that. You only have to look at the wider world: at the stink over Brett Kavanaugh, the howls about ageism directed at women on TV, the toxic verbal and physical abuse and death threats directed at certain female MPS in the UK – the fact that many intelligent women who were brought up in the British way (“no one’s looking at you, dear”) are reluctant to appear on flagship news and comment shows because of the Neanderthalgenerated heat they get for the way they look – and the general sense of “Oh My God, Is This Really Still Happening in 2018?” to understand that the way women (and men, but that’s for another article) present themselves outwardly urgently needs serious study.
Yet for years, fashion hasn’t really stepped up to the plate. Too busy perhaps, focusing on global hegemony, the next It bag or trainer, chasing after red carpet trophies and pandering to a porny aesthetic that began as a semi-ironic (that great get-out-ofjail-free card that fashion likes to play whenever it messes around with something dodgy) affectation, complete with half-baked twittering about female “empowerment”. But the past month of shows has thrown up some unexpected moments of optimism. Grace, elegance (not that strained, high maintenance Melania kind), ease, movement, colour… there have been a lot of clothes to remind us of the progress we have made.