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Lights, Camera, Action. Chanel SS21

| Design & Culture by Ed

I really start to appreciate Virginie Viard‘s vision for Chanel. The spring-summer 2021 Chanel show set, in Paris’s Grand Palais, spelled the brand’s name in giant letters, evoking the iconic Hollywood sign. Did this suggest that creative director Viard was thinking of the movies? “Less movies than actresses,” Viard explained, and particularly the modern life of actresses, from the high production values of the red carpet, to a staged off-duty look whilst getting a Starbucks in the certain knowledge that a paparazzo might be lurking in the parking lot, “the whole process!” Meanwhile, the accompanying movie teasers, produced by Inez and Vinoodh, literally brought Paris to Tinseltown, with the Sacre Coeur nestled proudly in those Hollywood Hills – symbolic of Viard’s marriage of Parisian cool with laid-back Los Angeles style. And of course, Coco Chanel’s love affair with film industry played its crucial role. Coco, who began her career as a performer singing saucy music hall songs, later made over a handful of actresses in her own image, just as she did with such beloved models in her in-house cabine as Marie-Hélène Arnaud and Jackie Rogers. The designer, for instance, transformed Romy Schneider into a baby-faced version of herself, and Luchino Visconti immortalized Schneider’s new look in his 1962 short movie Boccaccio 70. Chanel herself is even said to have found the new stage name for the Nouvelle Vague actress Anna Karina. Viard, who has all these references at her fingertips, is also drawn to femme fatale Jeanne Moreau in Louis Malle’s 1958 Elevator to the Gallows, and she looked to some on-screen Chanel moments in her collection. The show itself felt like a cinematic experience, and the clothes matched that elegant, yet unpretentious ambience. Viard had jumpsuits, flowing gowns and eternal tweeds as she was evoking the real life wardrobes of contemporary actresses using her own cabine of models, including many new French faces and the sophisticated Louise de Chevigny. All of them were encouraged to do their actressy best on the runway. The collection is quintessentially Chanel, nothing overly innovative – but absolutely consistent and reassuring with all its Chanel-isms. Maybe a bit less logos next time? That understated, relaxed, yet chic style Viard does so well, without all the forced decorations, clearly speaks for itself.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Bold Elegance. Givenchy SS21

| Design & Culture by Ed

To be honest, except for beautiful couture moments, Clare Waight Keller’s Givenchy was a yawn. But when I heard that Matthew M. Williams is the new creative director, I was skeptical – I never understood what’s his Alyx is all about. To my surprise, his debut collection for the French maison was pretty good, closer to Riccardo Tisci’s years when the brand was a fusion of dark elegance and a fresh look at “street-wear” (I dread this word, because it got completely distorted throughout the years). During the Paris presentation (no fashion show, but a look-book), placed front and center was his new lock jewelry inspired by those hung on the bridges of Paris by tourist lovebirds, who throw the key in the Seine. “It’s no secret that I’m really into hardware, and that’s what I lay the foundation with when I start a new project. It comes into shoes, bags, clothing,” he said. Williams is also obsessed with texture – from the reptilian to the volcanic and the densely embellished – as fervently illustrated at his own label. His Givenchy debut read entirely like a morph between those codes and the black-clad elegance of the house he now inhabits. Suspended between the formal and the super casual, the devil was in the fabric treatments. There’s a twisted expensiveness about Williams’s clothes that feels good and dirty all at once. What’s interesting, Williams hadn’t worked with a particular inspiration. “I’m not a person who designs in themes. It’s very much product-focused. A lot of it is what I would wear personally,” he explained, adding he did take a trip to the archives that birthed some horn heels informed by Alexander McQueen’s era, and nods to Hubert de Givenchy evident in some rigorous tailoring. The focus on product was seemingly an unemotional process that paid off in the precision of design clearly made to be instantly coveted: mushroomed slides, politely stompy black leather boots, magnified takes on existing bags. There weren’t many logos around – which I appreciate a lot. Williams isn’t mad about them. “It’s funny that I get lumped into people expecting that I do that, which I don’t really understand because at Alyx we don’t do that either,” he noted. Instead, he wants his hardware to replace the role of logos. In fact, Williams’s vision for the Givenchy woman – “very elegant and powerful and chic” – was remarkably graphic and decorative. A transparent white coat covered in fuzzy tinsel, worn over a white laser-cut top that looked like a bustier made from ribbon, with cream trousers, was simply gagging for a scene in an early 2000s music video. This will sell well, I guess.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Realness. Paco Rabanne SS21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Like many designers this season, Paco Rabanne‘s Julien Dossena focused on his signatures. Spring-summer 2021 show was an impressive vocabulary of the designer’s distinct takeaways he came up with for the brand – and it ranges from clothes you would see on the streets in Paris to chain-mail craftsmanship which equals to couture. And, as a matter of fact, the runway started on an actual street. The venue had a wide-open entrance in the background – the glimpse of the street was an intentional part of Dossena’s love letter to the girls of his neighborhood, not just the need of keeping Espace Commines safely aerated for the occasion. “I realized how much I’ve been missing being in the streets, passing people, looking at their style,” he said. “I’ve always lived just near here, between the Third and the 11th arrondissements. It’s a really diverse area, with people coming from everywhere, and expressing their individuality. I wanted to work some local realness. It’s what I’ve been really happy to get back to after confinement.” Recent controversies in France have made Dossena all the more convinced that he wants to stick up for young women’s rights to dress as they please: “I wanted to show a generous, affirmative sensuality. I was really noticing women in the street who were brave enough to embrace their femininity. Wearing super-short skirts, décolleté, and being proud of it.” Without even knowing what informed that underlying subtext some of the contrasts between last season, which was staged in the grand surroundings of the medieval Conciergerie, and this one, are refreshingly apparent. There’s the new emphasis on long-line jackets and midiskirts, a mix-up of sequins and stripes, lace and lingerie tops, and the suggestion that, actually, the glittery glamour of Paco Rabanne can go just as well with jeans. “And a kind of ironic flea market feeling,” he added. Many of the women walking in his show were friends: actresses, writers, interns, junior designers, students. Most definitely, everyone who was French in the house would have been conscious of the relevance of Dossena’s crop tops and the fact that he’d very visibly implanted bra cups into his complicated lace slip dresses. Since schools returned in September, a national row broke out when teenage girls were turned away from schools for wearing cropped tops and short skirts. The girls – protesting against being gaslighted for indecency and provoking boys – started a hashtag calling for all high school students to turn up to school on September 14 wearing something provocative. “It’s just so old-fashioned, these attitudes in France,” Dossena says. “These girls were really rioting. I’m so impressed by them.” Most definitely in the grown-up and otherworldly zone was the procession of all over pailletted, helmeted women who ended Dossena’s show – feminist guardian warriors, if you will. “If you look, some of the triangle paillettes are like knives, like a weapon. It’s quite a tough realness,” Dossena smiled. “We are definitely not about doing comfy bourgeois collections here.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

2132 Olympics. Thom Browne SS21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Thom Browne is another American designer who presented in Paris last weekend. While you always expect full throttle escapism from Browne, this season he resorted to something much more pure and toned down. Thom Browne’s “first and only” family trip growing up was to the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. He would have been 11 years old at the time, but he remembers Caitlyn Jenner winning the gold medal in the decathlon and Nadia Comaneci scoring the first perfect 10 in gymnastics. Yes, there are the many references to sports in his clothing, but there is also the fact that fastening oneself into his suits requires the mental focus of an athlete. For spring 2021 Browne has gone sporting at the 2132 Olympics, an event he imagines happening 239,000 miles from Earth on the moon. In a video he wrote that accompanies the collection, comedian Jordan Firstman and model Grace Mahary banter like sports commentators as models and flag bearers descend the stadium steps of the Los Angeles Coliseum. The venue was chosen both for its Art Deco architecture and its hosting of the 1932 Olympics. The silhouettes of the ’20s and ’30s inform the clothing, from the drop-waist dresses to the slim skirts, some pleated, others as straight as your back must be to pull them off. The entire collection is rendered in shades of white: ivory, eggshell, the palest yellow, the faintest gray. Browne chose the color as a symbol of hopefulness. Here it’s hard to divorce his creativity from that of his partner, Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Andrew Bolton. The Met’s Costume Institute exhibition “About Time: Fashion and Duration,” opening on October 29 because of COVID-19 delays, features only black clothes save its closing look (a white Viktor & Rolf upcycled couture dress, a gesture of stepping into a new, hopeful future). Working exclusively with white materials also allowed Browne to present his impeccable craftsmanship skills. The techniques on display here are as meticulous as ever: seersuckers made of cashmere, embroidery so thick it’s almost quilting, cable knits, intarsia suits, and trompe l’oeil dresses – everything emphasizing texture and surface tension. Aside from the long Deco silhouettes, Browne also continued to explore the repositioning of garments on the body: skirts as tops, jackets as skirts, etc. With so much graphic information packed into each ensemble and the clothes themselves so strangely collaged, it’s easy to forget the models underneath, some of whom are actual Olympians—and the fact that this is Browne’s second-ever coed collection. Not that the idea of gender really matters much in the Browne universe; his clothes are made for whomever is brave enough to wear them. That seems to be the strongest message of this collection. Rather than try to change in order to blend in with the new normal, Browne has instead cemented his status as fashion’s most uncompromising couturier. What about wearability? When asked how Browne himself dressed during New York’s lockdown, he laughed and leaned back in his chair to reveal his outfit: cashmere cardigan, gray wool vest, shirt, tie, shorts. “I’m either wearing this – or nothing!”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Craft. Gabriela Hearst SS21

| Design & Culture by Ed

This season, Gabriela Hearst decided to show in Paris instead of New York not only to catch the spotlight in Europe, but also because it was the most sustainable and carbon-neutral thing to do – most of her samples and designs are produced in Italy. And since New York Fashion Week suffered from its cuts and was stumbling this season due to strict COVID-19 regulations, Paris really is a better option for brands like Hearst’s. “It was really important to us to push ourselves creatively, to not let the pandemic stifle us,” Hearst told Vogue. “It became the craft challenge.” The collection was a proper Gabriela Hearst line-up, relaxed, made out of top-notch materials (most from deadstock) and full of gorgeous, timeless garments. The tailoring that has made its way onto the backs of influential women like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jill Biden, and Oprah Winfrey, took a back seat. Instead, and in keeping with the themes of comfort and ease that have defined the season so far, Hearst trained her focus on knitwear: a long crocheted tank dress of many colors and its ivory sister were both striking, as were a pair of hand-knit cashmere ponchos with fringe that nearly reached the ankles in back. The collection’s genesis was a shell bracelet from Easter Island, a gift from Hearst’s mother back in January. The designer re-created it as shell trimming along the edges of circular cut-outs and on the straps of two repurposed silk dresses, making keepsakes to treasure of what were otherwise simple silhouettes. The shells led her to explorations of the golden spiral, which she reproduced in embroidered seaming details on a pair of slub linen trenches and on an aloe linen dress. Hearst knows that nothing is as important as the detail.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.