Fashion

Versace skipped Milan Fashion Week this season to show at a later date in Los Angeles – just a couple of days before the Oscars gala. On the roof of the landmark Pacific Design Center, Donatella Versace presented her autumn-winter 2023 vision: a wardrobe for Versace heroines and Versace bad boys, seen through a captivating, LA lens. “I mean I love this city, I love the people, the laid back vibe, the atmosphere,” the designer said. To set the tone for house’s destination show, Versace circled back to a pivotal mid-’90s moment. Easily the most prominent inspiration images on the moodboard for the collection were Richard Avedon’s 1995 images of Kristen McMenamy. The chic skirt suit that McMenamy wore in those photos was tailored close to the body and replete with the brand’s signature gold buttons. “I wanted to go back to the cut and shape of the clothes, to concentrate on the perfect little black dress, the perfect black suit,” Versace said. Gigi Hadid opened the show dressed in a look that echoed those elegant proportions. Naomi Campbell took her turn on the runway in an ankle-grazing black dress with an embellished bustier. Jill Kortleve wore a hot, shoulder-padded LBD. There was also Ivan De Pineda, the ultimate Versace man, wearing a croco-embossed trench coat. For celebrities that were still shopping for Oscar dresses, there were options aplenty. Some of the standouts: a crystal-encrusted naked dress that called to mind a modern Marilyn Monroe, a slinky black chainmail number with sculptural floral embellishments, and va-va-voom interpretations of the cone bra worked into various hourglass shapes.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Ending this Paris Fashion Week (it did feel like a month, though) coverage with an A.P.C. collection that captured the authentic, real, charismatic youth of Paris. “The kids are all right” was Jean Touitou’s conclusion of his latest show. Paraded in front of a crowd of press, brand friends and buyers in typically low-key style at the brand’s Rue Madame base, the collection was a highly personal presentation, modeled by Touitou’s daughter Lily and her teenage classmates from Paris’s École Diagonale. Perhaps Touitou felt the need to emphasize the family-run spirit of the label he founded in 1987. After all, last week came the announcement that L Catterton, the LVMH-backed private-equity group, had taken a majority stake in the company. “The young people who are going to walk this runway are like veterans. They experienced the raging of their hormones in a bunker with their parents during the COVID crisis,” he said. “That crisis could have wiped us out as a brand. We survived that war by getting stronger. Everybody you see here was born in 2006, and I think it’s a good metaphor for the sort of transmission process we started recently.” What followed was a determinedly youthful take on A.P.C.’s well-honed vision of Gallic urbanity, each look a nod to what Touitou called “a tribe” in a backstage debrief postshow. There was a Take Ivy preppiness to Japanese selvedge denim miniskirts and high-waist jeans worn with stripy shirts and shiny penny loafers; a street-inflected attitude to gray marl sweatpants and nylon flight jackets; a grungy insolence to flannel shirts worn with slip skirts, fluoro T-shirts, and scuffed plimsolls. And what stunning teenagers! All with their own carefully considered quirks – a snazzy Bananarama hairstyle here, swooping black eyeliner there – and forming a touching antidote to the celebrity-packed catwalks to which we’ve become accustomed. “I love this idea of no casting. You don’t say to people, ‘You’re too tall, too fat, too this, too that.’ Everybody was just cool about it,” said Touitou, who confirmed that, post-partnership deal, he will remain creative director of the brand alongside his art director wife, Judith.