Paris is home to the world’s historically eminent luxury maisons, but in recent seasons, the newest names have begun to reclaim their place on the French capital’s fashion scene.
Unlike the brands that act as the lynchpins of Paris Fashion Week, the new wave is mobilizing the next generation with its reflections on the most current and pressing issues in society. From the spiky and conflicted creativity of Vaquera to the soft porn aesthetic of Ludovic de Saint Sernin that presents a paean to sexual liberation and gender fluidity; Ester Manas’s revolutionary push for body diversity on the catwalk and the revival of legendary houses like Courrèges and Rochas with young creatives at the helm, new blood is electrifying Paris.
“What designers have in common is not only creativity, but a commitment to a vision of the world that, compared to 20 years ago, is very different,” Serge Carreira, head of the Emerging Designers Initiative at the Fédération de the haute couture. et de la Mode, which governs Paris Fashion Week, he says. “Of course, design is always a mirror of culture and society, but they are directly contributing to change. They are finding their own path and their own voice, reflecting the world through their different concerns.”
Julie Gilhart, fashion consultant and director of development at brand accelerator Tomorrow Ltd., points to brands like Botter and Rokh who are coming up with ideas that are driving the fashion landscape as a whole. “The bigger brands are definitely addressing some issues, but these brands have an assertiveness that the bigger brands don’t have as much,” she says. “They bring an energy that reflects them.”
Backstage at the Vaquera Fall 2022 show.
Photo: Imaxtree
Like Vetements before them, Vaquera’s Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubansee set the town on fire, arriving from New York with a playful sensibility and a desire to translate the brand’s maverick spirit for a new audience. The first two Vaquera in Paris collections had a punk-inspired streak, with fetish details, oversized knits and sheer fabrics, the result inspired but never trite, a renegade spirit that feels utterly contemporary in a week that sees luxury brought to the fore. nth measure. The sight of him, with cheeky, scowling models strutting down the runway, blows raspberries in the face of the establishment.
Ludovic de Saint Sernin is also rewriting the codes of luxury. While the designer’s material choices like Loro Piana wool and louche chiffon feed into institutional expectations, his throbbingly sexual approach to clothing stirs an often neutralized sphere of fashion. Slender silhouettes in tonal hues can be sultry on the hands of most, but de Saint Sernin has a penchant for the sultry: shimmering crystal bodices, skintight mini-dresses, scantily clad men who look like they’ve stepped out of a Tom’s campaign. Fords for Gucci.
Not to say his work is derivative: his steamy provocation reaches beyond the past and into new territory. She approaches masculinity with an impressive tenderness; femininity is treated exactly the same. The body is a canvas for sexual expression, and while conservative streaks run wild around the world, de Saint Sernin shows how clothing (the little clothing that is often there) can be a tool for expressing sexuality.
Another jolt to the system, Ester Manas challenges the casting status quo at European fashion weeks with an inclusive attitude towards body diversity. Each garment is originally fitted by co-founder Ester Manas herself, stretch fabrics designed to fit many sizes. While size diversity among models has received more attention in recent years, founders Manas and Balthazar Delepierre expressed dissatisfaction with how it rarely translates to retail, where larger customers still fit. archaic industry standards.
Models at the Ester Manas Fall 2022 show.
Photo: Imaxtree
As with anything in fashion, the extent to which labels have a cool cache predetermines their success. But today, the word “cool” has been watered down a bit, the qualities that justify the descriptor plundered by creative and wannabe frauds. However, looking at Arnaud Vaillant and Sebastien Meyer’s collections for Coperni, one gets the feeling that hope persists. From tailoring to minidresses to denim, the currency the duo trade in, there are updates that propel the staples into the future, targeting Generation Z with the help of faces like Lila Moss, Paloma Elsesser and Bella Hadid. Coperni Cool is a way forward for fashion.
Elsewhere in Paris, traditional French brands meet at the junction of legacy and future, with newly appointed creative directors proposing new interpretations of style.
Based in Rochas, 25-year-old Charles de Vilmorin has a knack for combining dramatic exuberance with playful, playful feminine forms, along with some sweeping, dark and transgressive interpretations of romanticism for the 97-year-old house. In contrast, Nicolas Di Felice’s Courrèges is propelling the brand into its next chapter (and beyond) by maintaining its unpretentious space-age simplicity, ruggedness without modesty, and undeniable sexiness (think white gowns, gabardine skirts, , tight basic garments, vinyl jackets), with flexible garments with gender interpretations. Expect more to come on Thursday morning in the latter’s Spring 2023 debut, where the clothes we normally associate with evening are likely to continue down the runway.
“You can’t just watch the show, but what’s going on around him: he’s attracting who he feels is his audience by going directly to them,” says Amy Verner, a Paris-based writer and journalist, citing the Pride capsule from courreges. Proceeds will go to No Drama, a social platform for the queer community in Paris. “It doesn’t feel like marketing; you’re just doing things you think they’d like. It’s never obvious or performative. It’s intrinsic to the identity you’re creating for the brand.”
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Courrèges Autumn 2022.
Photo: Imaxtree
Spring 2023 by de Vilmorin for Rochas is lighter, packed with simple, practical fabrics like cotton and denim, alongside more glamorous organza. Hammered silks and lamé pleats recall the house’s luxurious origins, the designer’s touch shows shades of Galliano and McQueen. De Vilmorin hopes to “show another side of the brand” with this collection, he says ahead of Wednesday’s show. “It’s less about fancy and more conceptual, but it’s still very chic.” Clients who have been with Rochas for decades still have a seat reserved for them, but with new blood comes new ideas, and in turn, a new base of potential clients.
The challenge of communicating new ideas about style and aesthetics in fashion, particularly in Paris, is the proximity in which the young designers’ shows are positioned in relation to the mega-brands, with their legacies, global fan bases and advertising dollars. While most of the new crop have amazing ideas and are constantly adjusting their output, their efforts are often tempered by the financial makeup of industry titans.
“Everyone knows your marketing story and is doing that part, but there’s so much more,” says Gilhart. “If you want to be successful, that has to happen. We’re talking about the supply chain, the people behind the company, how they approach materials or marketing. It’s very difficult for young designers to do it alone.”
This was documented in Matthew Schneier’s 2018 Cowgirl profile in The New York Times. If it weren’t for the support of Dover Street Market Paris’ incubator of emerging designers, the brand’s fate might have been muddled, his insights might have been a tragic flicker in time.
Tomorrow Ltd has invested in Coperni and assists Ester Manas in showroom capacities. Rochas and Courrèges also require investment and general help to restore the names to their former glory.
The final in Rochas Fall 2022.
Photo: Imaxtree
The financial power of a company often affects the spread of various narratives. True diversity—of body, sexuality, gender, age—is often pushed aside by industry giants who work as activists to sell leather goods and fragrances for lucrative profit margins. The real game changers, your common sense and honesty, can get overlooked.
Yet with an increasingly alert base of loyal followers, millennial and post-millennial designers are using tools like social media with aplomb, gaining new followers as their brands and voices develop. Many big luxury brands yearn to chase the next generations, but it’s like Coperni and Ester Manas and other digital natives that do it best.
With a bright future for Paris, expect to be wowed by Weinsanto’s theatrics and inclusive cast, Germanier’s unwavering loyalty to sustainable craftsmanship, Nix Lecourt Mansion’s unabashedly sensual wares, Pressiat’s gothic fluidity. The rising stars of Paris Fashion Week, each with a concern revolving around changing social mores, aren’t just getting started: they’re multiplying.
“These groups of people have never been spoken to so directly,” says Gilhart.
Verner agrees, arguing that the vision shared by this new vintage “isn’t about symbolism or signaling. There might be strategy behind it, or it might be deliberation, but in execution, it never feels that way.”
Illuminate the question: if Paris Fashion Week is the nexus of fashion, are these rising creatives increasingly capturing our attention the glue that holds it together? The Parisian tradition has long been a cocktail of local and international names, tradition and modernity; now, more than ever, young designers are telegraphing much-needed visual stances on the body, gender, sexuality, politics, and style. To each, their own unique point of view; with each season, they communicate more cohesively.
“These designers stay true to their own voices instead of conforming,” says Carreira. “They don’t try to grow by distorting their message, they strive to make it stronger.”
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Source: news.google.com