Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Courtesy of Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Raf Simons, Miu Miu, Hermes
The Paris shows were remarkably weak this season, and when I think about why, it’s because so few designers gave us a glimpse of the future. It really is that simple. Chanel and Louis Vuitton were like two tortoises that refused to stick their necks out of their well-appointed shells. Chanel’s Virginie Viard planted her collection of mostly tweed suits and coats in the early ’60s, when girls wore slim skirts and ladylike low heels, later referencing Gabrielle Chanel’s travels to Scotland, in boots and wool stockings.
Chanel.
Photo: Courtesy of Chanel
Never mind that various luxury brands, like Prada and Balenciaga, have already made versions of waders. And never mind that Viard’s effort to bring an Anglo-French sweetness to his suits and knitwear seemed scruffy. All of that can be ignored. Her real faux pas was relying heavily on the house’s past, and this goes against everything that Chanel herself stood for in her career. As Janet Flanner’s well-known dressmaker profile revealed in 1931, and as the excellent retrospective at the Palais Galliera in 2021 confirmed, Chanel hated the past. Her focus was on the new and exciting. Surely that spirit should be the first quality of contemporary Chanel, not how well Viard interprets Chanel tweeds and embellishments, which he does quite well.
Chanel.
Photo: Courtesy of Chanel
Of course, fashion houses have rich histories to draw on, and I’m not saying designers shouldn’t. Check out the incredible work Demna Gvasalia has done at Balenciaga, whose show last July at the original maison sent haute couture into a new orbit. I’m saying that without a sense of a plausible future, a highly elaborate runway collection can seem like little more than a stream of eccentric and expensive products.
Louis Vuitton.
Photo: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
That was the problem at Louis Vuitton, which took place in the great central hall of the Musée d’Orsay, probably the most controversial part of Gae Aulenti’s design of the old train station, because the placement of the sculpture and boxes high and low exhibits suggested a necropolis. Nicolas Ghesquière’s idea for his oversized blazers and cardigans worn with baggy trousers, or large rugby shirts piled over party dresses and tied at the waist with another garment, was a teenage dress. Or, as he put it in his show notes, “a certain stylistic idea of adolescence.” Ghesquière is really capable of creating new and interesting things; he has done it many times before. But the language in the statement makes him sound like a crazy old man, and for that he blamed Vuitton’s communications staff.
Louis Vuitton.
Photo: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
However, there was something old-fashioned about this vision of adolescence, which included references to school uniforms and, curiously, showed very little bare skin, a quality very uncharacteristic of today’s youth. The use of rich materials and crafts, such as Lesage embroidery, made many of the pieces seem like status items and not necessarily related to real life. And although a group of oversized shirts embroidered with portraits of young people – the work of David Sims – caught my eye, I didn’t see their relevance. Sims made the portraits in the 1990s, the era in which he and Raf Simons created the landmark book of young men’s portraits, Isolated Heroes. And the look then, raw, minimalist, urgent, was actually something new.
At the end of the Paris shows, only a few collections offered a sense of the future. They are Miu Miu, Hermès and Simons, who actually launched their collection digitally before Milan, but I mention it here because of its relevance.
Miu miu.
Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu
Miu Miu was the best show in Paris in terms of expressing the attitudes of young people and indicating new directions. And it was funny that the same day as Chanel, Miuccia Prada opened Miu Miu with tennis skirts and cropped polo shirts, the models’ knee-high stockings turned into satin ballerina slippers. Much more realistic than Chanel’s field mouse stockings and little black patent heels, and certainly cooler.
Miu miu.
Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu
But in other ways, Miu Miu aimed to spoil bourgeois decorum, be it ultra-short tennis skirts (shown with the waistband of boxers), a semi-transparent polo shirt topped with a debutante’s snow-white fur collar, or a reduced charcoal tweed suit. she to a cropped jacket and a pair of boyish shorts, with gray tube socks tucked into pale pink ballerinas. A few years ago, Miu Miu was too crazy to be believable. Now, she has a powerful engine. Just as sarcastic as the Prada riffs on the country club attire were the tough-looking leather pieces; again, those low-rise pants but with double belts and a kind of engineer’s boot, with the top folded down.
Hermes.
Photo: Courtesy of Hermes
Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski began designing her Hermès collection months ago, when Paris was cautiously reopening but there were relatively few tourists. “I had this fantasy of creating a new Parisian,” she told me. “She was thinking about fear today and how it can stop us from being innovative, and she was also thinking about sensuality.” The over-the-knee socks, shown with low-heeled suede boots, were a nod to Jane Birkin, who was known for wearing jeans with skinny socks. But the look was also a nice change from the usual practice this season of showing off thigh-high boots and monster platforms. And the modest suede boots are cool just the way they are.
Hermes.
Photo: Courtesy of Hermes
Although Vanhee-Cybulski showed too many knit shorts and jumpsuits, some with ruffled necklines and a suede belt that featured a new H-shaped buckle, these fitted ensembles were a welcome break from the oversized blazers and chunky sweaters that we saw everywhere. And they fit in with a new Parisian fashion. I also like how Vanhee-Cybulski quietly subverts Hermès’s conservative image as he defies his ateliers, for example with a pleated black skirt in alternating strips of super-soft deerskin and knit. His playful shearling coats and coats, one in a dusty blue hue, also buck the trend for luxury brands to show off his techniques. Or manipulate the simplest forms. For that reason, I found his clothes particularly appropriate this season.
Rafael Simon.
Photo: Courtesy of Raf Simons
Simons’ collection was distinctive in almost every way. First, the silhouette was unexpectedly slim, with layers of wool falling directly from the shoulders and, in some cases, from the matching beanie to which it was attached. Second, his materials were predominantly shiny and complex, from low-sheen short-pile wools to high-sheen coated fabrics. Some people assumed that a thin black dress under a cape was vinyl, or something equally kinky, but it was a glazed cloth. A long dress, similar to a nightgown, caused the same confusion, but no, don’t worry, it wasn’t latex. Of the wool that Simons used for austere capes as well as some coats (and that Stephen Jones used for the trendy Helmut-style caps he created for the collection), Simons said he liked it because “it seems like a material you haven’t seen before. ” In fact, it came from an archival sample.
Third, the colors were lush: deep purple, tobacco brown, blue, forest green, royal red. Simons said one influence was Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1559 Netherlandish Proverbs painting, and it can be seen in the way Simons used brighter colors as highlights against warmer tones, an effect that was occurring simultaneously with the shiny fabrics.
Rafael Simon.
Photo: Courtesy of Raf Simons
From the Middle Ages to the mod. Well maybe. The results were splendidly difficult to read, though the lines and formidable sense of the future were in keeping with Simons’ earlier work. He returned to showing sports jackets, all black, in various lengths. But if a full-length version, with a cabbage-shaped pouf on the shoulders, looks Balenciaga-ish, that’s because it is. Simons looked at an elegant style by Cristóbal Balenciaga and made his own abstraction of it. There are many ways to sharpen his own ideas while keeping him alive in the present.
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