There is a lot to see at fashion week. Blink (or scroll too quickly) and you’ll miss the details: purses with feathers, futuristic sunglasses, forked jewelry. Throughout the month, we’ll be highlighting the things we saw that surprised or delighted us.
PARIS — For many years, the fashion industry has been criticized for its lack of diversity in the types of bodies shown on the runways.
Some progress has been made and some seasons are better than others. But for the most part, at the high-profile fashion shows in New York, London, Milan, and Paris, the landscape during the season that just ended looked like this: a plus-size model and a medium-size model were thrown in between. a sea. of size zero models (or more or less).
So it was refreshing, towards the end of this Paris Fashion Week, to see these proportions completely changed, if only in one show, by a young brand called Ester Manas, designed by the Brussels-based duo Ester Manas and Balthazar. Delpierre.
It was only the second parade for Mrs. Manas and Mr. Delepierre. In 2020, the label was a semi-finalist for the LVMH Prize, a prestigious competition for emerging designers, in which the duo distinguished themselves technically: Some 90 percent of their collection comes in one size fits all, from about 34 to 50. in French. sizing, or from 2 to 18 in American sizes.
So of the 29 looks featured in her show on Saturday, less than a third were worn by conventionally slim models.
Instead of feeling like an extraordinary and annoying act of body-positive rebellion, though, the designers pulled off a more impressive feat: It just felt normal. The models, like the women who shop for clothes in the real world, like the audience watching the show, represented a wide range of sizes.
Still, it wasn’t necessarily everyday wear for every woman, though that’s true of most catwalks. These designs were ruched (allowing for a wide range of sizes), sheer, brightly colored and sexy, yet securely constructed, revealing the midriff in a way that never seemed too flashy.
Backstage, after the show, some models cried, Delepierre said, because they “couldn’t imagine they could walk on the catwalk in Paris.”
But the designers stressed that their choice was not intended as an ethical stance, or with a desire to create a utopia of body confidence. It was practical. They needed to display the clothes in this way in order to sell the clothes. (Their largest distributor is Ssense).
“We have to show how the pieces move,” Delepierre said.
“It’s about reality,” Ms. Manas added. “It’s not about dreams.”
Source: www.nytimes.com