This January Paris greeted us with rain and more rain. In the seven days I saw sun only once – proof that god hates fashion. The weather put a damper on a season that was already decidedly mid. If fashion is supposed to reflect our culture, what it tells us is that our culture is mired in mediocrity. Note that I did not say that it was an awful season, nor am I particularly disappointed, which means that I got exactly what I expected – mids. Pretty much all the editors I’ve spoken with this season did not expect much either. We’ve capitulated to fashion in the say way the American left has capitulated to Trump. We shrug our shoulders because we know what to expect. We troop from one show to another without much joy and without much anticipation. We are tired; what was once fun is starting to look an awful lot like work.
This season felt like it was my busiest ever, even though I’ve attended the least amount of shows – no Ann Demeulemeester, which is in perpetual limbo, no Yohji Yamamoto, where rappers are now preferred to editors, no Dries Van Noten, which is in transition – the showrooms made up for it. Fashion is now in a peculiar state – it seems like the conglomerates have never had so much power, making it virtually impossible to build an independent brand, and at the same time there are more brands than ever before. How are they all surviving is beyond me.
My first show was Auralee, the newish kid on the Paris block, though the brand is turning ten this year. Ryota Iwai’s lovely clothes hardly require a show, but a show has become an indispensable part of being on high fashion’s radar. Looking at Auralee’s output in a show format makes little sense, but here it is; it started out slowly and then built up to something more intricate, leather biker jackets under coats, puffers over suits, all in all a fine outing, thought not terribly exciting. The excitement happens in the showroom as you run your fingers over baby cashmere and the fine wools, and try on the clothes that feel both new and lived in and intimate.
My next presentation was Lemaire, car number two on the quiet luxury express. The brand is riding high – according to a recent Business of Fashion article it’s pulling in 100 million euros a year – and its newfound swagger was reflected in that of the models who sashayed with uncharacteristic, for Lemaire, confidence down the runway, layered in the brand’s signature neutrals. Can a sexy librarian swagger? Perhaps. Broken down though, there wasn’t much new to look at; same staples in a new mixture. I file Lemaire under a it-is-what-it-is rubric – the brand does not need to change much as its fan base grows around its tried-and-true offerings.
On Thursday morning I dropped by the Dries Van Noten presentation. Dries Van Noten is not a huge brand – these days one cannot be huge while selling clothes – and I imagine the mandate from Puig, its owner, is to grow it. It looks like the strategy is to grow DVN by making it look younger, which we already saw with the last, uncharacteristically bare skin-heavy show. As far as this men’s presentation went, Julian Klausner, the brand’s new creative director, clearly thinks that “young” means effeminate. This is a peculiar proposition in the age where an unprecedented number of young straight men are interested in fashion. Dries’s man was self-assured and defined in broad enough strokes to appeal to a wide variety of customers. Klausner’s proposition does not. One must wonder whether the example of Sebastian Meunier feminizing the Ann Demeulemeester man and alienating scores of brand’s core clients in the process was not enough of an example – one next door, mind you – to give Dries Van Noten the brand pause. Apparently not. And one more thing; I am pretty confident that there are photographers other than the utterly predictable Willy Vanderperre out there. No wonder everything looks the same these days.
Then it was off to the Rick Owens show. Set to the soundtrack of various iterations of David Bowie’s “Heroes,” Owens showed that savoir-faire need not be the exclusive preserve of the polished luxury houses. The braided leathers on the boots, the masterfully frayed edges of jeans, and short sleeve, high-necked tops made of layers of rubber were feats of sartorial achievement. I also loved – and I was in the minority there – the simplicity of the outerwear, where a few sweeping lines were enough to make a statement. The silhouette was all over the place – a best of – with cropped jackets and huge pants, with long coats over shorts, and leggings tucked into boots. The casting was strong, with several older men overshadowing the usual young whippets. And yet, somehow the show failed to truly move, the way Porterville did a year ago. Perhaps the difference between this show and that was the difference between the demanding but haunting “Warszawa” and the irresistible but easily digestible “Heroes.”
My once-a-day show regiment was broken Friday, the day of Comme. First it was Junya Watanabe, who failed to wow this time. His modern day cowboys and truck drivers were too literal and tiring. Our culture’s pining for the good old days when men were men in the Wild West, as reflected in shows like the wildly successful Yellowstone and its various offshoots, watched by the subdued white-collar male whose spirit has withered long ago under the weight of his regimented life, is, frankly, embarrassing. This phenomenon is not new, but at least Fight Club was fun and had a whiff of counterculture to it, as did Watanabe’s shows that were based on the likes of the Taxi Driver.
It was Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons that had something relevant to say this time, about the sickness and the absurdity of war. The spliced uniforms worked like a charm, as did the crazy shoes that turned upwards like a barrel of an unusable weapon. Mama put those guns into the ground with gusto.
My first show on Saturday was Hermes, and it was as confident as ever. Some people find Hermes menswear underwhelming. I don’t, but then, I don’t look at Hermes menswear as fashion – I see at as simply beautiful, sumptuous, luxurious clothes. Do they need a show? Not really. What would work for Hermes menswear in a show is if it was styled up a bit to give it more energy.
There was plenty of energy at Y-3. Once again, like so much this season, I looked at it through it-is-what-it-is lens. The best bits were Yamamoto’s original silhouettes reworked as techwear. There was also another unnecessary Neighborhood collab, this one centered around motorcycle racing. It’s main feature was lots of bold lettering; ok.
The last show of the day was that of the Japanese brand Kolor. It was held in one of my favorite venues, the former Communist Party headquarters by Oscar Niemeyer. But instead of using its stunning main hall, as before, this time Junichi Abe stuck us in the brutalist basement. It was as if he was signaling something, and it was indeed, the end of his tenure at the brand that he founded. This was pretty shocking, and the new designer was announced two days after the show. I don’t know what exactly happened, and no one else did either. Farewell, then, to a talented designer. As for the collection itself, it was fittingly timid for a coda.
Could somebody, anybody, save this season? Enter Sacai. Few designers are as consistent and consistently good as Chitose Abe. Though it’s evident that she thinks that she too needs pop-cultural crutches – this collection featured artwork from Where the Wild Things Are, the wildly popular children’s book – the brilliant clothes stood on their own just fine, particularly the spliced two-tone trenches. But the fact that even the designer as talented as Abe relies on pop culture to move units speaks to the cultural moment we are in – where EVERYTHING is entertainment and kidults rule the world.
I suppose this makes a neat circle; I started with culture and ended with it, too. And fashion is part of culture, and the reason I fell in love with it in the first place. But the culture that I fell for is largely gone, and so is fashion that was in dialogue with it. Except Undercover, which presented a showless collection based on experimental German and French bands like Faust and Heldon. Someone must carry the torch after all.
The above is not an entirely fair ending, because I also attended Peter Copping’s debut at Lanvin. But since it was really a co-ed outing tacked on at the end of the menswear season, I am treating it separately. As far as trial runs go it was fine. I’ll start with the good – it’s nice to see a creative director at the helm of a traditional French house who actually knows how to design. The womenswear was a testament to that, and there were outfits in there that clearly signaled skill and talent. Having said that, the first outing is also your first impression and no time to be timid, especially at the time when the industry segment Lanvin is in is in tailspin. The outfits that had edge, like several made of black boucle, were overshadowed by evening ensembles that would make Carolina Herrera proud. There is a way to do Parisian high bourgeois chic – the intended direction of the house – without making it look passé (see, Anthony Vaccarello’s recent efforts at Saint-Laurent). And while there was coherence in Copping’s womenswear, the menswear looked like an afterthought – a common disease of creative directors of big houses who still think that men don’t care about fashion. It was all over the place and the best looks had a whiff of Dries Van Noten to them. Whether the faults of the debut are all with Copping is impossible to say – big brands are at the mercy of businesspeople, accountants, consultants, and merchandisers. But, for better or worse, it is the creative director that must own successes and failures of a house in the eyes of the public who can only judge by what’s shown to them on the runway. I am still rooting for Copping and hoping for a stronger second outing.