Paris Fashion Week SS27: Flying Cars, a Library and 95 Birds, the Biggest Sets of the Season
Paris Fashion Week SS27 ran from Sept 28 to Oct 6, and a lot of the clothes got lighter and easier. The sets got bigger. Here are six shows we're still talking about, in the order they happened, with one line from us on each.
Matières Fécales carried the billionaires out
Steven Raj Bhaskaran and Hannah Rose Dalton took the first evening of the week with what they billed as the first show ever staged on Place de la République, around the Morice brothers' Marianne. "The Ninety-Nine Percent" had 99 looks on 99 models of colour, in three acts: a migrant family in white cotton and tulle, a punk revolt, then feathered, lace-heavy evening. The finale stuck. Two models walked out staggering under mannequins of billionaires hoisted on their shoulders. A public square is a set you can't control. Bike couriers and shoppers drifted past while guests waited. We think that was the point. The protest landed because the gowns underneath were properly made.
Anrealage's dresses changed colour without glowing
Kunihiko Morinaga marked his 25th Paris show with a collection called Skin. Most of it was analogue: scales of felted Ultrasuede, and 3D-printed skirts that read as different shades as the models moved. Then came six armour-like evening dresses, each covered in 1,000 to 2,000 individually controlled E Ink scales. Unlike LEDs, they give off no light. The material itself changes colour, flickering and draining to ash grey in time with a live performance of Stravinsky's The Firebird. It's e-reader technology used as cloth. This is the smartest runway tech in a while, because a surface that reflects light behaves like fabric, not a screen. Washing it is another question.
Vaccarello gilded everything, then switched to black
On the same Tuesday night, Anthony Vaccarello, ten years into Saint Laurent, sent out trenches, safari jackets, pencil skirts and cocktail dresses almost entirely in gold: lamé, but also organza, guipure lace, brocade, metallic cotton and latex. Three huge gold chandeliers hung over a black catwalk, with the Eiffel Tower lit up behind. A dozen black looks closed it, led by Anja Rubik in a velvet skirt suit. Charlotte Gainsbourg sang to Vaccarello at the finale. Footwear News called the shoes the talk of the week: heels shaped like snakes, made with freelance shoe design director Corrado De Biase. Gold done this many ways could have looked like costume. It looked like research.
Valentino asked for a book at the door
Alessandro Michele showed on Sunday under the iron arches of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, and guests were asked to bring a book to donate. His theme was the "antilibrary", the unread books on your shelf, which he compared to clothes you'll never wear. The notes came with a bibliography of invented titles and fake ISBNs, The Social Life of Velvet among them. It opened with plain, jewel-toned satin bustiers over knee-length skirts in crepon, dévoré and leather. The eveningwear peaked with a black velvet dress under a messy stack of gold and pearl necklaces. Pairing some with men's checked shirts blurred the message. On their own, those plain bustiers are the clearest idea he's shown at Valentino so far.
Blazy hung 95 birds and made tweed stretch
Matthieu Blazy's first-anniversary show at Chanel, on Monday night in the Grand Palais, put 95 birds in mid-flight over the guests. The floor below was an aerial view of a bird sanctuary near his bolt hole in Calabria. There were 83 looks, tracing Gabrielle Chanel from Edwardian dress to her own suit. Dyanira Hurbuscher opened it carrying Gabrielle Chanel's own 2.55 bag from the archive. The detail we care about is the new suit cloth, a stretch fabric that looks like tweed and moves like sportswear. "We all look at Nike," Blazy said. The birds made the picture. A tweed that stretches is the change people will actually wear.
Ghesquière's coats weigh less than a T-shirt
Louis Vuitton closed the week on Tuesday in the Louvre's Cour Carrée. Nicolas Ghesquière hung a few dozen wedge-shaped flying cars over an asphalt runway, with '70s-style headlights and antennas blinking red. A traffic jam in the sky. Underneath, the clothes were close to weightless: three-hole dresses, cardigans and reefer coats in gauzy, papery fabrics. He pulled out a swatch of scarf-weight checked cashmere used for double-face coats, and said most of the coats weigh less than a T-shirt. "I'm a specialist in armor for a long time," he joked. We'd trade the cars for a seat near those seams. Lightness that hard to engineer deserves to be seen up close.
Light clothes, heavy sets
The best ideas this week were the quiet ones: a stretch tweed, a plain bustier, a coat you barely feel. Next season, we would happily take a smaller room and a closer look.
Comments