Final Notes on the Fashion Week🪡

Salut !

Alas, Paris Fashion Week has come to an end! 

It's been quite a busy week, even though I haven't been really involved with the Fashion Week itself. I've mostly been watching some recordings of the shows and admiring some pictures of them on Instagram (especially from Nina Garcia's account).

On Monday I did go and see quickly what was happening outside of the Balenciaga show in front of the cathedral of the Invalides, and I reckon that it looked more like the people were going to a funeral rather than to a fashion show.😜 Most people were dressed in black and since it was raining, all of the personnel of Balenciaga had opened their black umbrellas. The show took place in a giant grey cube that they had built next to the cathedral, and I just saw today that it was being dismounted. 

While I wasn't that impressed with Balenciaga's show, today I decided to go through a bit more of the other shows' looks to get an idea of the different ideas and identities of different brands. Here are my short notes that I gathered during my exploration of the shows on the site of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode:

• Louis Vuitton: Not really my vibe, but I like look 20 with a Chanel-esque tweed-ish dress and the Speedy 25 bag (the size designed for Audrey Hepburn) in the monogrammed canvas; look 38 is also cool with the baggy see-through pleated black trousers and a shiny black mosaic-style blazer.
• Rabanne: Very nice; interesting color choices and bold bling bling.
• Chanel: Not a huge fan, but I do like looks 6, 32, 60 and 67.
• Hermès: Kind of nice safari vibes, but begs the question that are the different shades of beige and brown a tad boring after all? Maybe, maybe not.
• Pierre Cardin: Extremely fun Star Trek vibes; staying true to Cardin's futuristic and playful side. While I wouldn't wear most of the looks in my actual life, I would wear look 27: a cute denim dress with circular pleats at the top!
• Lacoste: Love the yellow looks, some of the green ones and the dark brown/black looks 40 and 46.
• Courrèges: Quite a strange, but clear and sleek concept.
• Ujoh: I fell in love with the oversized blush-colored sheer suit of look 38.

The winners in my book:

• Elie Saab: All of the forest green safari outfits are to die for. And as we could expect from this Lebanese genius designer, he let us feast our eyes in some exquisite evening gowns!👗
• Saint Laurent: I wasn't that thrilled about the last colorful looks of the collection, but the oversized suits with gigantic shoulders have not left my mind since I saw them last week; and I had to admire them again today. Considering how much fabric the majority of the models had on, I am amazed at how balanced the proportions are, and that the models do not look too buried under the clothes. I guess we could even call this a redefinement of the feminine power suit. Most of all, the looks could not be more Yves Saint Laurent – the models looked almost like caricatures of him.👔

There we go! This is the most I've ever analyzed any fashion week by the way. But I'm glad that I feel that I understand the nature of the shows a bit more now. There is still so much more to understand though, and as long as I don't get an invitation to one of the shows, I'm quite sure there will always be something that can't be understood just by looking at videos and pictures of the shows. 

I imagine that there is even somewhat of a family atmosphere in some of the shows as the friends of fashion reunite and chat before and after the shows. But of course most of the time the shows serve as a place for "fashion victims" to show off their inventiveness with their outfits in the hopes of recognition and validation for their looks, as well as some showers of paparazzi flashes. Maybe it comes down to the question of what is actually the relationship between the superficiality and the depth of this visual culture that we see in these fashion shows. I'm going to have to think about that a bit more.🧠

Have a stylish week!

Bisous,

Elle

❣️Recent delights

• Apparently it's fig season now and I am in love with eating figs!
• It's sort of comforting to know that a successor to Inès de la Fressange is already in place in the fashion world. Her daughter Nine d'Urso played marvelously Cristóbal Balenciaga's muse Colette in the Disney+ series Cristóbal Balenciaga (which was very interesting by the way!), and now I realize that she has the same sort of big smile and a very natural demeanor in front of the camera like her mother. Here's a fun video she made with Dior:

• I've been re-reading Maria Callas' letters and memoirs for a university essay I'm working on, and it feels nice to time travel back into her life and especially to the start of her career again. What a different world it was in the years after WW2! And how exciting it must have been for her to get her first triumphant opera performances of her career in 1948 and -49.🎵 There is a new film about Callas with Angelina Jolie playing her, and I still have my doubts about whether they will represent her in a balanced way or not, but this teaser of the film gave me a bit of hope. The cinematography looks interesting, but we'll have to see what Jolie looks like when singing opera as Callas.👀