Tweet
A good, if a bit cynical, review of the Paris shows from NYT (minus the Raf praise):
Struggling to Stay Relevant on Planet Paris
By CATHY HORYN
Published: June 30, 2009
OUTSIDE the Rick Owens show, at a large arena here, three young street toughs — a girl and two boys who appeared to be 12 or 13 —were jeering at the fashionistas. The girl was especially bold; she would run up to boys not much older than herself, boys with the stylish poise of black storks, and flail her arms and laugh wildly in their pretty faces.
Unlike Milan, French men’s fashion has never really claimed a large, much less sympathetic, audience. That’s partly because the designers who show here, like Mr. Owens — or Raf Simons or Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons — tend to have strong sensibilities. In their designs, all sorts of people recognize what is modern, alluring, suggestive, dark and funny, but the numbers are fewer than for someone like Giorgio Armani.
Recently, however, it has become clear that Paris fashion is less the creative hub of the industry than an isolated universe whose weakness can be sensed even by children. Sometime in the last decade, the industry discovered that fashion was a terrific means to an end — so long as the end was anything but a useful new fashion. It could attract investors, sweeten a hotel deal in Dubai and serve as a communications tool.
Last week at the spring 2010 men’s shows, editors were dutifully sending out tweets as they flew around Paris in their hired cars and minivans. Nobody expects to learn anything significant from a tweet, and nobody does. The point is just to create the frantic sense that something is happening.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, designers were struggling against the profound realities of tighter credit and wary consumers. You felt this in the tiredness of Ann Demeulemeester’s many washed-silk suits, in Dries Van Noten’s safe and pleasing use of faded ikat prints, in Kim Jones’s modified dandies for Dunhill and in the new, softer suits at Dior.
Many people seemed to like the Dior suits, which were layered with loose vests and used light-emitting fabrics, as if the designer Kris Van Assche had wanted to expose the properties of tailoring. But likeable or not, the clothes were hardly remarkable in a city that has seen similar relaxed expressions from Yohji Yamamoto, as well as various Belgian designers. The hallmark of Dior is tailoring — and no doubt the backlist of suits will keep customers happy — but the house is also known for operating on a high plain of awareness, and lately what you get is a blurry vision.
Other designers offered what amounts to an imitation of experience. This season the buzzword was multiracial, with Stefano Pilati of Yves Saint Laurent showing tailored jackets layered over flowing tunics and soft trousers, the ethnic edges hazed. Looking at the murky Armani colors, you had to remind yourself that this was a Saint Laurent collection.
John Galliano’s Arabic boys, based on the portraits of Wilhelm von Gloeden, were plausible because his show was typically camp. It’s no surprise that he also managed to work Lawrence of Arabia and Napoleon Bonaparte into the same North African vistas.
But the Givenchy show, another multicultural experience, just felt naïve. Riccardo Tisci tried to insinuate that his heavy layers of black leather shorts, baggy gold tops, mosaic print leggings and hoods were based on a contemporary style. But is it his style? Such overwrought design serves only to isolate the people who inhabit fashion. Maybe that’s how it seemed to the taunting youths outside the Owens show, who reflected multiracial Paris.
The Givenchy show suggests the amount of insecurity and confusion worming through Paris houses. Designers are looking at everything but the actual challenges of modern design. Bernhard Willhelm could at least be funny. He turned a grand salon into a playroom where his models, dressed in kooky camo and jungle prints, blithely daubed paint on trite old paintings.
Aside from Mr. Owens, whose urban clothes — the tough leathers and half-skirted trousers — describe a specific world, the other standout collections of the Paris shows were Raf Simons, Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe and Jean Paul Gaultier. Although Lanvin presented a new, leaner silhouette, the shapes and styling felt a bit rushed to the runway.
Ms. Kawakubo’s singular effect was to apply collages of fabric to the fronts of suit jackets, repeating the notion of randomness in vividly printed trousers. Mr. Watanabe focused on the nipped-waist sports jacket, adding formal touches like ascots to polo shirts while retaining a casual look. With both designers, the changes grew out of their own fashion traditions.
Mr. Gaultier has a distinct silhouette, but the ultrawide-shoulder jackets that closed his show were compelling, especially with the line created by the straight-cut tops and slightly draped trousers. This wasn’t Mr. Gaultier up to his old tricks.
If Mr. Simons’s belted jackets, with their vague military cast, impart a sense of control, that’s precisely what he intended. He thinks that is what people want — control over their lives, their futures. Clothing can express that. Indeed, the striking thing about Mr. Simons’s collection is how much he focused on silhouette. Sure, the fabrics are beautiful, the details rich, but it’s the cut that makes the difference.
In spite of his influence on fashion over the last decade and a half, Mr. Simons remains below the radar. His work for Jil Sander has changed that a little, but now he wants to work on branding his own label. That explains, perhaps, white cotton trousers printed with writhing green-brown snakes and a new logo entwined with a snake, a style that might seem flashy for Mr. Simons. (They actually bring to mind a wild garden print that Helmut Lang once did for jeans.)
Referring to the economic crisis, Mr. Simons said, “I think retailers are going to focus less on the designers of the past 10 years than on those who are going to matter over the next 10 years.”
Paris designers can afford to be sloppy. Certainly one who is very fluent in modern luxury is Paul Helbers of Louis Vuitton. His clothes are probably best appreciated in a shop, where one can feel the weight of a linen suit or see how the sleeves of a jacket have been set slightly forward to allow for more ease on a bicycle.
Véronique Nichanian of Hermès also showed some lovely, civilized clothes: slim linen trousers in pond shades of green and brown, as well as lush leathers and fine casual knits. But the setting for this low-key luxury was a vast, airless ancient room made more stifling by a packed earthen floor laid specially for the show and probably at some expense. It was not quite the joy of Plato’s cave.
Struggling to Stay Relevant on Planet Paris
By CATHY HORYN
Published: June 30, 2009
OUTSIDE the Rick Owens show, at a large arena here, three young street toughs — a girl and two boys who appeared to be 12 or 13 —were jeering at the fashionistas. The girl was especially bold; she would run up to boys not much older than herself, boys with the stylish poise of black storks, and flail her arms and laugh wildly in their pretty faces.
Unlike Milan, French men’s fashion has never really claimed a large, much less sympathetic, audience. That’s partly because the designers who show here, like Mr. Owens — or Raf Simons or Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons — tend to have strong sensibilities. In their designs, all sorts of people recognize what is modern, alluring, suggestive, dark and funny, but the numbers are fewer than for someone like Giorgio Armani.
Recently, however, it has become clear that Paris fashion is less the creative hub of the industry than an isolated universe whose weakness can be sensed even by children. Sometime in the last decade, the industry discovered that fashion was a terrific means to an end — so long as the end was anything but a useful new fashion. It could attract investors, sweeten a hotel deal in Dubai and serve as a communications tool.
Last week at the spring 2010 men’s shows, editors were dutifully sending out tweets as they flew around Paris in their hired cars and minivans. Nobody expects to learn anything significant from a tweet, and nobody does. The point is just to create the frantic sense that something is happening.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, designers were struggling against the profound realities of tighter credit and wary consumers. You felt this in the tiredness of Ann Demeulemeester’s many washed-silk suits, in Dries Van Noten’s safe and pleasing use of faded ikat prints, in Kim Jones’s modified dandies for Dunhill and in the new, softer suits at Dior.
Many people seemed to like the Dior suits, which were layered with loose vests and used light-emitting fabrics, as if the designer Kris Van Assche had wanted to expose the properties of tailoring. But likeable or not, the clothes were hardly remarkable in a city that has seen similar relaxed expressions from Yohji Yamamoto, as well as various Belgian designers. The hallmark of Dior is tailoring — and no doubt the backlist of suits will keep customers happy — but the house is also known for operating on a high plain of awareness, and lately what you get is a blurry vision.
Other designers offered what amounts to an imitation of experience. This season the buzzword was multiracial, with Stefano Pilati of Yves Saint Laurent showing tailored jackets layered over flowing tunics and soft trousers, the ethnic edges hazed. Looking at the murky Armani colors, you had to remind yourself that this was a Saint Laurent collection.
John Galliano’s Arabic boys, based on the portraits of Wilhelm von Gloeden, were plausible because his show was typically camp. It’s no surprise that he also managed to work Lawrence of Arabia and Napoleon Bonaparte into the same North African vistas.
But the Givenchy show, another multicultural experience, just felt naïve. Riccardo Tisci tried to insinuate that his heavy layers of black leather shorts, baggy gold tops, mosaic print leggings and hoods were based on a contemporary style. But is it his style? Such overwrought design serves only to isolate the people who inhabit fashion. Maybe that’s how it seemed to the taunting youths outside the Owens show, who reflected multiracial Paris.
The Givenchy show suggests the amount of insecurity and confusion worming through Paris houses. Designers are looking at everything but the actual challenges of modern design. Bernhard Willhelm could at least be funny. He turned a grand salon into a playroom where his models, dressed in kooky camo and jungle prints, blithely daubed paint on trite old paintings.
Aside from Mr. Owens, whose urban clothes — the tough leathers and half-skirted trousers — describe a specific world, the other standout collections of the Paris shows were Raf Simons, Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe and Jean Paul Gaultier. Although Lanvin presented a new, leaner silhouette, the shapes and styling felt a bit rushed to the runway.
Ms. Kawakubo’s singular effect was to apply collages of fabric to the fronts of suit jackets, repeating the notion of randomness in vividly printed trousers. Mr. Watanabe focused on the nipped-waist sports jacket, adding formal touches like ascots to polo shirts while retaining a casual look. With both designers, the changes grew out of their own fashion traditions.
Mr. Gaultier has a distinct silhouette, but the ultrawide-shoulder jackets that closed his show were compelling, especially with the line created by the straight-cut tops and slightly draped trousers. This wasn’t Mr. Gaultier up to his old tricks.
If Mr. Simons’s belted jackets, with their vague military cast, impart a sense of control, that’s precisely what he intended. He thinks that is what people want — control over their lives, their futures. Clothing can express that. Indeed, the striking thing about Mr. Simons’s collection is how much he focused on silhouette. Sure, the fabrics are beautiful, the details rich, but it’s the cut that makes the difference.
In spite of his influence on fashion over the last decade and a half, Mr. Simons remains below the radar. His work for Jil Sander has changed that a little, but now he wants to work on branding his own label. That explains, perhaps, white cotton trousers printed with writhing green-brown snakes and a new logo entwined with a snake, a style that might seem flashy for Mr. Simons. (They actually bring to mind a wild garden print that Helmut Lang once did for jeans.)
Referring to the economic crisis, Mr. Simons said, “I think retailers are going to focus less on the designers of the past 10 years than on those who are going to matter over the next 10 years.”
Paris designers can afford to be sloppy. Certainly one who is very fluent in modern luxury is Paul Helbers of Louis Vuitton. His clothes are probably best appreciated in a shop, where one can feel the weight of a linen suit or see how the sleeves of a jacket have been set slightly forward to allow for more ease on a bicycle.
Véronique Nichanian of Hermès also showed some lovely, civilized clothes: slim linen trousers in pond shades of green and brown, as well as lush leathers and fine casual knits. But the setting for this low-key luxury was a vast, airless ancient room made more stifling by a packed earthen floor laid specially for the show and probably at some expense. It was not quite the joy of Plato’s cave.
Comment