Fashion
Cathy Horyn Paris Fashion Review: Valentino & Balenciaga
Mar
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images, Courtesy of Balenciaga
Valentino set its fall ready-to-wear show in a specially built tent on the grounds of the Arab World Institute, a cultural complex near the Seine River. Passing through its narrow entrance, you went from bright sunshine to a clubby red glow. For light reading, creative director Alessandro Michele provided his thoughts on the meaning of intimacy, citing Ludwig Wittgenstein and Hannah Arendt among other great thinkers. In the lull before the models appeared, Chappell Roan arrived with an escort of bodyguards and helpers, her couture dress so enormous she couldn’t reach her seat alone. God knows how she sat.
Then the red lights dimmed to darkness and a thunderous blast of sound went up. A jet taking off?
No, wait: We were seated in a red, faux-tiled restroom at a scale worthy of a stadium john, with stalls on four sides, and the sound was a toilet bowl flushing. And you knew what was coming next: pairs of legs at the base of each stall door; people doing their business. I have the feeling, um, that some clever art director in the ’80s made an ad campaign of the same image of forced human intimacies in public spaces. Except then, it was shocking or funny or both.
In fashion, it’s good not to know what’s coming. It’s sort of a principle. And despite his highfalutin title, “The Meta-Theatre of Intimacies,” and the rhetoric around it — rhetoric seemingly meant to get people lost — Michele failed to surprise or move. A number of looks were interesting enough, both at the undressed end of the fashion spectrum (the opening bodysuit in flesh-pink and beige lace with its crotch panel left flapping) and the dressed (conservative pantsuits and flounced satin gowns). But far too many clothes looked like vintage Valentino rather than new designs.
From left: Photo: Estrop/Getty ImagesPhoto: Estrop/Getty Images
From top: Photo: Estrop/Getty ImagesPhoto: Estrop/Getty Images
And Michele’s public washroom was less a “dystopian, disturbing, Lynchian space,” as he claimed, than it was a sign of creative constipation. Now in his second ready-to-wear season with the Roman house, Michele seems plugged up, still uncertain what to do with its pretty aesthetic and vast archive. But one thing appears certain: Valentino doesn’t need more theater, it needs clothes you want to wear.
From left: Photo: Daniele Venturelli/Getty ImagesPhoto: Estrop/Getty Images
From top: Photo: Daniele Venturelli/Getty ImagesPhoto: Estrop/Getty Images
This is an extraordinary time for fashion, as the Paris shows have made clear. It feels like sensory overload and simultaneously truly muddled, and that jarring state must reflect the times: of new aesthetics, of new materials and techniques. Some of the best work has come from relatively unknown designers.
Shortly before the Valentino show on Sunday, the Dutch designer Duran Lantink presented classic shapes — pleated tartan skirts, gray tailored trousers, jeans — that looked marvelously detached from the body, presumably by means of hidden connectors between the base garment (also jeans, say, or a kilt) and the duplicate floating in front.
From left: Duran Lantink Photo: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesPhoto: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
From top: Duran Lantink Photo: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesPhoto: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Older designers, notably Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, have done similar spatial tricks with construction. She did so again this season in a terrific show drawing on menswear pinstripes and checks for imposing sculptural forms, then exploding into feminine colors and frills (with hats, by Nobuki Hizume, that sometimes came with two crowns). It was one of Kawakubo’s best collections in years. Looking at Lantink’s molded jackets and tunics with built-up shoulders, enclosing the models’ necks like turtle shells, one also thinks of Demna’s early designs for Balenciaga: his jumbo parkas and those stiffened, cone-shaped necklines of black suits he did nearly two years ago in couture.
From left: Photo: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesPhoto: Estrop/Getty Images
From top: Photo: Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesPhoto: Estrop/Getty Images
From left: Photo: Cathy HorynPhoto: Cathy Horyn
From top: Photo: Cathy HorynPhoto: Cathy Horyn
Fortunately, Lantink’s saving grace is that he knows how to execute his designs at a very high level. The guy has a funny bone, which is evident in his understanding of how people want to distort their bodies today and in his controlled clashes of color and pattern.
Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, the designers of the Paris label Matières Fécales — that’s fecal matter to you — also succeed in familiar terrain because they execute their sleek, alienlike fantasies of glamour extremely well. Among their standout looks were a molded, nipped-waist suit in bright-white boucle with shredded hems and cuffs and a beautifully draped strapless gown in crimson tulle with a train.
From left: Matieres Fecales Photo: THIBAUD MORITZ/AFP via Getty ImagesPhoto: THIBAUD MORITZ/AFP via Getty Images
From top: Matieres Fecales Photo: THIBAUD MORITZ/AFP via Getty ImagesPhoto: THIBAUD MORITZ/AFP via Getty Images
From left: Junya Watanabe Photo: Peter White/Getty ImagesPhoto: Peter White/Getty Images
From top: Junya Watanabe Photo: Peter White/Getty ImagesPhoto: Peter White/Getty Images
Junya Watanabe has long built his practice on rock and roll and his ability to put classic clothing styles — the biker jacket, the trench, a couture frock — through the lens of modern architectural forms. This time, the effort resulted in perfectos in both leather and pleather sprouting spikes, cubes, and other geometric shapes flawlessly covered in the same material. Made in collaboration with a craftsman in Japan, some of the jackets will sell in the range of $6,000 to $7,000. Watanabe also gave the same 3-D treatment to trench coats, though those garments proved too complicated to reproduce for sales. And he sent out some tops and short jackets or capes in black or blond hairy fringe. It was synthetic wig hair, and the concept recalled Martin Margiela’s radically glam use of wigs in a 2009 collection.
Could high fashion be suffering from bloat? In need of a cleanse? One reason the Paris shows have been so fascinating is that there’s a tension between the old and familiar and the desire for the new, or at least for something that doesn’t feel overly designed or conceptual.
From left: Junya Watanabe Photo: Peter White/Getty ImagesPhoto: Peter White/Getty Images
From top: Junya Watanabe Photo: Peter White/Getty ImagesPhoto: Peter White/Getty Images
Junya Watanabe (backstage)Photo: Cathy Horyn
Junya Watanabe (backstage)Photo: Cathy Horyn
“Fashion should always be at a crossroads for it to be good,” said Demna after a Balenciaga show that essentially left behind many of the trends he has helped to start in recent years, like oversize tailoring and monster sneakers. He added, “Fashion is not quiet. Fashion is wearable, fashion is right now. And I miss that kind of fashion.”
So on Sunday evening, he opened with a slim black business suit, white shirt, and tie on a clean-cut male model, followed by similarly understated, dark tailoring, including a gray pinstriped suit and navy turtleneck sweater embroidered to look moth-eaten. Despite the change in tempo, despite the embrace of “normie,” in his words, everything still looked very Balenciaga. Indeed, the style had been given a fresh edge — perhaps because Demna was distancing himself from the crowd, as Prada did in Milan and Jun Takahashi of Undercover did at the start of the Paris collections. Black curtains divided up the enormous show space, creating a maze and a narrow path for the models.
From left: Balenciaga Photo: Courtesy of BalenciagaPhoto: Courtesy of Balenciaga
From top: Balenciaga Photo: Courtesy of BalenciagaPhoto: Courtesy of Balenciaga
Demna said later he wanted to give a sense of urgency. The models at first came out of steadily and then suddenly, around look No. 40 out of 80, they seemed to be exploding down the dark maze, or least my section of it: close-fitting leather jackets with stitched ribbing across the front; a dark-blue maxi cardigan with jeans; track suits with ordinary, broken-in sneakers (a collaboration with Puma); a pink ribbed jacket with a deep, fur-trimmed hood —think Kenny in South Park; and the same plush hooded look for a denim jacket and a gray sweatshirt sporting the word “Luxury,” as though it were a team or place. Among the striking looks, casual and yet not quite, was a dark-gray top with a high neck that was unzipped in the back — rather like an L.L.Bean fleece worn backward — and paired with a full-length matching skirt. The model had on high-heel sandals.
From left: Balenciaga Photo: Courtesy of BalenciagaPhoto: Courtesy of Balenciaga
From top: Balenciaga Photo: Courtesy of BalenciagaPhoto: Courtesy of Balenciaga
From left: Balenciaga Photo: Courtesy of BalenciagaPhoto: Courtesy of Balenciaga
From top: Balenciaga Photo: Courtesy of BalenciagaPhoto: Courtesy of Balenciaga
The visual bombardment seemed to slow for some jersey dresses — in Balenciaga pink and red, along with black and white — that were based on swimsuits, with partial trains. For me, the overall takeaway from the collection was a closer fit, a generally normal shoulder line, and more ease and function. And that is relevant now. I looked at some hardcore fans sitting across from me, in their ballooning Balenciaga pants and blown-up sneakers. The only thing Demna hadn’t made old was their sunglasses.
“I wanted to do everything I love,” he said afterward. But more to the point: not what he’s done before. Lately, there has been speculation that Demna may leave Balenciaga after a decade. I asked him about it backstage.
“Oh, really?” he said. “Fashion has become like this giant rumor mill, which is fun, too, because people like the guessing game … Sometimes I read more about rumors, and about who is going where, than what we really want from fashion now. Does it make any sense? I’m staying with fashion forever.”
It’s probably no surprise that some of the best collections didn’t try to be topical or cool or sexy. They just were.
From left: Balenciaga Photo: Courtesy of BalenciagaPhoto: Courtesy of Balenciaga
From top: Balenciaga Photo: Courtesy of BalenciagaPhoto: Courtesy of Balenciaga
At Hermès, Nadège Vanhee offered some terrific, streamlined looks that combined felt and leather. She said, “It works like the leather — it’s pliable and it has this great functional character.” Asked if the pistachio-colored leather of a sleeveless dress, with a bit of lacing at the waist, was bonded onto the felt — you could barely see the tiny strips of felt — she raised an eyebrow. “Never. There’s no bonding here.” She then laughed. “We’re like the snob.”
From left: Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com/Courtesy of HermesPhoto: Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com/ Courtesy of Hermes
From top: Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com/Courtesy of HermesPhoto: Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com/ Courtesy of Hermes
From left: Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com/Courtesy of HermePhoto: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com/Courtesy of Herme
From top: Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com/Courtesy of HermePhoto: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com/Courtesy of Herme
Snob or not, this was a brisk, sexy display with leather hot pants with snug leather jackets or long wool coats, molded minidresses fashioned from thin strips of leather and knitting, and a new style of pointy-toe riding boots.
“This season, I can really feel the presence of the atelier,” said Seán McGirr before his McQueen show, his third for the London label. “In the sharpness, the leanest of the silhouette. It has to be perfection.”
McGirr, who got hammered after his debut, has come back not only with a remarkably good collection but also with an elongated silhouette with neat shoulders that, in some jackets or coats, are compressed for a distinctive look. He referenced Victorian cuts and some of Lee McQueen’s early tailoring, but he successfully blurred his sources. Another welcome change was that his construction felt lighter and softer without losing the McQueen precision. Among his best looks were a black wool-twill jacket with a slightly curved front that hinted of British military tailoring and a slim black coat with a subtle flat pleat at the shoulders.
From left: Photo: INDIGITAL.TV/Courtesy of Alexander McQueenPhoto: INDIGITAL.TV/Courtesy of Alexander McQueen
From top: Photo: INDIGITAL.TV/Courtesy of Alexander McQueenPhoto: INDIGITAL.TV/Courtesy of Alexander McQueen
He beefed-up knitwear and his evening dresses were romantic but richer and more sophisticated this time. Broad-brimmed black hats, a nod to Oscar Wilde (and by Philip Treacy), were a nice touch. Even on the ultralong runway, McGirr’s smart silhouette — as relevant as it is McQueen — managed to stand out. Yet some details got lost, and they deserved to be seen. A cozier space would have helped.
From left: Photo: INDIGITAL.TV/Courtesy of Alexander McQueenPhoto: INDIGITAL.TV/Courtesy of Alexander McQueen
From top: Photo: INDIGITAL.TV/Courtesy of Alexander McQueenPhoto: INDIGITAL.TV/Courtesy of Alexander McQueen
