Fur! It’s a wonder there are any beasties left in the trees after 4 consecutive fashion weeks saw more fluff, scale, and skin rolled out than we’ve seen in the last two decades. Activists screamed for Gaultier’s hide, and he wasn’t even the biggest offender. Viktor & Rolf, Chapurin, Valli and Rick Owens’ show notes included SAGA Furs’ logo in the footer. But the resurgence of real fur isn’t quite as noteworthy as the Paris establishment’s acceptance of fake fur, notably at Chanel and Margiela. Serial fur recidivist Karl Lagerfeld presciently bucked the trend, choosing fake furs that varied from camp to convincing, though the spectacle of all that frothy outerwear parading around an imported iceberg was so desirable you didn’t care if any of it had ever been alive.
Chanel (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
Valli (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
Mid-century Mélange: Maybe it’s the influence of cult US series Mad Men or maybe it’s because the forties have been done to death, dug up and done again. But the 50s and 60s are back and with none of the insufferably smug tongue-in-cheekiness usually reserved for their look and texture. Dries, Rochas, Miu Miu, Giles and – with BBC costume drama verisimilitude – Vuitton brought out the elegant conformity and sexual rebellion of the period with startling – and highly wearable – results.
Dries Van Noten (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
Vuitton (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
Gothic: I almost wrote Belgian Gothic but I want to lock up Yves Saint Laurent in the same tower as Anne Demeulemeester and Haider Ackermann – even if it would be against Stefano Pilati’s will. We could tie him up with some of Anne’s whipcord. YSL’s bourgeois convent girl made mourning look hedonistic and Demeulemeester’s formal resignation was very adult but never madame.
Haider Ackermann (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
Demeulemeester (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
YSL (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
Leather: Maybe I should have put this with furs but the story here isn’t about texture so much as colour: dark sand (Chloé), cognac (Haider), and patent (Karl and Céline) were dominant with matte blacks and browns in supporting roles (Hermès).
Hermès (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
Céline (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
Minimalism: Whatever that means. For Céline’s Phoebe Philo it wasn’t anything prickly or cerebral. Philo used minimalism’s artificial simplicity to underscore the luxury of her tailoring and fabrics. Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci seemed to be channeling some part of Helmut Lang’s brain and sketching it all in modernism’s signature colours: red, black, and white.
Céline (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
Givenchy (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
The Beige Coat: It showed up everywhere, like a young woman making her grand début, with everyone dutifully noting in their pads and blackberries: “little beige coat, uh-huh…” Chloé had the look cornered, as usual, with a buttery-blonde horde of seventies Dunaways marching out in handsome pieces full of tailoring tics imported from that decade’s bourgeois menswear.
Givenchy (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
Giles Deacon (Photo © Marcio Madeira / FirstView.com)
