Within the vast domed complex that houses Napoleon’s tomb in Paris, on a raised catwalk draped theatrically in red velvet, a cast that included his mother and former teachers from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp traipsed past in Demna classics: pleated and cape-backed floral dresses that harked back to his debut collection but in their soft colours were more tasteful than garish; flat, squarish jackets with towering shoulders that ended somewhere around the knees; and shrunken tracksuits that assumed ridiculous proportions when teamed with a new supersized trainer that riffed on the Triple S. More interesting was a dress that looked as if it had been poured on to the model from a tin of white paint, draped and left to dry.
Demna said he felt his previous collection had been too “polished”, and he’d wanted this collection to feel rougher, more like himself. “I don’t care a lot about luxury or the whole idea of it, because I don’t want to give people a proposition to look like they’re rich or successful or powerful.”
Cher and Alexander Edwards attend the Valentino Womenswear SS24 event. WireImage
It was worlds away from the clean-cut, predominantly white show Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli hosted later that afternoon under the glass-ceilinged courtyard of the École des Beaux-Arts. Valentino always draws a starry crowd, and outside the venue onlookers in the street pushed to glimpse celebrities including Florence Pugh, Cher and actors Penn Badgley and Andrew Garfield.
They assembled in the front row, while FKA Twigs and her team of dancers, clad in skin-coloured bandeau tops and barely there skirts, writhed in gravel pits (there was singing too). Around them walked models in short dresses stitched entirely from embroidered flowers, pomegranates and leaves, followed by dresses printed or laser cut with baroque mermaids and baggy faded jeans – clothes pitched perfectly for Valentino’s glamour-loving clientele.
Kaia Gerber models a dress from Valentino’s ready-to-wear collection. Getty
Philophiles will have to wait a bit longer for Phoebe Philo’s new chapter. The ex-Céline designer was expected to drop photos of her debut collection for her namesake label during the Paris shows. Instead, the brand issued an email announcing that the collection will premiere on October 30, accompanied by campaign imagery that revealed only snippets – a model in pointed sunglasses, a section of brown trouser pulled tight over the behind.
Paris also played host over the weekend to Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo and her protégés Junya Watanabe and Kei Ninomiya. Kawakubo’s creations, shown in a crowded warehouse on the eastern fringes of Paris, were pure sculpture, this time joyous: “To break free of the gloomy present, I hope to present a bright and light future,” she wrote in her show notes.
At the Comme des Garçons show, Rei Kawakubo strived to “break free of the gloomy present”. Getty
The clothes that Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski designs for Hermès are always wearable, and beautifully made. Models with slicked-back hair moved in a Piet Oudolf-esque landscape of yellowing grasses in slim taupe and burgundy dresses which looked rib-knit but were in fact cut from very fine leather, and which could be unbuttoned to reveal a swath of shoulder or a navel. It was sexy and sporty but restrained, a collection that followed the trend for body-skimming and skin-baring fashion rather than introducing a new direction for it.
For 15 years Victoria Beckham has been turning out high-quality ready-to-wear, but has never developed the design codes that would make her clothes identifiable without a garment tag, or without the little VB monogram she has lately stitched on to the fronts of shirts.
Hermès struts its elegant stuff, left, while Victoria Beckham riffed on the trend of underwear as outer wear, right. Getty
Like designers in New York, where she used to show, she is good at making more avant-garde concepts from Europe commercial and relatable – here she adapted the current enthusiasm for underwear-as-outerwear as ribbed-knit bodysuits with matching cardigans for layering or lounging at home, accompanied by bias-cut evening gowns cut from grey T-shirt material. It was sleek and sellable, but Beckham could take a page or two from Burton’s playbook.
Financial Times.
