My grandmother used to say: if you don’t like the way the table is set, change the table. Or make the revolution. Paris was a revolution. A blaze of fashion from A to Z, full of different tables and dishes of all kinds. It happened to everyone to be at a dinner with people we didn’t know. Paris Fashion Week was this. From the contemporary elegance of Chanel, to the black of Valentino and Comme Des Garçons, from the alien planet of Louis Vuitton to the Renaissance reinterpretation of Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood. A lot of food; from the sexyness of Hermès and the experiments of Balenciaga, to the stages of life narrated by Miu Miu. Every dinner has a chef who is trying to emerge. But make a dinner is not always easy, and sometimes there is the need to make more attempt, as for Alexander McQueen by Sean McGirr. The revolution is happening. But the dinner is not over yet
Words DOMENICO CASORIA
CHANEL
Virginie Viard is finally having fun. She no longer has the anxiety of being perfect, and her new collection for Chanel proves it. The fall winter 24 25 is inspired by Deauville. Isn’t it crazy to be inspired by the town on the coasts of Normady that most of all forged the work of Coco Chanel? No, especially if the story that leads to the catwalk is philological. Mademoiselle has anticipated the times, we could say that the modern woman dresses today in a certain way thanks to Chanel. In 1913 she decided to open her first boutique in Deauville, a place where the wealthy French spend their holidays. It was in Deauville that she invented the popular sports style for outdoor activities, and watching the show we all arrived with our minds on a boat moored in Deauville. It’s an unusual collection, so Chanel, so contemporary, so out of the box. The large wide-brimmed hats that at the time concealed the pale faces of the ladies on the beach, become the leitmotif for a collection that goes beyond and that declines a style. A collection made of dress coats and bouclé suits, bermuda shorts and trousers, tweed jackets, low-cut shirts, bicolor boots, bronze-colored dresses and cardigan that recall the colors of the sea. A collection that has the strength to surpass itself again, because it is the daughter of an elegance that keeps up with the times.
It is not just a fashion show, it is a journey that we take on the wings of Virginie Viard. Who as a guide accompanies us through the meanders of the brand. And for the first time, Chanel presents an elegance that scratches – sometimes transgressive, as in down jackets or leather jackets, which add a quid to the collection.
This isn’t about quiet luxury. We talk about a brand that always remains at the peak of its splendor and that can read the society that changes, in clothes, in the ways of doing, in the way of conceiving the body. Like Mademoiselle Chanel did in Deauville.
Miu Miu
I have a weakness for everything that comes out of the hands of Miuccia Prada and also a pinch of envy, because in the panorama of only male brands there is no equivalent of Miu Miu. Miu Miu is the favorite son of Miuccia Prada, the one in which the creative goes to bridle without caring about trends. Miu Miu was raised in the image and likeness of the founder, and the degree of correspondence with reality is so deep that everything that comes on the catwalk has the sense of the news. And so it was also for the 2024/2025 autumn winter collection – a journey into the stages of life, which begins by talking about little girls and colorful dresses, and ends with mature ladies in fur and black sheath dress. Fashion is accompanied by reality especially in the casting of models, which is finally inclusive and transgenerational. More than anything, however, Miu Miu describes the world/wardrobe outside –that no longer has borders and that draws from every drawer. The new collection, as in a tetris, literally fits thanks to garments that come from different places. The standing of Miuccia Prada, moreover, is the conditio sine qua non to place a string of pearls on a navy blue coat without looking like a bitch. Or a porthole on a posh little black dress. A total freedom that allows you to bring back the low-rise pants, the navel outside and the fur. Is there anything more genius than placing flowers on a yellow skirt for autumn?
It is not difficult to understand why Miu Miu is the most appreciated brand – from the young who make the revolution to the ladies. Miu Miu is appreciated because talks about how we’ve always dressed. In pieces. By attempts. A little here and a little there. Forcing our hand. Mediating with ourselves. Stripping ourselves of little and clothing ourselves with everything.
In three words: as we want.
Alexander McQueen
Sean McGirr’s debut at Alexander McQueen seemed bland to us-the brand’s iconography has been a sleeping volcano since 2010, when the founder practically disappeared. With all due respect to Sarah Burton, who has indeed gathered the witness in a very delicate phase, but who has not been able to tell the explosive and necessary part of McQueen. As with volcanoes, there is a risk that magma will feed more and more, to the point of causing an explosion. And that’s what’s about to happen to the same, which is a brand that tends to entropy, which is disorder. Clearly it was the clutter that generated the brand and supported it. The mess, however, is not meant chaos, but brilliant madness that in the end always found its own narrative square. Now, Sarah Burton has in a way softened McQueen, schematizing and smoothing it out to make it round, but she has forgotten all the quotist baggage, simply because it is not in her possession. After almost 15 years McGirr finds a lion that has been in a cage, fed with the barbell and with sharp nails. The FW 24/25 collection has certainly not met expectations, because it is not enough to mention a masterpiece of 1995 as Birds to give the idea. But it’s definitely a shy approach to a myriad of references. But the theater is missing. The drama. The blood. Emotions are missing. There is no perversion. There is no squeal. There is no sound of shattering glass. Birds are missing. Fire. Edges. There’s a whole sub-world missing. Lee Alexander is missing.
Perhaps the way, in this case, is to first introject all the codes to indigestion. And then try to overcome them slowly.
Because the risk is that eventually the brand explodes from within. A caldera that collapses destroying everything. Insiders first.
Reconstruction is always painful.
Balenciaga
We all agree that Demna Gvasalia is not the arbiter elegantiae of this decade and we all agree that Balenciaga by Gvasalia is the furthest from the concept of form so dear to the founder. There are, however, a couple of points that make the brand still interesting, removed the slips – wanted or not, then transformed into ingenious marketing strategies. What is luxury? What is fashion and why does it continue to be relevant? For whom do I do what I do? Is fashion enough? These are just some of the questions that Demna has asked for the new autumn winter 2024 2025 collection. A collection, according to critics, that satirizes on consumerism (just think of the labels on clothes, the layering of other clothes or items purchased on eBay) but opens to a fundamental theme. In the historical moment par excellence in which luxury is associated with what is rare or what is bound, it is the creativity that succumbs and becomes rare.So much so as to arrive at the paradox that it is precisely creativity that becomes a new form of luxury. When in 1937 Cristóbal Balenciaga moved to Paris leaving a Spain in the midst of the Civil War and close to the dictatorship of Franco, he found himself faced with a closed and all in all classic fashion world, and to break through the hand, inspired by Spanish conservatism but revolutionizing the forms, expanded, accentuated, underlined, bold. Thanks to creativity and looking outside the box. That is what Gvasalia is trying to do, standing in front of a world of luxury that is now stranded in a sandy shoal. Demna is targeting a classist world, and in order to do so, he rips the shapes, aborts them, cuts them badly, turns the knife in the wound. More and more like a clock whose mechanism has started to turn backwards. The narration is simple but Balenciaga’s collections seem difficult to us because it is the development that is complex.
A development that inevitably passes from creativity. But it is not a classic creativity. It is a creativity soiled by anger, by impotence, also by desire, and at the end of the day, perhaps it is better to give birth to clothes that are difficult to read and almost unwearable, but that are the result of a creative and emotional effort. By the way, Gvasalia is perhaps one of the few (along with some emergent) that at the moment manages to put together a story that has a minimal logical sense and that actually tells something. Because fashion made only of product – perfect, accomplished, mature, that balls – has brought us almost to the abyss of apathy.
So Demna will continue not to be an arbiter of elegance but is one of the few that still manages to create while the boredom flares up.
Paris burns. Along with luxury.
Louis Vuitton
For his 10th anniversary at the helm of the brand, Nicolas Ghesquière set the fashion show in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre. The new collection revisits all the codes created since he was creative director. The setting is reminiscent of a science fiction movie, and even the models on the runway look like Louis Vuitton-clad aliens ready to invade Earth. Vuitton’s characters dress in total white, silver or gold, and love the reflective mirrors sewn onto them. They wear voluminous, asymmetrical skirts, structured jackets with stiff shoulder pads, and long, shiny leather trench coats. Ghesquière also knows how to play with irony, and here he places fur glove models. The result? A YetiChic one.
In the letter sent to guests, Ghesquière recalled the immense joy he felt during the LV debut. There is a hint of nostalgia, but the narrative continues. We are ready to board a spaceship.
Valentino
“Only in the dark you look for light”. For this autumn winter Pierpaolo Piccioli, Valentino’s creative director has dropped the heavy cards. The whole collection is focused on black, and this is a gamble because black hides above all. But Pierpaolo Piccioli, who is a skilled designer, chose not to hide but to show, bodies, souls, emotions, sensations, hopes. Valentino’s collection is made up of clothes that reflect the body, support it, show nudity, caress it, but above all – born from a study of the body, because it is simple to create fashion at the table, but it is difficult to study the body and understand how it evolves in time and space. The way Piccioli approached black is dangerous but full of satisfying. Like a painter, Piccioli used in black a starting point through which to build layers and structures, looking for light and shadows, but above all black has become the tool for the body-canvas. Black, therefore, also to emphasize the mastery of the atelier Valentino, which has brought on the catwalk so much tulle, ruffles and pleats, chiffon, processing with the technique of high relief. And then bows, lace, roses. Defined shoulders and skirts. Black is an achromatic color, because it is without tint, brightness and frequency, and because it is the child of the subtractive synthesis of all the colors of the visible spectrum. If it is therefore true that it represents the negation of color, on the other hand it contains them all. Valentino is a cornerstone of fashion. And his clothes contain the body. The real one.
Comme Des Garçons
Fashion is not always bows and pleats. Often it is a raw world. And the anger came to Paris thanks to COMME des GARÇONS by Rei Kawakubo, who presented in Paris a fall winter collection that was a demonstration of human emotions. The models on the catwalk slammed their feet, they were expressing anger, using the body to convey terror. Rei Kawakubo is famous for dresses that look like sculptural artwork. But while in the spring summer collection the colors were vivid, for this season the designer used dark colors for sculptural dresses full of creeks and lapels that seem to continue to talk about anger. The dark vision was slightly mediated by the bows and roses on the clothes. The first look for example, was a layered leather skirt with an excess of material that created depressions in its silhouette. Paired with an equally voluminous leather top and lace-up shoes with a flat sole. Anger in all its forms, and carried on clothes. It is not conventional fashion, and is not fashion for everyone. But it is fashion that speaks of feelings that disturb, and that are hidden in each of us. We need to come to terms and embrace her.
Hermès
Paris is always the right thing. Especially when combining Hermès and motorcycles. The result? A collection that speaks a sexy and strong language. For the autumn winter collection Nadège Vanhee combines the world of riding and motorcycling. It’s a Hermès woman riding a motorcycle, wearing leather, motorcycle boots, and a Birkin bag. We’re not just talking about a strong woman here. We’re also talking about a sexy woman wearing studs and suspenders. Any other comments would be superfluous. Hermès, motorcycles and leather? What else?
Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood
The new collection by Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood is a tribute to the history, passion of the founder of the brand. It is inspired by the costumes of the late Renaissance and the painter Giovanni Battista Moroni. Everything starts from a suspensory pouch, which Andreas Kronthaler recreates inspired by the suspensory braghetta worn by Henry VIII. The volumes of the dressess are over, the collars have the ruffles that refer to the Elizabethan warbler. The main source of inspiration of Andreas Kronthaler was a painting by Giovanni Battista Moroni, “The Tailor” and it is to his look – from work and fashion – that the designer searched for the Turkish pants, the straight lines velvet jackets, as well as the curled collar of the shirt. And then the casting of the show, which included British singer-songwriter Sam Smith, Lila Moss and Kristen Mcmenamy. The elegance according to Andreas Kronthaler has to do with what you wear or the perfume you put on. It concerns the interior.
