Cubist cool in City Hall with Yohji Yamamoto; Picasso and PETA at Victoria Beckham; Cher and confusion at Vêtements, in a jam-packed day of shows in Paris Fashion Week on Friday.
Yohji Yamamoto: Cubist cool in City Hall
Well now, there is nothing quite like a seeing a great collection by a real designer, such as Yohji Yamamoto on Friday night in Paris.
By real designer, we mean someone capable of creating a unique look and silhouette; becoming a consistently genuine influencer of trends; and an artist who can summon up beautiful images of women.
Which is precisely what Yohji did on a dank, wet and chilly Friday evening inside the City Hall of Paris, packed with 1,500 professionals and fans, hundreds happy to stand to witness a master at work.
Yohji Yamamoto played with cubism this season, adding fabric boxes, triangles, swirls and burls to some sensational coats and dresses. In a season of morning coats, Yamamoto whipped up the coolest versions, cut with quadruple tails, or fabric tentacles at the back.
The Japanese have always loved punk rock, and Yohji gave it a Scottish baronial spin with fab’ plaids and tartans of border princess rebels.
“The basis of fashion is often royalty, so why not Scottish clans,” smiled Yohji, who took the longest bow of his life to immense applause.
Another Yamamoto trick, hiring often unknown young models recently arrived in Paris, who feel obviously empowered and impassioned by his clothes. Aided by the most remarkable hair of the season – mad witches, impassioned Clytemnestra, devilish damsels – this was a smash hit.
In short, a fashion lesson by a designer savant.
Victoria Beckham: Picasso and PETA
Two runway shows, both of them hits, by Victoria Beckham completed the Friday action with a collection that echoed Picasso in a densely packed and waterlogged day of style action in Paris.
This season, Victoria held her show in the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild, a garden mansion famed as a setting of haute couture shows. A high-walled garden, where nonetheless, three PETA activist managed to get on the catwalk and disrupt the first Beckham show.
La Beckham’s big new idea was working on manifold silhouettes – there were even three trouser shapes. Most punchily, a dropped crotch cargo pant in patent leather that elongated the leg.
Her key source of inspiration was the wardrobe, where a half jacket looked like it was suspended off the neck; or duffle coats became fabric portraits attached to the torso.
“There is also a mushroom story. They remind of the padded details from a coat hanger,” added Beckham in a pre-show preview. Before pointing to a series of corsets, dresses and cocktails with padded rims.
“So sorry to point with my crutch. I find them very empowering!” added the designer, who broke her ankle in February, and took her bow in crutches.
Often, she punctuated slinky party gowns with metallic squiggles, that were inspired by Picasso’s light drawings. Though the best looks were funnel neck shearlings and a great mini selection of Japanese denim, a new arrow in her arsenal. Climaxing a fine show with chain dresses, like those from a shop window, and a chain print.
“It’s exciting coming to Paris. We announced last year that fashion, in its own right, is turning a profit. Beauty Is doing incredibly well, and I feel very proud that I am building the house I had always dreamed of,” insisted Beckham, who served espresso martinis to guests in a post-show cocktail.
Vêtements: Kid brother nose dives
Well now, there is self-indulgence and there is acting the maggot, and Vêtements was definitely the latter this season.
Too late, too long, too loud and too large. So what if Cher sat in the front row.
The show started 50 minutes late after a complete mess at the door, with heavies screaming in people’s faces, and drivers with their fists on car horns for minutes at a time on rue Cambon.
Too long, with three repetitive sections, where models trudged around, dragging three-meter trains behind him. Most oddly, Georgina Rodriguez who wore her a version of her husband Christian’s old Manchester United jersey – Ronaldo 7 – made into a jersey gown with a train.
Too loud with thundering techno music backing up a savage casting. And too large, since most people already know by Vêtements designer Guram Gvasalia’s shtick, elephantine versions of classic clothes – undertaker coats and flak jackets for guys; screen idol columns and grand gowns for gals.
His only new idea this season, was inserting hula hoops in the shoulders and arms of jackets or cabans to create an absurdist cocoon effect. They were absurd.
The show began with Natalia Vodianova in a corset, giant mannish coat and huge trousers, and ended with Guram taking his bow with former ‘Desperate Housewives’ star Marcia Cross in a vulgar red sequined gown. In between. there was a lot of oversized Margiela pinches and one long fashion dirge, staged on the opposite side of the street from Chanel HQs.
Where Vêtements could learn a thing or two about how to stage a fashion show.
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