From the runway gloss to the first rows of celebrities photoshoots, Parisian High Fashion Week of summer 2024 went on in the usual rhythm, till it’s last day. When the ultimate show felt like an earthquake.
The past Haute Couture Week in Paris felt calm despite its usual intensity and worthless haste between the shows. Mainly due to the awful organization and the guest management of some events by the press offices which this time went beyond limits.
In terms of weather conditions, the high fashion audience got luckier than the men’s wear one: the week before Paris was freezing with the temperature going below zero.
However, the forecast from the runway for the spring/summer 2024 season seems to lack meaning. Getting lost in the frenzy of stars/muses/ambassadors of the houses who sometimes totally eclipse the collections.
The appearances of J.Lo, Zendaya, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, and other celebrities at the “top” shows went viral in seconds. Despite these planetary-known personalities, there were dozens (if not hundreds ) of half-a-million-plus-followers influencers from all over the world who came dressed to kill to the events for the main reason – to show themselves and be photographed by the photographers. Which are known to be well-trained to recognize and tag the most unusually sound IG names. One of my street/backstage photographer friends from Paris admitted to watching a reality show featuring rich Asians from New York City for the reason of picking up their names and being able to recognize their faces while they attend the French capital shows. Those young and thriving folks spend their lives between the capitals, fashion shows, and expensive branded shopping. They don’t necessarily know the ins and outs of the house for the defilé of which they are invited, nor its values or the even name of its founder, but who cares? In the modern world of instant images, and instant memories, values prevail over what used to be considered timeless of the fundamental ones.
What about high fashion?
Which is seen as a pinnacle of craftsmanship of the labelled French savoir-faire. The laboratory for innovatory ideas and a safe space for creatives to create without constraints but are pushed to do commercial Ready-to-Wear lines.
We found all these ingredients within the show which symbolically closed this four-day fashion tour: John Galliano. Presented his latest Artisanal Collection under Maison Margiela’s brand name. The previous couture collection is dated Fall 2022.
It felt like a slap into the face of the industry, a sort of wakeup call but foremost it was the triumphal comeback of the last of the Fashion Magicians. Galliano is back, and, probably, he would save us all. He is back despite the fall from Paradise, he is reborn after death, the one and only, the last one.
There is not much of Martin Margiela in this proposition, it was essentially about John Galliano. The Creative Director captured a moment in time: a walk through the underbelly of Paris, offline, with cinematic precision showing the night creatures, the outcasts, the miserable, and what lies beneath the imprints of their clothes. The pure beauty of eeriness, which captives and taps into all of our senses at the same time.
The “natural” staging of the performance, under the Pont’s Alexander III was almost unreal: the night drizzling gave way to a sort of mist; the full moon, the first of the year came out to create the ambience of the voyeuristic portraiture of Brassaï (renown Hungarian-French photographer of the 1930th) along the Seine.
A perfectionist by his nature, Galliano left not a single detail to randomness. In a physical expression of emotion form, silhouettes were sculptured with body-modifying corsets and pinchers underpinned by prothèses. A reflection on the fragility of focus unfurls in dresses fashioned through forms of fade. Some interpretations materialized over bodysuits aquarelles in tulle in the fauvist pallet of Kees Van Dongen (the Dutch-French painter). The models acted as personages of this edgy spectacle: some of them were moving in the mechanical rhythm of a doll, a porcelain doll who was broken, thrown away, and came alive at night.
All of Galliano’s DNA was here: the drama, theatrical extreme corsetry, padded hips, sensual sheer lace dresses, and unique, inimitable romanticism of historical garment, proper to the designer. “Appropriating the inappropriate”: hats in gloss-coated foam, a deconstructed black nylon umbrella, goggles, and goggled turbans appeared in silk organza with elements of clear material, masks aquarelle from tulle, and embroiled with face motifs.
The collection celebrated the craftsmanship, “Artisanal” and the artisans who collaborate with the House. There were leather breastplates, which looked like made of porcelain and wood commissioned by John Galliano to Robert Mercier, an Art Artisan, and number one specialist in leather in France. The apparent simplicity of these objects which uplifted more than one look of the lineup, hides the technical challenge which can still be succeeded merely by humans, where the imperfection plays an important part. Imperfect perfection lies in the core of the Haute Couture.
Strangely, the collection resonated not just with the state of the fashion industry but on a more private level with ourselves. A small independent project, a fashion ‘outcast’ who is trying to make its way between all these glossy influencers, and editors who have been silenced for a long time ago with their consciousness in favour of the first (or any) row of the big houses shows. Press offices privilege big Instagram accounts despite the emptiness of the figures standing behind them.
The Creative Director of Maison Margiela showed us ourselves and said: “You matter too, maybe even more than the daylight creatures. I am one of us, I am with you”.
Thank you, John.
Photo credit: Maison Margiela