This season’s Paris Fashion Week has been particularly thematic, with recurrent nods to the color black and the elements of the earth. Below, you can find our favorites from Stella McCartney, Hermès, Commes Des Garçons, Alexander McQueen, and Valentino.
Courtesy of Stella McCartney.
Stella McCartney Offers An Ode to Mother Earth
Mouthed by the lips of eco-activists, Olivia Colman and Helen Mirren read a manifesto from the perspective of Mother Earth. “Despite your attempts at emancipation / You cannot cut the umbilical cord that connects the entire planet / Sorry, baby / I am the only mother where it is natural for her to outlive her children / But what will be left of me / After you? / I still love you / Do you still love me? / I need you to show it / Show me you love me / It’s about fucking time / It’s about fucking time / It’s about fucking time.”
It was a dramatic, primal start to Stella McCartney’s show at Paris Fashion Week and a fitting one at that. The label’s newest collection is an ode to the Earth, with sustainable pieces coming in a color palette that reflects all that surrounds us. Responsibly sourced wool tweeds come in soft natural tones, with squares of clashing lines inspired by a garden path from McCartney’s childhood in the countryside. Trench coats are tailored from regenerative wool twill, and forest-friendly viscose satin dresses are so light that they shift with every passing breeze. This season, the label certainly stuck to its guns: 90% of ready-to-wear pieces were made with responsible materials.
Courtesy of Hermès.
Hermès Brings the Rain Inside
As a column of heavy rain descended upon the runway, the models for Hermès’s newest collection showcased an onslaught of leather looks à la bikers and equestrians alike. With this assortment of clothing, creative director Nadège Vanhee has created a wardrobe for tough, chic women: show notes titled “The Rider” describe an urban woman who doesn’t rush through the rain, taking her time as she mounts a horse or a motorcycle. These pieces certainly offer insulation from the elements. Head-to-toe leather looks are zipped up and stitched close to the body. Moto jackets are embossed with saddle design. Topper jackets come in classic black and olive green, and smocked waist dresses are stitched from scarves. Ribbed knits mixed with tiny strips of leather mimic long johns; leather jackets are fringed with ostrich feathers. Even when the weather is unruly and unforgiving, Vanhee suggests that we need not be unruly ourselves. We can simply tuck away into a leather get-up and stay outside.
Courtesy of Commes Des Garçons.
Commes Des Garçons Is All About Anger
At her Commes Des Garçons show at Paris Fashion Week on Saturday, designer Rei Kawakubo remarked, “This collection is about my present state of mind. I have anger against everything in the world, especially against myself.” What followed was a litany of supremely dramatic looks ballooning out from the body, all in the same shade of midnight black. Anger was not merely a backdrop to this collection, but a leitmotif of it: one model stopped halfway down the runway and began throwing a tantrum, huffing and stamping her feet, while others veered off the path to confront guests in the front row and get in their faces. Silhouettes were imposing, from pannier skirts in black faux leather to crude box shapes, and some fabrics were stamped with barbed wire or chain motifs. A leering Beethoven song played in the background to tie the whole show together, replete with the models’ Marie Antoinette-esque pompadour wigs that shifted precariously as they walked the runway with a vengeance.
Courtesy of Alexander McQueen.
Alexander McQueen Reveals the Animal Within
For his debut collection as the creative director of Alexander McQueen at Paris Fashion Week, Seán McGirr looked back to the label’s Spring/Summer 1995 “The Birds” collection. This inspiration was clear from the first look that hit the runway, a compressed latex dress equal parts shiny and constricting. “It should have a sort of playful aggression to it, and should be kind of uplifting because I want to bring a kind of lightness to McQueen,” the designer said to Vogue.
Lightness was to be found in silk viscose dresses and corset dresses in honey calf hair, acid yellow silk nylon shirts, and trompe l’oeil tees in black nylon mesh. Against the backdrop of an industrial forest with shockingly yellow grass bales, models donned leather hats that obscured their faces and furry turtleneck tops that did more of the same. Show notes mused that this collection is about “revealing the animal within,” and with an array of fur-textured dresses in mohair and shearling taking the stage, it seems McGirr did just that.
Courtesy of Valentino.
Valentino Finds Itself in a Universe of Black
For his newest collection with Valentino, creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli reconsiders the color black as not the absence of color but the amalgam of an infinitely nuanced spectrum of shades. Here, context is given by the black artworks of Mark Rothko, Pierre Soulages, and Constantin Brâncuși. The color is a philosophical groundwork which absorbs our cultural definitions, our memories and meanings. With this collection, the aesthetic signposts of the label—rosettes, ruffles, embroideries, and lace—are given new meaning with their new color.
Last season, Valentino introduced the novel technique of altorilievo (high relief). By sculpting fabric into “apparently seamless three-dimensions,” Valentino creates pieces whose wearer is “more naked than clothed,” in a way where the person who wears it “becomes an active participant in its design.” Executed this time around in tulle, dresses fall like shadows around the body. Intense velvets and crêpe lend an immense structural quality, and chiffon veils the skin like an apparition. Within a universe of black, Valentino’s archetypal silhouettes are reexamined and made anew, juxtaposing lightness and toughness, then with now.
