Paris fashion week | A serious and protective fashion in times of war

(Paris) Outfits reminiscent of bulletproof vests, dark colors, scenographies of serious parades: some have said that fashion lost its “right to exist” during the war, but Paris Fashion Week did not ring false , even revealed prophetic elements.

After two years marked by COVID-19, the women’s ready-to-wear week which ends on Tuesday was thought of as “a kind of reunion”, but it was impossible to “celebrate” this against the backdrop of the invasion of the Ukraine, Fashion Federation President Ralph Toledano told AFP. He had called from the first day to live the parades “in gravity”.

And fashion has responded. Though designed several months earlier, many of the collections are full of ‘protective’ pieces and the runway aesthetic is anything but optimistic.

“Smell of Time”

“The world has been serious for a while, fashion has largely integrated the feelings of seriousness […]. It soaks up the smell of time,” fashion historian Olivier Saillard told AFP.

“There was an all-terrain outfit at Dior, quite appropriate, as a premonitory,” he adds.

At Dior, inflatable cushions are worn as a corset or vest, a little gray dress evokes armor and protections cover the shoulders and ankles.

“There is a lot of thinking. How, in these difficult times, to combine beauty, aesthetics and protection? “, explains to AFP the Italian designer of Dior woman, Maria Grazia Chiuri. The war in Ukraine “is much closer to us. But the world was already at war. COVID-19 was another war […]we have lived through extremely difficult months”.

Balmain also presented padded corsets, tops resembling futuristic bulletproof vests and golden shields.

“My collection may seem inspired by anxiety-provoking headlines. […] But, of course, such a rapid reaction would never have been possible”, nuance the stylist of Balmain, Olivier Rousteing.

The Belgian Anthony Vaccarello, artistic director of Saint Laurent, broke with his “sexy glam” aesthetic for the first time to deliver a poetic parade at the foot of the Eiffel Tower “which suggests a moment of reflection”.

Black, long dresses, tuxedo trouser suits and sumptuous faux fur coats: there is no longer any place for provocation.

At the Japanese Yohji Yamamoto, certain looks covering from head to toe, with several layers of draped or padded fabrics, look like tents.

The American Rick Owens, master of apocalyptic parades, presented a parade accompanied by the Symphony No.5 by Gustav Mahler, creating a dreamlike and solemn moment.

In a thick fog stood out the silhouettes of long dresses with shimmering gray trains and heavy down jackets.

“The theme of protection was very present this week – like the huge enveloping and padded coats at Rick Owens in which you feel protected, comforted… It was the same thing in London” (mid-February), comments to the AFP Dana Thomas, American journalist and author of Fashionopolis.

poem and song

Does fashion anticipate the convulsions of history? This is the question posed by Benjamin Simmenauer, professor at the French Fashion Institute, in a post published by the French daily Release.

“It is true that fashion often anticipates its future states and informs us about a given era,” he writes.

The Balenciaga show imagined by Demna, the Georgian designer himself a refugee from a war with Russia, was a declaration of love and support for Ukraine, with a poem recited in Ukrainian during the show, t- shirts in the colors of Ukraine placed on each seat and a note explaining that fashion lost “its right to exist” during the war.

The models walked on the snow braving the wind, some half-naked, evoking refugees fleeing war.

At Vuitton, the latest look — a wide-striped t-shirt over a flowing floral dress — is in blue and yellow, the colors of Ukraine. A subtle way to place the show in context.

Stella McCartney opened her show with a speech by US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (“We will also do our part to build a world of peace”) and closed with the song by John Lennon/Yoko Ono Give Peace a Chance.