Paris Fashion Week: (original) spirit, are you there?

For a designer taking over a historic house, nothing is more difficult than the first show. In a balancing act that is often impossible to achieve, we expect him to respect the spirit of the founder, but also to be capable of injecting new blood – this alchemy would justify the longevity of the brand. During the fall-winter 2024-2025 women’s fashion week which takes place in Paris until March 5, Irishman Sean McGirr presented his inaugural collection for McQueen, a particularly difficult house to understand: Lee Alexander McQueen, the founder, was as talented as he was dark. In the 2000s and until his suicide in 2010, his radical collections aroused admiration and unease.

What can we say under the McQueen banner in 2024, when the fashion industry has become very corseted, when the label belongs to Kering and when social networks are ready to sanction the slightest step aside? “I would like to show the energy of youth, characters who evoke danger, joyful aggression. I’m trying to evoke the essence of Lee McQueen at the start of his career.”summarizes Sean McGirr, 35 years old, who looked at concepts dear to the founder: compacted volumes, the distorted body, industrial waste, found objects.

The son of a nurse and a mechanic, Sean McGirr grew up “in an anonymous suburb of Dublin”, discovered fashion as a means of expression, studied at Central Saint Martins in London, where he worked in gay bars to earn a living. He came across “very inspiring hedonistic characters like Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty and Kate Moss”, which nourished his imagination, already fueled by the films of Quentin Tarantino. Before joining McQueen, he worked at JW Anderson, where he oversaw the men’s and women’s collections.

In its first draft, we feel the influence of this last experience through the industrial references (dresses sculpted from sheet steel), the games on proportions (protective XXL mesh), the fun ideas (a dress made of fragments glass like a broken phone screen). We also find a bit of a Balenciaga attitude, Demna version, in these dripping dresses or long black coats worn by awkward-looking models.

Faux python tracksuit

And McQueen? It appears in touches, the pretty work on the suit with sharp shoulders, the pants with tied legs, the sculptural ruffled jackets and the animal references like these horse hoof-style ankle boots. The location of the parade – a vast hangar with harsh lights – rather underlined the disparity of the proposition which created an atmosphere conducive to the staging of the charismatic night owls that Sean McGirr dreamed of. We cannot judge the value of a designer on a first show, and it is possible that the designer reveals himself over the course of the collections. But can we do McQueen while remaining faithful to Lee’s sulphurous spirit in 2024? It’s debatable.

For a brand adrift, tossed in recent years between designers with very different aesthetics, returning to the founding father can prove to be a reassuring option. This is the case for Givenchy, without an artistic director since the end of Matthew M. Williams’ contract in December 2023, which left the director of the women’s studio, Susanna Venegas, to pilot this collection centered on Hubert de Givenchy. “We tend to forget that he had a certain sense of provocation, an experimental side, especially in the early 1950s”, details Susanna Venegas. The black, white or sapphire wardrobe is striking in its elegance, with its draped or sculpted dresses – sometimes by the haute couture workshop -, peplum skirts, tuxedo coats, lustrous alpaca overcoats… Fantasy is expressed discreetly through a cat’s head print, a chandelier motif on a lace dress. Hubert de Givenchy would no doubt have appreciated it, but what will the customer to whom the brand offered ripped jeans last year think?

“This collection is a research into good and bad taste. And my reference for good taste is Cristobal [Balenciaga, le fondateur] », explains Demna. The Georgian designer, who seems to have recovered from his desert crossing after the scandal caused by two advertising campaigns in December 2022, mischievously subverts the sober elegance tinged with austerity of Balenciaga. The ball silhouette from 1960 becomes a dress made up of three men’s shirts interlocked with each other. The shiny faux python tracksuit replaces the bolero in sets where top and bottom are coordinated. Demna even finds a way to evoke three-quarter sleeve shirts “very madam” by Cristobal Balenciaga by transforming jeans into a top, legs over the shoulders.

Elsewhere, bad taste is evoked with the outrageous logo, T-shirts with diverted messages, trompe-l’oeil accessories, or incredible dresses on which underwear, a scarf, a glove, a tie hang. … “There are a lot of ideas in this collection, because Balenciaga speaks to different people. What these outfits have in common is that there is nothing boring about them. Fashion must always be close to its breaking point”affirms Demna, who proves once again that he is not a usurper.

Grape Patterns

At Balmain, Olivier Rousteing also summoned the spirit of the founder, Pierre Balmain (1914-1982), this season. “ This collection is a tribute to what he loved, notably grapes, which he used in print from the 1940s, but also the “Jolie Madame” look which he exported to the United States in the 1950s. I also put a little of myself in this collection by paying homage to my adopted city, Bordeaux. » Grape motifs are available on short peplum dresses with cinched waists, in gold necklaces or on belted trench coats. The Gironde city nestles with mini-pearl jacquard embroidery on a ruffled dress, reminiscent of the tapestries of the castles of the Saint-Emilion region.

“ We have a lot in common with Mr. Balmain, adds Rousteing. For example, he highlighted the women of his time, from Brigitte Bardot to Joséphine Baker via Audrey Hepburn. This is also what I do with the most incredible women of the moment, from Beyoncé to Rihanna. » This time, there were no pop stars on the podium, but a delightful stream of women over 60, each more beautiful than the last.

“When I met Vivienne [Westwood], I was attracted by the fact that she was as interested in history as I was. Here I looked at late Renaissance costumes after visiting an exhibition by Giovanni Battista Moroni in Milan, which reminded me of the beginning of my collaboration with Vivienne., explains Andreas Kronthaler about his collection for Vivienne Westwood, of whom he was the husband and collaborator for thirty years, until the death of the designer in 2022. The historical references are found in the baggy pants and loose culottes. The spirit of Westwood is everywhere, in the tartan checks, the bias-cut skirts and dresses and the difficult-to-wear platform shoes. A tender and fitting tribute.

At Nina Ricci, Harris Reed turned to the French house’s archives. A photograph of the actress Suzy Parker by Richard Avedon, in 1962, particularly caught his attention. “ She is dressed in a classic tweed suit dress with a fur-lined hood and wears gloves, but her arms are bare. She looks so confident in this picture! », explains the Anglo-American. On the catwalk, the look is indeed less garish than in the two previous seasons and more elegant, with transparent dresses or fitted suits, but the whole remains fragile.

It’s also difficult to be really convinced by the Ann Demeulemeester collection. The founder, who left the ship in 2013, came to attend this second test by new designer Stefano Gallici. He created a wardrobe faithful to the DNA of the brand, but without succeeding in bringing it modernity or singularity. Perhaps Ann Demeulemeester’s heyday, in the 1990s and 2000s, is not long enough to inject something new into it. In fashion as elsewhere, you have to let time take its course.