How to capture attention? Each season, fashion weeks become a battlefield between the most powerful fashion houses, which “combat” each other with spectacular parades. And calculate their notoriety on Instagram. In this frenzy, midsize brands are looking for ways to float. Paco Rabanne, Patou and Alaïa have thus chosen to depart from the usual calendar to unveil their ready-to-wear collections for spring-summer 2023, on July 3.
At Paco Rabanne, Julien Dossena strikes a blow by plunging his graphic fashion into a poisonous bath. A good idea as the sexy silhouette he likes to draw gains in flavor when it appears a little shady. “I started from the rubber that Paco Rabanne had worked, around 1968-1969, to mold the bodies and from which he had made rainwear for Amazons, explains the artistic director. I wanted to re-explore this radical sensuality and this warrior femininity for our time when women’s rights and freedoms are questioned. »
Beware of those who mess with them! They wear kerchiefs on their heads but pierced with metal eyelets, a translucent PVC trench coat which seems sprinkled with raindrops but is in fact embroidered with nails, dresses which intertwine lace and latex, between the young girl in flower in a nightie and the dominating mistress, romantic prints with SM harnesses, big flat boots covered in chains. “I fed on film noir or zombies and I thought a lot about David Cronenberg”, a filmmaker in whom sexuality and the horrific act are always close. A note of grunge also runs through the subject, through a kilt (in worn-effect leather) or unexpected but successful tutus on which latex drips or mesh fails.
“We have great ambitions but not to make a fuss”, assures Guillaume Henry. Since his arrival at the artistic commissions of Patou in 2018, he has been forced to imagine what this house, whose name immediately evokes the XXe century, may have to say in our era. Despite his talents for the cup, it hasn’t always been crystal clear. “The heritage dimension of fashion has always fascinated me and, for a while, it’s true, I was wary of the relationship that the younger generation has with clothes, very uninhibited, displaying the skin … This season, for my very first show at Patou [jusqu’à présent, il n’y avait eu que des présentations], I specifically wanted to fight against my preconceptions, to open up, by embracing this state of mind. »
You have 53.6% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.