Listen to the audio version of the article
Fashion that comes closer to life and its imperfections, perhaps smoothing them out, but no longer theatricalizing them: this is the most evident result of this round of Parisian fashion shows and of the simplification or trivialization that is galloping along.
On the hardest and most difficult aspects of existence, sublimated by a refined sartorial technique, Demna has built the entire aesthetic of Balenciaga – that this glorification of the irregular occurs within a luxury brand is a perfectly aware perversion. Equally, Demna is interested in the way in which clothes shape identity, and the perception of the person. He recounts backstage an episode of bullying that occurred to him in the summer: having frightened some patrons of a restaurant in the south of France with their appearance to the point of inducing them to ask for a change of table, Demna and his partner try to dress like everyone else, to conform to one day. Successful experiment: no fear from fearful passers-by, but, he says «Even though I was myself, I didn’t recognize myself, I was ashamed. I can’t be anything other than that.” The fashion show is exactly this: the reiteration of a way of making clothes and shaping identities through them; an aesthetic that arises from the construction and deconstruction of garments.
To underline the message, Demna sends his personal tribe on the catwalk: mum opens, BFRND closes dressed as a wedding, and in the middle there are teachers, mentors, lifelong friends, and even a tireless Amanda Lepore. It’s a bit of an Otto Dix vaudeville – an effect underlined by the red velvet curtains – but the typification of the characters – especially the outcasts in sweatshirts and jackets, superfluous at this point – appears rough-hewn, from commedia dell’arte, while the fashion does not it moves a millimeter from the known, even if the giant, battered jackets and the dresses made from plastic tablecloths have a fresh movement. Demna this does and this hammers, take it or leave it. He is an author who reiterates his original sin, that is, Margielism to which Gaultier adds quite a bit in this round, but whose passion for making clothes is authentic. This saves him, even if modernity has now vanished, even if having such a precise style is sinking him due to lack of oxygen, for fear of trying other paths.
Glenn Martens is another insanely coherent author, inventor of forms that multiply the possibilities of use, of architectures that collapse and regroup around the body. Both decadent and pleasure-loving, this season Martens tones down the excesses and lightens the language, finding a touching balance.
At Valentino, Pierpaolo Piccioli works around the idea of the dress that dialogues with the body, the skin, nudity, while rejecting the objectifying gaze on female physicality and the clichés that derive from it, and imagines a quick, simple and fresh collection in which the shapes can be glimpsed through the spirals of high textile reliefs, clever slits and an admirable absence of the superfluous. It is certainly a repetitive test, definitely designed for sales and partly overshadowed by the powerful performance of FKATwigs that accompanies the show, but it refreshes this Piccioli dressmaker without concepts.