Paris fashion rediscovers its rebel heart

Paris fashion has rediscovered its taste for
rebellion with designers playing fast and loose not just with the old rules
of
couture but also with France’s ban on the full-face veil.

The mould-breaking French label Vetements — the new darling of the
fashion
press — staged a show full of teenage revolt and defiance in a cathedral
late
Thursday, while American Rick Owens flirted with the law by completely
shrouding the heads of 14 of his models in veils.

France bans all covering of the face in public since a controversial
2010
law aimed at the Muslim niqab and burqa.
But it had the unintentional effect of technically making some full body
suits, Zentais and even children’s party animal costumes illegal.

Owens has a reputation as an iconoclast who last year displayed the
genitals of his male models through strategically placed peepholes.
The previous year, at the height of the Greek debt crisis, one of his
models carried a placard down the catwalk declaring, “Please kill Angela
Merkel not”.
But his spokesman told AFP Friday that the veils were not meant to be
provocative.

AJUMA, FW16
MASTODON WOMENS, BACKSTAGE #RICKOWENS #RICKOWENSONLINE
#RICKOWENSFW16

A photo
posted by RICK OWENS ONLINE (@rickowensonline) on Mar 4, 2016 at 1:21am
PST

‘Cupcake frosting’

“There was no shock value intended. It was not meant to be
controversial,
rather it was more of a poetic statement,” he said.
“They are a bit see-through, you can see the hair.”
In his notes to the collection, inspired by the Salvador Dali painting
“Swans Reflecting Elephants”, the LA-born designer refers to them as
“cupcake
frosting”.

While Owens continued with the protective mohair cocoons of his
recent men’s
collection, the young label Vetements was all attitude and aggression.
Headed by 36-year-old Georgian Demna Gvasalia, who now also designs for
the
venerable fashion house Balenciaga, its show was one of the Paris fashion
week’s hottest tickets.
And it didn’t disappoint. Led off by the stylist Lotta Volkova in what
Vogue called an “obscenely short brown childlike dress”, it took the
sullen,
shrugging teenager look to another level with reimagined streetwear and
hoodies.

A photo posted by Lotta Volkova Adam (@lottavolkova) on
Mar 5, 2016 at
3:05am PST

Having earlier declared that “there are no genders anymore”, it mixed
its
men’s and women’s collections, with pinstripe shirt dresses and short hockey
skirts straight from St. Trinian’s.

Vintage Dior

The sloganising continued onto the clothes with oversized hoodies and
sweatshirts adorned with epithets such as “May the bridges I burn light the
way,” “Drink from me and live forever,” or “Sexual fantasies”.

All the chains, leather and tartan of punk rebellion were also there
with
novel hoops attached to trouser belts to hold coats on unseasonably warm
winter days.
But it was the shoulder pads that most caught the eye, superhero-wide and
worn with high-waisted trousers, or hunched and menacing, making their
wearers
look like Felonius Gru, the supervillain of the “Minions” films.

There were no such flirtations with bad taste at Dior, where despite
the
absence of a creative director, Swiss stand-ins Lucie Meier, 33, and Serge
Ruffieux, 39, produced another impeccable symphony of riffs on the most
feminine of labels classy traditions.

Their collection was strong on 1940s influences, an effect magnified
by the
Flash Gordon-like pavilion built to stage it inside a courtyard of the
Louvre
museum.
But the day’s most sublimely spectacular show was one which set Issey
Miyake’s highly-coloured op artish collection to brilliantly hi-tech music
and
light show by Ei Wada and Haruka Yoshida. (AFP)