Paris Fashion Week Day 1: Jacquemus, Saint Laurent showcase the strong shoulder
The first day of shows here served up some of the same trends we noticed coming out of New York Fashion Week – trousers with high waists and generously cut legs and riffs on the men’s dress shirt to name just two.
Jacquemus
The spring/summer 2017 Jacquemus collection, shown in a tented space in the Tuileries, managed to tick off all the trend boxes with 32 looks that felt positively Old Hollywood despite being inspired by les Santons de Provence traditional terra cotta figurines that reflect various crafts or identities (i.e, the cook, the shepherd, the bohemian, the grandfather), thanks to silhouettes that accented a strong shoulder, V-shaped necklines and wide-brimmed straw hats.
The collection was rounded in a color palette of black, white and beige and served up in linen, cotton, wool and white lace that allowed the label’s signature riffs on shape (notably the circle and square) to take center stage, particularly in tops with rounded or poufed-out shoulders. Trousers ranged from cropped clam-digger-style pants to extra-long trou that belted at the breastbone, and skirts were a playground for pleats that somehow added a Spanish flair to the whole affair.
Notable throughout the collection were the numerous riffs on the men’s classic dress shirt (one of the big trend takeaways from the New York Fashion Week shows), here scrunched, pleated, folded and pinned to delightfully flatter the female form.
Founded by Simon Porte Jacquemus in 2009, the Paris-based label (which garnered two consecutive nominations for the LVMH Prize) is available stateside through Opening Ceremony, Nordstrom, and luxury e-tailer Net-A-Porter. It may not be on your radar yet, but with more collections like the one that came down the catwalk here Wednesday, it will be soon enough.
Saint Laurent
If there was one label on everybody’s radar coming into Paris Fashion Week, it was Saint Laurent, which saw the high-profile exit of creative director Hedi Slimane in April, a move that was swiftly followed by the announcement that Anthony Vaccarello would succeed him at the storied French label. Though no one really expected Vaccarello’s take on the label to be the least bit Slimane-like, the curiosity lay in how far -- and in which direction -- the designer would nudge the brand DNA in his first collection for the house.
That curiosity was slaked Tuesday night at in the 17th century Abbey of Penthemont on the Left Bank, a building most recently used by the Ministry of Defense, that will be, when construction is completed in 2018, the headquarters of the Yves Saint Laurent label. Currently under construction, the space provided such a perfect metaphor for the brand’s transitional season that the symbolism of the towering construction crane dangling a giant neon YSL logo over an excavated pit was hardly necessary.
Using Slimane’s penultimate ‘70s rock ‘n’ roll-flavored show in Los Angeles in February as a benchmark, it turns out Vaccarello moved the needle just about a decade -- to the disco-centric ‘80s, a decade when gold lame was in vogue, bad taste was practically a good thing (at least wardrobe-wise) and more was always better.
The show notes refer to the 1972 YSL “Scandal” collection inspired by Paloma Picasso (“which,” the notes point out, “was irreverent and disturbing to the eyes of society”) and cite a deep dive into the label’s archives for the spring/summer 2017 collection -- including the starting point of a dress with exaggerated sleeves.
The notes don’t get more specific about that inspirational dress from the archives but it hardly matters; it gave the designer the jumping-off point he needed to put the shoulder front and center in the collection that came down the catwalk.
Rooted in black, black and more black -- with gold and the occasional orange leopard print thrown in for good measure -- there were black leather dresses with plunging necklines and shoulders that poufed, black leather bustier tops with shoulders that drooped, and black leather button-front shirts with shoulders that somehow managed to do both simultaneously. There were detachable one-off sleeves in bold patterns that included a horizontal-striped black-and-silver lame or a black and white leopard print.
There was a black, sleeveless cowl-neck top paired with a skirt that resembled (or quite possibly was) a gold lame jacket tied around the waist and cinched to one side. There were a number of sheer, black, breast-baring button-front shirts and all manner of one-shouldered dresses and tops in fabrics ranging from lace to leather to orange metallic leopard print. And there was the one look that had almost every smartphone snapping and every tongue wagging -- a black leather mini-dress with a bodice so asymmetrically sheered off on the left side it required a glittery silver pastie to stay just this side of decency laws.
The traditional tuxedo also went into the Vaccarello blender for spring/summer 2017; riffs included a shiny, cropped black tux jacket with peak satin lapels paired with a black skirt, a deconstructed -- and sleeveless – peak lapel tuxedo jacket layered over a sheer, lace-trimmed top and paired with a full-length skirt that appeared to have been reconstructed from a pair of traditional tuxedo pants and a half-jacket dress that was full formalwear on the right side and essentially an artfully wrapped black scarf on the left.
By favoring wrapping, draping and a more fluid feel over more tailored looks; the overall impression was of a collection just as much under construction as the backdrop against which it was presented, and of a designer making his own way in the long shadow of his predecessor.
This is not a bad thing at all.
For more musings on all things fashion and style, follow me @ARTschorn.
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