The young French designer Victor Weinsanto opened the Paris Fashion Week yesterday with a manifesto full of humor and high spirits.
As usual, this spring/summer 2023 ready-to-wear womenswear week in Paris kicked off with a focus on up-and-coming talent and the show by 28-year-old Victor Weinsanto, a former ballet dancer who worked at Jean Paul Gaultier before he founded his own label in 2020.
“This collection is a manifestation of love to my generation, my best friends, artists, designers and performers,” the designer told AFP.
A novelty was that prominent couturiers such as Charles de Vilmorin, head of his own haute couture house and artistic director of Rochas, and the duo of Kévin Nompeix and Florentin Glémarec, the founders of Egonlab, showed pieces on the catwalk inspired by their world and interpreted by Weinsanto “in his own way”.
An eclectic fashion show that included many aspects: from very wearable denims to theatrical dresses with inspirations like ‘Black Widow’ or ‘Bride’ with exaggerated volumes, to a nude draped mini dress, or a long dress with a gradient that combines several included skin colors. The models were shown on a busty model or on men wearing sensual, more feminine pieces.
Wickedness is old-fashioned
“This is the quintessence of what the young French creation currently offers,” summarizes the designer. “Friendliness, creativity, freedom, craziness and humor are again the essence of what you are currently looking for in fashion. We want to break out,” the blue-eyed, orange-haired designer pointed out after wearing it pink for several seasons.
The image of the “obnoxious” designers of the ’90s who “hated themselves” is “old-fashioned” and “wickedness” is no longer in demand, he asserted. “Nobody wants something like that anymore.” That’s where the idea of a big homage to friends, a family reunion, came from. Crafted almost entirely from luxury brand fabrics, the collection is responsible and inclusive, with a piece meant to be worn by mother and daughter. The cast is very diverse and the pose is free: the models walk smiling and dancing, like his mentor Jean Paul Gaultier, who is a pioneer in the field of diversity. “I like the idea that a piece of clothing has no gender, I dress sometimes male, sometimes female,” says the designer.
Fascination Metaverse
The fashion show was followed in Paris by the launch of a Metaverse project with the K-pop band Lightsum, whose singers were virtually present as holograms.
These were wearable silhouettes that don’t distort the band’s female singers. The NFTs will be available for sale in the Metaverse in October. “I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to have a project in the metaverse alongside the physical fashion show,” says Victor Weinsanto, who at the same time was fascinated by this world. “You can really develop freely (…). I feel like going even further in the direction of 3D.”(AFP)
This article was similarly published on FashionUnited.fr. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ