The trend color of the fall season is black. And yet yellow and blue were the colors of Paris Fashion Week – everyone had the situation in Ukraine in mind.
“In a moment like this, fashion loses its meaning and its right to exist,” wrote Balenciaga designer Demna Gvasalia in a letter to viewers of his show. “Fashion week feels like an absurdity.” The designer wrote that he was considering canceling the show altogether. “But that would have been surrendering to the evil that has caused me so much grief for 30 years.” Gvasalia is a refugee himself: as a child he had to leave his home country of Georgia. “The war in Ukraine has reopened the wound of the trauma I have been carrying since 1993.”
A blizzard behind glass
Maybe that’s why the Balenciaga show was so strong. The venue, a circular hangar at Le Bourget Business Airport, was transformed into a desolate snowy landscape. The backdrop was surrounded by a glass wall, behind which the spectators sat. The show was originally intended to be a commentary on global warming. But now the sets and the presentation within them took on a new, even more urgent meaning. The models stumbled through the snow on high heels, carrying a kind of garbage bag with them – like refugees who had hastily collected their belongings. Her steps were made even more difficult by the wind machines. The show was accompanied by loud, aggressive techno reminiscent of lightning and bomb sounds. The show concluded with a model in a yellow jogging suit and Gvasalia’s muse Eliza Douglas in a sky blue dress.
“This show needs no explanation,” Demna wrote. “This is an ode to courage, resistance and the triumph of love and peace.”
The strongest show of the fashion week was therefore also the most uncomfortable. The fashion designer was right: clothes were unimportant at the moment. Nonetheless, we continued to watch Paris Fashion Week.
As a fashion label or designer, how do you react to a humanitarian drama without appearing hypocritical? Gvasalia, for example, may have been a refugee himself, but ultimately the show’s main purpose is to sell his employer’s expensive clothes. Is it ethical to use human suffering for commercial gain? Isn’t silence sometimes better than speaking up?
Protest on and around the catwalk
Before the Balenciaga show, which took place in the middle of fashion week, there was much criticism of the fashion industry’s silence, which was perceived as too “frivolous”. This view was not entirely justified: in the front row, editors and influencers were active from day one, wearing outfits in yellow and blue or posting links to aid organizations on their social media.
Giorgio Armani was the first designer to respond to the crisis. He ran his show in Milan quietly and without music. The Paris runway featured Koché’s Isabel Marant and Christelle Kocher, among others, wearing a yellow and blue brooch and a yellow and blue jumper, respectively.
The label Botter, from the Dutch design duo Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh, made the start and combined light blue and yellow on the catwalk. There was also a jacket with “No War” written in beads. It was one of the strongest shows of the fall-winter season.
Balmain projected a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s war classic The Little Prince onto a large screen. Acne Studios said it had donated €100,000 to UNHCR and UNICEF for humanitarian aid and had suspended all activities in Russia. This show also aired a set of outfits in blue and yellow.
Rick Owens eliminated the militaristic soundtrack he had planned for his show and replaced it with Mahler’s symphonic melancholy, which harmonized very well with the show. Owens provided some of his models with portable smoke machines so the runway was obscured in haze half the time, much to the photographers’ chagrin. Finally, there was Ninamounah. The high-profile Dutch duo opened the show on the last day of fashion week without music. Similar to Armani, the textiles were also used for a message: a model wore a T-shirt that showed Putin as a green figure with devil ears. Below it the text “Putain, hands off Ukraine” – simple but effective.
The silence of the luxury groups
After “Le Monde”, a French newspaper, published a remarkable report about the relations between Putin and Bernard Arnault, the boss of LVMH, among other things, the luxury groups also changed their attitude, mainly with financial support. Shops in Russia were closed (the magazine giant Condé Nast, which publishes the Russian editions of Vogue and GQ, among others, also withdrew from the market). But the war was kept off the catwalks of Dior, Chanel or Hermès.
Hermès exhibited – not for the first time – in the barracks of the Garde Républicaine. Before that, the guests could visit the stables and pet the horses – it was like therapy. At least by Hermès standards, the collection had a high share of dominatrixes.
The Chanel set was similarly soft. The space in the Grand Palais Ephémère behind the Eiffel Tower was completely clad in tweed from the catwalk to the seats. The invitation? A large box filled with tweed. The collection? Tweed. At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri tried new ideas, such as a fluorescent, slightly futuristic bodysuit and an inside-out jacket with built-in cooling technology from D-Air Lab, an Italian start-up. Some outfits appeared to be inspired by American football jerseys. Balmain also flirted with science fiction, most notably the film Dune.
Paris debutants
War misery aside, it was an excellent season with many Parisian debuts including Scandinavian designers Cecilie Bahnsen and Heliot Emil. Belgian designer Meryll Rogge, nominated for the LVMH award, presented her designs for the first time with models and a backdrop of dozens of wine bottles and hundreds of half-empty glasses. Rogge, who has worked for Marc Jacobs in New York for a long time, flirted with grunge this season. Germanier from Switzerland showed his outfits with colorful pearls and glitter for the first time on the catwalk of the crystal manufacturer Baccarat. Vaquera, a duo from New York, opened Paris Fashion Week with a successful tribute to Martin Margiela’s Barbie outfits. Demna’s brother, Guram Gvsalia, introduced VTMNTS, the gender-neutral sideline of Vetements. Presenting the collection were angry models in suits and crop tops trudging through the ruins of a recently closed supermarket, accompanied by hard rock.
Women’s fashion no longer exists
For years there has been talk of gender-neutral fashion – the bogeyman for the conservative people, the boys in skirts – but in 2022 the trend seems to have fully arrived: there is little difference between men and women in fashion. Many fashion shows were mixed, even Miu Miu reintroduced a men’s collection. On the runways, male models wore heels and skirts, and there were a notable number of trans models, especially among the younger generation of designers. Sometimes it was completely unclear to the viewer who exactly was wearing a dress. That’s a good thing: anyone can wear anything, so everyone wins in the end. At the same time, many designers were inspired by classic men’s wardrobes. The Gucci show in Milan was inspired by designer Alessandro Michele’s first collection, which put boys in girly blouses. At Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquière gave his models ties. Saint Laurent, the house that practically invented the androgynous style with ‘le smoking’, showed blazers and tuxedos, among other things. A pair of broad shoulders to carry the weight of the world.
This translated post previously appeared on FashionUnited.nl. Translation and editing: Karenita Haalck