A Young Designer Shakes Up Paris Fashion Week

Noontime at Terminus Nord, a brasserie opposite the Gare du Nord train station in Paris, the diners were mildly surprised fashion editors who were treated to lunch and a show by a young Belgian designer named Marie Adam-Leenaerdt. Waiters impassively set out plates of deviled eggs and pâté on the white-linen-covered tables and took orders for drinks. Considering that Adam-Leenaerdt is still in her 20s and only started her brand two years ago, after a stint at Balenciaga, it took chops to occupy a busy restaurant. Her producer, the veteran Etienne Russo, said it cost less than many other show venues.

Terminus Nord is so well known among travelers that it keeps a digital screen near the bar with the train schedule so you know how much time you have to eat or linger. A French journalist, sitting with a group of Americans, joked that it was the timetable of the designers about their leaving their jobs, either fired or moving on.

In point of fact, there is very little movement in the fashion industry, even though insiders and journalists keep anticipating some kind of large-scale shake-up of creative talent among various big houses. So far, the only change has been hiring Sarah Burton at Givenchy. And there’s curiosity about Alessandro Michele’s debut at Valentino on Sunday. Chanel continues to search for a new creative director. Could Jonathan Anderson of Loewe be the next designer at Gucci? The feeling since the Milan shows — well, since a flat New York — is that the industry desperately needs a jolt of excitement, creative sparks. And right now, it generally feels stuck in limbo.

Marie Adam-Leenaerdt
Photo: Courtesy of Marie Adam-Leenaerdt

Meanwhile, there’s a new group of young designers doing exciting work, like Adam-Leenaerdt and the London-based Michael Stewart of Standing Ground and the Swedish Ellen Hodakova Larsson, whose latest collection using discarded and surplus materials like masculine leather belts, homey dish towels, and fox-fur bits could easily read as a study of women’s lives over the past century. One of her amazing dresses converts stiff masculine shirt collars into a strapless column, as if to ask: Which sex now has the control? At the heart of her work is the freedom to create, to extract meaning from everyday objects.

Marie Adam-Leenaerdt:
Photo: Courtesy of Marie Adam-Leenaerdt

Adam-Leenaerdt is also a kind of insurrectionist, though her feet are planted on the ground. She wants to make clothes that someone can wear. You can tell when a designer is contemporary in her thinking when her work is aimed at sophisticated tastes and, at the same time, is highly functional. But when a contemporary designer can also make women of any age look cool, she has something special — and that’s Adam-Leenaerdt.

Marie Adam-Leenaerdt
Photo: Courtesy of Marie Adam-Leenaerdt

Her shapes were fresh and inspiring, like a long, asymmetrical yellow tunic in what looked like softly pleated jersey, and a pair of long-sleeve, straight-line silk dresses with V-necklines finished in three contrasting colored fabrics and a tiny bit of lingerie lace, each dress shown with a thin leather belt. I like her modest yet knowing take on femininity, and in some ways, her clothes, or their attitude, remind me of the fashion of Veronique Branquinho, the Antwerp designer who had a real following in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In her show notes, Adam-Leenaerdt said she was inspired by the T-shirt’s “supreme reign” in the streets, this “sea of sameness with little room for contour and dimension.” Other gifted designers have tackled the T-shirt, and Adam-Leenaerdt did it in both rigid forms and a loose-fitting, two-piece white cotton outfit that looked cool. But I sense she mainly viewed the T-shirt as a broad exercise in rethinking “basics.” Her minimalist pantsuits are certainly a cut above the form.

Vaquera
Photo: BFA/Courtesy of Vaquera

The young Vaquera designers Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee also put on a great show, easily their best in the decade since they launched their label in New York. The difference? They focused on signature styles like girlie tops and denim and painted canvas pieces that look like leather, and added their first line of sunglasses and shoes, notably a good-looking black pump with a kitten heel. They also used models who seemed more professional or, at any rate, less antic.

Vaquera
Photo: BFA/Courtesy of Vaquera

“We wanted it to be more commercial this season,” Taubensee said. “And we thought, Oh, is it too commercial? There’s no crazy look. Then we were like, no, we don’t need that anymore. This is more confident.”

This coming spring, DiCaprio and Taubensee plan to move to Paris, instead of only presenting their shows there. That should give Vaquera even more room to grow.