Fashion

Getting Into Character for the Finale of Paris Fashion Week

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2 months ago

October 2, 2024

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Getting Into Character for the Finale of Paris Fashion Week

On Tuesday morning, Chanel made a grand return to the Grand Palais.

The massive exhibition space in central Paris has an atrium ceiling and is flanked with mint green ironwork, and it is where Karl Lagerfeld staged his elaborate, theatrical runway shows for the French luxury fashion house. So it was a homecoming of sorts for the brand—one that came at an uncertain time, as Chanel remains without a creative director. (Though it does feel like an announcement is imminent, especially considering that this morning, Hedi Slimane—rumored to be one of the top contenders for the role—suddenly left his position at the helm of Celine.)

Chanel’s in-house team, which the brand calls the Creative Studio, designed the Spring 2025 collection this season. Overall, they did a really nice job. It helped to be back at the Grand Palais, to welcome in a rush of hope and optimism on a day when the rain in Paris finally broke and the sun came pouring onto the runway. A giant white birdcage decorated with interlocking C’s anchored the space; with its door flung open, it felt like a metaphor for taking flight.

The collection had a decidedly easier, more free-flowing vibe about it—fewer intricate, tailored tweeds and more sinuous fabrics and denim. There was a lightness about the whole thing, and a refreshing realness. Cropped skirt suits cut with slits at front offered a bit of sex appeal, as did sheer, ultra-thin pastel shorts and long-sleeved tops styled with capes. There were simple, beautiful pleated polo dresses in pink and yellow, worn with thick black leather belts that hung low on the hips. The women wore little makeup and messy buns—the requisite beauty formula for French nonchalance.

In many ways, it was a collection for real Chanel-heads: fans of the essence of the brand rather than the brand itself. It felt even more free and unencumbered when juxtaposed with the house’s clients sitting in the front row, some dressed in head-to-toe neon tweed, others wielding Chanel-logoed Popcorn Minaudieres or wearing mini 2.55 bags in their hair. One women brought her purse dog, also dressed in Chanel, to take in the fashion. These characters are integral to the Chanel universe, too, and they’re fabulous. But the spring collection was about the Coco of it all—the sportswear, the movement. It was about the idea that wearing luxury doesn’t have to feel like you’re playing a game of dress-up. It should feel like clothing that you can live in.

No one understands the feeling of lived-in, personality-driven fashion better than Miuccia Prada. At Miu Miu, she continued her exploration of the characters that fashion allows us to play as an escape from—or balm for—our everyday chaos. Speaking backstage briefly after the show, Mrs. Prada said that her spring collection was “about gesture, wearing things the wrong way.”

Indeed, there were plenty of looks that gave messy, in the most delightful way possible. Mrs. Prada showed little linen slips with sweaters tied around the waists to mimic corsets. Other slips were designed to look as if they were coming off the body, almost as if the model were running somewhere, with straps hanging down around the arms or bras peeking out from front or back. These were the women you see racing down the subway platform, trying to catch the train, jacket hanging off one shoulder and neckline swinging too low, to reveal a bodysuit underneath. In their whirl of energy, they’re still the most envy-inducing women in the world.

More traditionally put-together looks included great pleather pencil skirts worn with cropped jackets in jewel tones and layered chain belts. Mrs. Prada also added modish geometric prints to tailored coats that called back to her early-’00s collections. There were fantastic bags and shoes and bug-eye sunglasses, too. As has become standard at Miu Miu, the runway models included a grab bag of recognizable faces, among them Hilary Swank and Willem Dafoe. In the show notes, the Miu Miu team wrote that the actors who had walked in the show were “used to presenting alternate versions of imaginary realities, here they walk in their own truth.”

Mrs. Prada understands how to blur the lines between fantasy and reality, between people to idolize and people to observe. For her, it’s always about embracing one’s expressive dichotomies (her own especially), which is also something that Nicolas Ghesquière explored this season at Louis Vuitton. His spring collection was focused on dressing with soft power and the glorious-looking style that can be born out of the tension between opposites.

Ghesquière did mashed-up this season right out of the gate, with Renaissance-style pouf-sleeved jackets that were striped and embroidered and finished with ruffled peplum hems. These were worn over sporty shorts and leggings and long shirts, and accessorized with min Vuitton Speedy bags and a flat utility sneaker/sandal hybrid. Oversize coats and capes were made for modern, urban-dwelling superheroes, as were strong draped and embellished dresses, some with ruffles peeking out from the hem.

Like a few of his peers, Ghesquière is embracing an odd one-legged pant thing. I’m not quite sure I get it, but in the context of upselling the power of contradictions in clothing, it did make sense in the mix. As a friend—a huge Ghesquière fan—pointed out to me after the show, this wasn’t necessarily another survey of the designer’s greatest hits. It felt more like a character study of Ghesquière’s woman, someone who lives and breathes a kind of opulence that blends past, present, and future.

Emerging London-based designer Torishéju Dumi did something similar with her sophomore outing at Paris Fashion Week. Though her narrative had a fictional thread, which involved a group of aristocrats stuck on a sinking ship, it still felt like a marriage of time and space, of personas both real and imagined. Dumi’s parable was costumed with balloon-silhouette black dresses stuffed with discarded trimmings and fabrics from her studio. There were beautiful longline gowns and clean-cut suit jackets, but also little ruffled bloomers and a tutu skirt. Dumi is a talent to watch, not only for her immense skill but also her strong sense of imagination.

And then there was Disneyland. Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant staged Coperni’s Spring 2025 runway show at the base of the Magic Kingdom’s majestic castle on the final night of Paris Fashion Week. Walking into the empty park, with the familiar sprightly music still playing over the loud speakers at 10:30 p.m., made for a trippy end to weeks of fashion shows.

The show itself was epic, with pyrotechnics and a light show very much included. Models sauntered out of the foggy gate of the castle and down a long and winding runway in thematic groups: the princesses, the villains, the mermaids, all done up in a Coperni-ized version of their cartoon-character selves.

But nothing about Meyer and Vaillant’s collection was corny or kiddish. Instead, it was cool, wearable, covetable. There were cute bloomers (they’ve been everywhere this season!) and ruffled jackets and embroidered slips that looked like molded plastic in texture. There was a crystal bag and 3-D butterfly appliqués made from scuba fabric.

Sure, there were a couple of distressed tees with Mickey and Lumière from Beauty and the Beast, but many of the references were more subtle, like also-mermaid-esque kick-pleat evening jumpsuits and a bustier dress with a neckline sculpted in the shape of Maleficent’s crown. Only some of the collection was created in direct collaboration with Disney. Kylie Jenner, a sort of modern princess, closed the slow in a strapless black gown with a ball skirt.

The clothes were good, the spectacle was one for the books, and the vibes? Oh-so happily ever after. We rode Hyperspace Mountain afterward and noshed on Mickey-shaped tater tots. The whole thing made showgoers feel like kids and was a reminder that, with or without the help of Disney, that’s what any great fashion show should do. If there’s any takeaway from the Paris collections, especially from the last day, it’s that clothes really can awaken some magic in us, giving us the space to play whatever role we want.