“It was not a circus,” insisted Jean-Paul Gaultier after presenting a dramatic collection staged against acrobats swinging from rings in the ceiling at Paris Fashion Week. “It was about acrobats and suspension and how clothes were suspended and draped and superimposed.” Well, that’s okay then.
Gaultier wasn’t the only one lifting his collection into a whole new level of theatricality this weekend. Of course there was plenty of substance – this is Paris, after all – but designers were also clearly out to get their point across to blasé fashionistas already titillated by shows in Milan, London and New York.
Alexander McQueen went for film for the staging of his collection, hiring John Maybury – the director of the 1998 Francis Bacon biopic Love Is The Devil and Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2U video – to create three short films to set off his 2003 creations. The result swept the audience through a bedraggled shipwreck scene and into woods peopled by nymphs and boyish aristocrats before an explosion of colour against a disco setting.
Viktor & Rolf, already famed for offbeat shows, plunged their models into a Rio de Janeiro carnival world where they had to dance, dance, dance to get noticed. Leggy lovelies generally required to sashay appealingly down the catwalk were suddenly being judged on their ability to shake their bon-bons. Alek Wek and Caroline Ribeiro scored high with their sensual Latin and African moves, but Karen Elson and Karolina Kurkova were clearly not too comfortable with the new demands of their trade.
And even reclusive Londoner designer Hussein Chalayan, who never takes a bow at the end of his presentations, was gripped by the urge to perform, emerging onto the stage with a bass guitar to join the musicians accompanying his collection.
But it was by no means all flash moves and special effects, and critics found plenty to admire at even the most extravagant shows. Superb tailoring and brilliant creative flair underpinned the maverick attention-grabbers.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
