The nine-day Fall/Winter 2023 Paris Fashion Week has come to an end. For friends who follow fashion week, whether on and off the runway, or on major social media platforms around the world, the most intuitive feeling is that "the excitement is back". Indeed, in today's fashion week, design is no longer the only protagonist, but when the instant hustle and bustle fades, we should not be left with only three minutes of topical heat, after all, these works that have been poured into the designer's efforts for months or even half a year should be seen and faced, in order to form a virtuous circle of fashion creativity. Here's our top five highlights from Paris Fashion Week, from great debuts at the beginning to steady play by veterans who have achieved countless highlights in just 9 days.
Three months ago, in the official announcement of Ann Demeulemeeter's appointment of designer Ludovic de Saint Sernin as the new creative director, Ludovic's brand profile became the stepping stone to start this new journey. Demeulemeester has always maintained a niche scale and cultivated an audience that is particularly supportive of the brand's style, and the first question for Ludovic is how to integrate itself rather than distance itself from history. After researching and trying on many of the brand's past classics, he came up with a collection that would allow both new and old audiences to get what they wanted, from leather feather-shaped corsets that echo the opening and closing scenes, to waist slim satin tail skirts and long streamers at the junctions of suits, and the sexiness he excelled at became completely offended, and the model's arms around his chest made the design appear subtle and humble. In a post-show interview, he revealed that Demeulemeester also personally encouraged him: "Work hard and do the best you can." And that's just the beginning of Ludovic's time at the fashion house, as he says, "This season is my first step." After that, I will spread my wings and express myself. ”
Ann Demeulemeester Fall/Winter 2023 collection
Meanwhile, Harris Reed made his Nina Ricci debut this season. Perhaps because Harry Styles' early rendition on the red carpet made this season's runway look less mysterious. Silhouette satin suits and silk embellishments have quickly become the new tone he set at Nina Ricci in a short period of time, but perhaps influenced by Styles, more of the look takes on a red-carpet robe-like look. Reed is clearly not dwelling on the heritage of classics, but in the face of such a time-honored and elegant brand, boldly breaking the rules also means carefully walking the tightrope between the old and the new, and the gait of the closing model in the narrow trailing skirt seems to hint at the pace of his creation, but everything is dangerous.
Nina Ricci Fall/Winter 2023 collection
Often, testing the waters of couture from ready-to-wear is often a sign of brand progress. Schiaparelli once again chose to do the opposite, with Daniel Roseberry's first ready-to-wear fashion show officially unveiled this season. Roseberry, who has always been inspired on the runway, turned cautious when wading into the world of ready-to-wear, not because of the controversy over the haute couture collection more than a month ago, but because of the documentary The Kingdom of Dreams, which he watched while developing a new ready-to-wear collection, in which the battle between luxury groups and designers made him more aware of what it means to bring design to the mass market. Therefore, even if we can see the details carried over from previous seasons of couture, it is more calm and restrained in terms of silhouette, prints and color schemes, allowing the Schiaparelli girl to enter the real life of the 21st century.
Schiaparelli Fall/Winter 2023 collection
Overly grand scenes or propositions often steal people's attention from the fashion itself, and for high-tech designs, there is no need to give too many gorgeous elaborations to the design, but only need to go deep around a precise and subtle incision to create a complete and wonderful collection. Following tweed, Virginie Vital once again drew camellia as inspiration from Chanel's brand spirit, and around this flower it connects the brand's 100-year history. Although the imagery is traditional, Viard knows how to make flowers appear in the details of fashion and accessories in a youthful manner, once again extending the meaning of Chanel's meaning in the present.
Chanel Fall/Winter 2023 collection
Pierpaolo Piccioli was inspired by her 15-year-old daughter. One day when he came home from work, Piccioli found his daughter wearing a formal dress from his closet. This led Piccioli, who has been thinking about the preferences of young people in recent seasons, to conceive the entire series under the theme of "Black Tie", deconstructing the rules of traditional formal wear culture while incorporating Valentino's achievements in the field of haute couture. Each model on the runway looked like Piccioli's "cool kid" scavenged on the street, with rich eye makeup, outrageous studs, and a black tie around their necks as their only link to stereotypes. From Valentino cropped suits to tulle bandeau dresses that gently wrap over shirts, Piccioli's challenge to the established rules of established fashion houses is bound to attract the attention of younger generations, who may never have imagined that a black tie could represent their avant-garde attitude.
Valentino Fall/Winter 2023 collection
On the last day of Paris Fashion Week, when everyone's eyes were wandering and their heels were trembling, Miuccia Prada's words immediately made everyone continue their spirits, "If I were younger, I would go out in panties!" It is true that Miu Miu in the past two seasons has won people's attention with low-rise pants and layers of rebellious panties, and when we thought that this season Miu Miu would continue to follow this kind of well-behaved girl character, Miuccia personally pushed the girls, They started their careers "recklessly" enough to make up a series of humorous real-life scenes: a retro leather briefcase kept in hand, took a few seemingly infallible pieces from their mother's wardrobe (similar to the Prada masterpiece of the 90s), hurriedly put them on, paired them with deviant shorts and colorful mesh stockings, and rushed straight to the office so that they couldn't care about the messy hairstyle. Even though life is not easy, it is good that there are Miu Miu girls who make everywhere interesting.
Miu Miu Fall/Winter 2023 collection
Courrèges' opening scene made the guests think that some staff member had walked up the venue out of place, staring intently at the screen of her phone, and the music over the show echoed with the voice assistant's question, "Is the sky blue?" In this way, designer Nicolas di Felice hopes to bring people together to think about how much time we spend on electronic devices, whether our lives are better for it, such as questions about the sky, which can be seen when the curtain is open, but people are used to exploring everything in the virtual world. Immediately afterwards, di Felice evokes our inward thinking with a series of circular mirror decorations, withdrawing from the world in the mobile phone screen, evolving more possibilities of fashion around the interaction between body and material, and making more curved cuts and pieces with oversized logo decorations based on the brand's iconic 60s silhouette, not only to satisfy our fantasies about space and the future, but also to make girls go out of the house now.
Courrèges Fall/Winter 2023 collection
Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson's designs rarely evoke nostalgia, but after the runway this season he volunteered to count his tenure, "I've been at Loewe for 10 years, and I'm starting to think, OK, what should the next chapter look like?" He ponders, "I feel like I was a little bit away from the core of the brand. And now, we're going to put it back. But Anderson's so-called implementation is not a complete return to the past, and even gives people the illusion of "overusing the eyes". A series of satin dresses appear in the opening scene with clothing patterns from the forties and fifties, but in a state of de-focus, while the next two pleated knitted cardigans are actually printed on adhesive paper and pasted to the model's skin, and the feather decoration process of haute couture is used on basic T-shirts and trousers. For viewers who are used to seeing the show on their phones, these crafts are more like Anderson playing a joke with us, and the subtext is the beauty of putting down the phone and going out of the house, touching and trying these clothes for yourself.
Loewe Fall/Winter 2023 collection
The scene where Bella Hadid "put on" Coperni's spray-painted dress on stage last season must still be fresh in everyone's memory. And this also made designers Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant riveting to strike while the iron is hot in the new season, presenting a creative show with both hardcore and banter. Perhaps you've seen their ingenuity in embellishment of emoji on dresses, bringing the language of the digital virtual world into real fashion to enrich the layers of the look while producing a stodily effect, and the other thanks to the robots of Boston Dynamics, who staged a 2023 version of "The Wolf and the Lamb" with supermodel Rianne Van Rompaey, Coperni hopes to prove. The topic of the balance of rights between different groups applies not only to animals in nature, but also to the relationship between humans and machines.
Coperni Fall/Winter 2023 collection
The world of fashion has always been difficult to reconcile, which has given rise to a variety of styles, but no matter how the trend changes, there are always some brands, mention them will make us think of the most beautiful look in Paris, day after day on the runway of Paris Fashion Week, adhere to the high standards of the fashion system. Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello is undoubtedly one of the best. In the black box-shaped space that stands in the center of Place de Varsovie, Vaccarello recreates Yves Saint Laurent's haute couture show in the Intercontinental Ballroom between 1975 and 2001. The Fall/Winter 2023 collection is also comparable to high standard, Vaccarello does not refer to some specific archival designs, but integrates the brand spirit into its own design language, highlighting the strong sense of sharpness that shapes the shoulder line this season, further consolidating the image of the contemporary Saint Laurent girl, and delivering a "compact and focused" answer.
Saint Laurent Fall/Winter 2023 collection
For more than three decades, Dries Van Noten has been a season-to-season interpretation of what it means to be at ease. The delicate textures, romantic colours and slightly provocative fabrics collide with his private flower beds and the real lives of his female wearers. In the autumn and winter of 2023, Van Noten's design is still rotten, but it focuses on reality - a special state between the wearer and the clothing, tinkering. "For the parts that are about to be broken, out of love, you have to put them back together, and that's the essence of this collection." Although it is a simple concept, the effect is surprising, those "wounds" that have been sewn and repaired, but have become a wonderful decoration in the whole garment, in addition to the stitching in the costume technique, the method of gold on porcelain is also reflected in a luxurious way, starting from the subtleties and enriching the entire collection until it does not leak.
Dries Van Noten Fall/Winter 2023 collection
Hermès Womenswear Artistic Director Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski is recognized in the industry for good taste, but she is not satisfied with such comments, just as she lost one of her long hair with her own hands last winter, this season's Hermès has also ushered in a round of simplification of the complex, no longer pursuing the maximization of style, but focusing on the color spectrum of autumn and winter nature and the color palette for hair coloring, coupled with an outstanding combination of fabrics and craftsmanship. The whole collection weaved through the circular runway, "I wanted to bring some creativity to the most prosaic models," as Vanhee-Cybulski says, not only did it, but sublimated the blandness into a kind of timelessness.
Hermès Fall/Winter 2023 collection
Thirteen years have passed since Alexander McQueen left us, and Sarah Burton's years of hard work. For a long time, we've been fantasizing about what the brand would look like if McQueen were still around. But now, Burton's efforts have left a deep mark on the brand, a design that continues McQueen's craftsmanship but stays true to the rhythm of the market. Nor can we imagine anyone who will successfully bring the brand to the second decade of the 21st century as McQueen's right-hand man. At this season's runway, Burton also wanted to look back, with images upside down on electronic screens around the runway, music in the space from McQueen's Fall/Winter 1998 collection, and the collection's iconic broken stripes and beaded tassels introduced into the new design. What's more worth mentioning is that Burton did not have the motivation to recreate the so-called reproduction, but reconstructed in his own design style, remember the flowers that inhabit the skulls in the McQueen documentary? She transforms its gorgeous charm into a tenacious life force, an orchid that blooms on the models' shoulders, fingertips and chests.
Alexander McQueen Fall/Winter 2023 collection
Exactly a month before the launch, Mr. Paco Rabanne left the world behind, leaving the current creative director, Julien Dossena, to continue the brand's legend. Dossena's first way to pay tribute to this sudden change was to contact the Gala-Dali Foundation, which was allowed to reflect five surrealist works and several accessories by artist Salvador Dali, in the new collection, as a sign of the great friendship between the two Spanish creative leaders. At the same time, Dossena also recreated several of Paco Rabanne's archival designs at the end of the show, which have appeared in countless photographs and media reports, and when these designs are presented in front of us in real shape, we will still be deeply impressed by the brilliance of their creativity.
Paco Rabanne's Fall/Winter 2023 collection
"Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood", no abbreviation, no abbreviation. In 2016, when Andreas Kronthaler was first added to Vivienne Westwood's brand name, we didn't seem to understand the real meaning behind it, and according to Westwood at the time, the brand could not be operated without Kronthaler's dedication, which was a kind of justification for him. Today, when the husband and wife separated by 25 years apart, Kronthaler can only and must face the future of the brand alone. In his runway notes, he wrote, "I understand you so much more now," perhaps not an epiphany at one point, but a tacit understanding that has been around for a long time. As soon as the Fall/Winter 2023 collection began, the smiling portrait of Vivienne Westwood on the T-shirt reminded us that sadness is not allowed in this show. A series of platform shoes, miniskirts, corsets, striped suits are the same as ever, and the model's makeup and hair seem to show us what Westwood looks like when she wears them, "She's done a lot of things she wanted to do, and we've worked on this collection together, most of which she did during her lifetime," Kronthaler says truthfully. I need to accept that everyone goes through this hard feeling, but I believe I'm ready. ”
Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood's Fall/Winter 2023 collection
Written by: Shanlai
Edited by Yang Yi
Backstage photography: Acielle/Style Du Monde
Design: Xiaoni