#SuzyPFW: Designers Usher In A New Era At Paris Fashion Week – Lanvin, Kenzo, Margiela & Patou

The race to find fresh designers and to swap old bones for new seems never-ending at the Paris shows. Heritage brands are all trying to freshen up. And this is nothing new. Many houses are on their third or fourth attempts to find just the right young, lively, talented designer to make clothes that sell. The most important skill is identity. Without a sense of what a brand stands for, little can be achieved.

Yet the opening of the Paris season, with no Chinese buyers and a general feeling of unease about health, has produced a surprisingly good crop of new or forward moving designers.\

Lanvin by Bruno Sialelli

The Gobelin tapestries on the walls of a grand building made a big, bold statement for Lanvin. How could any designer compete with gigantic woven images of a vast vista of trees, prancing gazelles and leaping giants.

Enter Bruno Sialelli who, at his second season, seems confident and clued up about balancing showmanship with desirable fashion.

“I wanted to make bridges between now and the glorious past of Jeanne Lanvin,” the designer explained. 

“She collaborated with her peers, working with the poet Louise de Vilmorin – in 1949 they made together a book about the perfume of Lanvin, mixing familiarity and poesy.”

A torrent of other references were offered from a Rainer Werner Fassbinder movie, to Jeanne Lanvin’s upward social manoeuvre from a poor family to high society and her grasp, even in those early days, of the power of femininity.

Fearful that the entire show would be held up by tracing Madame Lanvin and the full 130 years of the brand’s history, I asked only about the tapestries, first made for Louis XIV and continued today in this very building.

Can you absorb the past and yet make a modern collection? It was to Sialelli's credit that he absorbed all this history and turned out a smart collection that opened with short A-line silhouettes and followed that with lively but wearable tailoring for both sexes.

Ladylike hair and makeup suggested a figure from earlier years. But the general effect was of clothes with a feminine edge that youngish women would want to wear. Flashes of interest came up as painterly flowers on a white coat; cute round bags swinging along; a fluff of feathers at the neck. Were there too many ideas? Well that is so much better than not enough.

Kenzo by Felipe Oliveira Baptista

The ever-smiling face of Kenzō Takada, the founder of the house that bears his name, burst with joy as the sporty and energetic collection by designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista came to an end.

The entire event seemed like a movie - the audience placed in transparent bubbles as the heavens opened, lashing the set, but in no way denigrating the show.

Kenzo's new Portuguese designer has been long enough in Paris, working with Lacoste, to understand that type of sporty elegance that the French do so well.

The show open ended with a black coat to introduce elongated sporty clothes that suddenly broke into colour and pattern. Big cats landed as multi-coloured patterns on simple dresses or tops for both sexes, interspersed were long, straight double-breasted coats in strong colours such as ink blue or a mustard-orange. 

The original Kenzo had been a world tour of fashion inspirations - an idea difficult to follow up in an era critical of cultural appropriation. But Baptista played with just the right insertions of colour and pattern on a basically practical collection.

“I wanted it to be something universal - looking back at Kenzo, finding what was effortless and beautiful and putting it into 2020, always looking forward,” the designer said after a roar of approval from the audience, who appreciated the meld of new designer and founder.

“There was a lot from my personal history, memories of the Azores with my parents sky diving,” the designer said. “I wanted to offer optimism and freedom.”

Margiela by John Galliano

To listen to John Galliano’s podcast – with the designer’s fruity voice and his way of swooping from one ‘bourgeoise gesture’ to uniforms and tweeds – does not really tell you much about his latest offering from Maison Margiela.

The designer makes jokes about his ‘fetishism’ over uniforms, his passion for heritage fabrics and how he has been moved by the art of Edward Hopper.

But without any of the designer’s subtle references, the collection spoke for itself, with its re-propositioning of pieces of material and its suggestion – from a checked hat to a giant scarlet bow – that these additions were temporary and could be worn in many other ways.

With beauty in the casual way fabrics were tossed together – a throw-over orange scarf here, a front-only collar and buttons there – both the construction and the colour sung out.

Looking back at the Galliano/Margiela history, it seemed as though rather awkwardly-planted roots have now burst into flower. A jacket dressed with what looked like the contents of a much-loved handbag – old travel tickets, clothing labels and paper money – was impeccably tailored. As were many other jackets and coats that, even with decorative additions, could be defined as ‘normal’.

But the most joyous and original ideas for Margiela were the colours. It takes an artist to mix plaid in shades of brown with a necklet in sky-blue, and to pit that same blue against russet with orange.

Galliano is an artist and visually – as well as in his extraordinary palette –  his particular make-do-and-mend has become an art form.

Patou by Guillaume Henry

“From denim to evening dresses – it’s for the same woman – but with different aspects, desires and emotions,” said Guillaume Henry, looking round his Patou studio, where the Winter 2020 collection was on display. It started with cutters and stitchers on the entrance floor and led to the upstairs area where a bar underscored a generally friendly feeling.

Patou – once well-known on the Paris scene and now relaunched by LVMH – has been put in a middle position, between high fashion at super-high prices and the cheap low-lines.

“Jean Patou was always the first to dress independent women in Deauville or Biarritz and the bar was part of her world!” said the designer, explaining that in the 1920s, a bar was put in the boutique to entertain would-be brides and, in particular, their future husbands.

“Patou is French, so am I, and we all are very enthusiastic, happy and smiling – as if we were in the boulangerie,” the designer said, as though distancing himself from the haughty high-fashion labels.

But he also praised ‘gourmand’ shapes for the outfits, all fresh, youthful and, all important, at medium prices where anything over €500 is exceptional.

In keeping with the friendly attitude, guests were encouraged to look at the pieces, try them on and hang out in the relaxed atmosphere of the bar.

“Christian Lacroix and Karl Lagerfeld both started careers at Patou,” the designer continued. “And I want to dress ordinary people who are not fashion people but who really love fashion.”