Paris Women’s Fashion Week wrapped up on Tuesday after nine days of shows and celebrity sightings. AFP looks at some of the trends that will influence women’s wardrobes for the Spring-Summer season next year.
Fashion in kit form
“The emergence of separates has become a key theme of this season, as we took our signature silhouettes, gowns, necklines, and reimagined them as tops and bottoms,” Schiaparelli designer Daniel Roseberry said in his show notes. Clashing patterns and mixed up styles and shapes were a key theme of the Paris fashion shows, as well as those at the Fashion Weeks in Milan, London and New York.
“Styling and mix-and-match are becoming almost as important as the product itself,” said Victoria Dartigues, director of women’s ready-to-wear and leather goods buying at the luxury Galeries Lafayette chain in Paris.
The skirt
The skirt is everywhere on the catwalks “with plenty of fluidity and movement, in a range of shapes and lengths”, according to Elodie Abrial, commercial director of Le Bon Marche department store in Paris. At Chanel, it returned again and again just below the knee, a length even known as “the Chanel length”, considered by Gabrielle Chanel to be the most flattering. “The skirt is a contemporary object because it is flexible and adaptable. It invites contradiction,” Miuccia Prada said in a statement after the show.
Chilean model Sara Caballero presents a creation for Louis Vuitton.
Soothing colours
“Colours that soothe and lower cortisol levels – butter, lavender, sage,” fashion journalist Pascal K. Douglas said of the colours for Spring-Summer. There were similarly soft colours at Victoria Beckham, Stella McCartney and Icicle in Paris, and Ashley Williams in London, with shoulder-padded shirts ranging from pale blue to baby pink and yellow.
High volume
Dreamed up by Christian Lacroix in the mid-1980s, the “pouf” or bubble skirt – an inflated skirt structure – is making a triumphant comeback. Loewe and Dior made it a key silhouette, while Miu Miu and Zimmermann offered very short versions. Comme des Garcons made it its centrepiece in denim, a sculpture as puffy as it was comic. – AFP
