Power at play at Paris Fashion Week

Paris Fashion Week has just begun, and the overall message is all about power. Given that this year has seen the reversal of Roy vs Wade and that protests against the death of Mahsa Amini in Tehran have spread globally, women’s empowerment is an issue worth revisiting. It’s also about the power of the fashion houses themselves – their ability to hammer home a message, to sell a dream and a product.

What does female empowerment look like for 2023? At Dior, it looks like a ethereal dress and platform shoes. Artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri entered the French royal family in 1533 under the inspiration of the Italian Catherine de’ Medici, who married Henry II. De Medici was considered the most important woman in 16th century Europe. She was dressed for power, especially heightening her height with heels and black tracksuit bottoms for her husband – an expensive color at the time, as well as indicating her wealth and status. Christian Dior himself wore corsetry and petticoats, but Chiuri has not gone down in history. The collection was perfect when they combined structured corsets, over cotton blouses, with simple pants, as practical modern armour.

Gabriella Hearst has built responsibility into both her namesake brand and Chloé. Before taking the stage for the latter show, she raved about fusion power — no joke — and the set and show was in support of the proposed fuel source, which uses heat from nuclear fusion reactions to generate electricity. Hearst recently visited an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project in southern France and translated the power of fusion into her clothes. If you choose, you can wear jeans studded with grommets that look like isotopes, or wear knitwear inspired by reactor components.

It was weird to talk behind the scenes while learning about the intricacies of alternative fuels, but Hearst is a self-professed nerd. And she’s shown that the power of fashion as a tool to convey messages can, thankfully, be more complex than the next Kardashian-Jenner clan movement. I certainly never thought it would lose my composure during fashion week.

Balmain’s message was loud and clear. The first is the operative word – creative director Olivier Rousteing presented the show, dubbed the Balmain Festival, to about 7,000 guests at the sports stadium – some of them the fashion press, but most of the public – who whipped up burgers while cheering on couture dresses and the musician Cher. She was incarnated for the bow, along with Rusting, but it was enough to provoke hysteria.

Roustein’s set was beautiful – it took its inspiration from the painted ceiling of Versailles and, like the palace itself, replicated the costumes designed to dazzle and overwhelm the audience. Some resemble naked statues, while others are stamped with burning fire. The final couture garments are African-inspired and made from natural materials such as bark and twigs (Rusting’s birth parents are from the Somali Peninsula).

I go back to the shoes where he straps stone blocks to the heels as if his models were standing on pedestals. In Rousteing’s view, Balmain is a brand with a global voice that can fill a stadium with fans. Cher was there to sell handbags – she gleefully painted it on a 100 meter high video. How about a power message?

No handbags are to be seen at Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello. “I want to dress a woman,” the designer said backstage. It’s surprising how few designers have made this statement recently. The Saint Laurent show, like Balmain, was open to the public and was held on a grand scale in the Place du Trocadero with a large fountain behind the Eiffel Tower. But it still felt close. These clothes were stunningly beautiful, with the power of a fist-pumping aesthetic. Pretty much every look was a floor length blouse – some ruffled, some embroidered, one chain designed in leopard print, some with a structured coat thrown over them, a gigantutan draped over the shoulders and pulled up to the ankles. The colors were glorious – olive green, oxblood, inky blue, lilac bruise – shades as blurred as a Polaroid picture.

The power was palpable. On the one hand there was the brand – these clothes photograph beautifully and are unmistakably Saint Laurent. From the 1960s until his retirement in You can trace hooded dresses back to Yves Saint Laurent’s couture collections in 2002. Great shoulders are also found in the designer’s archive, as are gold jeweled globules on the wrists and lobes. But it was the vision of a very powerful and amazing woman at a time when that was what we needed. Vaccarello does not draw on this subject. “When you go into politics in fashion, it seems like an opportunity to sell more bags,” he said. He chooses his clothes to make a speech. And in addition, Saint Laurent’s revenue rose 42 percent in the first half of 2022. Maybe it will sell well enough.

During Jonathan Anderson’s nine-year tenure, sales at Lowe’s increased fivefold. Perhaps more valuable is that we all understand what Loewe stands for: craft, concept and nature, so handwoven raffia can sit next to needlework silicone. Before Andersen launched, the LVMH-owned brand’s identity was boring. This season, huge anthurium flowers sprouted from breasts, placed on shoes. “I like something that looks fake in nature but is real,” Anderson says on the back. “Comparison. Illusion. The idea of ​​iconography – it reminds us of something else.”

That’s the genius of Andersen Lowe, where ordinary and even humble objects and materials are put to extraordinary use, to create clothes that look like nothing else. Witness the shoes made from inflated balloons that wound up something between a Swiffer mop and a sea cucumber. The funny thing is, you wanted to get your hands on a pair by the end of the show. Or, rather, your feet in them.

Be the first to know about our latest stories – stay tuned @financialtimesfashion On Instagram