The biggest trend coalescing at Paris Fashion Week is that there isn’t one. Collections on Wednesday felt both evolved and comforting — kind of like catching up with a dear friend you haven’t seen in awhile. From Dries Van Noten’s clever proportion play to The Row and Cecilie Bahnsen’s slimmer volumes, these are clothes to love for a long time.
The Front Row:
The sidewalk outside of the Row’s show always makes for a fun game of spot the celebrity, as bold face names glide by in plush tailored layers and big sunglasses — designers Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen’s preferred style of incognito mode dressing. Yesterday afternoon, eagle-eyed observers may have seen Kaia Gerber (in grey suiting) and Kendall Jenner (in a sage trench tucked into a black pencil skirt).
They were joined be a new — and surprising — acolyte of The Row: Pamela Anderson, the ’90s sex symbol who showed a softer side in her autobiography and Netflix documentary released earlier this year. The actor was all smiles in an oversize three-piece navy suit worn with a white blouse buttoned up to her neck. Also looking blissfully happy were seemingly on-again couple Cher and Alexander ‘A.E.’ Edwards at Balmain later in the day.
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The Work in Process:
Dries Van Noten’s show presented traditional menswear tailoring pieces like tuxedo jackets and double-breasted suits draped and oversized, layered over stripes and sequins and with added flourishes of contrast colour piping. He titled the collection ‘Unfamiliar familiar,’ and it pretty well summed up the mood of many shows on Wednesday.
At Cecilie Bahnsen, models walked briskly in the designer’s signature romantic and ultra-feminine dresses we know and love. The cuts were slimmer and featured fewer flounces — for Bahnsen, anyway — and were paired with upcycled ASICS decorated with fabric scraps.
So too at The Row, you had the Olsens’ signature voluminous layering pieces subtly evolved. The key silhouette was a long scoop neck tunic, worn over boxy white T-shirts (the first piece the Olsens ever created) and knee-length shorts, or occasionally nothing at all. There was also lots of great hybrid-outerwear — The Row shows off cycle, so this was technically a PF24 rather than SS24 collection — including hoodie-capes and windbreaker-dresses.
The Instagram Moment:
Fashion Week attendees can be a bit if a jaded crowded who think they’ve seen it all — and then a designer serves up something so utterly unexpected that the audience collectively catches its breath. One such moment occurred yesterday when the houselights went down at the end of the Undercover show, and instead of a finale walk, three models emerged wearing strapless dresses that had illuminated butterfly terrariums in place of skirts. The butterflies represented a loss designer Jun Takahashi suffered recently, and were released post-show.
