Due to the Covid-19 pandemic none of us has been able to travel a lot in the last year: we have navigated through small spaces, our bedrooms and kitchens doubling up as offices or classrooms; we turned trips to the local supermarket into socialising events and felt that going to get a haircut was a thrilling adventure. Many of us also found new existences in digital spaces and in the immensely infinite virtual reality that video games can offer.
Fashion-wise most runways turned into engaging films, digital presentations or more traditional lookbooks, but some designers transported their shows to beautiful real or virtual spaces. And that was maybe a huge mistake as our attention refocused on the background rather than on the clothes.
At the end of April, for example, Anthony Vaccarello released the film showcasing Saint Laurent's A/W 21 collection, entitled "Where The Silver Wind Blows".
The clothes were a mix of '60s moods and shapes with the ebullience and colours of the '80s and the designer also stated he was inspired for this collection by Canadian electroclash artist Peaches.
Metallic stretch bodysuits and tiny metallic miniskirts were matched with lean jackets quite often as long as the skirts. Tweed mini-skirts in jewel shades such as violet, turquoise, gold and chartreuse were hemmed with faux fur.
Occasionally there were metallic or tweed trousers, but the emphasis was on shorts (or knee-length trousers) matched with ultra-long waders-like leather boots or pointy metal-tipped heels. Costume jewellery – from chandelier earrings and pearl chokers to heavy bracelets – completed the looks.
There was a contrast with the clothes and the background: Vaccarello is not new to distractions and in previous runways he included the Eiffel Tower in the background (S/S 20 collection) or transported his models in the desert where they walked on sand dunes rather than on a conventional runway (S/S 21).
For the A/W 21 runway, the designer opted for a digitally generated space with models moving among volcanic rocks, and rocky cliffs, icebergs and glaciers, crashing waves, an impetuous waterfall and rocks covered in lichens.
The wintry locations, the perfect counterpart to the desert landscapes of the S/S 21 video, showed the strength of nature and created perfect contrasts with the clothes.
Vaccarello's emaciated models (though the fashion media prefers describing Saint Laurent's models as "skinny" or "pin-thin") with their sheer tops, metallic bodysuits and tiny miniskirts weren't really dressed to face the force and fury of the elements. Their clothes aren't indeed the best options for walks and adventures through rugged landscapes under a leaden sky.
The problem with this presentation was that, by now used to more functional and practical clothes, and having lived in relatively small and confined spaces for over a year now, by watching the video most of us simply do not long for the clothes it showcases (if they will ever be produced in more sensible sizes…), but for the landscapes shown. Immense, powerful and scary, they seem to evoke the vastness, infinity and magnificence mentioned in Edmund Burke's essay "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime".
The more you look at the video, the more you realise how ephemeral we all are in front of the power of nature and the more you feel attracted not by the clothes, the leotards and the tweed suits, but by the forces surrounding the models.
Rather than wanting to go out and buy party clothes, after watching this you feel the need to book a holiday in extreme climates to be as much as possible in contact with nature as if you had suddenly developed an interest in the Arctic tundra lichens rather than in that diamanté bra, a rather distracting crossover between Mata Hari and Theda Bara's more famous bejeweled bras.
Virginie Viard at Chanel did more or less the same mistake in the film accompanying the fashion house's Cruise 2022 collection.
The film, unveiled yesterday evening, was shot in Provence, among the Carrières de Lumières (Quarries of Light), the limestone quarries of Les Baux-de-Provence.
This village in the south of France is famous for its picturesque streets and vistas and it is a major tourist attraction for its quarries.
There was actually a precise reason why the runway took place here: poet and playwright Jean Cocteau, a friend of Coco Chanel, shot here in 1960 his film "Testament of Orpheus" featuring cameos by Jean Marais, Pablo Picasso, Yul Brynner and Cocteau himself.
Chanel often collaborated with Cocteau: the designer created indeed costumes for his plays "Antigone", "Orpheus", and "Oedipus Rex", and Cocteau did portraits of her and illustrations of her clothes.
The movie location and the image of a man in a black horse costume (by Janine Janet) from Cocteau's film were the main starting points for Viard's collection, but the designer also elaborated other themes connected with Cocteau and Chanel as well.
A draped white top matched with sarouel pants was indeed reminiscent of Chanel’s bandage costume for Jean Marais in "Oedipus Rex".
One blue and black tweed dress with a sailor collar called to mind in its combination of colours Cocteau's ceramics and the tiled floor in the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Jérusalem (Our Lady of Jerusalem) in Fréjus, the last work of Cocteau.
The sculptures of animals – from lions and doves to sphinxes (the sphinx also appeared in "Testament of Orpheus") preserved in her original apartment reappeared here as printed motifs recombined with Cocteau's signature stars (also projected over the walls of the quarry during the show) and with his doves that were stitched on the sweaters.
Also the camellia patterns on light dresses were hints at Cocteau's pen drawings, but to make the collection more modern and appeal to younger generations, Viard filtered Chanel's vocabulary through the Mod and Punk dictionaries, adding black fringed miniskirts, raw finishings along the hem of skirts and cuffs and applied hundreds of jewelled pins on a white tailored jacket.
The double-C piercing jewellery for the lower lip was also a punk gesture, while the jacket featuring a bloused body and fitted peplum and the romantic white dresses with puffed sleeves embroidered with wild flowers from Provence were dedicated to more discerning and mature consumers.
While Viard mainly used black and white to stand out agains the powdery pink tones of the chalky quarries, there were some designs with a texture that called to mind the colour and consistency of the limestone, in particular two dresses with woven strips of fabric, one of the 100% sustainable tweeds created by Lesage and featured in the collection (a third of this collection features eco-friendly fabrics).
Speaking about sustainability, Viard also reused some of the concrete tiles, a surplus stock from Atelier Montex from Chanel's A/W 2014/15 Haute Couture collection by Karl Lagerfeld, to create a trellis-like architectural design on a coat dress.
Viard included in the show more curvy models which marked a change compared to Lagerfeld's times, yet she fell into the pitfall of the sublime location. The quarries didn't play indeed in favour of the clothes: as soon as you saw the majestic limestone quarries you started dreaming about travelling, losing the interest in the clothes and their details, or in the stories and references behind each design.
Grand, immense and magnificently imposing, the quarries took centre stage, at times they looked like sacred temples from an ancient civilisation and your eyes started wandering from the texture of the stone to the blue sky, with the models and the designs becoming a distraction.
It was then that you realised that there was something missing that you actually didn't miss at all – the audience. Remember that time when assistants went around asking people to uncross their legs to avoid getting funky sneakers, vertiginous stilettos and dirty boots in the runway shots? Well, that time has gone as there is no more front row.
In fact, who does even remember that mythical time when it existed? The thing is, many of us, especially those ones who were violently elbowed aside by some fashionable editor/celebrity/influencer while looking for their seats, do not miss that experience at all (and while there are some cons in these runways with no audience – you can't see the clothes properly and you can't touch them – there are some great pros for the fashion house involved as no guests means saving money on accomodation and transport…).
In the end, the more you look at these shows, the more you feel that nothing seen on these runway seems extremely desirable except from one thing – being able to see the world again, with its fierce, beautiful and amazing landscapes and locations and do so as soon as possible. The rest, from the metallic bodysuits and mini-skirts to the tweed jackets – can definitely wait. Indefinitely.
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