Paris Fashion Week: Hermès channels Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau in surrealist womenswear spring/summer show – what were the key takeaways from this year’s part-digital runways?
Fewer celebs and masked front rows at the largely digital take of one of fashion’s biggest calendar events – where home-grown Hermès used one its live runway show to play with depth, using projections and reflections of Greco-Roman sculpture to evoke Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau
Hermès headlined Saturday’s (October 3) instalment of Paris Fashion Week with a cinematic, surrealist runway, but the lack of celebrities and patchy drizzle put a slight dampener on the usually high-octane event.
Like Milan before it, Paris is undertaking an unusual fashion season for spring/summer 2021. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the nine-day calendar is flitting between 16 ready-to-wear runway collections with masked guests in seated rows, 20 in-person presentations and several dozen completely digital shows streamed online with promotional videos.
Prints of Greco-Roman goddess sculptures adorned columns at the Hermès show, with mirrors reflecting parts of their marble forms. The creative presentation referenced surrealists Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau, evoking a sense of magic, mystery and depth.
Depth was indeed the key theme for minimalist designer Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski, but the magic and mystery were sometimes missing in the clothes. Shimmering metallic mesh came as an outer layer over pared-down undergarments in dark and muted hues.
In one LWD (Little White Dress), the gold meshing resembled kinky chain mail and felt very 1990s. Elsewhere, the play on depth continued as the sides were scooped out of an ethnic-looking brown dress to expose the model’s skin.
It was, on the whole, a low-energy collection. Still, individual garments were high in sophistication, especially those with layered panelling, including one coat in old rose that had a chic rolled-up collar that riffed on aviation attire.
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