Paris Fashion Week: In The French Capital, Desire Is Back On The Menu

Schiaparelli, Alaia, Hermes and Chloe had designers thinking about what we want, reports Washington Post fashion critic Rachel Tashjian from Paris.

Let’s put this whole luxury downturn situation, of declining sales and revenue across the conglomerates LVMH and Kering, in terms we can all understand: Nobody wants this stuff! Yes, prices have gone way up, and economic anxiety looms, but if people want things, they figure it out. That’s why Hermes and The Row are minting moola. It’s not just the ultra-0.1% who are buying those brands’ scarves, handbags, coats and trousers. Their creative leads are cultivating and inspiring want.

So this season, the really good designers are thinking about desire – for clothes, for each other. “Everyone [in the atelier] was saying ‘female envy,’” said Daniel Roseberry, following his fabulous Schiaparelli show on Thursday, moments after kissing a corseted Doechii hello. “That was the gauge in the fittings: Are we envious yet?”

Here’s what makes Roseberry’s clothes extraordinary: He writes rules for tackiness, for vulgarity. Okay, say his leather pants and skirts with a zillion layered macho belts, go ahead, show off.

He sees a human instinct others dismiss as low and runs to serve it gracefully. Particularly gorgeous were a slinky gold evening suit, his bulbous sleeved jackets with fitted waists, and wild, hairy skirt suits. This is a very tender creative act, made especially so because his clothes are made impeccably.

Another tender man is Rick Owens, whose best shows (like this one) are so persuasive in their mix of weirdness and expert cut that you can’t wait to show off your body in his high-slit skirts (so high their panels almost look like trousers), no matter what your gams look like. “The juicy a** was our erogenous zone this season,” said Owens, reflecting upon a spiked panel that revealed the crest where the posterior meets the thigh. And it’s not just one behind he has in mind: His clothes make everyone look (and feel) cool.

The relationship between the body, clothes and the mind is a central concern this season. Who are we dressing for? Who do our bodies really belong to? Pieter Mulier explored this dexterously at Alaia – perhaps the most irrationally desirable clothes on the market. On social media, many women pointed to the misogyny of Mulier’s constricting clothes, and I remain skeptical about the designer’s insistence that he wants to celebrate women when most of his pieces flatter only supermodel bodies. But his ropy jackets, hooded tops and tendriled knits make a certain kind of woman, the type who shops like a connoisseur or a collector of remarkable clothes, so ravenous that you can’t ignore it. And since when are we projecting moral values onto our desires and fantasies? Don’t kink-shame women’s Mytheresa wish lists!

There was a row at the Row over the front row! The Olsen sisters, who design American label the Row, have become two of luxury’s foremost philosophers. They think like extraordinary clients: What kind of trouser or dress can stand up to a vintage Chanel sheath, a Lisa Eisner necklace, an extreme design by Rei Kawakubo? Known to the internet hoi polloi for their viral shoes, they sent out all their models for Wednesday’s show in thick, beautiful stockings without a shoe in sight. Once again, attendees were told not to take photos or videos. Punk.

And rather than engage in the low art of assigned show seating, which is one of fashion’s foremost exercises in status paranoia, they instead encouraged everyone to sit wherever, although there were only a handful of wooden seats and upholstered chairs and sofas. Of course, fashion people have no clue what to do when told they can do whatever they want. (Revealing.) People scrambled for the few available seats. Two gamine girls sat on a sofa with a Margaux – the label’s hit bag, dubbed the new Birkin – to hold a spot for Anna Wintour. Then W Magazine editor Sara Moonves and The Cut editor Lindsay Peoples sauntered in and sat on the floor.

Suddenly the floor became the locus of power and chic. A powerful editor offered another their seat on the sofa, thus consigning themselves to the floor in an act of graciousness that also gave them a more commanding perch. Oh, God, I found myself thinking. Why didn’t I think of sitting on the floor?!

And that’s how really cool fashion works: Someone proposes something weird, a bit off – sometimes the very opposite of what everyone thinks is “correct” – and no one knows what to make of it until the right person just goes for it. In this season’s collection, there were layers of knit dresses rolled at the shoulder, pin-neat blazers and knits worn in cozy, cheeky layers. One coat was belted by a small silver oyster shell, open at the centre. Understated but totally erotic.

The same feeling is found at Hermes. In a horsey show of knit dresses that unzipped to reveal the hips and abs, buttery leather layers and wittily tied knits, designer Nadege Vanhee showed all these social media freaks scratching their heads over rich-women uniforms what looking good – relaxed, commanding, smart – really means. Vanhees clothes have a stunning mix of authority and whimsy, which makes them feel human, whereas many other big luxury labels (Dior, Chanel) make garments that feel mass and remote. Part of Hermes’ success while nearly every other brand is flopping must be that: She and her colleagues act like a small brand, a family brand, when, in fact, they’re a behemoth.

One of fashion’s other rare successes of the moment is Chloé. “The Chloe woman is a real woman,” said Chemena Kamali backstage - which is to say, ka-ching! Women are buying these clothes! Her bohemian dresses festooned with charms and little fur tails, along with her absolutely awesome coats, are so desirable, even if Sienna Miller circa 2008 is not the goddess you worship. (And there was Doechii, in one of the runway dresses, barefoot. Will the Rowdents spend this summer scurrying around the East and West villages without shoes?) Kamali’s vintage-inspired looks aren’t about nostalgia, but about freedom: They suggest a totally, almost decadently feminine space, where you wear a see-through blouse and no bra not to tantalise men but because you feel relaxed. Isn’t feeling relaxed the rarest luxury you can imagine right now?

Let’s note that the Row, Hermes and Chloe are all helmed by women. The desire they elicit is not for attention, or even for sex – but for intimacy and companionship with other women. Yohji Yamamoto, perhaps fashion’s greatest male flirt, showed a parable of that relationship at the close of his Friday show: Women in pairs wandered out in black coats, paused on the runway and turned the garments inside out to reveal bright purple lining, then traded coats and carefully adjusted each other’s collars, lapels, hems.

“I imagined a world in which men had gone extinct and women had inherited the Earth,” Roseberry told me, “so women had to reappropriate these male archetypes devoid of the male gaze.” Wonderfully said – but women are already working on it.

More from the runway

The shows, style and ideas that made an impact.

From Haider Ackermann To Sarah Burton, What Makes A Designer Debut Great? At Paris Fashion Week, new designers brought new energy to Tom Ford, Dries Van Noten and Givenchy.

How To Look Original? At Milan Fashion Week, Diesel and Marni have some ideas.

From Runways To Real Life, Fur Is Having A Renaissance. What happened to the stigma of wearing ot?

It’s a Man’s World. So How Should a Woman Dress in It? Fashion wrestles with a shift in gender politics at New York Fashion Week.