For those of us who sometimes lose hope over fashion future (and sometimes present),day four of Paris Fashion Week offered the reassurance that well, great design is alive and well.Dries Van Noten presented a collection that combined luxury and grandeur with a new-found essence of minimalism-and the result was exquisite. John Galliano continued his experimentation journey at Margiela with a collection that blurred the lines between sexes and focused on deconstruction-and reconstruction
Dries Van Noten is no stranger to haute gestures and razor sharp design and this season offered a polished yet minimal collection with moments of grand gestures and couture-like approach. Still, those weren’t clothes for special occasions but rather garments to transform all everyday occasions into special ones. Simple, functional but not simplistic, his work elevated workwear to a state of pre-couture, if there’s such a term.
In the same day, John Galliano offered a collection that was more an evolution of his previous work and the helm of Maison Margiela but nonetheless refreshing. Galliano has embraced the house’s codes and developed them to include his own vision of creative anarchy and embracing ‘memories’ of garments over other garments-menswear over womenswear and vice versa. It was a political statement on gender roles and society roles perfectly tailored, executed, deconstructed.
Fashion can be a manifesto on modern society ,provoke, showcase issues and raise controversy. After all, is the form of art we mostly engage in our everyday life. At the same time designing (and executing)great clothes is a manifesto by itself, a call to action and a spark of hope that great fashion is here, alive and well.
