Reckoning With the Past and the Future at Paris Fashion Week
After several days of grey skies and non-stop rain in Paris, the light and lightness came by way of Junya Watanabe Spring/Summer 2025 show, presented Saturday morning in Paris’ 5th arrondissement.
Donna Summer’s I Feel Love’s pumping baseline filled through the show space. The 1977 hit was incepted to inspire a futuristic mood and one Watanabe seemed to want to evoke. The show began in space-age silvers. Jackets patchworked together with full skirts evolved into sporty fabric separates that seemed finished with bricolage you might find in your garage: protective kneepads, backpack materials, safety reflectors, and other “modern recycled materials” according to show notes.
From the futuristic silvers, the designer evolved into the more sculptural shapes he’s known for. Shapes seemed to cocoon or envelope—unending spiral zippers and structured dresses that were classic in shape but newer feeling in technicality (denim dresses were finished in a glossy coating). It was a proposal of a look for the forward thinking, and undeterred. As Watanabe explains, “abnormal dressing is necessary in everyday life.”
From Watanabe, crowds decamped to the second Comme show of three for the day. Noir by Kei Ninomiya is known for its alien-like sculptural pieces and Saturday’s show was no exception. The first look was an illuminated bulbous pod with a golden headpiece. What followed was wistfully romantic.
Suiting jackets in black leather with suspender detailings, red roses and crimson-laced flower appliqués surrounded the neckline on palette-cleansing all-white looks. To close?
Another illuminated look, featuring light beaming from 3D blooms—a metaphor perhaps to lead and end in the light.
Comme Des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo contemplated on our precarious times. The trio of opening looks— three alabaster-colored creations —were reminiscent almost of a sort of armor or protection. In the show notes, Kawakubo described what we saw as a “an expression of my own issues, of what’s in my own head.”
But clearly, current conflict is on the mind. Skirts made of black gauze structures shaped like garbage sacs, filled with debris and messages like ‘system change not climate change,’ ‘not my president’ and ‘no more excuses,’ made for sobering thought.
Hermès doubled down on its relationship to craft and expressions of the hand. Brushstroke, paper to pencil, and the readying of raw materials. Nadège Vanhée’s camel and chestnut-hued collection centered utility and sexiness. They were ideas that could be interpreted as vulgar in a sophisticated way, transparent mesh in zip-up skirts that exposed the leg and hugged the thigh. The house’s signature scarves were fashioned into shirt dresses and maxi dresses coolly paired with knee high riding boots and of course, the bags: a Birkin à l’envers and a stoic Plume bag completed the look that was luxuriously aspirational and surprisingly practical.
The story of the Banshee link the late Alexander McQueen and Sean McGirr, the new-ish installed creative director of McQueen. The title of McQueen’s second ever collection, shown in 1994, it’s a reference to the mythical Celtic character foreboding death; as a child, McGirr used to listen to his mother tell stories of the Banshee. Looking for those links between the brand’s founder and his own story was a smart move. McGirr’s first season was under a tight timeline and he had big shoes to fill. McQueen is your favorite designer’s favorite designer. Expectations were high and criticism felt premature. This season, he mined the archive and pulled out more of the house’s codes. The three tailored looks that opened the show, rolled at the closure with stiff standing lapels, were chic and felt like a new take on subversive suiting.
Elsewhere, peekaboo panels, framed with ruffles that exposed the dip in your back, shoulders, and hip bones, spoke to something more grotesque, in a good way. The more formal dresses, most of them delicately embellished punctuated with sequins and finished with feathers felt like a triumph. The haunting finale look of the show, the Banshee “brought to life” as McGirr explained backstage, was a gown finished in sequined hangings that engulfed the body and the face, and felt like a resplendent display of his potential.
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