First the pussy bow, and now the tie?
Of all the signifiers of power that one might want to appropriate, a piece of silk that knots around the neck like a noose and then dangles down the shirt like a — well, whatever — seems the least forward-thinking. Yet there, on the Saint Laurent runway, nominally inspired by what the designer Anthony Vaccarello called “a quintessential female archetype,” were 24 of them.
They were worn, natch, with big-shoulder suits: double and single breasted, high-waist trousers with a bit of a swoosh, pinstripe button-up shirts and chunky eyeglasses, in a very literal nod to the look worn by Mr. Saint Laurent himself in the ’80s, after he had made the segue from rebel to institution. Sometimes there was a trench or leather jacket tossed on top, a silk bathrobe coat, and in between were some classic YSL peasant dresses in gold-shot chiffon, but the focus was the old empire-builder suits and ties.
What female strength looks like, the shapes it may take, is the big question facing fashion — and the women who buy it — right now. Or so it seemed as the Paris shows, the last leg of the fashion season, began. It makes sense, for obvious reasons. Mr. Vaccarello got that one right. But C-suite cosplay seems like a particularly unimaginative answer.
At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri had another: the Amazons. Or, as she said in a preview, “the only figures in mythology that wore the pants.”
That got her thinking about Diana, the huntress, and Wonder Woman, and sports.
Well, she had just come off designing a troika of looks for the Olympics opening ceremony and a number of athletes are now brand ambassadors. (Paris itself it still in a semi-Olympic hangover, with temporary stadium seating still clogging the Place de la Concorde.) And that led to a collaboration with the artist/archer Sagg Napoli (real name Sofia Ginevra Gianní) who took her place at the center of the Dior show in a one-shoulder black bodysuit that framed her trapezius and biceps, and a gladiator miniskirt, and then began target practice in time to the music. Brigitte Macron, France’s first lady, in the front row next to Bernard Arnault, the chairman and chief executive of the Dior owner LVMH, looked delighted. So did Jennifer “Elektra” Garner and Anya “Furiosa” Taylor-Joy, who were a few seats away.
The idea, Ms. Chuiri had said in the preview, was to demonstrate that old assumptions about strength being the opposite of femininity were misguided.
Then she showed a collection based on the bodysuit and the track pant, almost entirely in black and white with some gold Diana Prince fringing, a trench coat or two, and a finale of nude goddess gowns thrown in for good measure. It was her most overtly athletic-inspired show since her fencing-focused debut in 2016, if one that also seemed to be jogging around in circles.
An archive print from the Marc Bohan years (Ms. Chiuri has made it something of a mission to resurrect Mr. Bohan, whom she calls the most “underrated” of the Dior designers before her) turned the name Dior into an Adidas-reminiscent multi-stripe racing logo that sped down the legs and arms of moto leathers and suit jackets, mesh dresses and wool coats. Gladiator sandals had sneaker soles — and souls. There was a lot of strapping. Though unfortunately, Ms. Napoli aside, not so many strapping bodies, which, along with the thinness of the collection, somewhat undermined the point.
In the end, Ms. Chiuri didn’t resolve the dichotomy she identified any more than Mr. Vaccarello did. (Ilona Maher, the American Olympic rugby player-turned- “Dancing with the Stars” competitor, who has gone viral for adopting exactly the same cause, has done it more effectively.)
Instead he capped off his men’s wear suiting with a finale of very ’80s tiny tiered silk miniskirts with just-visible lace under slips worn with high-neck lace blouses and metallic brocade jackets, all in contrasting colors: teal, bronze and burgundy; ruby, chartreuse and ivory. They were chic, in an interestingly high-maintenance sort of way, and a big step forward from last season’s nudie show. But juxtaposed against the tailoring, they suggested a choice had to be made: between feminine/masculine, frilly or tough, day and night, button-up and undone.
That’s an old groove (as old as the tie, anyway, an accessory that in theory is fading into the mists of history). The job is to design a different way forward, if only someone could figure it out.
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