Paris Fashion Week: The takeaways

To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here.

After Milan, Paris Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2022 started during the ongoing war in Ukraine. Throughout the event, which opened with a call for “solemnity” from the French Fédération, luxury brands announced they were halting all business in Russia and making humanitarian donations.

On the ground in Paris, some creatives carried on while others called for “love” above all, as per Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino, ahead of a show in a new trademarked pink, with some sombre black dresses at the end. Others like Marine Serre and Roger Vivier held moments of silence, and Coperni made a tribute to the Ukrainian seamstresses of Cap East who supply the brand from ateliers in Kyiv. Isabel Marant cancelled her traditional after show party and wore a blue and yellow sweater, the Ukrainian flag colours, to her show.

The Balenciaga show was the most referential, starting with a poem read in Ukrainian by creative director Demna, who later spoke of how he was triggered by the war in Ukraine. “Fashion somehow doesn’t matter now, to me,” Demna, who was born in Georgia, told reporters backstage.

Rick Owens’s show notes read “During times of heartbreak, beauty can be one of the ways to maintain faith.” Pierre Hardy, founder of his namesake footwear brand and creative director of Hermès shoe collection and jewellery echoed the sentiment. “A fashion week now is both absurd and necessary,” Hardy told Vogue Business.

“It’s a strong fashion week, with a lot of creativity and diversity, with the backdrop of this tragic war. Designers were very sensitive to the situation, each reacting in his or her own way,” says Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode.

This season marked a pivotal return to physical shows since the start of the pandemic, with big celebrities like a pregnant Rihanna at Off-White and Dior, and Kim Kardashian at Balenciaga. K-pop stars were back in the city: Blackpink’s Jisoo drew hordes of photographers at Dior and Blackpink’s Jennie at Chanel. Crowds of fans swarmed outside at Off-White, Dior, Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Miu Miu. And it was big inside too: Louis Vuitton’s show, held for the first time at the Musée d’Orsay, seated 700 guests. The Dior show’s livestream generated 130 million views, per the brand.

Smaller brands made splashes as well, with collections that brought gender fluidity, inclusivity and sustainability (front and centre at Marine Serre who focuses on upcycling and at Patou whose collection included lots of recycled materials and a first handbag made with deadstocks.) “They built up during the pandemic, thanks to their creativity and innovative spirit,” Morand said.

At the Chanel show that paid tribute to tweed (with the set also swathed in tweed), new global CEO Leena Nair discreetly sat in the back away from the front row along with global executive chairman Alain Wertheimer.

Morand likened the atmosphere outside the shows to rock or hip hop concerts, with “even more [electricity] due to the number of celebrities and the impact of social media”. Dries Van Noten and Paul Smith chose to stick to the intimate format of the presentation. So did Lanvin, with a colourful collection. At the Marine Serre show that was accompanied with a performance by Iranian-Dutch singer Sevdaliza, guests were standing. The show was followed by an exhibition opening. “I felt strongly about the live music. I wanted to bring the fashion show to something different than a straight line, front row and a pre-recorded soundtrack. I wanted people to be able to meet and talk,” she explained. It was the designer’s first physical show since the pandemic, during which she made films instead. “There’s an emotion, sensibility and singularity that exude from films that is quite difficult to convey in a 10-minute show,“ she explained.

Except for Celine and Jacquemus, nearly all the brands showed as part of the official calendar. Celine presented its menswear collection in a video last week, more than a month after men’s fashion week. “It seems that the standards Hedi Slimane sets for his films make them very long to produce and edit and that would account for the time gap,” says Institut Français de la Mode professor Benjamin Simmenauer. “But does it matter for Celine’s visibility to be in the official calendar?” he adds. (LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault called out the fast growth of the brand during the 2021 earnings results presentation.) Jacquemus is to show his SS22 collection in Hawaii on Wednesday, right after Paris Fashion Week.

Emerging designers in the calendar included Rokh, Ester Manas, Ludovic de Saint Sernin (whose cast included Gigi Hadid), Lecourt Mansion, Kenneth Ize and Germanier. At the LVMH prize showroom, semi-finalists called themselves “pandemic babies” because almost all brands were created during the pandemic.

“It was a challenging fashion week for brands and designers because the context was obviously not favourable to think about fashion and consider fashion as important,” says IFM’s Simmenauer. “For some brands, the main purpose was to show a collection that reflects the house’s heritage and values. Other brands gave a perspective to the moment we are living in.”

Outside the Miu Miu show that closed the curtain on Paris Fashion Week, a young man had a sign that read, “Thanks to all the brands that supported Ukraine during Paris Fashion Week, especially Balenciaga.”

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

More from this author:

Balmain’s Rousteing to be Jean Paul Gaultier’s guest couture designer

Marine Serre: From fashion’s upcycling darling to established brand

Inside the new look Dior flagship in Paris