You go Biker, I’ll be Dandy

Five striking trends emerged from the first days of Paris Fashion Week, which ended yesterday.

 

DECADENT DANDIES

The front-row guests at Dries Van Noten’s sumptuous show were ready to give their (redone) front teeth for anything from what Vogue called this “spine-chillingly elegant” collection of leopard-spot suits, gold lame coats and poison-green furs. The standout show of the opening days drew on 1930s aristocratic dandies and the Marchesa Luisa Casati in particular, who never left home without her pearls or a pet cheetah or two.

Van Noten offered a wonderfully sensuous take on Edwardian aristocratic decadence, with pearl-encrusted fur jackets and silky leopard-print trousers and suits. You almost imagine the cross-dressing writer Rita Sackville West wearing this gear as she returned at dawn from a party.

The Belgian designer said he was inspired by the passion between the Italian heiress Luisa Casati, who famously said, “I want to be a living work of art”, and the writer Gabriele d’Annunzio. 

 

THE WILD WEST

Paris has rounded up the wagons and gone West for inspiration. Chloe riffed off its classic hippie-dippy look with cowboy-gaucho capes and floaty frilly dresses that saloon girls could only dream of, while the (East) Indian designer Manish Arora created a line of super-colourful punky tribal squaws that would have given even Vivienne Westwood the vapours for his “Hell’s Belles” show. 

And Anne Sofie Madsen set off too into the lost Native American heartland in search of Elvis Presley’s Cherokee roots.

Westwood declared her husband Andreas Kronthaler “the world’s greatest designer” as he emerged from her flamboyant shadow on Saturday with his first solo Paris show. 

As guests cheered his |chutzpah, Westwood confessed to reporters that Kronthaler – |who is 25 years her junior – had long been the power behind the throne.

Kronthaler, who’s worked closely with Westwood for years both as a model, stylist and muse, sent a dizzying array of disparate looks down the runway in the show billed as “Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood”.

All were in one way or another gender bending, with priestly girls, men in gold lame dresses and snakeskin-effect boots, and women in oversized Alpine jackets from his native Tyrol.

Some of his models looked like senators emerging from a Roman bathhouse in blood-red togas, while others wore long trailing Tibetan monk’s hats, but all – male and female – wore platform shoes and boots.

MINI EQUALS MINIMALISM

With fashion in the something of a more-is-better spiral, Courreges brought it sharply back to the basics of its 1960s minimalist roots. As well as its headline-grabbing self-heating coats it went big on miniskirts, which the brand claims to have co-invented, a trend picked up by Anthony Vaccarello among others. 

The French label Courreges announced the dawn of the “new era” last Wednesday, “an era when the garment will come alive”.

“Who has never dreamt of being warm in the winter?” its designers Sebastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant declared. “This transition is possible if technology responds to our primary needs – wellbeing and comfort.”

Three of its chic full length autumn-winter wool coats have been fitted with a slim-line heating system, much like the ones which warm up cars seats on winter mornings. “By simply applying pressure” on a button, they said, “you give the coat life.”

The brand, one of the pioneers of futuristic 1960s style under its visionary founder Andre Courreges, vowed that this was only the beginning of its voyage into hi-tech clothing.

Co-president Frederic Torloting said that as yet the move was “symbolic”, but they had ambitions to go much further. 

“Technology has been a very tricky subject for fashion. It’s often seen as antithetical, that hi-tech isn’t glamorous,” he said. “But that’s wrong. It can be made glamorous!”

 

BIKER CHIC

While Paris has only tentatively followed Milan’s lead on thigh-high boots, it has gone hell for leather on a rebooted biker look, with Paco Rabanne, Anthony Vaccarello, Carven Ready and Wanda Nylon all looking to “Easy Rider” in the rear-view mirror. Chloe even dedicated its collection to the 1970s motorcycle adventurer Anne-France Dautheville. 

 

SEE-THRU DUNGAREES

See-through is usually synonymous with sexy – until it’s applied to a pair of dungarees. New takes on workwear are everywhere on the very practical and wearable Paris catwalk, with Wanda Nylon turning out nifty see-through denim-type jackets. 

Her dungarees, though, will never hold a candle to blue-jean real things worn by Beatrice Dalle in “Betty Blue”.