Paris Fashion Week is one of the four biggest global fashion weeks together with the London Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week and New York Fashion Week. The schedule begins with New York, followed by London, then Milan and ends in Paris. The history of fashion week can be traced back to early 18th century in Paris. At that time, the fashion shows were only organized for potential clients purchasing items of new collections. Then, in the early 19th century, British creator Charles Frederick Wort who is known for haute couture began showing multiple pieces together. He made a change by inviting media and customers to enjoy the fashion show.
Thanks to his powerful clients like Pauline von Metternich, an Austrian Princess, Charles Frederick Worth gained much recognition and opened his own haute couture house in Paris. The luxury fashion show is exclusive for only invited guests. Fortunately, O'bon paris team was lucky enough to get invited to fashion shows organized by Fashion Show Studio in Ritz Paris and also got the opportunity to visit both showrooms and press days of French brands Cartier, Longchamp, and Maje.
Normally, we can see plenty of showrooms or press day events of different brands during the period of fashion week. Showroom and Press day could reflect the same meaning which refers to events dedicated for a brand or various designers. The participants of the showroom and the press day are normally VIP customers, buyers, press agents, bloggers or representatives of department stores,etc. from all over the world. The organizer of the event or the brand representatives may expect to collaborate with the current or potential clients for the sales of the new collections. Sometimes, the showroom will be private for only the potential clients.
On the press day of Cartier, the brand intended to create a vintage atmosphere in a private bar which strictly requested an invitation. Passing through the revolving gate, we felt like we were back to the year of1847 in Paris when Louis-François Cartier founded the renowned French jewelery brand.
With a series of short films “L’odysée de Cartier” (odyssey of Cartier), whose the first four episodes set the tone with stories dedicated to the Maison’s influences and the foundation of the Cartier style. Furthermore, we saw how the symbolic brillant panther diamond was born but also into the heart of its inspirations.
The story of 150 years of Cartier was shown on the event of Press day by especially focusing on the creative dialogue between the past, present and future of Cartier.
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A well-known French brand, Longchamp is well-know to people due to their IT bag : Le Pliage, a leather and nylon fabric luggage. This bag has been popular for a half century and became to women's foldable handbag. The handbag was an instant hit and kept being the company's best selling product.
So in this season, we found out that Le Pliage collection has different kinds of designs, which have been re-envisioned and re-invented in countless shapes, patterns, colors and fabrics. Like this mini Pliage, they present the same concept as Jacquemus' but different ways to express.
For the showroom of Longchamp, it’s nearby one of biggest stores on Rue Saint Honoré. With the idea of private galleries events, Longchamp revealed their concept that links to French chic style. Their new collection varies from classic totes and shoulder bags to casual cross-body bags and backpacks, with clutches for your night out and business bags for your day-to-day office look.
This is the story of a warm woman-friendly brand: Maje. The designs of Maje bring out the sense of women who have desires to be elegant, captivating but funny and mysterious like Parisiennes. Maje is above all the story of a family of Judith Milgrom, who created Maje since 1998. The name of brand represents the siblings: M for Moyal - Judith's maiden name, A for Alain, her brother - co-founder of the brand, J for Judith and E for Evelyne, her sister-founder of Sandro.
Maje came up with a collection called “swimming pool” for the next year. In response to this concept, they built a garden with a blue acrylic sheet making you feel like in a villa of the Southern France with classic European decoration.
The highlight of this collection would be their brilliant colorful bags with new logo, brightly colored tweed dresses, tops designed similar to swimming suit which goes well with elastic waistband shorts.
Making some Mix&Match with these elements, you can have a chic Parisian outfit or vacance look.
Besides the luxury brands, there are some small fashion shows for the new designers. Since there were few sponsors, they had to gather together in order to hold their own fashion shows to lower the cost. It’s been a pleasure to be invited to the fashion show which was organized by Fashion Week Studio. It’s a private company based in the United States of America. It is not tied in any way to La Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM). We can see more designs from all around the world not only limited to French brands.
We had the chance to experience avant garde shows that describes artists or ideas that are ahead of their time. Let's take a look now at the three themed shows of some young designers.
Paco Rabanne and Altuzarra set to unleash an uncompromisingly optimistic outlook with the mixture of 1970s' tailoring and electrifying futuristic patterns or cutting. The vintage look can also be found in the collection of Yu Lin, another young designer joined in this fashion show. He combined the elements such as dragons or calabash which usually appear in Asian temples. Moreover, he adapted fluorescent colors and traditional taiwanese textiles in order to create a visual impact between the co-existences between the past and the present.
As you might see in Loewe, Alexander McQueen, Isabel Marant, the lacework is the leading concept of their spring/summer 2020’s trends. Here, we have the brands called Vonlippe and Trisha Sherman who showed their collections with bohemian looks consisting of dresses, skirts, and tops transparent, feathery, and spearheaded.
In order to emphasize the climate change issue, the fashion industry started to focus on an ecology gesture. For example, a lot of them began to choose 100% bio materials to produce clothes with less pollution, or make items working with local manufacturers. A young designer, Stella McCartney turned parts of her Paris Fashion Week show into an active campaign underlining the importance of eco-friendliness. Another designer, Nazarene Amictus narrated his own fahsion style inspired by biblical events and religious ideologies. According to his concept, the ancient look is clearly his main focus. Hence, to make the look more realistic, he used fine textiles such as raw linen, papyrus, sackcloth, velvet, animal skin and vegetation spun. He applied the methods of assemblage, minimal cutting, stitching and knitting into his works so that his production leads to the connection between human and nature.
It’s always hard to get a fashion show ticket since there are thousands of media and bloggers worldwide coming for the fashion week. Normally, a brand sends 40% of tickets to those biggest international medias, and 30% for buyers. The remaining seats are reserved for bloggers, influencers, KOL or VIP members. However, if you love fashion so much and you’re a “We Media”, you can still send e-mails to the press contact of the brands to ask for a ticket. Otherwise, there’s always a fashion show on every Friday afternoon at Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, click here to reserve your ticket!
Words by Ya Hui
Photographs by Yuka Ishihara & Ya Hui CHANG