Review of Day 2 of Paris Spring 2021

KOCHÉ

Défilé

Why am I doing a fashion show? Well … It’s a matter of resistance. It’s a matter of emotion. It’s about being alive, living souls in living bodies. Physicality is not dead, physicality is evolving, as it always has been.

– Christelle Kocher

Christelle Kocher, the 2019 ANDAM Prize winner, her reasoning for her live show in a park in Paris in light of the restrictions for her brand Koché that blend the street/high fashion aesthetics before street luxury became a thing in the last two years. 

Staging a show in a public park or public spaces is not anything unusual for Kocher. I have been to a few of her early show one late night at around 10PM in the Forum des Halles in September 2015 as people rushed by to get to the RER to get home with a mixture of real models, friends and street casting since her first 2014 brand debut. A few years later, she staged a second show again at Les Halles when the complex was reopened after three years of renovation sending her models up and down the high escalators. 

For this spring she stayed close to home at the Parc des Buttes Chaumonts opposite the Temple de la Sibylle where her cast of all Parisians models, “they are not pros, they are just beautiful and that’s way enough” with a group of musician playing bagpipes as a live soundtrack performance. The collection is what one expect from Kocher – an ingenious way to combine different materials like nylon, leather, lace, cotton, suede and so forth into different garments that have the magnetic pull from the intricate cutting, draping and shaping into clothes that are wearable, friendly but and made in a couture way.  

A fashion show is a way to make a collection appear for the first time, like a newborn, like a ghost, like a beautiful memory that will stay forever.

– Christelle Koche, on why she insisted on having a show

Kocher men’s clothes simply wonderful in its sense of aesthetics and in the execution of the garments themselves – it’s really a poetic vision of menswear that is so unlike anything else in fashion today. The tempo of each outfit felt just right and never overdone as if she would push to the cliff of the boundary but never went over board. A patchwork short coat with black lace tank and cargo pants, a light blue sleeveless cotton shirt with tier layers of ruffles trims with white laces and light blue pants, a blue embossed pattern sweatshirt with black lace pants and shorts underneath and a denim blouson with lace tee and a white scarf tied at the neck were examples of these men’s outfits that in their simplicity were elegant. To spill a bit of humor, the designer added a male bride/groom wedding outfit of white ruffle cropped midriff ruffle lace with faded jeans worn sagging style with light blue timberlands. 

Dresses in the many variety are Kocher’s strength in womenswear.  Here, some of her best spring dresses included a white cotton with lace overlay dress, a black print spaghetti strap short dress to an asymmetrical black lace strap dress and a red geometric cut pattern short dress. 

Kocher’s show is real and authentic with little pretense to by anything else even the pretense to be fashionable. “It is an intimate show close to nature, close to people, close to where I live and close to the dreams I had since I created Koché,” Kocher said in one of the most sincere statement I have read from designers over the years.

MARINE SERRE

Digital

“A cycle of timeless events and encounters are performed by mystic characters immersing the viewer into their world. With the aid of token items, two cryptic individuals navigate between parallel existences, living an astral projection, guided by each other’s truth. Despite feelings of danger, care, seduction, and vulnerability, the two chameleonic figures take a leap of faith into the unknown,” was how Marine Serre’s Instagram account described her short film ‘Amor Fati’ directed by Sacha Barbin and Ryan Doubiago. 

Serre described the difference doing a film instead of a live fashion show was the chance to associate the clothes to the actions and feelings of the film instead of to a specific body like in a show with models wearing the clothes. 

Serre has been at the forefront of fashion with her eco-futurist mission with her hybrids of couture/sportwear silhouettes and constructions with a clear view of the mixture of global cultures to spawn a new mode of thinking.

Her lines now have different categories that include white for basics wardrobe clothes and gold for seasonal experimentation – surely providing the clarity on the art and commerce divide while maintaining that dialogue over what should new values be in a world in various crisis. Serre has touched on upcycling, eco production and social activism in her recent collections using her clothes as the language for change in actuality.

The film is borderline a high tech science fiction of a dystopian vision of interactions of different world and different people and off course wearing different clothes from the crescent moon print jumpsuits, the utilitarian garments like black parkas and cargo pants this time made with biodegradable nylon and recycled moire along with a mixtures of tailored jackets and pants in monochrome palettes. Those tailored garments are also fabricated from repurposed fabrics. There was a section where one group of people wore garments made from regenerated denim. The film ended with a Red line outfit – a rubber cut out corset belt dress over a bodysuit.

The film was a bit hard to grasp at times with its fluctuations between different groups and worlds to have a consistent message but the clothes seen were classic Serre garments all made with a view to ecological damages.

COPERNI

Défilé

Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Valliant, the pair who launched Coperni in 2013 and paused their brand in 2015 when the pair became creative director for Courrèges and restarted in 2017, staged a live show on the rooftop of the Tour Montparnasse observation deck to show their sleek, slim and minimal design with a penchant for high tech fabrics in a new conception for their brand called ‘Ready to Care’.

New innovative fabrics have always been at the center of Coperni and this time the designers developed a special jersey fabric C+ that is anti UV as well as anti-bacterial. Crafted into a fitted jacket with front zippers and paired with tights pants in black or aqua blue or as black asymmetrical cut dresses with prominent play on creating geometric pattern on the body. “The technology that we love, and in which we believe, is there to support our daily life, our bodies, in what they experience. It will never replace the actual experience,” the duo said on their Instagram in announcing the actual show. 

Innovation today must support a better way of living, by caring about others and ourselves. It is thanks to this care and attention, and only thanks to it, that we will be able to evolve.

– Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Valliant, on their clean silhouettes

It is refreshing to see a young brand helmed by designers determined to continue with their own vision in spite of the crisis going around them. If offering these new clothes is a means of bringing comforts and perhaps protection to others, then Meyer and Valliant can rest assure they have performed not only their civic duties and also their mission as fashion designers. 

THEBE MAGUGU

Digital

The day before his official presentation via digital from his base in Johannesburg, the 2019 LVMH Prize winner Thebe Magugu launched a small capsule of menswear items available immediately on his e-commerce site comprising primarily of knitwear which referenced his affinities for sports clothes with to sensibilities to his South African roots. 

“This men’s capsule is quite special because it directly takes cues from my own wardrobe, which is quite solutions driven,” Magugu said of his new products, a sentiment that can also apply to his brand of fashion based on this personal experiences and his interactions with different cultures. His fashion incorporated these cultural elements and their physical materials coming from local and from British colonial direct influences.  

The new men’s items included a Basotho poncho and a corrugated parka. “With the former, the poncho was inspired by the Sotho blanket of our people in the Kingdom of Lesotho, where my family is from and where I have gained most of my cultural learnings,” the designer said. Magugu responded to the pandemic crisis by launching his own e-commerce and went deeper with local production to counter the disruptions with retail production shut downs globally. The blanket is the symbol of the country with different emblems inscribe on it like corncobs, pots, shields and fauna all with specific meanings now as a blue short poncho. The simple knit polo are decorated with symbols of sisterhood.

For the women, Magugu produced a short film titled ‘Counter Intelligence’ that showed a James Bond like short film about spies working under cover or as Magugu said “our immediate picture of spies is largely informed by their portrayal in popular culture – slim, ostentatiously demure, fashionable and aloof. Truth is, spies are all around us, they are our teachers, friends and family member. It got me thinking – what drive one to commit treason?”  Or he should say what one wore while spying?

The answer is fairly simple – sharp and fitted tailored suiting and feminine flowing dresses like a white polka dots asymmetrical long sleeve dress or a blue knit polo short sleeve long dress with side slit. The focused collection is based on the detail in each garment like a tan tight waist tail jacket with front folds paired with short flare pants or a mock neck short sleeve dress with patches of fabrics embroidered on each others. The men’s looks in the film included a great fitted single breast jacket worn with shorts.  

It’s good to see Magugu embarking on a slow road to build up his fashion startup instead of rushing to do too many projects at a time. There are no needs for so many looks as just the essentials are more than sufficient. As the brand grows in the next seasons, Magugu can then slowly expand perhaps with shirts or choices of pants.