The theme is fun. Parisians need it. Everybody wants it, of work, but the French seem to need it more. & these days they are doing a nice job of providing themselves with reasons to be cheerful, before & after dark.
In what way is this place different from other fashion cities? In New York, Fashion Week can seem like an countless loop of business transactions. & about the last time someone had a blast during Milan’s Fashion Week (now shriveled to about half that time) was during Tom Ford’s salad days at Gucci.
In the last 72 hours here, however, a determined partygoer might have dropped in on the following: a party staged for Gareth Pugh by the people from PonyStep, the successor to the London nightclub BoomBox, & held at Le Baron, a formerly seedy bottles-and-models boîte; a private wingding for Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga at Le Montana, another nightclub whose inspiration is all things 1980s; as well as a genteel cocktail gathering for Peter Copping of Nina Ricci, held in the grandmotherly Salon d’Été at the Ritz.
Or, a temporary Fashion Week pop-up bar at the Hôtel de Crillon instigated by Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, to provide all the random beauties floating around town a proper excuse to strap on their stilettos & their gilded Balmain rags.
That same partygoer might have joined in the fun at the nutty party at Le Meurice hosted by Viktor Horsting & Rolf Snoeren, the Dutch designers with a marked taste for the surreal. To celebrate the fifth anniversary of their popular Viktor & Rolf perfume, Flowerbomb, the designers crammed 1,000 or so of their closest friends in to the hotel ballroom for a private concert by Grace Jones.
By diva standards, Ms. Jones was relatively punctual. For a set scheduled to start at 10, the singer, who had spent much of the day divagating about what to wear onstage, appeared around midnight. He wore a flattop haircut, a Domino mask, a dress with sleeves resembling turbines; & he concluded a brief greatest-hits performance by serenading an oversize box of Flowerbomb with “Happy Birthday.”
It was that kind of night.
“Sometimes, you look around a room & you ask yourself, ‘How did I get here?’ ” the Tunisian-born model & television actress Afef Jnifen Tronchetti Provera remarked as he sipped cranberry juice & awaited Ms. Jones’s appearance. He meant this in the most approving way. “It must be fate,” he added, referring to the fact of being in that room at that particular instant. A born optimist, Ms. Tronchetti Provera likes to nudge her happy fate along by piling jeweled cloverleafs & blessed amulets on her arms.
“You hope for the best, but you seldom know,” Mr. Horsting said, by which they meant the success enjoyed by Flowerbomb, consistently ranked among the world’s top-selling fragrances. A bit later, Mr. Snoeren added, “You hope, & if the stars are aligned, it works,” his unintentional echo of Mr. Horsting’s point underlining three of the themes of this Paris season: optimism.
Recall that?
three days ago, Marco Zanini, the designer of Rochas, remarked, before a charmingly goofball show inspired by the 1969 comedy “Cactus Flower,” that “it’s important not to take things seriously.”
It is seemingly everywhere here. Reviewers saw it in Mr. Ghesquiere’s graphic & technically strenuous collection. Designers & other creative sorts saw it in the fact that they have remained in business. Even retailers, like Jim Gold, the chief executive of Bergdorf Goodman, saw reason for hope. “We all thought the financial process was going to fall down,” they said before the Lanvin show on Friday.
Why not? & why not take risks, said the hairdresser Eugene Souleiman, who has appeared to be everywhere, ratting & teasing hair to produce the disheveled Sharon Tate look that is his current signature. “There’s not so much to lose anymore, so you’d better enjoy yourself,” Mr. Souleiman said as they covered the model Marlena Szoka in a sticky hairspray nimbus.
“We need to have a tiny fun with fashion,” Mr. Zanini added. “We need to be not so worried about what is nice taste & what is bad taste. Why not nice bad taste?”
Translated, that could the season’s slogan: Don’t Worry. Be Happy. Don’t Panic. Over On.
“Designers are not necessarily supposed to filter what’s happening socially,” Rick Owens noted before his show on Thursday, referring indirectly to the economy, a topic so toxic that more superstitious types think about its mention taboo.
Yet three times the caravan moved on to Paris, there was a palpable lightening of mood.
But designers, of work, are pelted with the same barrage of bad news & quasi-information they all are. Keeping the panic at bay has been no cinch, the producer Alexandre de Betak said backstage at the Dior show on Friday. “The New York season was bad & odd & down,” said Mr. de Betak, who attributed a number of the gloom to news of Alexander McQueen’s suicide. “Even the parties felt like a job.”
“Economically, they feel that they are out of trouble, & while they may not be, it feels that way,” Mr. de Betak said. & that is why people here are letting loose & partying so hard. “It’s actually healthy,” they added. “It’s nice to let go. That used to be what parties were for.”
In what way is this place different from other fashion cities? In New York, Fashion Week can seem like an countless loop of business transactions. & about the last time someone had a blast during Milan’s Fashion Week (now shriveled to about half that time) was during Tom Ford’s salad days at Gucci.
In the last 72 hours here, however, a determined partygoer might have dropped in on the following: a party staged for Gareth Pugh by the people from PonyStep, the successor to the London nightclub BoomBox, & held at Le Baron, a formerly seedy bottles-and-models boîte; a private wingding for Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga at Le Montana, another nightclub whose inspiration is all things 1980s; as well as a genteel cocktail gathering for Peter Copping of Nina Ricci, held in the grandmotherly Salon d’Été at the Ritz.
Or, a temporary Fashion Week pop-up bar at the Hôtel de Crillon instigated by Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, to provide all the random beauties floating around town a proper excuse to strap on their stilettos & their gilded Balmain rags.
That same partygoer might have joined in the fun at the nutty party at Le Meurice hosted by Viktor Horsting & Rolf Snoeren, the Dutch designers with a marked taste for the surreal. To celebrate the fifth anniversary of their popular Viktor & Rolf perfume, Flowerbomb, the designers crammed 1,000 or so of their closest friends in to the hotel ballroom for a private concert by Grace Jones.
By diva standards, Ms. Jones was relatively punctual. For a set scheduled to start at 10, the singer, who had spent much of the day divagating about what to wear onstage, appeared around midnight. He wore a flattop haircut, a Domino mask, a dress with sleeves resembling turbines; & he concluded a brief greatest-hits performance by serenading an oversize box of Flowerbomb with “Happy Birthday.”
It was that kind of night.
“Sometimes, you look around a room & you ask yourself, ‘How did I get here?’ ” the Tunisian-born model & television actress Afef Jnifen Tronchetti Provera remarked as he sipped cranberry juice & awaited Ms. Jones’s appearance. He meant this in the most approving way. “It must be fate,” he added, referring to the fact of being in that room at that particular instant. A born optimist, Ms. Tronchetti Provera likes to nudge her happy fate along by piling jeweled cloverleafs & blessed amulets on her arms.
“You hope for the best, but you seldom know,” Mr. Horsting said, by which they meant the success enjoyed by Flowerbomb, consistently ranked among the world’s top-selling fragrances. A bit later, Mr. Snoeren added, “You hope, & if the stars are aligned, it works,” his unintentional echo of Mr. Horsting’s point underlining three of the themes of this Paris season: optimism.
Recall that?
three days ago, Marco Zanini, the designer of Rochas, remarked, before a charmingly goofball show inspired by the 1969 comedy “Cactus Flower,” that “it’s important not to take things seriously.”
It is seemingly everywhere here. Reviewers saw it in Mr. Ghesquiere’s graphic & technically strenuous collection. Designers & other creative sorts saw it in the fact that they have remained in business. Even retailers, like Jim Gold, the chief executive of Bergdorf Goodman, saw reason for hope. “We all thought the financial process was going to fall down,” they said before the Lanvin show on Friday.
Why not? & why not take risks, said the hairdresser Eugene Souleiman, who has appeared to be everywhere, ratting & teasing hair to produce the disheveled Sharon Tate look that is his current signature. “There’s not so much to lose anymore, so you’d better enjoy yourself,” Mr. Souleiman said as they covered the model Marlena Szoka in a sticky hairspray nimbus.
“We need to have a tiny fun with fashion,” Mr. Zanini added. “We need to be not so worried about what is nice taste & what is bad taste. Why not nice bad taste?”
Translated, that could the season’s slogan: Don’t Worry. Be Happy. Don’t Panic. Over On.
“Designers are not necessarily supposed to filter what’s happening socially,” Rick Owens noted before his show on Thursday, referring indirectly to the economy, a topic so toxic that more superstitious types think about its mention taboo.
Yet three times the caravan moved on to Paris, there was a palpable lightening of mood.
But designers, of work, are pelted with the same barrage of bad news & quasi-information they all are. Keeping the panic at bay has been no cinch, the producer Alexandre de Betak said backstage at the Dior show on Friday. “The New York season was bad & odd & down,” said Mr. de Betak, who attributed a number of the gloom to news of Alexander McQueen’s suicide. “Even the parties felt like a job.”
“Economically, they feel that they are out of trouble, & while they may not be, it feels that way,” Mr. de Betak said. & that is why people here are letting loose & partying so hard. “It’s actually healthy,” they added. “It’s nice to let go. That used to be what parties were for.”
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