Spring 2019 Fashion month will go down in history for evoking real emotions.
Isn’t fashion overall all about it?
Fashion is a dream, a dream with a scope, to be of use to women, “to make sense in the life of a woman” as Robin Givhan unsurprisingly begs.
“But actually, I came to decide that this idea of escape is a bull shit,” said Pierpaolo Piccioli “You should be free to be who you are wherever you are, not be running off to some community in the forest.”
That serves also for a social media community, I am interpreting at my leisure.
Why was Valentino, once again, the best show of the season? It evoked romantic emotions, it provided that luxurious, extravagant, luxe tale you tell yourself every time you get dressed. Jo Ellison described it “a stunning collection of wonderful clothes that had the same minimal simplicity of his most extravagant creations”
Miuccia Prada, in both her runways, she speaks to women, not on behalf of them. She is a “political thinker” according to Business of Fashion’s Tim Blanks. Both Miu Miu and Prada are a well-defined woman and both identities lined up the general sense of women vs. men, vulnerability being always women’s strength, that carte blanche that allows women to carve their position and have their voice heard, even if it is with clothes, the primal language.
Who wears the pants?
Some issues were addressed, because:
The designers who show their collections on the runway work in a rarefied environment and serve a niche market. But what they do dictates the direction in which the industry will go. They can elevate the banal and declare the mundane desirable.
Women designing for women and the role of a designer who designs for women vs. multi-million contract creative designer hired to sell a brand through clothes, or, in an unorthodox and anachronistic way, via sex. As Vanessa Friedman noted, the ‘70s represented a whole new kind revolution from the #metoo and the #believesurvivors movement. Paris Fashion Week, especially YSL and Celine, since it is about them that I am talking about, coincided with the Bill Cosby jail sentence and one of the darkest moments of American and democracy history the Dr. Christine Blasey Ford Senate hearing.
Rick Owens’ burning pyramid was the un-planned symbol of the season, it goes without saying.
The other pressing debate was “what are we supposed to do with all these influencers”?
Somehow the answer is above: women live, work, drive, travel, cover or are destined to be voted in public roles, they aren’t inspired by a posed and paid for picture on Instagram.
Stay angry, stay foolish.