Paris Fashion Week and Its Defining Moments

Paris Fashion Week and Its Defining Moments

Paris Fashion Week officially came and went. It brought with it a dazzling celebrity lineup and collections that shone and deflated. It marked an end to the 2023 fashion week season and left the industry with much to discuss for the year.

Miu Miu Brings Back Bad Hair Days & The Working Girl

Model walks for Miu Miu at Paris Fashion Week
Model walks for Miu Miu at Paris Fashion Week
Model walks for Miu Miu at Paris Fashion Week

Miu Miu, the perpetual younger sister of Prada, has grown up. Compared to the latter’s predilection for ugly-chic, Miu Miu possesses a naivety brought on by an unbothered youthfulness. This has endeared it to young women who prize hyper femininity and its many subcultures. Call it coquette or say it’s Sofia Coppola’s doing. But the brand’s tagline Girl at Heart encapsulates what the brand prizes – youth, demureness with a hint of sensuality. The Miu Miu girl is dressed and on her way to work! Consider us surprised. Despite this flurry of independence, she is still not quite polished as say Prada in the 1990s. This is a girl on the verge of womanhood, stumbling into a coming of age. 

Sarah Burton’s Use of Red

Naomi Campbell for Alexander McQueen at Paris Fashion Week
Model walks for Alexander McQueen at Paris Fashion Week
Model walks for Alexander McQueen

As the successor to Alexander McQueen since his passing, Sarah Burton has remained the creative director for over 10 years. Few could live up to the late designer and his eccentric and peculiar designs and runway performances. Though Burton is not as experimental as McQueen, she does a fantastic job keeping his spirit alive. The F/W 23 collection in Paris is a presentation of anatomy; yes a woman’s, but also the label’s. So, Burton harkened back to McQueen’s beginnings at Saville Row where he learned tailoring, construction and how to flip a design over its head. 

Naomi Campbell wore a scalloped dress as she opened the show and let more traditional methods of tailoring shine. Impeccably tailored double breasted suits and artfully constructed pinstriped pieces that created an almost optical illusion followed.

The Row Uses Older Models in Runway Show

Model walks for The Row
Model walks for The Row at Paris Fashion Week
Model walks for The Row

Finally, The Row is at the forefront of a quiet luxury. One that cares about a perfect t-shirt or dress fit their high powered customers. But this Paris Fashion Week, they did something unusual. For an industry so concerned with the current, and consequently, youthfulness, they chose to use older models. It is a decision rarely made and when it is, there is almost always a retired supermodel in mind.

Models start in the industry in their teens because for most, their careers peak in their mid to late twenties. It causes somewhat of a disassociation with certain clothes and designers. A 20 year old will be modeling a designer mainly worn by women in their 30s or 40s. Though this is no great moral wrong, it does create a separation between product and consumer. The Row however, gives the audience a look at product and consumer combined and slightly pushes for a subversion of ageism in fashion. 

All Images Courtesy of Hypebeast

Feature Image Courtesy of FASHION Magazine

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