This is our unfiltered review of the first ever digital couture week. Here, stay up to date on all the top fall 2020 Paris couture shows directly from couture week in Paris.
For the first time in history, the Paris couture shows are going digital. Due to the pandemic, fashion weeks worldwide are being cancelled and postponed. In lieu of live runway shows, brands are putting together digital content (mainly videos) to showcase their latest collections. As such, the entire Fall/Winter 2020 couture collections are going live on the digital platform that typically sets the schedule for Paris Couture Week.
As someone who has covered the couture collections live from Paris for the past four years, this is a huge change and something I’m super interested in. Sure, it makes sense for brands to go digital due to COVID-19, but in other ways, this has also been something that’s been coming for a very long time. Fashion week is costly, as well as bad for the environment. For reporters, writers, editors and buyers, it’s also exhausting. But I can’t help but wonder, how can couture–the world’s most elusive, expensive and custom clothing–compete on the same platform with all ready-to-wear brands doing “digital” shows as well?
After all, some of the most exciting shows of the year are during the couture season. It’s an all-out assault of the senses in the very best way. Brands take things to the next level with immaculate set designs that transport, compelling makeup and hair that tells part of the story, and of course, clothing that is meant to be seen up-close-and-personal. It’s one thing to see clothing move through space digitally on a video, but it’s another thing entirely to see, for example, an Iris Van Herpen 3D printed gown illuminate the room, or a fleet of Guo Pei dresses prancing through a room, moving with an almost sinister amount of glamour.
Of course, couture is dying, and this digital fashion week makes that even more clear. At only three days, the schedule is shorter than ever. All the designers who normally participate are there, but jamming everything into three days online makes it feel succinct to the point of levity. There’s less space to think about the impact and work of each designer and each collection, and for people who are normally in Paris for the shows but have to cover remotely this season, there’s no magic in waking up and having almost all of the “shows” over and posted everywhere already.
Still, I’m interested to see how labels can take these elements of the digital world and go forward with fashion week in an innovative way. For now, I don’t think doing strictly video is the right move. Read about the shows of Paris Couture Week Fall 2020 Day 1 here.
Here, some mini reviews of the standout shows of the Fall/Winter 2020 Paris Couture Week day 2:
Paris Couture Week Fall 2020 Reviews: Chanel Couture Fall 2020
Chanel’s video presentation came in at just over a minute and featured a couple of models wearing select looks from Chanel’s collection. Short snippets of the models moving in the clothing flash across the screen. There’s only five looks in total shown, out of a collection of 30, and it feels like a really stark, really toned down version of everything Chanel has represented in the past, especially when it comes to couture. But maybe that’s a good thing?
This video, more than others we’ve seen from digital couture week, feels more like a commercial that could literally run on TV. As for the clothing, it’s all a classic take on the specific elements of Chanel Haute couture aesthetic, harking back to the excess and opulence under Karl Lagerfeld’s reign when it comes to craftsmanship:
“I was thinking about a punk princess coming out of ‘Le Palace’ at dawn,” Virginie Viard said in the show notes. “With a taffeta dress, big hair, feathers and lots of jewellery. This collection is more inspired by Karl Lagerfeld than Gabrielle Chanel. Karl would go to ‘Le Palace’, he would accompany these very sophisticated and very dressed up women, who were very eccentric too.”
Though you may not be able to see it in the video, all the details of a traditional haute couture wardrobe are there: embroidery partners Métiers d’art Lesage and Montex, as well as Lemarié and Goossens embellished the sequins, beads, stones and gems on the classic tweeds.
Paris Couture Week Fall 2020 Reviews: Alexis Mabille
Using the traditional runway format as a starting point, Alexis Mabille had models walk through a pink room as if it were a catwalk. A lot of the classical elements from the brand were present: little lace dresses, bows, suiting turned into cocktail dresses, and gem-toned gowns. You wouldn’t know it from watching the video, but the designer used fabrics that were already existent in the atelier rather than buying new fabrics. Each season, Mabille usually starts out his creative process with fabrics. But due to lockdown, he wasn’t able to order anything new. For the brand, this was a new step forward in sustainability.
“I let my pencil dance on paper, sketching silhouettes—pure without being minimal—that follow the body inits movement, enhancing it and highlighting materials through the needle’s artistry. Jersey kisses curves, fluid chiffon velvet drapes on them, crepe suggests them,” reads the show notes. “Nods to the masculine play with delicate details of laces, embroideries, jewels, and furs. More than ever, elegance and sensuality are the red thread woven throughout this collection, along with my long-held respect and love for the female form. It’s my vision of an attitude, a call for optimism, an invitation to smile.”
The video presentation certainly gives a viewer a sense of the collection from start to finish, but what it lacks is the narrative. I would have loved to see some allusion to the story behind the fabrics in the visuals.
Paris Couture Week Fall 2020 Reviews: Alexandre Vauthier
If you thought Chanel’s digital presentation was a whirlwind, Alexandra Vauthier’s was even shorter, coming in at less than one minutes. Still, the independent couturier created a video and imagery that strongly aligns with the aesthetic of the brand: bold, youthful, exacting, edgy and rebellious.
The designer made clear that all of the visual components of the fall 2020 shows were done in a socially distanced way. For the occasion, photographers Karim Sadli, and Inez and Vinoodh and videographer Albert Moya were given carte blance.
The look books may just be the strongest thing to come from Alexandre Vauthier’s fall 2020 couture collection: the fantasy of the clothing, not often seen in other places besides the run carpet, looks amazing against the blue skies of the Hamptons, the Parisian streets and even inside home interiors in both Paris and New York. In some ways, one could say it validates the couture clothing creations. Fantasy and illusion is replaced with wearability and a rare sort of charm.
Aganovich, Stephane Rolland, Yuima Nakazato, Julien Fournie, Aelis, Rahul Mishra, Ronald Van Der Kemp and Imane Ayissi also presented fall 2020 couture collections today.
Tune in tomorrow for day 3 reviews!
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