After Milan, it was time for Paris to take over the fashion reins. From 25 September to 3 October, Villa Lumière hosted the Spring/Summer 2024 collections.
Paris Fashion Week welcomed top brands including Dior, Valentino, Saint Laurent, Chanel and Louis Vuitton, as well as new arrivals (such as the Italians Quira and Niccolò Pasqualetti), and returnees - Mugler, back on the catwalks after the past see-now-buy-now collections - along with Margiela led by creative director John Galliano, and Carven, following a 5-year absence.
The Paris fashion week will also be remembered as the event where we said goodbye to some top designers who have led leading fashion brands for years... Let’s see what happened.
Architecture as inspiration: Chanel
Inspiration for Virginie Viard arrives straight from Hyeres, a small town in the South of France, facing the island of Porquerolles, specifically from the garden of Villa Noailles, designed by architect Robert Mallet-Stevens in 1923. The latest collection brings to life the garden colours and villa architecture in its geometric striped and checked patterns. Here too, as on the catwalks of Milan, we see the return of ballet flats and thongs.
Eyewear is decidedly big, in both the eyeglasses and sunglasses models.
Focus on the role of women: Dior and Valentino
Dior
Maria Grazia Chiuri, artistic director of the Dior women’s range, designed the ready-to-wear collection of 2024 around one precise philosophy: “Fashion is responsible for making women aware of their own. And self-assured in their differences,” declared Chiuri.
The outfits recall a medieval influence; the jacket is mannish, and the iconic Dior mille-fleur pattern becomes a dark motif.
Knitwear plays an important part in the collection: it drapes around the body, enveloping without adhering, both sensual and cosy.
Valentino
The Valentino L’École collection from Pierpaolo Piccoli highlights the body and its independence, freeing it from the judgment of men’s eyes and societal expectations.
Skin becomes a fabric; skirts are shortened and daring cuts open up perspectives of the body. It is all thanks to a technique defined by the brand as Altorilievo, which carves the fabric in three dimensions to create natural forms: Baroque foliage, fruit, flowers and animals.
Eyewear, too, underlines the independence of women, with its daring frames in colours and shapes that match the clothes. The harmony between eyewear and the clothes collection is, it goes without saying, clearly evident.
Rose Power: Balmain
Olivier Rousteing has taken inspiration from the 1930-1940 archives of Pierre Balmain. While polka dots put in an appearance, it’s roses that are the true stars here, in a variety of forms and materials: printed, embroidered, in 3D, in leather, in latex, in rubber, in china, even in recycled plastic.
Reflecting Balmain’s “New French Style”, characterised by precise cuts, the eyewear also offers neat and concise forms with the temples placed at oblique angles from the front, where perfectly round lenses are united by a pyramid-shaped bridge.
The importance of sustainability and ethics: Louis Vuitton, Pierre Cardin and Stella McCartney
Louis Vuitton
The former headquarters of the HSBC bank played host to the S/S collection by Nicolas Ghesquière. The show took place against a backdrop of orangepolyethylene which, the fashion house declared, was 100% recycled and will be re-used.
The outfits conjured up global travellers, with signature features of stripes, leather corsets and white socks. Jumpsuits are this season’s evening wear but in silver lurex.Pierre Cardin
The fashion brand sent 50 models down the catwalk in outfits inspired by the ocean and space, under the modernist dome of the Communist Party building designed by Oscar Niemeyer.
Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin, an aficionado of Niemeyer’s creative and futuristic architecture, chose this place in homage to his uncle, Pierre Cardin. Always conscious of environmental issues, he has designed an ethical collection together with the company’s team, in a seamless continuity of the fashion house’s style.
Ph. Pierre Cardin Evolution © NIEMEYER, OSCAR Adagp, Paris, 2023
Stella McCartney
The champion of sustainability recreated a “sustainable market” under the Tour Eiffel: 21 stalls invited guests to try out the innovative materials of the collection. For Stella, this is her greenest collection yet, with 95% of the materials being sustainable: regenerated silk taffeta, forest-friendly viscose satin, organic silk crepe, vegan leather…
For the S/S collection, the designer has followed two trajectories: she reinterprets both her own archive creations and those of her parents with vintage graphics of Wings on her organic cotton t-shirts.
Farewells: Alexander McQueen and Chloé
Alexander McQueen
Sarah Burton said goodbye to her longstanding partnership with the fashion house, which began in May 2010. Her last collection was “inspired by female anatomy, Queen Elizabeth I, and the blood-red rose” she stated.
An official salute to Burton was obviously lined up, with a well-deserved standing ovation.
Chloé
The Chloé Spring-Summer 2024 collection was the last by creative director Gabriela Hearst. Reconfirming her commitment to the issue of sustainability (already proven in the last 3 shows), the designer was inspired by flowers in her silhouettes and motifs. Thus the curved stitching, puffed sleeves and circular cut-outs, recalling the shapes of orchids and lilies.