We’re still star-struck from our trip to Paris Fashion Week, and we’re more in love than ever with the fashion names we grew up obsessing over. Here are 10 of the best designer shows of the week, starting with two designers we know will be joining the “it” list very soon.
Harry Halim
Harry Halim has established himself as a fashion designer with a distinctive voice in a global stage, thanks to his signature sculptural shapes, bold cutting, and his twisted take on romanticism. Those elements formulate the perfect essence that empower every individual who wear HARRYHALIM, reconnecting them to their inner bold, dangerous, and daring personality.
HARRYHALIM debuted its adventure by showing its 2012 Spring Summer collection in Paris Fashion Week, allowing the Creative Director to make history as the first ever Indonesian designer to be accepted to show a collection in the Paris Fashion Week calendar. Ever since, his collection has captivated the eyes of the fashion industry and industry enthusiasts worldwide.
Kimhekim
Kimhekim is a fashion brand founded in 2014, created by Kiminte Kimhekim. He gained experience at one of the most prestigious French fashion house, Balenciaga where he learned the importance of the approach and the attitude of the artisanship. This encounter profoundly influenced in defining the house of KIMHEKIM. His designs include combinations of past and future, with experimental elements.
Chloe
Is there anyone fashion people love to reference more than the illusive boho Parisian girl? She’s been on hiatus with the onset of streetwear and ’80s power shoulders, but designer Natacha Ramsay-Levi brought her back today. The designer called the collection, “An essential manifesto for the Chloé woman: a fundamental vision of femininity anchored in reality.” She wears suits with interesting, sexy tops underneath, floral bustiers, floral dresses with cool leather belts. Face it, she’s cool, but she’s not afraid to be feminine too.
Saint Laurent
Anthony Vaccarello is staying within the codes of Rive Gauche and its particular melding of masculine-feminine, making it just a little modern, but also embracing that ’70s realness. It may sound like a mouthful, but it’s really quite simple—short shorts, high boots, gilded party dresses, Le Smoking tuxes and jumpsuits. It’s the things girls want to wear, with some great uses of that well-known logo. Thank god it hasn’t been redone in upper case Didot.
Christian Dior
For Spring, Maria Grazia Chiuri kept it in the family—taking inspiration from the house’s founder’s sister, Catherine Dior. It’s not a great leap, looking at the show, to realize she was an avid gardner and fiercely independent before it was fashionable to be so. Charming floral prints, feathered jackets, and houndstooth mini dresses, paired with little gardening hats, served as a reminder from Chiuri to create our own “inclusive garden” and re-establish a balance between humans and the planet.
Loewe
JW Anderson explored the ethereal side of his Loewe woman for Spring 2020, alluding to patrician elegance. Loewe’s craft and construction is always at the focal-point of Anderson’s collection, yet he creates pieces that real women want to wear. This season his nomadic woman gets in touch with a softer, romantic side, by way of guipure, chantilly and marguerite lace in the form of sheer dresses with rectangular pannier skirts, a tunic and coordinating pants, as well as a babydoll gown.
Isabel Marant
Isabel Marant is bringing booty shorts back. For Spring 2020, the French designer looked to a colorful mix of ultra teeny, ultra short shorts, styled with a myriad of strong-shouldered jackets. The colors were bright—with a mix of stripes, florals, and muted tie-dye prints thrown in, too. But the key takeaway was an overarching ode to the no pants look. Whether done in booty shorts or ultra mini skirts, it seems like the early 2000s are itching their way back once again.
Off-White
Virgil Abloh had to sit out his latest Off-White runway show due to health reasons, but his creative vision made him feel like he was there in spirit this season. Titled ‘Meteor Shower,’ the collection was quite literally inspired by just that—as evidenced by the large holes left in leather pants, tops, blazers, and even the brand’s newest bag. According to show notes, the cosmic theme was meant “to illustrate a woman’s power, to show that her spirit is indestructible by natural forces.”
Abloh’s signature streetwear pieces were still there (albeit with a few extra holes), but it was the hoop-embellished necklines, buttery leather separates, and colorful gowns (including a hot pink finale number worn by Bella Hadid) that stood out most.
Rochas
Alessandro Dell’Acqua is back in the color game after a previous season of all-black looks. That meant explorations of red with burgundy, preppy pink with green, seafoam with black—and a reminder that sometimes an LBD is all a girl needs. Color seemed to be the main through line, though, on a generally haphazard look at a woman’s wardrobe for the season.
Lanvin
Lanvin is officially back, spinning their own dreamworld to enchant us, and enchanting it was. As editors huddled under an umbrella for the outdoor show in the rain, models lightened the mood as they made their way down the runway in cheerful prints, yellow checkerboard, and rainbow block prints on clothes that evoked a certain jet set style of the 1950s. Creative Director Bruno Sialelli drew inspiration the Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strip that began in 1905, and his childhood in the South of France, where nothing felt impossible. He noted Lee Radziwill and Babe Paley as inspirations. But it wasn’t all about beach time, he also worked in more serious silhouettes like architecturally sculpted suits and accordion pleated tops and matching skirts.