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September 30, 2018

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Tiny bags and big shades: top trends at Paris fashion week

PARIS women’s fashion week heads into the final straight, here’s a look at what we have learned so far from the catwalk collections.

It’s all about purity

Spring-summer collections are supposed to be about throwing open the windows to a world of color and floral fancy, but Paris shows have been notably more sober and austere than usual — almost puritanical in fact when it comes to prints.

Hedi Slimane went on a voyage to the heart of black in his long-anticipated debut at Celine, as did his successor at Saint Laurent, Anthony Vaccarello.

Blink at the Margiela, Guy Laroche, Olivier Theyskens or Hyun Mi Nielsen shows and you might have thought yourself at a funeral there was so much black, while Rick Owens summoned up the Salem witch-hunts, smoking pyre and all.

Two tones, black and white, dominated the catwalks.

Even Balmain was uncharacteristically restrained, which is no bad thing.

Dior — where flowers are never far away — was utterly lovely but also determinedly unflashy.

Gigantic shades

Summer is as all about sunglasses. And if Paris is any barometer in 2019 they will be as big as picture windows.

Dior was first to burst the frame with big boxy skin-tone shades, followed by Gucci’s jet black giants inspired by sleeping masks with Loewe’s equally massive ones a little more modular.

Rick Owens and Paris newcomers Marques’Almeida continued the gigantism with almost identical fighter pilot visor shades.

Like its collection, Guy Laroche’s were white-rimmed two-tone while Saint Laurent and newbies Each x Other went all hippy dippy with heart and diamond-shaped frames.

By gusset, it’s Y-fronts!

There has been much gnashing of teeth this week about the relevance/appropriateness of Saint Laurent’s leather hot pants.

However little brouhaha resulted from Gucci sending out some of the boys in its co-ed show in big baggy Y-fronts with socks and Oxford shoes or in a selection of leather, red-zipped vinyl and crystal codpieces.

One diamond-encrusted scallop shell worn over a pair of powder blue slacks drew particularly admiring glances.

While Saint Laurent’s Vaccarello may be out of synch with the mood of the times, Owens tellingly put his codpieces on women in an impressive show that also included kick-ass women in headscarves and a black Lady Liberty holding the flame of freedom that set fire to his “Tower of Babel.”

Teeny tiny bags

Bags are getting smaller, much smaller. We appear in fact to be entering the era of the micro-bag with young guns Ottolinger and Jacquemus introducing handbags you can hold with one finger.

Natacha Ramsay-Levi’s new C bag at Chloe might not be quite so teeny tiny but the biggest thing about it is the golden C she has stamped on it, while Maria Grazia Chiuri’s new Dior bag is more of a shoulder purse.

But for pure practical ingenuity, Issey Miyake’s new bag hat is hard to beat. Made with shiny shot fabric, it can be folded into a hat and worn in an almost infinite number of ways.




 

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