Coming in the wake of Milan, London and New York, the first of some 90 shows opened the autumn/winter collections in Paris yesterday, signalling trends for the coming season. Sure signs that fashion week has arrived in the city are the camera teams, flocks of international buyers and stylists that congregate around Colette, a hip boutique on the Relais St Honore considered the first place of pilgrimage for the international fashion cognoscenti.
The shows are scattered all around the city, and yesterday three collections, one in the Sorbonne, another in the Musee des Hommes and one staged in a marquee beside the Eiffel Tower offered views of modern femininity as varied and as diverse as their locations ranging from the conceptual to the commercial.
At the Sorbonne, Sharon Wauchob, the Irish designer from Co Tyrone, sent out a sombre black collection of modern coolness characterised by a mix of masculine tailoring and feminine detailing. That meant a caped jacket, folded and zippered at the back, worn with tight leggings and high heels or a long black coat vaguely suggestive of a formal dinner jacket. Heavy shoulder details like folded or braided silk elevated a simple black dress and the narrow squared shoulders of a black trouser suit defined a strong silhouette. It was sophisticated in a relaxed, rock 'n' roll way.
Her technical expertise is to take other forms. It was announced yesterday that Wauchob has designed a new range of glass for Tipperary Crystal to go on sale later in the year. Comprising stemware and giftware, the collection will be very distinctive and different, according to Declan Fearon, managing director, who attended her show.
Like Wauchob, Isabel Marant is one of a handful of independent female designers on the official catwalk schedule. Popular with the Parisian gilded set, her show reworked in a very chic commercial way the current vogue for tunics sending them out gladiator style over short full minis and chiffon leggings or worn simply as soft jersey dresses.
The hard wide shoulders of a white T-shirt, the first outfit down the runway at Martin Margiela's show, set the silhouette and the tone of this collection whose force lay in its uncompromising line. There were sleek trousers, slick skirts with panel detail, but the vehemence was in the top: heavy steel, grey padded jackets, lurex cable knits and livid green fur capes that vaguely recalled the power dressing of the 1980s.