The influence of the recent Olympics could be felt in many of the spring collections, writes DEIRDRE McQUILLAN, Fashion Editor, in Paris
FRESH FROM London’s most successful Olympics ever, it was perhaps not surprising that one of Japan’s most outstanding fashion designers, Junya Watanabe, took a sprint at sportswear for his fast-paced spring collection in Paris at the weekend.
This was a collaboration with Puma using nylon, mesh and stretch fabrics on models striding along in silver trainers and spiky crystal helmets. Flared skirts or leggings with racer back tops in day-glo colours had filmy overlays, transparent tunics that mixed sheer and opaque – a running motif throughout the spring collections.
Though the sporty theme continued throughout, it didn’t always dominate: some dresses and purple hoodies with intricate insets of mesh and zip had an almost couture look, kept firmly grounded with high-top sneakers, or what the French call baskettes.
Breathable fabrics and sportswear had little to do with Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garcons presentation, held in the chilly underpass of Paris’s fashion and design school on the Quai d’Austerlitz.
Kawakubo always takes a conceptual approach, and the theme of the collection was the idea of crushing; this explained the elaborate disarray and dishevelment of unbleached cotton and metallic fabrics haphazardly patched together in vaguely Victorian silhouettes.
Serious, white-faced models wore crowns of recycled metal and plastic, and walked at a solemn pace, but it left one thinking afterwards that, whatever about its symbolism and offbeat grandeur, most might prefer sleeves worn the usual way rather than sprouting from the backside. Maybe that wasn’t the point.
Contrasts are everything in Paris and Martin Grant, a talented and sophisticated Australian designer, below the radar for some (though he’s just been contracted to do the uniforms for Qantas), showed a beautiful, elegantly tailored collection with shapely dresses in coral, white or navy silk and flamboyant evening ensembles in black taffeta.
At Haider Ackermann’s exquisite collection, models never took their hands out of their pockets, thus giving those dark shiny trouser suits and textured layered tops the kind of languid ease the clothes demand.