PARIS-BASED Sharon Wauchob, the only Irish designer on the French catwalk, sent out a collection in the Ecole des Beaux Arts yesterday notable for its workmanship and textural play.
With a cut and slash approach to her material, whether it was leather, silk tulle or wool, she created intricate origami effects on dresses and jackets, integral to the shape, right down to accessories such as peep-toed ankle boots and elbow-length gloves. “I knew there was a cleaning up of the silhouette,” she said afterwards.
“But I wanted to do it my way, to do minimalism without dumbing it down.”
The slits, opening and closing with body movement, concealed and revealed in an artful way.
She has a 25-strong team in her Marais studio, many from Japan. One standout dress like chainmail was made from minuscule brass beads and leather knots mounted on black tulle.
For daywear, black or khaki jackets, composed of angular geometric shapes, stood proud from the body and were trimmed with stamped-leather lapels and puckered sleeves.
Such attention to detail is very much her signature as is a certain cool sexiness in the look evident in the line-up of batik print silk dresses with slit fronts and laced derrieres.
Another female designer, Anne Valerie Hash, took her references more from the street, reworking schoolboy stripes and layering Bermudas over mesh or jersey leggings for a two-tone effect. She has a way of uplifting the mundane in a very French way – such as making hooded jersey jumpsuits look fluid and luxurious and almost desirable – but her finely pleated transparent skating dresses, though softly coloured, were a challenge too far.
A real culture shock for the western eye was Manish Arora’s show, held in one of France’s most distinguished public secondary schools, the Lycee Henri IV, whose illustrious roll of past pupils includes Michel Foucault, Eric Rohmer, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Arora, India’s top designer, is known for combining Indian crafts with western silhouettes. But yesterday’s technicolour Bollywood assault of sequins, sparkle, lavish embroideries and digital prints, culminating in models sporting glow-in-the-dark nylon flanges in their ears and bouffants made of green or gold chains, though incredibly detailed and well made, was, as the French would say, de trop.