Spring-summer 2022 collection Fashion week: vibrant Vuitton, kisses Elbaz

The week of Parisian fashion shows dedicated to spring-summer 2022 women's ready-to-wear ended on Tuesday with a striking Vuitton fashion show and a tribute to Alber Elbaz, who died in April.

Emerging from who knows where, interposing itself impeccably between two models, she succeeded in deploying her banner which proclaimed "Overconsumption = extinction" ("overconsumption = extinction") over a hundred meters before being exfiltrated manu militari by a security guy. One of his comrades also tried the blow, in vain, a little later. The activists of Extinction Rebellion chose their moment, Tuesday evening, to denounce the impact of the fashion industry on climate change . The Louis Vuitton parade at the Louvre was the last of this Parisian salvo, and one of the most anticipated given the weight of the house (LVMH group) but also the faculty of proposal of Nicolas Ghesquière. It has verified itself with a collection full of panache and mastery, which plays with the times. Ghesquière mixes past, present and future with a stunning sense of balance, creating a space-time that belongs only to him.

These are basket dresses that open the case, spectacular or even cumbersome, but as elaborate as they are, they keep fluidity and the girls move forward at a beating pace, in gladiator-style laced boots, pairing them with oversized jackets. Equally ubiquitous, the tailcoat declined to denim, and the cape, short as well as extra-long, like a train. These classic hints of pieces blend surprisingly well with jeans, miniskirts, very refined tops (with effervescence of collars, ruffles, Victorian, choir, renaissance ...), associated with jodhpurs with sporting echoes, and this mix s 'enriched with a set of overlays (top, dress, pants) completely from here and now. A wardrobe so rich that we have the impression of seeing more than 45 figures.

Vivid memory

The exercise of collective homage to a deceased couturier is always perilous. Bringing together well-known personalities around the memory of one of their peers and inviting them to cross-reference their work often gives rise to an uneven result, touching at the best of times. Organized at the Carreau du Temple (3rd arrondissement of Paris), at the end of fashion week, the parade organized in memory of Alber Elbaz, who died in Aprilthe consequences of the Covid, at 60 years old, a few months after the launch of his brand AZ (Richemont group), confirmed this. The show summoned two contradictory but not contradictory impulses: the joy of seeing original creations, a nod to Elbaz's fashion, made by his sisters and colleagues (45 houses in total), and the emotion of memory, lively , “Alber” remains one of the most popular designers in the fashion world.

Tuesday, the show was as much in the room as on the runway where the models wandered. In the first row, we saw Brigitte Macron and Anne Hidalgo, Antoine Arnault and François-Henri Pinault, Rick Owens and his wife, Michèle Lamy, Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Pier Paolo Piccioli, Naomi Campbell, Demi Moore, Anthony Vaccarello, Carla Sozzani, Olivier Rousteing, Charaf Tajer (Casablanca), Giambattista Valli…

Elbazian silhouettes were as varied as required by the exercise. The large candy pink cape dress, haloed with a giant bow in the back, designed by Demna Gvasalia of Balenciaga, recalled Elbaz's taste for large volumes made with a minimum of seams. Completely the opposite of the completely transparent second skin pink dress by Pieter Mulier from the Alaïa house, who had fun drawing a pretty heart as a thong. Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski, head of Hermès women's collections, had the happy idea to draw the round silhouette of Alber Elbaz, recognizable among a thousand, on the print of a pleated silk shirt dress. The young Thebe Magugu, for his part, dived into the archives of Guy Laroche, where Elbaz started out before joining the Yves Saint Laurent Rive gauche house, then Lanvin, where her talent exploded, to create a blouse, just highlighted with a Klein blue spot on the chest, and a pleated skirt in slightly broken white color. Daniel Lee of Bottega Veneta chose his favorite color, a “parakeet green” that Alber Elbaz also liked, to build a short and fun dress, all in pearls of various sizes.

The show ended with a tribute collection, created by the AZ workshops, followed by a shower of red confetti, which whispered that despite the great void, the party continues.