Recently I have written an homage to Paris for my Story Behind the Picture section. The French city is often considered the capital of European fashion (some people think this title belongs to Milan or London but the strong influence of the legendary French couturiers on modern fashion is still relevant to this day) and Paris Fashion Week has always been the ultimate celebration of haute couture and prêt-à-porter.
Among the most defining moments of this fashion week were Jacquemus opening his first eponymous store at 58 Avenue Montaigne, Victoria Beckham’s PFW debut with her S/S 2023 collection and model Bella Hadid having a dress spray-painted on her for the closing of the Coperni show.
Being from Milan, I got to live the atmosphere of Milan Fashion Week over the years and I have recently talked about my MFW experience; however, I have been envisioning Paris Fashion Week as something magical and extremely fascinating ever since I started reading fashion show reviews on Italian magazine Book Moda in 2007; every designer who presented their collections at PFW seemed to reflect the style I was looking to embrace. I have always been attracted by French style because my mother has always dressed like a Parisian woman and I have often looked up to her for my own wardrobe choices (except for a few experiments during my teenage years!), so I was eagerly waiting to see what this edition had in store.
Below I have rounded up my favorite looks from PFW S/S 2023:
1) SAINT LAURENT: Anthony Vaccarello’s Spring/Summer 2023 was all about physicality and celebrating the body. The main inspiration for this collection was 80s Grace Jones and the entire show was built on the concept of length; the outerwear was predominantly oversize, with the coats replacing the clothes as the main stars of the show. This created a series of powerful looks that were impossible to take your eyes off of; the color palette was the epitome of elegance, with camels, purples, olives, tobacco shades and soft browns. The shoes were barely noticeable due to the length of the dresses and coats and they ranged from minimal sandals to satiny pumps; this brought the audience’s gaze to focus on the width of the shoulders and the length of the outfits.
The nightly-lit Eiffel Tower was the perfect backdrop for this show, whose setting included also the Fontaine de Varsovie in the Jardins du Trocadéro; due to the rhythmic soundtrack, the atmosphere was quite dramatic and suitable for the clothes that were shown. The whole collection combined Vaccarello’s minimalism with the sensuality and elegance that are so typical of Yves Saint Laurent’s style. It was dark, it was glamorous and it was so difficult to pick just one particular look because I fell in love with every double-breasted coat I was seeing on the runway (the long black dress was amazing, too). The ensemble pictured above spoke to me, with the gloves and sunglasses adding a touch of mystery to the whole outfit in the best possible way.
2) LOEWE: a symbol of love and passion, the anthurium flower made of giant fiberglass was literally growing from the floor for the setting of Loewe S/S 2023 and was made to creatively represent the connection between nature and technology, the latter being evident with the introduction of pixelated hoodies and t-shirts on the runway.
Jonathan Anderson brought this collection to life looking at the flower’s sensuality, seen both as a part of nature and an element of design. The flower was everywhere, from the dresses to the tops and the shoes, which ranged from high heels décolletés to braided and texturized red sandals which resembled the petals of a flower.
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