Saint Laurent and Dior struggle with the answer.
First the pussy bow, and now the tie?
Of all the signifiers of power that one might want to appropriate, a piece of silk that knots around the neck like a noose and then dangles down the shirt like a — well, whatever — seems the least forward-thinking. Yet there, on the Saint Laurent runway, nominally inspired by what the designer Anthony Vaccarello called “a quintessential female archetype,” were 24 of them.
They were worn, natch, with big-shoulder suits: double and single breasted, high-waist trousers with a bit of a swoosh, pinstripe button-up shirts and chunky eyeglasses, in a very literal nod to the look worn by Mr. Saint Laurent himself in the ’80s, after he had made the segue from rebel to institution. Sometimes there was a trench or leather jacket tossed on top, a silk bathrobe coat, and in between were some classic YSL peasant dresses in gold-shot chiffon, but the focus was the old empire-builder suits and ties.
What female strength looks like, the shapes it may take, is the big question facing fashion — and the women who buy it — right now. Or so it seemed as the Paris shows, the last leg of the fashion season, began. It makes sense, for obvious reasons. Mr. Vaccarello got that one right. But C-suite cosplay seems like a particularly unimaginative answer.
At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri had another: the Amazons. Or, as she said in a preview, “the only figures in mythology that wore the pants.”
That got her thinking about Diana, the huntress, and Wonder Woman, and sports.
Well, she had just come off designing a troika of looks for the Olympics opening ceremony and a number of athletes are now brand ambassadors. (Paris itself it still in a semi-Olympic hangover, with temporary stadium seating still clogging the Place de la Concorde.) And that led to a collaboration with the artist/archer Sagg Napoli (real name Sofia Ginevra Gianní) who took her place at the center of the Dior show in a one-shoulder black bodysuit that framed her trapezius and biceps, and a gladiator miniskirt, and then began target practice in time to the music. Brigitte Macron, France’s first lady, in the front row next to Bernard Arnault, the chairman and chief executive of the Dior owner LVMH, looked delighted. So did Jennifer “Elektra” Garner and Anya “Furiosa” Taylor-Joy, who were a few seats away.
SOURCE: New York Times
