For today’s show, Filip Arickx and An Vandevorst accessorized their signature mix of sharp tailoring and lingerie accents with nuns’ habits, rosaries, and surgical tape placed over some of the models’ mouths. If they wanted to make a religious-political point, though, their audience—who’d been sipping champagne during the long wait—seemed at best oblivious, and at worst uninterested. This was a fashion presentation, after all, not agitprop theater—and with another show to go to and perhaps a party or two, the issue at hand wasn’t freedom of speech, but, “Have they got pretty frocks?”
The answer, happily, was mostly yes. A trio of silk numbers in Mother Teresa blue—the best of which looked like an elegant yet simple sheath in front, but was bare at the back—stood out among the show's white, nude, and blush offerings. So did a royal-blue halter gown with a deep plunge and a pleated skirt. Hoods—which appeared on everything from a cardigan sweater to a shirtdress—were a recurring and not too overtly religious trope; the same went for narrow shifts layered over pants. A.F. Vandevorst’s men's vests looked smart and salable, but if it isn’t a sin to put men’s cotton briefs over tights and ask a model to walk the perimeter of the Musée Galliera in them, then it should be.
