Bouchra Jarrar has said her mission at Lanvin is to describe the “tenderness and force” of women; an honorable intention. Nevertheless, at the beginning of her second women’s runway collection, audience attention to her clothes was scattered by Monday’s allegation by the casting director James Scully that Lanvin had specifically asked for white-only models to audition for the show. Joan Smalls was one of the several models—Helena Christensen, Dilone, and Hilary Rhoda included—who expressed support of Scully’s Instagram (as is well known now, he was raising other general issues about the maltreatment of models, too). Nevertheless, Smalls herself did walk in Jarrar’s show, wearing one of the best outfits, an elegantly slouchy pair of white pants, and a blazer striped with a flash of Lurex, which hinted at the pattern of a djellaba. Jarrar comes from North African heritage, is the point. Smalls subsequently put up a photograph of herself on her own Instagram account, captioned “A beautifully curated show.”
Still, now that everyone is counting, it was noticeable that Alicia Burke was the only other black model in a cast of roughly 40 women. Burke was also wearing one of Jarrar’s exemplary looks—an elegant navy jumpsuit with a gently swagged asymmetric collar, and a soft, striped cardigan jacket. Before we go on, this should be stated: In times like these, fashion has a responsibility to walk its talk about women’s representation. Fashion is one of the few industries which is dominated by a female workforce and is totally reliant on the creativity, skill, and dedication of immigrants, yet also commands a massively globally visible stage. Never mind slogan T-shirts. Celebrating the entirety of fashion’s rainbow membership is the one political message that must be kept at consistently.
But to clothes! Bouchra Jarrar is an excellent cutter of pants and jackets; she brought the skill and the instinct with her when she closed her own label to join Lanvin. Masculine-feminine is more or less the distillation of what French fashion has stood for since Saint Laurent himself—but what of feminine-feminine? Perhaps responding to Lanvin’s growing success in the mileu of red carpet dressing, Jarrar went to the girliest of girly tropes: the pink ballerina dress. This time, she didn’t make the mistake of rendering her “femme” dresses transparent. They had frothy flowers and ruffles at the shoulder, plissé chiffon skirts, and flat punkish men’s shoes.
That’s a formula which could work for some. Another string to Jarrar’s bow is her way of spiraling a piece of satin around a woman’s shape. Those with a slender build and a taste for understated line are going to like these.
