Gabriele “Bebe” Moratti, cofounder at biker-brand-turned-Paris-upstart Redemption, sure talks good dissent. “When I was here in Paris presenting couture was when the Women’s March took place,” he said. “And I was greatly inspired by that. Because we founded the company on the premise of giving fifty percent to charity, we also give the message that is right to start a dialogue that provokes positive change. So the theme of this one is not rebellion, it is activism.”
The focus of Moratti’s purported activism was there in plain sight on the T-shirt in look five, his combover flying in the wind under text that was a blatant riff-off Jamie Reid’s work for the Sex Pistols (not that punks can reasonably complain about appropriation). But were the clothes—or, indeed, could the clothes—really be transmitters of sedition? “Maybe this is creative hyperbole,” Moratti conceded, “because I suppose that women are not going to protest in 12-centimeter heels.” Ah: there was the rub. Apart from that T-shirt, there was not a slogan, sensible shoe, or hilarious placard to be seen. In fact, with the exception of the Perfecto-incorporating earlier looks true to the brands hog-riding roots, this was a collection that mixed frankly fabulously done, high-octane, male-eye-popping super sexy eveningwear—phew!—with heavily embellished brocaded tailoring.
What did lend the occasional hint of dissent was the women wearing the clothes. Like much in this collection, Aussie model Catherine McNeil’s closing dress—a strong-shouldered gown in red sequins—was divided as dramatically as public opinion in the United States. Really though, it looked pretty trad—at least from the front. Yet once she’d passed, the constellation of horoscope tattoos revealed by said dress’s open back empowered it with properly nonconformist oomph. That was the main take-away—it’s the woman in the clothes, not the clothes, that expresses her individuality—from a collection so determinedly sexy that had the Donald been in the room, he would (I suspect) have gotten only halfway through tapping out “TREMENDOUS” on Twitter before succumbing to total synaptic collapse. Send him an invitation to next season, Bebe!
