What? No show? Joseph’s creative director, Louise Trotter, explained that she was presenting this collection by appointment in Joseph’s Paris headquarters instead of on a runway in London because, “We’re taking a pause . . . to decide where we want to show and how we want to show.”
Instead, Trotter and her team shot these looks in a bar/tabac by the Gare du Nord, where her handsome leather or gabardine trenches plus double-alpaca overcoats—some built for creative double jacketing and featuring très-Trotter extra-cape details—fit serenely in.
There was a gentle tension in the interplay of natural versus synthetic that ran through the collection, whether via digital prints designed to appear analog, the occasional overt nylon-polyester flash amid a sea of organic fabrics, or the interjection of consciously lurid, carefully placed pops of color against a natural, neutral backdrop. After consideration of Trotter’s attractive oat-toned, by-strap-adaptable skirts and tailoring in checks, a pleated skirt in plastic bag blue matched with a sheeny silky top over blue faux-gaitered boots fairly slapped you in the eye. A pony overcoat in zebra stripe was another flirtation with the boundaries of decorative restraint to which Joseph usually subjects itself.
As already noted in this season’s review for the excellent Lemaire, the world faces a critically imminent shortage of Philo-flavored Céline. Joseph is another possible source of consolation for those who mourn the loss.
