Hard-core street stylers are usually reluctant to cede space to any oncoming object—whether trams in Milan, buses in Paris, or cabs in London—but they moved fast when the 80-strong patrol of gilets jaunes protestors swept through in front of Andreas Kronthaler’s show venue today. Ski-masked, often helmeted, and of course yellow jacketed, they chanted and shook their fists—in a comradely fashion—at the watching fashion cluster.
Upstairs in the space at the Hyatt there was more direct action, this time aimed in my direction. Back in London, I gave the last Vivienne Westwood collection a critical going-over, based on the idea that urging us not to buy clothes for the sake of sustainability while selling us clothes seems an unsustainably contradictory position. Here in Paris (at her company’s second show of the season), Westwood was seated two seats away from me—Carine Roitfeld was our borderland.
I sat down, and Westwood leaned over. “Are you Luke?” asked the designer I’ve interviewed perhaps 20 times during the past few years, on occasion for so long that I’ve nearly missed her show, watching it from backstage. Once I agreed that I was, she suggested I am an “idiot,” a “climate change denier,” and “a tool of the financial system.”
The right to reply is sacrosanct, and Westwood is entitled to hers. However, disagreeing with the wisdom of lecturing a captive audience of editors and celebrities on the threat of climate change while holding a fashion show isn’t climate change denial; it’s in this case Westwood denial. And given that Westwood’s business last reported annual revenues in the tens of millions through the sale of high-margin, internationally distributed luxury consumer goods, I bet I know who’s got the larger carbon footprint.
This keyboard eco-warrior’s opinion is that Westwood’s undisputed brilliance as one of the most gifted and influential fashion designers in history does not automatically mean she’s brilliant at messaging her undoubtedly sincere concerns about climate change.
As for the clothes, the collection was sometimes excellent, and any worries that might have been caused by Kronthaler’s in-the-mirror selfie “dick pick invitation”—as a fellow audience member termed it—proved unfounded. Quarterback-silhouette coats in knit bouclé and their jacketed equivalents as suits in rich silk brocades were powerful. There was a deconstructed interrogation of exoticism in the semi-shrouding of knitwear whose collars dropped straight from the chin and forehead to the shoulder, and another inversion of convention in the closing menswear wild-bridal look. However, all of Kronthaler’s work—the meandering necklines and slept-in bedsheet rumple and gather of his beautiful, wonkily fitted evening gowns—was suffused in spirit by the work of his great muse, love, and inspiration, Dame Vivienne Westwood.
