“Have you ever been to a fashion show like this?” The cheerful black humor of the wonderful French gentleman who has been driving team Vogue Runway around Paris was surpassing this morning as we were on the way to the Sacai show. At 8:30 a.m., he had just negotiated his way through a police roadblock at the entrance to the Place de la Concorde. I say police—you have to imagine a helmeted riot patrol of 10 men clad in black high-tech plated armor, like something out of Tron. As we bowled alone across the grand sweep of the cobblestones, there was a tank silhouetted against the entrance of the Tuileries gardens.
It’s the closest I’ve ever got to feeling like Lee Miller reporting for Vogue—I wouldn’t want to get any closer. But here we are, in Paris, where fashion goes on regardless in the days of the gilet jaunes action, just as it did in WWII. And here is Kaia Gerber, kicking off the 10th Saturday of anti-Macron protests in a full-length semitransparent white nylon dress, trimmed with lace.
Chitose Abe was showing her women’s Pre-Fall with her Fall men’s collection. She described it as “a stew, a melting pot of Sacai tastes.” Somewhere in it were a couple of boys in a black T-shirt and a hoodie printed with the logo of Bar Italia—a collaboration with the London hangout institution where “all kinds of people mix together.” Abe has fond memories of going to the Soho spot when she was a student, she said.
People’s unity across cultures—that chimed a sweet note in this age of divisiveness. Clothes-wise, it was also a coming-together of sporty and formal, utilitarian down jackets, chunky knitting, and this time, a leopard-spot and faux fur injection of the season’s feeling for glamour.
Fashion can credit Sacai with the fact that layerings and collagings of fabrics and genres of clothing have become almost normalized. In a way, it’s a physical reflection of our current state of consciousness—processing so many levels of things going on around us, and in our heads. Others may use that chopped-up awareness to amplify angst, but Sacai has succeeded in processing it into a steady lifestyle brand. That’s her success.
