Fashion is finally catching up with Christelle Kocher. The street-casting concept she’s championed from her first show in 2015 in an effort to reflect her “real Paris” is now a badge of honor and a mark of cool on both sides of the Atlantic. Clothing-wise, too, her high-low/haute-street mix is a concept that’s been lifted and adapted by other designers. Kocher doesn’t always get the spotlight she deserves, so it was a real delight to walk out of the 19th Arrondissement’s Espace Niemeyer and hear the crowd’s enthusiasm today. Yes, this was her best show yet.
Best because while it was her most ambitious outing so far, it was also the most wearable. Spurred by a summertime trip to the Seychelles and China, Kocher’s embrace and endorsement of diversity took on broader global implications. She called the collection an “homage to the know-how” of the world, and sampled from a large swath of regions. There was an African dashiki, American patchwork, Japanese plaid, a YSL passage, tattoo-print bodysuits à la Jean Paul Gaultier, Indian face jewelry, and soccer jerseys, a visual language everybody can understand. On another runway, all this borrowing might have come off as cultural appropriation, a messy hodgepodge. Kocher is assured enough in her vision that it all looked recognizably like her.
As for the wearability factor, the women around me were buzzing about the elegant navy and white polka-dot section. In particular the dotty sleeveless, ruffled-hem top worn with full black trousers and a fuchsia silk rose choker, and the polka-dot trench sliding off the shoulders of a catsuit in what appeared to be the pattern of a Palestinian keffiyeh. This woman’s eye was drawn to a sharply tailored gilet densely embroidered with silver beads forming the shapes of stars. That silvery beading is Parisian know-how, and Kocher has it in spades.
