You’ve got to admire Anaïs Mak for her show-must-go-on attitude. Based in Hong Kong, she endured the city’s widespread protests last year only to be one of several designers on the Paris schedule directly affected by the coronavirus this season. Faced with delays on the Chinese parts of her production, she could have decided to sit out the week; but there she was backstage on a particularly rainy Sunday betraying little indication of how stressful it must have been to reach this point.
Her collection consisted of just 12 looks, including the one worn by singer-songwriter Vox, who performed live through a sheer veil covered in clusters of blue flowers. Double-breasted blazers in lace that had been gilded with metallic foil were the lineup’s showstoppers, not just because they could be adapted to various stylings; they also furthered Mak’s youthful approach to dressing up. She proposed new tiered tulle skirts with additional lustrous accents and added sparkle to knit cardigans and crop tops, as a “kirakira” flourish (the filter/app turns everyone into a crystalline princess).
To make up for so few real-life looks, she added a simulated show that was projected onto a large screen of the auditorium where we were seated. She gave animation artists the patterns of the designs that didn’t make it to the runway and they, in turn, created virtual models in the exact silhouettes. Let’s just say that Gigi, Bella, and all the other models out there need not worry that they are going to be replaced by avatars anytime soon. Still, this was an interesting experiment that spoke to Mak’s ingenuity in resorting to video game technology, which is becoming more and more seductive to fashion people (see Elizabeth von Guttman and Alexia Niedzielski’s luxury gaming app, Ada).
“Virtual reality has been on our minds for some time,” Mak said, adding that her feminine ideal has always embodied a certain spin on fantasy princesses harnessing their courage to face the world. “I’m half-glad we had this new way of working because it really inspired me.” If the show wasn’t what she initially envisioned, it was a valiant effort to salvage the situation and to maintain the visibility and optimism of her futuristic ingenues.
