It’s a strange time to be an American at Paris Fashion Week, as inquiries into impeaching the president run the risk of throwing our country into yet another political doom spiral. Remembering the beauty back home, especially against Paris’s Beaux-Arts buildings and crepuscular gray light, can be hard. Leave it to an outsider like Cédric Charlier to take bits and pieces of Americana and make something unexpectedly beautiful. His stated inspiration for Spring 2020 was the American West, from the rolling mesas of Arizona to the sandy deserts of Utah, leading him to ideas about leatherwork, denim, and cowboys. Charlier is a wardrober first and foremost, using his seasonal inspirations to underline his foundational clothing, meaning this was a more abstracted take on yeehaw culture than the cowboy hats and boots that have populated Instagram all summer long.
Which is good. Instead of literal Westernwear, Charlier offered craftsmanship in the form of paisley embroideries on leather and micro-pleated denim dresses with saddle-color contrast stitching. Worn with boxy, long shorts or eyelet ruffle skirts, these pieces had a casual cool that—all things considered—is still the backbone of American style today. Also, the majority of the collection was built on separates, offering Charlier customers the power to choose to buy, wear, and love these garments as they will. That’s not to discount the dresses, including a horse-print strapless dress that bubbled around the model’s body in a technical feat of draping and darting, but to celebrate perhaps the most American thing shown on the runway: The ability to choose your dream and make it real. Yeehaw to that!
