The physical shows that began in Paris today are raising skeptical eyebrows across the pond. Where Americans see hubris or a too cavalier attitude to safety, the French see something different. Christelle Kocher who staged her Koché fashion show today in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, not far from her studio in the north of Paris, put it this way: “It’s a matter of resistance. It’s a matter of emotion…. Physicality is not dead; physicality is evolving, as it always has been.” Watching Kocher’s show unfold around the park’s famous Temple de la Sibylle from a laptop in a little New York apartment was not only poignant, but powerful. Life-affirming.
That’s been the Kocher way since she launched her brand on the runway five years ago, pioneering the street casting phenomenon that has since taken hold of the industry and promulgating the once groundbreaking, now de rigueur notion of elevated streetwear. Kocher’s brand of fashion isn’t alienating, it’s encompassing, and that too is a quality whose time has come. The park felt like a departure from the busy urban spaces she’s chosen for shows before, most notably the basement level of Les Halles, but on a Zoom call Kocher made a point of its diversity and “all walks of life” appeal. During quarantine, her strolls around its perimeter were a daily balm.
As with many of her peers, Kocher’s experience of quarantine has redoubled her interest in craft. Embroidery is integral to her work, given her long experience at Lemarié, the plumassier to Chanel, but here she experimented with hand-painting the bodices of the slip dresses that are her signature. It was a time-consuming process, apparently, but the results are special. Lace was another decorative motif, both the real thing and photo prints; it provided a pretty counterpoint to the sportier elements—spliced soccer jerseys, uniform stripes—that are essential to her vocabulary. Feathers decorated a striking cape and a bustier worn with high-waisted trousers.
She closed the show with a betrothed pair, one in denim and the other in a feather-covered ball skirt that erased old distinctions about high fashion and low fashion and the equally tired concept of the gender binary. And if she wanted to “bring back emotion,” it worked.
