Anthony Alvarez is on a roll. You could see it in the crowd preening and posting as they waited outside the posh lycée Molière, where his spring 2023 Bluemarble show was held. And you could feel it backstage just minutes before the show.
The starting point was a dream of going back in time to the California desert to experience the Monterey festival, the designer explained. What he discovered there: "hippie cultures, joy, and celebration."
Those vibes, spliced with riffs on his own era— the late 1990s and 2000s—yielded some pretty fantastic clothes. Patchworks of four-hearted clovers and the kind of sunbursts that trippy festival goers might have seen at the time converged on what Alvarez described as “a big blend of inspirations” that yields several vestiaires in one, but always with a touch of eccentricity.
The highlights: baggy skater pants with sequined cuffs or rhinestone suns, reversible jewel-tone varsity jackets, hoods spliced onto shirts and oversized flowers embroidered on workwear. Throw in a dash of French artisanal craft, a smidge of classicism in the trenches and shirting, and you've got the mix. Improbable as they sound, even laced sandals with wave details, made of surplus leather, perhaps in cosmic violet, had a certain allure.
Alvarez called it the New Paris Attitude. "Part of the collection is me, and part of it is what fascinates me; it’s what I’d love to see on people," the designer offered. To a piece, it worked.
