Let’s check what the weather report was for Paris the evening of September 29th: Chilly and cloudy but with an unexpectedly warm spell in the vicinity of the Palais Royal—aka the location of the Isabel Marant show. OK, I might have made up that last part but, come on! Marant always brings the heat. That’s both literally (her clothes so often speak to sunnier climes, and she has never met a thigh-grazing skirt or pair of short-short-shorts she didn’t like) and figuratively (she and her label have always exuded a joyous embrace of life).
For spring, she doubled down on that approach, with a look that was abbreviated, exuberant, and went from soft to tough—often in the same outfit. It’s a singularly identifiable look she has created, one remarkably adept as a kind of blank canvas on which to project whatever she’s feeling for, be it punk, Victoriana, or surf and scuba. It’s possible to spot a Marant at fifty paces—even with my eyesight.
This time round, Marant went back to basics, as it were, revisiting the moment when she started her label in the mid-’90s through to the dawn of the ’00s. There was a new mood in the air then, streetwise and raw, but also with a kind of world-weary, knowing charm. It was a moment when a different kind of woman—a little grunge, a little boho, a whole lot cool—made herself known. “I wanted to go back to a certain fragility of femininity, but still keeping in mind the Isabel Marant woman, who is a bit of a city warrior,” said the designer.
She referenced the work of the brilliant late photographer Corinne Day, who pretty much photographed Kate Moss before anyone else, but who also, importantly, spent her sadly all too brief career photographing women as they would like to be seen themselves. You could also say that that’s quintessential Marant: A label where women can see themselves in it.
The very personal era that Marant revisited was writ large in this collection. Racer cut tanks and swingy little dresses in patchwork configurations of metallic-threaded floral silk chiffon came with zippered leather minis and moto pants that had been washed and washed to get the perfect lived-in patina. Laser-cut suede jackets were as long as the shorts and fluttery skirts they were worn with. Camo looked as if it had been sun-bleached, cut into an oversized jacket (rocked by Gigi Hadid) or cargo pants, another from the Marant arsenal of killer trousers.
And to underscore what makes Isabel Marant, the woman and the label, tick, there was a profusion of artisanal detailing, from the tiny seed pearls sprinkled across an organdy camisole, to the macramé threaded across an organza blouse. “It’s all very subtle, but there’s a lot of craft going on here,” Marant said. “I’ve always been impressed by what the hand can create. Even if we speak about the industry of fashion, it’s really always about the craft of fashion for me.”
