The Paris (Fashion Week) Review: Croissants, garden parties and hardcore ribbons

Anne Valérie Hash, one of my favourite French designers (and forever the next Big One), is about to present Paris Fashion Week’s first really-must-see collection, and I am dreaming. No, literally. I’m in my big white hotel bed, nested in sheets, dreaming of bunny rabbits with blue nail polish on.

At 7:30 a.m. home-time, my body screams for caffeine and I awake to panic. My first thought is unprintable. My second is: oh no, Paris has probably eaten all its croissants already!

But I did find a crescent-shaped slice of heaven, plus espresso in a cute plastic shot glass—even though when you order coffee to go here, the barista looks at you like you have the H1N1 virus—and a 20-euro cab to Musée de l’Homme. (Why did I book a hotel in the emerging 20th arrondissement again? Oh right, because it’s Mama Shelter, and it’s super-fantastically cool. It’s also kind of like staying in Brooklyn during New York Fashion Week.)
At the shows, my first sight is most welcome: streetwise photographer and friend Tommy Ton. “Rule Number One,” he tells me, surveying my half-Value Village, half-fast fashion outfit. “If you want to be on time for shows, don’t dress up.”

OK, Tommy. Tell it to Anna—not Wintour, no, but Dello Russo. The Italian Voguette is forever the paragon of gemmy glamour. In Dello Russo-verse, every hour is cocktail hour. (See the evidence here.) Today’s silks were from Chloé and Theyskens-era Rochas, and her peach Louboutins matched the Rochas invite in her bagless hand—coincidence? I’d be disappointed if it were.

Dello Russo might have felt over-the-top at Marco Zanini’s garden party—in a marked departure from those Theyskens days, not a single gown trailed down the runway. Instead: a Little White Dress or two and lots of tea-length sheaths, thinly belted with flowers at the waist, in colours (peach, plum, sable, teal) plucked from a Manet scene. Light, blocky sandals went with socks. Straw hats reinforced that fresh-as-a-Daisy-Buchanan feel.

And though it’s a spring thing, the boater hat is floating around autumnal Paris, too. I liked it best worn in a natty-ratty way by Pete from Stylesightings (stylesightings.com), a scruffian who kept me entertained in the wait for Gareth Pugh’s show by telling me New York stories and kidding around in the old photo booth at Palais de Tokyo.

Pete also captured the celeb sighting du jour: Rihanna, who instigated a minor flashmob when she arrived with Ellen von Unwerth—shockingly on time, too. (And with Entourage’s Adrian Grenier sneaking in on her heels.) If America’s biggest Miss Thing could be punctual, what was fashion it-boy Charles Guislain’s excuse? The wunderkind fluttered in five minutes before showtime like a bat out of hell, preternaturally pale and crimson-caped, standing out among the black watch of Pugh’s superfans.

I’m not sure what the avant-goth kids will wear now—this was the designer’s most exquisitely wrought vision yet, but all in (gasp) grey! And just when I was wondering what hautecore embellishment he’d go for next—studs are ubiquitous, nails were last season, so what? Chainsaw teeth?—he came out with…ribbons. Yes, laced-up on leggings or basket-woven into his signature shapes. Equally soft/hard were Romanesque feather headdresses–one looked like exaggerated helmet plumage, another like a pair of chariot wheels. I sighed many, many times. But I’ve decided to covet something I can afford: the matte grey nail polish, like asphalt left in the sun, created by ManGlaze’s Marc Alexander Paez for the show. “It’s called ‘Hot Mess’ because we had such a short time to make it!” Paez told me on Twitter. When I suggested “Haute Mess,” he loved it. You’re welcome. Now send me a bottle, s.v.p?

Video via lucianoborgos YouTube

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