The last champagne has been popped, the folding chairs have been restacked, the legion of runway models have gone back into cryogenic storage (or whatever they do between October and January), and Fashion Month is over for another season. Following a flurry of shows in New York, London, and Milan (tl;dr—quiet luxury is out, buttcracks are in, PETA is protesting sweaters now), the festivities came to a climax in Paris with presentations by heavy hitters like Chanel, Tom Ford, Balenciaga, and Valentino. As ever, production values were high, celebrity cameos were abundant, and the world’s top designers continued to offer a wealth of inspiration.
Here are the moves most likely to make it into our spring-summer wardrobes. Belts Where They Shouldn’t Be It’d be easy to pin the preponderance of weirdly low belts we saw in Paris on the second-coming of low-rise pants, but that doesn’t seem to be entirely the case. While Valentino, Balenciaga, and Tom Ford all featured slender belts worn well below hip level, Celine and Miu Miu went in the opposite direction, belting above the waist with shoelaces and bits of string.
Taken together, these looks lead us to conclude that a) a thin belt is now a necessity, and b) how thin you’re willing to go (and where you want to cinch it) are a matter of preference. Monastic Chic Color came back in a big way this year, but Jean-Paul Gaultier, Celine, Balenciaga, and Tom Ford all offered plenty of monochrome creativity that evoked the understated drama of monastic robes. An unlikely source of fashion week inspo, perhaps (Monks’ attire usually symbolizes humility and detachment from earthly vanity, so not exactly fashion’s wheelhouse), but—as romantasy fans already knew—it can also be kinda sexy.
Designers expanded on the idea with looks that combine the drape and dramatic flare of religious vestments with enough skin to make a Benedictine swoon. It’s a bit of a tough hang for most of us, but if you were looking for an excuse to try out a rope belt (see above), a drapey monochrome fit is absolutely the way to do it. Black Tie Optional Heading into the holidays and awards season, there’ll be a lot of talk about black tie over the next few months—mainly about what is and isn’t an acceptable interpretation of this formal dress code.
A clutch of hot designers, including Matthieu Blazy, Haider Ackermann, and Pierpaolo Piccioli (the creative genii behind Chanel, Tom Ford, and Balenciaga, respectively), weighed in at their Paris shows with some highly unorthodox—and extremely vibey—takes on black tie, none of which featured an actual black tie. Ackermann paired Tom Ford’s signature peak-lapel tux with an ultra-low U-neck black tee or a spangly vest, while Piccioli remixed the look with a mesh sweater and a baggy leather jacket. How you interpret any dress code depends on the nature of the event and your appetite for experimentation, but for anyone with a hankering to get freaky with black tie, Paris Fashion Week offered plenty of new ways to do it. ’90s Minimalism Fewer guys are wearing backward Kangol hats and Oakley T-Wires in New York these days, but the legacy of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette still ripples through the fashion world, especially the latter’s signature tasteful minimalism.
In addition to The Row, where tasteful minimalism is kinda the whole thing, the new collections from Tom Ford, Celine, Loewe, and Miu Miu were awash in low-key yet sophisticated color-blocked looks. The “less is more” message is fairly straightforward, but making a pair of white trousers, a camel sport coat, and a black tee look refined remains deceptively complicated. We don’t pretend to have the same knack for assemblage as Michael Rider, who showed precisely that look for Celine, but he sure makes us want to take a swing at it.
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