The mirrored invitations, the huge reflective panels that revolved in the middle of the catwalk, the model casting that was more conventionally good-looking than usual… these could all be construed as signposts to the heart of Raf Simons' latest collection. According to the designer's longtime DJ-collaborator Michel Gaubert, the theme was vanity and performance. So there were the kind of sartorially precise suits that present a man's best front to the world, especially when he's engaged in the kind of financial chicanery that has plunged us into our present sorry state.
But that very thought raised another subtext -the idea of duality, the public face and the face in the mirror. Simons brilliantly played off the notion by manipulating unlikely face-offs between the conventional and the not-so : a camel coat had gray flannel lapels, a gray flannel jacket had camel sleeves. A knit shrug was laid over a suit. The remnants of a techno-fabric jacket made another. But the sharpest juxtapositions were neoprenelike shrugs in hot pink or bright blue hauled over flannel or pinstripes to create the impression of an alien other. The effect was heightened by the small pieces of mirror inlaid in jacket lapels. The macabre echo of "The Silence of the Lambs" confirmed the show as one of Paris' most memorable.
But that very thought raised another subtext -the idea of duality, the public face and the face in the mirror. Simons brilliantly played off the notion by manipulating unlikely face-offs between the conventional and the not-so : a camel coat had gray flannel lapels, a gray flannel jacket had camel sleeves. A knit shrug was laid over a suit. The remnants of a techno-fabric jacket made another. But the sharpest juxtapositions were neoprenelike shrugs in hot pink or bright blue hauled over flannel or pinstripes to create the impression of an alien other. The effect was heightened by the small pieces of mirror inlaid in jacket lapels. The macabre echo of "The Silence of the Lambs" confirmed the show as one of Paris' most memorable.
