From short to supersized. In fashion size always matters

On a Tuesday morning, Virginie Viard took us back to 1961 only to get inspired by Alain Resnais’s unconventional drama, L’Année Dernière à Marienbad. In the movie words break down as the beautiful landscapes are unfolding and actress Delphine Seyrig who is playing ‘A' - in a relationship confusion that might some characterize as a Ménage à trois - looks stunning in the costumes, designed by Coco Chanel herself. In order to bring the essence of the movie to the present, Chanel’s artistic director asked from Inez and Vinoodh to shoot in Paris a short movie with Kristen Stewart. The American actress was seen coming down the famous Rue Cambon Chanel staircase or even taking the metro, dressed in Chanel Spring 2023 of course. Although the movie indicates the fact that we should forget the past in order to move into the future, Virginie Viard optimistically looked back in order to deliver the prosperous future of the Chanel woman. Her latest collection brings all the characteristics of the brand through a more youthful prism, with clothes that seemed influences by Kristen Stewart’s personality as a strong and independent woman. The classic Chanel suit felt reformed and modernized, while high slit skirts, flesh exposing dresses, crop top sets and hot shorts were passing by. 

Thinking about shorts, my mind slips down to Miu Miu’s latest collection as a length and size continuum. Miuccia Prada was always seeing Miu Miu as her alter ego, a creation of her own that can bring to the surface her well hidden-from-the-public-eye self. Playfulness, seduction, and cleverness were always parts of the brand and its founder’s also. While Miuccia Prada unleashing her seriousness into Prada’s core, Miu Miu remains as her own relaxed version in history of fashion. It’s almost like the perfect and well-balanced duality. For the first time, these two aspects of the designer are coming together to outline Miu Miu’s future. To deliver her message about the season directly into the modern consumer, Miuccia Prada collaborates with Chinese artist Shuang Li who created a series of visuals as a building bridge between material and the immaterialistic world - and so the dreamscape begins. In the last two seasons, Miu Miu allied with the sexy, subversive, product-focused tastes of the digital generations by creating bold statements about modern dressing and redefining its signature girlish sets. For this season the classic but new kind of the brand’s signature gets iconised as it projects itself into the future. A lot of Prada references from the past, such as the nylon jackets or the extremely large pockets and belts came together only to create an interesting mix in which details feel enlarged and the clothes smaller. Exactly like the hot mini skirt that FKA Twigs wore while she was closing the show. 

For the last show of the week, we went from super mini to oversized. Nicolas Ghesquière wanted to make a statement this season in the most popular place of Paris - the Louvre. In order to do so, he invited his longtime friend French artist Philippe Parreno and Hollywood production designer James Chinlund to create a gigantic flower that in a first glimpse looked more like a spaceship. This statue was clearly pointing out what it was going to happen inside it. Yes, the flower was actually the show space. By the first look, we already understood what we were about to witness. All the Louis Vuitton iconic accessories and details got enlarged as a simple of the relationship between the house’s past and future. Proportions changed dramatically. The cloche clés keyholder that accessorizes many of the brand’s bags and the Vachetta leather luggage tags alongside with the logo of the twist bags got all supersized. But he didn’t stopped at these only. Something similar happened with the clothes as well. With his Fall 2015 collection for the house which was his first one, Nicolas Ghesquière setted ground for the growing future of Vuitton, now he’s looking back at it only to emphasize that the brand is also a strong fashion company. Humongous zippers, chains and buttons were becoming the biggest part of dresses, uplifting the essence of detail but also energetically disrupted femininity through the multiplexity nature of the collection.