Paris: City of Light, city of the mega-weight fashion houses - the conglomerates that rule the roost. It's the final leg of four weeks of fashion and the one that, some say, counts the most.
"Since I was little, I heard that if you want to do fashion, you go to Paris and if you're known in Paris then you will one day be known all around the world," says Simon Porte Jacquemus, the mind behind Jacquemus,one of Paris' most exciting and innovative brands right now - he was awarded a special runner-up sum at this year's LVMH Designer Prize. "Paris is hard and it's complicated but if you do something in Paris, you have all the attention of the world."
This week, his show was the one that had fashion editors going out earlier than usual - on Tuesday (they usually head out for Dior on the Friday). The self-taught 25-year-old designer from the South of France who started out by emailing and Facebooking members of the fashion press to get them to see his collections and take note ("Hello, I'm doing my first collection," he would write - sometimes only to be blocked) is new, he's doing something different ( this time that involved leading a horse out on to the catwalk) and he's shaking up Paris.
"Hallelujah, I think finally this has to happen - regeneration," declares Demna Gvasalia, the voice of design collective Vetements, another name that has newly added itself to the Paris Fashion Week line-up and as a result become a must-see ( Kanye West dropped into last night´s show). There's a buzz about the 2014-launched label that's based on the idea of combining seasonal wardrobes with urban culture and personal style - and they too have caught the eye of LVMH, making the final shortlist for this year's prize. There's a renewed buzz about Paris where, simply, there hasn't seemed to be one for some while, it feels. We accepted it was about tradition and heritage. C'est tout.
"There has to be regeneration and change and now is the moment. Also those fashion houses taking on younger creative people to take on their vision, which is great," continues Gvasalia, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp who worked at Maison Martin Margiela for seven years and was head designer at Louis Vuitton womenswear from 2012 to 2014. "It felt like a couple of years ago it came to the limit of being conservative and corporate and how the system works. People are ready for something different." It seems they are.
Aside from new labels like Vetements and Jacquemus, there's newness to be found in established houses: Adrien Caillaudaud and Alexis Martial at Carven, David Koma at Mugler, Guillaume Henry at Nina Ricci, Sebastien Meyer and Arnauld Vaillant at Courreges and Adam Andrascik at Guy Laroche. Simply: there is new and young blood in Paris, lots of it. The scene is changing. It's exciting. And like the lunar eclipse, it doesn't happen all that often. London, sure, we expect it, that's what it does; New York, a bit, it has its new generations; Milan, occasionally (Giorgio Armani has made Stella Jean and Angelos Bratis protegés); but never really Paris.
"Paris needed it. You see all around the world that there are these new fashion weeks coming from all the other countries, you see that you need something new," says Carven's Alexis Martial, whose opinion is shared by Jacquemus. He says: "I hope we're going to see more and more cool guys on the fashion scene because really today it's incredible how fashion is closed, it's a really closed world. It's hard to go in to, Paris wasn't like this in the Eighties - Jean Charles de Castelbajac, Jean Paul Gaultier, it was more freeing and more open-minded, now it's a big business, that's why it's hard to play the game."
It's easy to forget, as we trot from one fashion capital to the next, programmed that London is creative, New York is commercial and Milan and Paris is where business is done, that the latter, too, bore the original enfant terribles. No one ever actually wore a cone bra out on the street or a speech bubble above their head. But it was a provocative proposition.
"We can do things out of the frame. We have a kind of luxury freedom being independent," says Gvasalia of positioning Vetements in Paris, where it made its breakout presentation in a sex club. "It really created a buzz around us. It's Paris, it's kind of predictable, it's Chanel, it's Dior and then suddenly there's a show in a sex club and it makes people talk," recalls Gvasalia, who had considered basing the brand in Berlin, but then it would have blurred into that whole typically subversive Berlin scene. "We don't necessarily do things how they should be done just because they're done that way and they have been done that way for the past 20 years," he says of Paris. Where in New York and London the schedules are packed and new additions easily lost, it's Paris' storied rigidity that has its advantages: if you do something there that goes against the grain you stick out - you've made it before you've even made it.
"It's the end game, the end goal, everyone's who's the best went to Paris. It's the most demanding," reflects Adam Andrascik, who was appointed as the new creative director at heritage house Guy Laroche secretly at the end of last year. His second collection for the label, presented this week, came with a distinct twist on any tradition, sending out punky cool girls who'd plundered the millennium when it came to their spring/summer 2016 wardrobe. "When you're designing a label that's been going for X years, well it made me work harder and push myself more" - because there are the resources to do it. Previously an American in London running his own label, he notes he could see how Paris was "picking up" - a host of new and young names joining it - when he made the move. "I still find it intimidating in a good way."
His sentiments are echoed by the new design duo at Carven, who made their debut in March this year, taking over the helm from another young gun, Guillaume Henry, who went off to work his magic at Nina Ricci.
"Paris is known for big brands and fashion houses and it's a big challenge to take your part in that," say the duo. But it's one they relish. "Doing Paris Fashion Week is a way to register something really important. It's always been our dream." Since their arrival at the house they have been defining their brand of cool Carven girl - she's young, cute: "She's not the same Parisian girl [of Guillaume Henry's] but she's the best friend of the girl a few seasons ago," they agree. The other thing they agree on is that being a smaller brand in a sea of rich heritage is the key. "It's important for us to be compared to these types of big houses." It, in fact, likely polarises the differences, the sense of old and new, variation and balance.
But why now does there seem such a reboot? Sitting in the Vetements new and airy studio a good month before the show, the collection is done and Gvasalia reflects: "I think the cycle is an inevitable part of fashion, it has to reinvent itself, refresh itself, there's no way without it and in 10 years it will be the same." Of course, let's not forget that Paris is home to the Belgians and to the Japanese - significant fashion moments and movements, designers who still challenge convention now, only we are more used to their sensibilities where once we weren't.
"I hear from a lot of people that Paris has begun a new revival in the last few years - you can see it in the party scene too, and even in your private life," says Glenn Martens, creative director of relatively new label Y/Project, which launched in 2010 with the aim to appeal to the individual. "I think perhaps it's a reaction to the fact that everyone has been here for a long time."
Nina Ricci's Guillaume Henry, a self-confessed contented Parisian for 20 years, points out that it's always been an exciting time to be a designer in Paris and that this energy is more about continuing something that's already there as opposed to a newness. So what has changed? The internet, that's what, he observes - it creates visibility and enables both new and established names to interact with their audience, throwing their brand name into the dialogue - be it as cultural or social media chatter.
"Today the number of followers on Instagram is the most important thing," acknowledges Gvasalia. And the label casts from Instagram too. It's the same story for Jacquemus. "It's so important for me because I didn't have any help. People can really know exactly my universe, it's never just about the clothes." Gvasalia adds: "It's [Paris] is not like other cities, like London for example where you get supported by many different institutions, here it is completely impossible - you really have to compete with houses like Chanel and Dior. We're doing it our way: we are showing in place that no else wants to show and costs no money. You have to fight your way through." Ultimately it's about being "part of it, not next to it".
"Historically Paris is more dense and all the names remain quite historical, all the brands have been there forever," says Henry. And that's the magic, the allure in the first place - being able to make a contribution means something. "It's always been the main fashion capital with big players and important shows," says David Koma, who divides his time between Mugler and his eponymous London-based label. There's a level of respect upon entering Paris' exclusive doors and what you do once through them. "Paris is a blend of creativity and maturity you don't get anywhere else, that's what makes it stand out," concludes Andrascik. Right now, it's got plenty of reasons to stand out - and we're only half way through Paris Fashion Week.
