Paris Fashion Week autumn / winter 2019 wrapped up on March 5 with Louis Vuitton, which had quite an act to follow after Chanel bid Karl Lagerfeld an emotional farewell.
Luckily, creative director Nicolas Ghesquiere is not one to get overwhelmed by occasion, as he demonstrated by sending out a collection based on the Centre Pompidou in Paris, or more specifically, the wealth of people who gather outside it.
Referencing what he described in the show notes as the "melting pot of different tribes", his collection embarked on a visual journey of self-expression. If Lagerfeld’s final collection for Chanel was about the languid language of chic, so Ghesquiere’s was about setting oneself apart.
The opening look was a demure tweed dress, worn with what could have been a sequined scarf from the New Romantic era, and paired with a leather skull cap and woven raffia ankle boots. Jarring? Yes, but that was the point. Then came a drop-waist flared skirt in swirling blues, paired with a tan blouson cropped jacket in the jaunty shapes of the 1980s, while the famous house Damier check appeared on sleeves, skullcaps, mini skirts and even the occasional bag.
Shoulders and torsos were exaggerated with quilted ruffles, as more quilting appeared as padded jackets in granny florals - both tightly belted and vastly oversized - and mixed with denim skirts, skinny ties and brothel creepers.
Flirty round-sleeved dresses came in faded black and whites, and topped with pie-crust collars, and even with Puritan vestments. There were tiered skirts in shiny black leather worthy of Madonna circa 1984, and shell suits finished in white piping and cinched at the waist. Elsewhere, urban graffiti appeared splashed across leather jackets, shirts and pencil skirts.
Feminine lace-trimmed slip dresses were toughened up with rubber shoulder straps and blood red lips, as full-cut trousers – swelling over the hips to come in tight at the ankle – were traced with diagonal zips.
The final look – black shirt, black trousers, black shoes and black cap – was loaded with reference, from the heady style of 1980s bands A-ha and Duran Duran, to the do-rags of early hip-hop. This collection was about not being afraid to go against the grain, and brought to mind the words of the German masters of synth-pop Kraftwerk: “She’s a model and she’s looking good.”