When fashion week goes into virtual mode

“Des collages postmodernes.” Voilà la lecture qu’a faite l’historien de la mode Richard Harrison Martin des défilés de notre époque : une rencontre entre des temporalités disparates, une découverte du futur dans un présent dorénavant inscrit dans le passé. Ephémères et exclusifs, ceux-ci nourrissent des rituels propres à ce milieu : les foules habillées de tendances rocambolesques amassées à l’extérieur du lieu de l’événement, les rédacs chef au premier rang l’air obligatoirement désabusé, le la créateur trice concluant le show par un très bref salut.

Around this restricted and untouchable space-time is born a factory of desire and belonging.What about luxury without its curb?Without interaction, without tactility, without shared experience?This is the question that the industry arises, which had to give up for almost a year to these famous four weeks of parades, the shows being immediately defeated by the health constraints of the COVID.

But fashion had not said its last word.It was then that the Digital Fashion Week was born.To understand: a calendar identical to that of the IRL era announcing, hour after hour, an official presentation, but online.On the brand's website, at the agreed time was unveiled a video narrating the new collection.

To fill the gap between a frantic parade and a parade viewed in pajamas, the big brands have redoubled with efforts: invitation cards of the most formal inviting their Esses host in their own home with Champagne and Chocolate, inventing luxury and exclusivityProximity.

Un champ visuel à investir

Each claw is its universe, its aesthetic approach, its budget too, in this new chapter of the SAPE.During the Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2021 week, Dior opted for a romantic short film around the tarot in which a collection of folklore was guessed.

Chanel, on the other hand, has recreated a parade in good and due form in its eternal large palace, but in the presence only of a handful of scattered actresses.

Each brand, therefore, its symbolic background to transcribe in this innovative format.Margiela returned to the sources of its artistic creator John Galliano.The latter, known for his theatrical parades, and in particular for a disguised self -staging, imagined a completely different kind of show.His slender silhouette appeared, his head overseen and the shoulders marked, in front of a psychedelic background, to finally present ... absolutely nothing.A provocative blow that seems to denounce overconsumption while leaning over this era of the void.

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Jean Paul Gaultier, the terrible child who had bowed out in January 2020, finally made an exception and chose to virtually open the doors of his fashion house, revealing his archives - a breath of fresh air - to fight, according to his own statements, against “a world that contains itself in itself”.

Couturier Franck Sorbier, meanwhile, proposed a sublimation of the current era, not without humor, entitling its flagship dress La Covid - a creation of Jais, Victorian and heavy -, in an atmosphere convening both Gothicand the commedia dell'arte.

On the avant-garde side, Alphonse Maitrepierre presented a surreal and postpop collection entirely in 3D experimental imaging-undoubtedly an abyss of the digital week in which it was registered.The young Creator tells that he has allied himself with the artist ADEM around a common inspiration of Madeleine Castaing's work: “being able to make absolutely all my ideas achievable thanks to 3D was unprecedented for me, very liberating during this period without visibility”, he said.

Un art nouveau

For Alice Verrier and Sébastien Bauer, at the head of the provisional title, a very trendy company specializing in the fashion film, their achievements are much more than ersatz of parades: the COVvid would have generated a new film production rich in promises.“The video is the medium that allows you to touch the most meaning;The raw material is so rich: with the audio and the visual, we enter the texture, we hear the real ", specifies the duo, stressing that if" a camera cannot replace the human eye ", it can, on the other hand, “enter more deeply into materials.

In haute couture, for example, images can capture details, fabric movements, embroidery that is impossible to see with the naked eye. ”

If these film projects are intended for the screen, final of models, whimsical decor lending itself to a square format, clothing changing color under the flashes of phones ... Here, paroxysm of the digital era, the event n 'is more incidental, it disappears to exist only in and for its dematerialized reception.

Le “tout-numérique” inclusif

Nevertheless, these solutions have rather delightful aspects - against which the happy few are usually subscribed to the forefront: an egalitarian placement, democratic accessibility, a greater opportunity for young brands to be seen by stylists and buyersusually overwhelmed.

“Pre-Cavid, we were all in a logic of the physical.Now that we are refocused on digital without space constraints, it is suddenly possible to invite absolutely everyone.Virtual experience allows everyone to belong to it, which is completely aligned with the inclusiveness movement, "explains Sophie Roche Conti, director of the New York Press Relations Bureau Conti Communications.

If the founding principle of luxury is inaccessibility, desire must today be fueled otherwise.Sophie Roche Conti recounts the implementation of many appeal strategies in videos: the appearance of celebrities and even actor nes of Saturday Night Live in several New York short films, unpublished talks with the creator Trice, and commentspersonalities invited during filming."Suddenly, the dialogue predominates", notes Sophie Roche Conti on the subject of this small revolution.

Vers une mode culturelle ?

Particularly in -depth changes and reflections in the young London guard!What The Guardian describes as an attitude "Pass The Mic" is to give the floor and associate his claw with someone or a cause.

Thus, the Kid Charles Jeffrey club (at Loverboy) imagined a “Live-Stream Happening”, leaving the floor to artists and performer in non-Black Ches, with the aim of raising funds for the UK Black Pride;The Duo Marques’Almeida took advantage of Fashion Week to present its initiative to recycle factory textile falls.And designer Priya Ahluwalia has chosen to confide in her Indian and Nigerian origins and what it means to be "young and mestizo in London" today.