Paris, The Last Stop Of Fashion Week In Spring And Summer 2021

This year's people may not have time to notice, this autumn's four fashion week has quietly come to an end. As the final finale of Paris fashion week, the pressure to withstand this season has not decreased compared with New York, London and Milan. Before the opening of the grand show, the number of new crown cases in Paris was on the rise, and French officials began to study and discuss measures urgently. By early October, the epidemic indicators in Paris showed no signs of improvement, but Paris's obsession with fashion was that it never stopped holding fashion weeks even during World War II. Therefore, faced with the pressure of the second rising epidemic situation, many brands still adhere to the "go show to the end".

According to the data released by the French Fashion Association, a total of 84 brands made it to Paris Fashion Week in this special October, four less than the number previously announced. This year is also the first time that comme des Garcons, founded by famous fashion designer Kawabata, is absent from Paris fashion week for the first time in 40 years. Junya Watanabe and noir Kei Ninomiya of the brand also announced their withdrawal. The new series is planned to be presented in the form of mini show and static exhibition in Tokyo from October 19 to 23. In this season, 19 brands, including Dior, Louis Vuitton, chanel and herm è s, stayed behind and chose the physical show, accounting for less than a quarter of the total. In addition, 20 brands chose static exhibitions with both safety and site feeling, while most other designers chose to display their works online. According to the official requirements for on-site crowd flow control, brands holding entity shows only invited 20% to 25% of the number of guests in the previous season.

All the pictures are from visual China

Remote interaction

Sometimes it's a good thing that the show is deserted. People have more attention to return to the creativity of fashion. Perhaps in a few decades' time, when fashion historians and future designers look back on this extraordinary period, they can't help but wonder how the current fashion industry is doing everything it can to fight a raging tug of war between standard physical fashion shows and creative mixed media forms, between sales and vigorous creativity.

Loewe's ss2021 series, the "open way" is impressive. In addition to the online catwalk, creative director Jonathan Anderson has teamed up with British artist Anthea Hamilton to present each guest with a brown paper file box. In the box, there are 16 sets of model posters, paint brushes, paste, scissors and other tools of 2021 spring and summer series women's clothing. He hopes that guests who receive the gift bag can manually paste 1:1 poster characters to

No matter where you are on the wall, it's like being in a three-dimensional fashion show. He hopes that through such a wall fashion show, viewers who are unable to participate in the physical fashion show can still be present and maintain a high degree of interaction. Just as the creativity of the exhibition is flying, the spring and summer clothes he brings this season are also full of imagination. The exaggerated wide bubble sleeves like clown's clothes, the flowery skirt and the leg of Lantern pants are not bound by the traditional concept of luxury brand fashion. Each upper body is like wearing a very dramatic art.

As for Christian Louboutin, the founder of the fashionable "red sole" brand, he parachuted into a social game app called zepeto during Paris Fashion Week this year. In this virtual reality game, which is somewhat similar to the hit "get together! Animal friends" at the beginning of the year, guests can fabricate their own characters, interact with other characters in the game or enjoy the performance of singer king Prince. Of course, more importantly, Christian is present Louboutin is a virtual avatar of a new store. Try the new loubishark shoes with their name. During the game, people can also buy virtual products in the brand space by earning coins. Through the way of virtual games, Christian Louboutin has attracted many new customers of generation Z to gather, entertain and consume in the game, thus broadening new marketing groups and ideas.

All the pictures are from visual China

Gender mobility and gender dominance

To break the traditional fashion label in different seasons. Louis Vuitton has split the show into two shows this season, with live online at the same time. The show is located in the Paris department store next to the brand headquarters. Louis Vuitton has laid out a green curtain with a sense of science and technology on the scene, allowing viewers who watch the show online to enjoy the video clip of "under the Berlin sky" covered with building walls and floors. Nicolas ghesqui è re, a women's brand designer, points out that this season has focused on the increasingly mobile boundaries between genders and the reshaping of gender concepts. In terms of the past design, in addition to gender specific styles, it is a simple combination of adding female elements to men's clothes or adding male elements to women's clothes. But this season, he hopes to reconstruct and explore the concept of "neutral", so the new series are mostly styles that blur the obvious characteristics of both sexes - oversized T-shirt, windbreaker, jacket or loose suit pants and sports shoes, which are equally reasonable for men and women.

The creative director of Balenciaga, demna gvasalia, has also presented many asexual suits and knee length windbreaker with wide silhouettes and pure and simple style. But the inspiration of his design is totally different from that of Lv. After four months of isolation, he is addicted to "imagine the fashion trend of 2030", and believes that within 10 years from now, everything in fashion will be sustainable. "It's clear that making one size fits all, one size, one size fit for all genders can significantly reduce the number of cuts we make," he told vogue. In addition, I also like to change the outline of clothes according to the wearer. But no matter how they change, they look good in them. "

Is entity show still necessary?

The last stop of the four rounds of fashion week in Paris, the details of the recession still can't be hidden: brands have cut their marketing budgets, the size of the show has shrunk, big brands are absent, the stars on and off the stage are dim, and even the fashion magazines with fresh flowers are becoming thin. The fashion industry has been forced to make a comeback in the uncertainty, with a little understandable hustle and bustle on the whole. In the current environment, do you still want to hold a solid fashion week? Different people obviously have different answers.

For the two giants of Kaiyun group and LVMH group, they have delivered different answers with their actions. Kaiyun group, which owns Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga, has indicated earlier that it will not hold any physical shows this season. Take Gucci as an example. In May this year, Alessandro Michele, the creative director of the brand, announced through a social platform that he would abandon the outdated seasonality and show ceremony and regain a rhythm more close to his own expression. In July, gucci released its first 12 hour creative live broadcast after breaking the rhythm of fashion week, attracting 35 million viewers. This successful experience has convinced Gucci that it no longer needs to rely on physical performance to cause sensation and attention. A Gucci executive told the Wall Street Journal that Gucci would hold another digital based event in October or November, adding: "fashion shows and fashion weeks are no longer critical to us."

However, for LVMH group, which owns Louis Vuitton, Dior and Givenchy, physical show is like a kind of ceremony and belief, and the effect can not be copied by online activities. Therefore, this season is still fully betting on Paris fashion week, especially the offline show. According to the research of social media monitoring agencies, the publicity coverage of events by traditional media and social media can be about equal to millions of dollars of paid advertising, and the strong performance of brands at fashion week is very helpful to translate into market share. In addition, a considerable part of the reason is that some of the early fashion shows that tried to establish a digital connection with the audience proved to be ineffective. For example, at the New York Fashion Week held in early September, most brands only held online fashion shows. According to survey data, compared with previous years, this season's New York Fashion week attracted much less attention on social media and traditional media. As a result, LVMH has not given up its physical show, although it knows that it will take health risks and bear huge operating costs.

For smaller fashion brands, whether they choose to take part in the fashion week or not, the answer has never wavered. The reason is very simple: mission. "I firmly believe that despite the many unknowns, we still have to move forward and we have to look to the bright future," Andrew GN, a fashion designer with the same name, told NPR. We, designers, are the core and driving force of the whole fashion ecosystem. Textile workers, printers, embroiderers, design studios, etc. all rely on our creative work. We have to keep going. "

No matter how uncertain the future may be, we know that the fashion industry is always on the move and beautiful things will continue to grow.