Vogue Editors’ Closing Thoughts On A Debut-Filled Fashion Week

0:03Choma Where's Choma? Well, I barely made it to the show, guys. So we just left the Balenciaga show, which was at their headquarters. And somehow I left three minutes after Nicole and I arrived 40 minutes later. And I was the last person to enter the room apart from Megan Markle. What an interesting sighting. She truly, truly gasped when she walked by in her all-white outfit. She was sitting right by you guys, right by the Vogue team. I didn't actually make it over there. I had to just take a perch. Wow. Did you get a good glimpse? Like the skin looked good. She looks beautiful. She does look really beautiful.

1:09She really does. And sort of like a princess, you know. I was trying to put together the connections. I was backstage when she said hello to him and they embraced several times. And she whispered, I'm guessing, words of encouragement and congratulations in his ear, which many, many people were doing that backstage. Kristen Scott Thomas was there. Isabel Huppert, who was a Demna girl, but is now a Pierpaolo girl at Balenciaga. And, you know, just bunches of editors and journalists trying to hear him talk about, you know, which direction he's going to take it in. Wow. I mean, he got pretty much a standing ovation at the end.

1:54He came out looking extremely happy. I did like how he sort of thread the needle from Demner's Balenciaga to Cristobal's Balenciaga to his own interpretation of the house. The first model had these very intense blackout shades that were kind of bug eye shaped that very much tipped were a nod to Demner's Balenciaga. But then the shapes were very much in keeping with Cristobal. And honestly, what we know already from Paolo, who's very much known as a couturier, very much in keeping with the spirit of the roots of the house, the origins of the house. Yes. And I think what made it work for me was that it really felt effortless.

2:40Like couture tends to be quite well studied and crafted and a lot of care goes into it. This is obviously not couture. It's ready to wear. And I just appreciated the fact that even though the shapes were sort of couture-ish, they were sort of handled in like an offhanded way. It didn't feel, I mean, it's fashion, but it didn't feel serious to me. And I like the way that some of the pieces were put with jeans, culotte. There was a great pair of very narrow black trousers that were quite simple but super elegant. And then, like you said, we saw lots of very Pirapalo things with those bright colors paired with the muted ones.

3:23You know, that sort of like grayish lilac and then that bright, bright pink felt like a really him color combination. And I think that, you know, there's definitely a customer for that kind of elevated but sort of not pretentious evening. I always love the way he dresses because he always wears, you know, simple black trousers, a t-shirt, very great sneakers, but everything is quite precise. And there's this kind of casual elegance to the way he dresses. And it very much comes through in the clothes, like you said, paired with jeans. As someone who's been wearing jeans all week with pretty much everything for day or night, I feel very seen.

4:03He wants women to feel comfortable in their skin. And I do love that. And there was also a lot of this movement that we've been talking about all and this texture that we've been talking about all week, which is always interesting to me because you're like, how do they all know? It is something in the water in Paris. Must be.

4:30In a quarter mile, arrive at your destination. So this is Chelsea, a producer on the show, and I'm walking around right now trying to find Chloe and Chioma.

4:47Hi, I'm just trying to... Close. I'm meeting up with someone for the Vogue show. Close. Okay. I am marching up a giant hill on my way to meet up with them to hear about how the Celine show was.

5:08Oh, there's Chloe. Hi. Hi.

5:17Sorry, are we recording? We are. I don't have to.

5:24Choma, Nicole and I and Claire Thompson-Jeanville started out the morning at the Paris Vogue offices with a podcast recording and then choma nicole and i had a really lovely breakfast with simone balotti the designer of jill sander and he was so charming and elegant and just seems like a really lovely man we're so excited for what he's up to and then like good soldiers we boarded our train actually our got in our car to the parc du saint clou which is a beautiful park on the outskirts of paris this is all to say we went a long way for Celine and it was a beautiful show location and beautiful day and weather but it was long.

6:13Yeah it was long it was far but it was a beautiful show and they got lucky with the weather it was gorgeous we were sat between kind of in an alley of trees and there were moments when the sun came through so it was kind of nice and they did provide lovely blankets which was great. Blankets and monogrammed little um pillows yeah pillows have been a running theme throughout this season in a way and there was a six-person k-pop band called um tws tws and they all came and bowed to anna and introduced themselves one by one and then she said i am anna and it was a great moment on video and I thought the show was fabulous Brian Malloy styled it again I thought he did a great job it felt like women on the go sort of a chic Selenian woman grabbing her kid to bike to school there were Selene bike helmets which I love the little tiny leather sneakers that almost looked like soulless keds in very thin calfskin leather and what else trauma they're very same serge gainsburg jas shoes that they that became very popular last season i mean it's so funny because a friend of mine was like our skinny jeans are coming back and i can actually say yes they are coming back um i i've i love the denim last season and i and i loved it this season i'm not a skinny jeans girl but there were some quite persuasive versions in there and then also some more tailored styles that were cropped to the ankle I love the styling.

7:53I love the sort of beads that we're poking through at the collar. It's reinterpretation of scarf dressing with these ruched tops, scattered tops that had the scarf print or bags that had the scarf print on them. I feel like there's been a trend of sort of reinterpreting scarves and using scarves differently. I mean, Hermes yesterday, the scarves were sort of threaded through little leather brassieres. And scarf print was put onto knitwear. Today, scarves were tied around the quite heavy wooden block invitations. And then the scarves were really integrated into the look. Some of them that were sort of patchworks together as scarf tops.

8:41I do think it's interesting these houses that have a real history with silk scarves, finding ways to reinterpret that and still make that feel relevant. Yeah, I mean, it's funny walking around Paris. I do notice that women have a way of wearing scarves of all ages across all generations. It's really fun to see. So scarf dressing is such a Parisian thing. Yeah, it is a very Parisian thing. To see it reinterpreted and the many ways that you can wear scarves. And I've seen this week people draping it over their pants, which I think was started at the last Dries show. which I think was an excellent styling trick.

9:21I think it's lovely when you can go to a show and take something and wear something immediately, take an idea from it that you can take immediately. I love crafty beads and those kind of necklaces that you pick up on a vacation. And they had lots of them layered and fun beaded earrings that you probably would have made as a kid at school. So there were some things that were very accessible about the show.

9:53We are going to take a quick break. We'll be back.

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10:37We're reporting live from the Paris offices, and we're joined by our dear colleague, Claire Thompson-Johnville, who is head of editorial content at Vogue France. Hi Claire. Hi, happy to be here. Okay, it has been a very long, very eventful Paris Fashion Week. We are recording this on Sunday morning, Paris time, and we have seen so much. We have a few very important things left to see. For example, Chanel, which is going to cap the week off on Monday evening. But before we discuss what we are looking forward to, I want to hear what people are taking as the big picture from the week. Claire, what do you feel like is the French take on all the debuts and the general fashion vibe?

11:22The general fashion vibe. I mean, I felt a lot of like positive energy just in general. Really wearable. A lot of clothes. I think that, you know, there's a lot of creativity, but there's also a real anchoring in kind of reality and like what women actually want to wear. And yeah, I mean, I just always want everybody to win, you know, so like Balenciaga is just so happy to see like a standing ovation and like the guys, Loewe. So my takeaways are pretty positive. I think the mood is pretty upbeat. Claire, I wonder if you could give examples of what are some great reality-based clothes. Like what were some pieces that you saw on the runway and you were like, oh, I can see who is wearing that and I would wear that.

12:12Well, I mean, you know, I think maybe it's the Glaswegian in me, but I love a sort of a denim miniskirt. I love a pair of jeans. You know, I love a great tailoring. I really like... The denim miniskirts were for Dior? Dior, obviously. Yeah, I mean, I loved Victoria Beckham, I have to say. I mean, Alaya, I loved the jeans with like the open backs or loads of great shoes, the accessories at Balenciaga. I love a Balenciaga City bag. Who else? Well, Margiela was definitely grounded in the real world. And I think maybe people were a little surprised because Glenn Martin's debut couture collection was so fabulous and fantastic.

12:52Fantastical, yes. And then you got to see, you know, a little bit of the grounding that he's had in Diesel for all these years, like really great denim pieces and cool tailoring, which felt very Martin Margiela. Yeah, I love the slip dresses too. The children's orchestra. Really? I had like people had like PTSD after that who were like, the noise, the noise. No. It was delightful. It was my favorite part of the week. Oh, my God. Me too. You're like missing your kids. Yes, totally. I was like, this is so charming. I loved it. And then they gave the recorder out to everyone. I brought it to my eight-year-old niece who plays the flute.

13:32And so she was playing it for me last night at dinner before Balenciaga. But I thought that was so joyous. the mouth thing was not for me. No, I didn't like those. The mouth thing is they had this sort of brace, the kind of thing that you would wear during oral surgery. I always had PTSD from that. I was thinking, oh, my God, I need to get my implant. That's what I could think about, my tooth implant. They were like the four little stitches that, you know, it was Martin Margiela's signature. And that was the reference. and yes, it was sort of a weird juxtaposition with a lovely children's orchestra.

14:13Yeah, it was like demonic. They all look kind of crazy, but it was like, I get it. I get what he was trying to do. Claire, tell me about Olaia. What do you want to know? Well, you were saying about that Peter said that the clothes were... The clothes were crying. Yeah, what does that mean? I have no idea. But I thought it was kind of beautiful to say that. You know, there was those boots. I think there were like fringed boots and sort of the movement as a theme, just in general, I've sort of, I feel like movement and kind of moving with the body has really been like a strong theme this season.

14:46What I loved about the Alaya show is just like, it felt electrifying. It felt like full of energy. I always love it when the, when the girls, you can tell that the girls love what they're wearing. The setup of the show as well was incredible with the mirror on the ceiling and then the video projection of the faces. And, you know, like I love that juxtaposition between he's so architectural. He's technically such a great designer, but the girls are very natural. And I always feel that with his woman, it's very flattering to the body. It feels like he's a designer that actually likes women. So that was my sort of takeaway from Aliyah.

15:25I always feel uplifted when I come up out of one of his shows. Yeah. Save maybe for the little sort of jumpsuits where the hands were stuck in the garments. Yeah, there's been like weird moments. And I don't know if you should jump to that, like Courage with the hat thing, like covering. Maybe it's a cocooning thing. We've heard that word, right? I mean, with Louis Vuitton at Nicolas Gesquière talking about wanting to stay inside sort of as a protection from the world. And then you did get that with some of the some of the silhouettes at places like Simone carrying a pillow, wrapping yourself up.

16:01That's true. That's a that's a positive spin on bondage.

16:11Let's talk about wider trends of the week. And Vogue Runway does such a good job of distilling the trends. But, Nicole, are there any trends that you see already presenting themselves? Marie Antoinette. Yeah. Everybody's talking about Marie Antoinette. And it really, in Paris at least, it started at Saint Laurent, where Anthony Vaccarello had this very distilled message, three silhouettes. It was the leather jacket and the pencil skirt for day, a sort of a nylon trench slash shirt dress for day. And then evening were these, you know, grand, ruffled ball gowns in the sort of historical style. Big, big shoulders, big skirts.

16:53But those two were made out of this like parachute nylon. And so they're walking outside underneath the Eiffel Tower in the wind. It really moved beautifully. It was so cinematic. I mean, those will make some of the best pictures of the season for sure. Yeah. It was so great. I wasn't at the show. I saw that on my phone and it just had such impact. I understand that there was an insane floral arrangement on the runway too. I do think it's funny because there was a Marie Antoinette exhibit that opened in London and it was really impressive to see pieces from her wardrobe and to kind of get into the history of Marie Antoinette.

17:30I do think she is a strange icon for now. Oh, my God. Marie Antoinette and the revolution. Yeah, Marie Antoinette, like where's the revolution? is what I'm thinking. But yeah, it is interesting. Yes, I agree. Also, there was a lot of that, like the Pannier skirts at Dior, even in London with Erdem, one of his references with Marie Antoinette. Yeah, Simone, they were like those kind of those shapes. I think the interesting thing is that are these all these historical references and how designers are interpreting them. And it's not sort of straightforward reference. It's like a high collar at Dior, which I thought was really cool to see and felt very buttoned up and they're not literal but they are they do kind of like shift your eye a little bit because you're like oh like um this is such a historical silhouette but done in interesting ways I think it's been interesting to see different designers lean into those historical moments and maybe that nostalgia for completely opulent time I don't know what it says about us now but yeah it is has become so much part of the it's it's funny when someone becomes so much part of the the zeitgeist I kind of felt like not the opposite but maybe it's because I'm like French I saw there's like leather jackets everywhere like perfectos everywhere and you know even at Givenchy like you know the sort of little gowns and everything's like got like a leather jacket over the top and Saint Laurent.

18:58So I don't know, I kind of see this. I loved Hermes as well. The little leather bras, we're talking about the scars, the leather bras with like the scarves over the top. So I don't know, I saw like a toughness as well in the collections. Loewe, also a lot of tough leather and sort of bracing for the outer world. Yeah. And, you know, I'm always like, I'm like, that's for listening to Nicole, some more kind of collections to like the themes but I definitely thought you know that red was a bit I've seen red everywhere you know so it's great to have a bit of color um thought color was everywhere color was everywhere and like everywhere and sheer you know a lot of sheer yeah um you know I loved Moogler I thought I know I was happy for him I thought he did a really great job like sheer gowns you know the juxtaposition between this very like tough, real life silhouette.

19:54And then like the gowns for like, you know, we all need to dream and, you know, have an aspirational moment. So just jumping in the him and question at Mugler is Miguel Castro Fritas, right? And he is a guy who I've never met, but has been in the business for incredible resume. Yeah. An incredible resume. So, yeah, no, I met him actually with Anna, um you know before uh the show a while ago a few weeks ago and um I you know was very impressed by his resume and obviously he's you know done the work but yeah so that's why I was kind of keeping an eye on that show in particular but I thought it was technically great I mean you know I love the suits I was you know I think it's always um great to have like a strong connecting theme and he definitely worked within a you know specific color palette but there were definite dresses I I could see on the red carpet, you know, these kind of long, like frothy, sheer, very flattering dresses that I thought would really connect, you know, especially like the sort of Parisian style.

20:55I think it's also important to talk about what we think overall has worked for debuts and what has been more challenging. I think it's been really interesting and it's easier to sort of see as we're seeing so many of them together, but how the designers who feel maybe daunted or overwhelmed by the history of a house or the designers who have come before them have been less successful than the designers who really are able to thread the needle between referencing the codes of the house, but also really making it clear what their stamp is. I was, you know, brushing up on my notes in the car on the way here and I was absolutely obsessed with the video that Jonathan worked on for Dior.

21:43And, you know, this idea of kind of a horror. It was a mix of like scenes from horror films mixed with archives of the designers. And I thought that was such a clever way to incorporate like the pressure or like the anticipation or the expectation that you have taking such a big house mixed with the kind of irreverence. I thought that was really clever. And I think that's a sign of, you know, there's this whole generation of these creative directors, like I think Jonathan's 40 and like, you know, understands like the sort of commercial aspects of the business, understands like digital and is obviously technically like a great designer.

22:24So to sort of have a nod and a wink to that, I thought was really, was really clever. And I definitely want to work with that video guy. Yeah. Probably can't afford him. Yeah. It was Adam Curtis, right? Yeah. Yeah. Tom Ford was a really excellent example of a creative director, in this case, Hayda Ackerman, who really managed to take the codes of the house but also infuse himself. Yeah, it felt very him. It felt very him, but it also was like totally Tom Ford. I think it's so difficult to tread that line with such confidence. It was definitely one of the shows of the seasons. And for me, it felt there was drama.

23:01There was a real exploration of what it means to be seductive in different ways, whether that's in a completely naked dress or in a really fabulous suit. I love those trenches that look, you know, when you turned around, you could see. Yeah, no, that was beautiful. I love that show. Yeah. And such a lesson for all of these models who are coming up in the business. And, you know, they're encouraged to be very flat on the runway. And that show was so good because the models had so much attitude. You know, they were really, I just totally think that a show can be a lot more if the models are sort of engaged and alive somehow.

23:40Yeah. I was talking to Daniel Roseberry last night. He was front row at Balenciaga about his collection. And, you know, for someone who's very like known for being quite theatrical and sort of couture, seeing how he's kind of evolved in this last collection to something much more anchored, like, and I keep saying reality, but, you know, those gowns, you know, made me think also of Heider, you know, the sheer, I think the girls. there's not so much like acting because I somehow I find it sometimes a bit cringe when they when the girls have to you have to be good at it there's a lot of people aren't good at it right but yeah there's definitely room to play a little bit as well this season so yeah but I totally agree with you Trima like I loved Tom Ford it's probably one of my favorites Scaporelli I thought was really great too I thought there was a lot of I love the silhouette that more languid silhouette because I think in the past we've seen Daniel focus much more on sort of a waist whittling corset or something that really adds this very dramatic silhouette.

24:45And there was this sort of loosening, much more fluid line that I thought was really beautiful in the dresses and the colour. And I thought the way the models too, he's so great at identifying models who can connect with the audience, who always look out into the audience, and it can be quite kind of unsettling for the audience because these models are basically making eye contact. They're basically flirting. Yeah. And then obviously you had Kendall who closed the show and then Kylie was on the front row. Yeah, just speaking of models of the season, I do feel like by the end of Paris, you really are familiar with faces that have felt like the stars of the season.

25:26And for me, as has been the case, like the last season or two, but really I feel like she cemented her status this season was Alex Consani. Agreed. But also my favorite new face is this adorable girl who illustrates all the looks she wears that Jose wrote about for Vogue Business, but Luna Johanen. And she's just, she was, looked beautiful at Vuitton and she's been all over the place. And I'm really excited about her. Anyone else you guys love? I don't think I've learned their names yet, but there are definitely some new faces that I really liked. I thought Dior was so strong at the casting I love a new face you know and I think traditionally French Vogue has always been very like models so I felt really excited because I think it's Pierre Jojo does the casting for Dior oh no I think it's Ashley I think it's Ashley yeah it's Ashley wow she's great I mean it's so it's always so exciting just to have like new ideas and there's that like toughness you know I was talking to Anna about it and she's like what's the story what's the story around like the new girls you know they've only just started and I'm like that's the yeah that's the story you know like that energy as well like from the streets and kind of I always love a sort of a teenage stomp so I don't know anyone's names yet there was there was a girl at Givenchy who I feel maybe wasn't a model because the casting at Givenchy was quite I thought was the most inclusive as far as size and age diversity.

26:59And there was one, one girl who I feel like I've seen this girl on the streets of London. Like she had the girl with the leather. She had like bleached eyebrows, like when I both turned to each other, we're like, who is that? I feel like maybe she's an artist. She looked really familiar to me. Yeah, she was great. I love that haircut, that buzz cut. Yeah, yeah. So it is, it is, to your point, it's really exciting when you see a new face, or kind of intrigue to find out more about? I mean, not technically new faces, but, you know, I do love an Isabelle Maron girl. I love that, like, sexy, like, let's say athletic more figure.

27:34You know, there was practically no body diversity, let's be honest, in these shows. But, you know, the daughter of... Nicole Kimmon? No, Naomi Watts. Oh, yeah, Kai Schreiber. Kai. Obsessed. Yeah. so like fizzy and like cool she's a dancer I mean you can tell did she walk a show? she walked a lot she was in a row and also Correge and Naomi was front row like cheering her on Correge was really cute Naomi was at at Maglare as well and I also love Lennon Sorrenti at Isabel Morant in like just like a bikini so Isabel but just in terms of attitude you know it's nice to have some like personalities Yeah.