Powder that wig: Paris fashion goes all 18th century

PARIS: Dries Van Noten and Christian Lecroix channeled “Barry Linden,” Andreas Kronthaler and Vivienne Westwood channeled Mozart, and American designer Thom Browne went potty for Madame de Pompadour on Sunday.

With designers’ love of streetwear fading, Paris Fashion Week has fallen to the 18th century.

Even streetwear’s main man, American Virgil Abloh, turned back his clock this week with Gigi Hadid in a pink puff ball gown and another model in a zipped raincoat worn like a cape.

He was not alone. At Jonathan Anderson’s Louie, crinolines and featherlight side hoops almost look like they’re fun dresses.

“If I had a perfumed handkerchief, I’d be waving it right now,” quips one critic at the end of a Thom Browne show, as pompadours in veiled skyscraper Versailles wigs circle a white mannequin Peace Fountain. moving around

As seersucker birds fluttered overhead and fabric flowers bloomed from New York’s arch-formal garden, millinery guru Stephen Jones said fashion Crying out for a bit of politeness and circumstance.

‘People want fantasy now’

“There’s a whole idea of ​​practicality,” said the British hatter, who created the show’s iconic headgear, with sportswear dominating the catwalk for several seasons.

“But I think people want fantasy now.”

Britain’s punk queen Vivienne Westwood has always had a soft spot for 18th-century decadence.

And her Austrian-born designer husband Andreas Kronthaler found a strikingly elegant and modern “Rock Me Amadeus” note in their Mozart-inspired show on Saturday.

Noting that the nightshirts, breeches and knickerbockers of the period could easily be adapted for men or women, Kronthaler told AFP that the era’s gender fluidity was very “now”.

Boys “can be as beautiful as women in dresses”, he insists, even with a hoop, “it’s just about adoption.”

“Of course, not every dress suits the man,” he added backstage, as he sipped champagne with actress Pamela Anderson and several “RuPaul’s Drag Race” stars.

Kronthaler grew up on 18th-century suede ankle boots — Gigi’s sister Bella Hadid put a pair on — as well as buckled sandals, as Brown did with her collection’s mules in the same seersucker pastel nursery colors. .

‘Really out there’

With “Game of Thrones” actress Maisie Williams (who played Arya Stark) in Brown’s front row, Jones said another reason designers returned to the Age of Enlightenment was that “the 18th century was really out there.”

“What we wear today is really calm and restrained compared to what people wore 200 and 300 years ago,” he told AFP.

Van Noten, who took Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1975 film about an 18th-century Irish rake as inspiration for his show with veteran creator Christian Lacroix, agreed.

The Belgian, known as the “King of Prints,” said he had to tone down the original acid colors of historical artifacts that caught his eye.

“They were anything but a shame,” he added.

All those corsetry and bodices that beg to be ripped have a kinky sexiness that strikes a chord with designers, too.

Fashion’s horror moment, Demna Gvasalia, known for her post-Soviet minister models and her cynical take on branding and consumerism, may have made a name for herself with $800 hoodies.

But the Georgian’s biggest shock at her show on Sunday was following up the fetish outfit with a line of crew-neck velvet crinoline ball gowns that brought to mind Miss Scarlett from the board game Cluedo.

The trend is likely to continue with a major exhibition about the 18th century’s greatest fashion icon, Marie Antoinette — the queen who lost her head in the French Revolution — opening in Paris next month. is

This includes John Galliano’s famously decadent designs for Dior during his 1990s run, as well as the hugely popular Japanese manga, “The Rose of Versailles.”

Japanese master Yohji Yamamoto sent a large black hat Marie Antoinette might have worn to the guillotine as a final flourish if she had been allowed in the Paris show, though her crinolines were more ballet époque than pompadour.

“Fashion is so mysterious sometimes?” Jones said. “All these people who think the same things at the same time, but I think it’s nothing.”