Fashion
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Each in their own way, Yohji Yamamoto, Noir Kei Ninomiya and Comme des Garçons were able to create soothing bubbles in the fashion week marathon dedicated to women’s ready-to-wear fall-winter 2023-2024.
It can take an hour to get there and systematically wait (at least in Paris) for at least half an hour, a Fashion Week parade lasts an average of fifteen minutes. Except at Yohji Yamamoto, where we go double. Not that he is slowing down, soon to be 80 years old. His shows have always praised slowness, even stasis, with this unparalleled ability to suspend time. We come out of it with the impression of having experienced a beneficial parenthesis, shot through with soothing messages. That variation is not repetition. That femininity is anything but fixed. That timelessness is as fruitful as frenzied novelty. That gentleness is not weakness. That the spectacular is not necessarily violent. Among others.
That of Friday also recalled how much this sorcerer of Leonard Cohen envelops and pierces at the same time. The first part of the show, given in the salons of the town hall, had as its soundtrack I’m Your Man sung by the designer himself – he willingly gives voice, on the blues side. A declaration of love, sentimental and inflated, which says “I am the man of all situations”. Like with Yohji Yamamoto. The girls parading are gently disheveled elves looking like birds fallen from the nest, but their wardrobe (44 looks) is unique and refined.