Business of Fashion writes that Jun Takahashi, Dries Van Noten, and Nicolas Di Felice’s shows at Paris Fashion Week made it “impossible to see the everyday in the same way ever again.” Japanese designer Jun Takahasi’s show was narrated by the German filmmaker Wim Wenders. As a barefoot woman emerged in silence on the runway, Wenders began to read “Watching a Working Woman’,” which Takahasi specifically asked him to write for the show. She is a single mother at age forty, with an eight-year-old son. As the other models walked down the runway, Wenders revealed “lyrically itemised the pleasurable ordinariness of this woman’s life in extraordinary detail.” ‘the morning bathroom and breakfast ritual. The job at the law firm…the drive home listening to Glenn Gould playing Bach. The dinner with her son…all followed by the Big Sleep.’ Takahasi’s inspiration for the collection was Wender’s most recent film, ‘Perfect Day’, which “weaves a moving tribute to the unassailable virtue of the ordinary.” Takahasi seemingly aimed to highlight the extraordinary in the everyday. The key to his collection, “adhesion,” was developed within the designs featured on the runway.

Belgian designer Dries Van Noten similarly made “‘beauty from the mundane,” the title of his show, according to Business of Fashion. “The Woman Who Dares To Cut Her Own Fringe” is based on the narratives that he aligns with his work. This story of an “audacious” woman highlights the necessity of “style over fashion.” He details the limited details on his designs and instead emphasized color and structure, allowing people to “make it their own.” Sade’s “Haunt Me,” bird song and an orchestral crescendo, accompanied the models.”

Di Felice’s Courrèges collection, “In Search of a Thrill,” was presented alongside “The Thing” and Chopin. Iconic imagery had an impact on the designer. A key feature of the collection was the carré blanc, the advisory white square on French TV. Di Felice’s “‘magic square’,” a square of fabric suspended across the models’ chests; this was a version of a “cue for taboo.’. His models walked the runway with a hand tucked into a pocket of their waistband. His casual provocativeness clarified his emphasis on subtlety and gesture.

Paris Fashion Week saw a spectrum of conceptual grounding, from Demna’s Ready-to-Wear collection for Balenciaga, featuring a background of AI generated media and witty, subversive designs, accompanied by The Row’s strict ban of phones and encouragement of note taking. Denma emphasized a “juxtaposition between this overload of content and the idea of us not being able to focus on things that actually matter,” according to WWD. He commented that “there’s beauty in reality that we often forget to notice.” The Row’s “no pictures please” policy was a nod to the present as a luxury.

Are these odes to the importance of ”now’ and the ‘ordinary” as being effective in shows or are they, in actuality, slightly ironic? Where is the line between conceptual justification and hypocrisy? From questions of accessibility surrounding The Row’s show, the limits of visionary expression at Balenciaga as well as the ongoing discourse on luxury label’s paradoxical plays on the “beauty in the ordinary,” we’re becoming increasingly quick to question the motives behind show’s creative approaches.

Article by Alana Courtney-Gleeson, Contributing Editor, PhotoBook Magazine
Tearsheets by Alexa Dyer, Graphic Designer, PhotoBook Magazine

Focusing On the Ordinary at Paris Fashion Week?