In Paris, crazy clothes for crazy times, plus a little Kanye West

The last Sunday of Paris Fashion Week did not open with a parade, but a surprise performance by Kanye West and 120 singers from his Sunday Service gospel choir.

Between 2015 and 2016, West became famous for disrupting New York fashion weeks with their Yeezy runways for Adidas, which were scheduled for the short term and started so late if several models passed out. And so his invitation for a 9am performance, sent less than 24 hours in advance, first met with groans.

But the Sunday event was not about promoting clothes or shoes, but some kind of spiritual gift – an hour and a half to cheer, dance, sing, raise your hand, and for the South African designer Thebe Magugu on my right, who grew up going to church services on Sunday, to pray. Kanye West stood in the circle, but did not dominate it – he sang only briefly, about 45 minutes, and otherwise cheered on the other singers and smiled at his wife, Kim Kardashian, perched alongside the designer Balmain Olivier Rousteing in the circle of the dress. According to him, the audience of several hundred members of the fashion industry – which also included the CEO of Balenciaga Cédric Charbit and the founder of APC Jean Touitou – hardly seemed there. .

It was nice to see, especially when remembering the last time that West had gathered such a crowd in Paris, for its eponymous designer brand, which closed in 2012 after two widely exhibited collections. (He will show season 8 of his four-year-old Yeezy label Monday night.)

It was also a nice break from the dark and austere mood that prevailed during Paris fashion week. Rare is the conversation that does not touch the coronavirus, which led the city to ban indoor gatherings of more than 5,000 people on Saturday, and several designers have created collections with an apocalyptic lot.

It was done fantastically in Balenciaga, where a storm cloud ceiling screen swirled over a stadium flooded with fake kerosene scents, the front rows appearing to be submerged under several feet of blackened liquid to resemble 39; gasoline. (In fact, it was about an inch of water.) The advanced, skinny but austere models, armored in black office coats and dresses, pagoda pants and shoulder trenches (the result of some intricate models), and stretchy, "all inclusive" evening dresses – with one-piece shoes, gloves and leggings. All along, a bass beat thumped sharply as the sky passed from burning clouds to lightning and a rush of satellite imagery – really, the apocalypse was upon us.

"The world is inundated with its post-industrial and self-inflicted problems and I wanted to create a metaphor in which people would go over these problems", explained the designer Demna Gvasalia to me.

This metaphor worked, as did the show, reminding the audience that, even though the hype around his accessories has faded, Balenciaga has not lost his temper. (His return to the haute couture calendar in July promises to be a major event.)

Comme des Garçons still has its cool side, 50 years after its foundation – in part thanks to the mysteriousness of its shy founder for the press, Rei Kawakubo. His catwalk collections, presented in intimate spaces with large standing crowds, are more sculptures than fashion and defy descriptions of easy clothes such as "skirt" or "pants". The series of 20 looks from Saturday was titled Neo Future and featured women in rounded pleats or conical black leather underneath satellite-shaped helmets hanging with veils, and a cut silhouette of a bride in the shape of a keyhole, its round center sheared to reveal a vulnerable belly of yellowed lace. The music changed with each look, beating the electronics for a moment, the opera the next – the effect was baffling, even dangerous, and despite the layers and thick padding, the models, with their centers cut and their arms wrapped, seemed strangely vulnerable, unable to fight or flee. Kawakubo's show notes offered no interpretive tools, but postulated on the difficulties of creating "something completely and completely new", which led her to refer to her own archives.

Designer Clare Waight Keller has been more loyal than her predecessors to the Givenchy archives, where she became artistic director in 2017. This season, she referred to what she described as "intense glamor" of cinema Nouvelle Vague from the 60s and 70s, the self-portraits of the Portuguese artist Helena Almeida and the work of Hubert de Givenchy of the time, which led to a collection of evening clothes mainly devoted to severe lines, with soft volumes and graphic juxtapositions of colors, and entirely devoid of floral prints (and ripped denim from last season). The effect was nice, but not exciting.

The same could be said for Hermès, albeit with its strong trade in classic handbags and silk scarves, and the highest profit margin in the luxury fashion sector (34.8%) , she hardly needs to make the effort. The company made its first foray into beauty last month with a range of 24 lipsticks that were the subject of a gasping press cover. Poles resembling her lipstick balls were planted around her exhibit area covered with white carpet on Saturday evening, through which models walked in preppy white turtlenecks adorned with silver padlocks, polo shirts and clean-knit ribbed polo shirts and leather coats with cape-like shoulders. by thick brogues and thick heeled boots. It was classic, easy, without challenge.

Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino likes to use the podium to challenge, although he said after the Sunday parade that he "doesn't think fashion should make manifestos". Nevertheless, he delivered one, encouraging equality and tolerance through a collection articulated on the fluidity of the sexes – a theme of course, but one that recontextualized and loaded some of the most classic elements of femininity, like a round coat of roses in black molded leather, which was worn over a semi-transparent crew-neck top, spacious men's pants and shoes with thick soles. What seemed to be missing here is the wonderful color interaction that Valentino de Piccioli became famous for – and can make a Valentino show a spiritual experience of its own.