It's the end of the world as we know it

PARIS The empty auditorium of the drowned world was black with forebodings. A gaseous, lemony scent fills the air. From time to time, a drip spread through the pool of water that had swallowed the seats three rows deep. Then furious gray storm clouds rolled over an LED screen on the ceiling. Thunder crashed. And splashed a woman in an austere black velvet cassock, the hem dragging in the deluge. It was raining outside Sunday in Paris, and Balenciaga, a storm was raging inside.

There were more long black dresses and vaguely sinister hanger-shoulder suits. Outerwear made of leather and wool, the collars extend to the base of the skull and descend like a ski slope to the shoulders. Above their heads, birds swarmed and flew away. A man appeared in a silicone jacket covered with spikes like porcupine quills. The fire has consumed the sky. The accessories were delivered with bondage cuffs and masked sunglasses (so named in the show notes). Some models weren't all professionals; some were musicians, students, bicycle messengers, artists, of all ages, rubber boots, others over the knee boots, most were neither one nor the other and they got wet. The earth appeared from afar in its blue and green calm. Some dresses with quilted flowers appeared. Some ThermaForm jersey suits molded to the body like a corset.

There was a total eclipse. It was so dark that it was almost impossible to see what was going on. Even when you could see, it was difficult to concentrate. The shoulders were so sharp that they could slice the bread. Blurry street landscapes. Motorcycle hides and branded articulated silk soccer jerseys appeared. Evening dresses with leggings, gloves and built-in shoes. The kind of clothes salvaged from the remains of a society past. To be built. May be.

J.G. Ballard (and his post-apocalyptic science fiction) around 1962 would have felt at home in the world of Demna Gvasalias around 2020.

There have been so many crises in the past few weeks, so much imminent news, disastrous news and an increasing number of deaths; declarations of war; the religious bloodletting that climate change, which recently shaped mea culpa and its cause, has almost disappeared from the radar. He certainly seemed to have fallen from the podiums.

Last season alone, Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy was recycling old denim and putting it on the runway. This time, with the exception of two fake recycled furs reconstructed from vestiges of the past, she seemed above all to oscillate between ideas: shady sewing and dresses in graphic silk with a scarf; large blousing shoulders and feathery swirls. Its sewing is coherent and convincing; we don't know why her ready-to-wear is so soft.

So even if it was not a surprise Stella McCartney, which has always made eco-awareness the foundation of its brand, activists in rabbit costumes (and horse and gator) distributed baby trees to supposedly help customers be neutral by carbon before its show of ease of twisting and binding inspired by Ert in silk and perforated vegan leather, wider recognition of the environmental disaster and the catastrophe that we and this industry have caused was long overdue .

(It's not that putting climate change on the track or distributing seedlings are solutions; it can't offset the fact that doing more things just contributes to the problem or that the shows still require driving all over the place Paris; Givenchy took place at the Hippodrome de Longchamp le Mais since the show is the voice of the designers and a soap dish, this is, at least, an amplification of the problem.)

Thom browne built a snowy landscape in the cole des Beaux-Arts, with white dusty fir trees and bare, skeletal branches, then sent his models two by two, a man and a woman each time like the refugees on the ark from Noah, only at the place of a flood it looked like there had been an avalanche. One led by a parade of men with animal heads in red, white and blue striped skirts and platform hooves, the Greek choir of M. Brownes: a giraffe, a hippopotamus , a lion, a horse (and so on).

After having schussed the twins, both sexes wearing exactly the same thing: increasingly complex evolutions of the classic couture of Mr. Brownes (90 percent in Harris Tweed) in classic colors (gray, navy, red, white ) made completely unconventional by the technique. The pleated dresses had stripes of silk tie inserted between the panels; blue jackets became skirts and suit pants were vests; and an entire safari landscape has been worked into otherwise simple overcoats.

Because, said Mr. Browne after the show, it was his first student production, and also because that kind of gender demarcation is on the way to extinction. To prove it, he then mixed the couples and it was almost impossible to say who was who.

Each couple have totaled their own version of a matching pet bag in black leather, until there is a whole menagerie (all descendants of the original bag, introduced there years ago in the form of a Mr. Brownes dog, a dachshund named Hector). A beaded boa constrictor stole was hung over the shoulders of the final pair. They had only survived the end of a world to worry about trying an apple?

It was a surreal moment rightly topped with an even more surreal moment at Schiaparelli, where Daniel Roseberry presented his second collection of ready-to-wear, with prints created using a flatbed scanner (there is one in the workshop) to digitize three-dimensional objects such as perfume bottles, vintage furs and an octopus.

Purchased from a fish market, it had been scanned, scanned and then transformed into a splattered image on silk shirts and loose pants. Later, I also cooked and ate for dinner (I knew someone would ask me that, said Mr. Roseberry). Don't waste. Elsa, the founder of the house, not the one Frozen would have approved.

(The jellyfish also made an appearance at Mrs. McCartneys' show, but in a stylized diamond pattern on generous silk pajamas and caftan dresses.)

Even Pierpaolo Piccioli from Valentino, who said behind the scenes before the show that I don't think fashion should be a manifesto, put more black on her show than ever (probably more than 70% of the clothes were black or navy or very dark gray ) sleeveless, elegant sheaths, dresses and coats enlivened by a unique, strategically placed flower in bright colors. A leather jacket was covered with 4,000 black rose petals.

There were of course the iconic ethereal dresses that shone like Orion at night, but since Mr. Piccioli is a designer known for his ability to remix the rainbow, it was black that persisted. It was meant, he said behind the scenes, as a picture of a moment that we all share, no matter our age, size or gender (there was a real mix in the show). Although it did come, darkness fell.