Video won’t kill the catwalk, say critics of very first digital fashion week

Video may have killed the radio star, however on the response to the first ever digital Paris style week, the queens of the catwalk can relax.

Required online for the first time in its history by the coronavirus pandemic, brand names both in haute couture and the Paris men’s style week presented videos of their collections instead.

Whle some had seen this as the introduction of a long past due opening up the cliquish hair salons of the fashion elite to the masses, the digital transformation has actually rather failed.

” The runway can’t reopen for company quickly enough,” quipped Bridget Foley of the market bible Women’s Use Daily, who like numerous felt the online shows– which end Monday– do not have the buzz and razzamatazz of the real thing.

” Oh Lord, how pretentious are some of these movie shorts,” she composed. “This digital fashion week is making the live program design feel plenty relevant, and even vital.”

Front row fixture Diane Pernet was not impressed by the early offerings either.

” I am sorry, I think they can do more,” the Paris-based American critic and manager told AFP.

” I am all into digital, however it is not doing it for me,” she included.

However Laurent Coulier, head men’s purchaser for top French outlet store Galeries Lafayette and BHV Marais, might see advantages.

” The great benefit for us compared to a regular style week is the time we conserve,” he informed AFP.

Read also: First-ever online Paris fashion week clicks off

No more mad rush

Rather than the mad race across the French capital from one show to the next “we can see them all every half hour online. Sometimes in a normal fashion week with the transportation and meetings, it is tough to get a global view of what is going on.”

He also liked how some labels, like Y/Project and the young Paris brand Egon Laboratory had actually utilized their movies creatively to show the originality of their clothes.

Coulier said the films were very helpful calling cards “offering us a great view of brands that we have not been working with currently … so we can drop in them in their showrooms”.

Still even he admitted digital did not have the magic of a live program.

On the vexed concern whether he would buy a collection on the back of an online program alone, Coulier was more mindful.

” You can see how the garments hang and fall, however with digital you can not touch or feel the product … that’s what it lacks.”

Pernet can not see style shows being rendered outdated, “and I am not one of those people who sob at programs,” she said.

The the digital transformation has actually currently taken place to some degree, she argued. “We have actually had live streaming of shows for 5 years now at least there is lots of digital showrooms.”

Read likewise: Paris style week to proceed in September

Digital: ‘Light years to go’

As for the designers themselves, Berluti’s Kris Van Assche informed AFP that you can’t beat the drama and adrenaline of the runway.

” I really love the emotion of the show, the history you can tell with the place you hold it in, the music and individuals” who come.

” But there is something in a fashion reveal you can’t do, which is to press time out and describe where things come from.”

Van Assche said this was “an as soon as in a lifetime chance” to give individuals the background of how he worked on his collection with the American ceramicist Brian Rochefort.

Nevertheless, Foley stated that early indications “indicate that digital has a long way to go– light years– before it can change the live style event.”

While she admitted that with the amazing circumstances labels did not have long to prepare themselves, she still found the digital experience doing not have.

Which included acclaimed Italian director Matteo Garrone’s luxurious film for Dior haute couture– which clocked up nearly 3.5 million Instagram views even as it was criticized for its absence of variety in casting.

” Elegant” as it was, Foley stated, “the film diverted toward fashion satire”.

While others noted that the quality of the digital programs improved in the men’s collections– with heavyweights Louis Vuitton, Dries Van Noten and Rick Owens debuting their offerings Friday– Foley said that for her, the digital experience did not have the “enjoyable intimacy of really ‘being there’.”

There was something, nevertheless, that Coulier, Pernet and New York Times critic Vanessa Friedman all settle on– digital has split style show’s eternal tardiness problem.

” I’ll state one thing … you don’t have to sit there for the usual 20-30 minutes twiddling your thumbs and awaiting them to begin,” Friedman tweeted.

I’ll state something for all these digital couture shows – you don’t need to sit there for the typical 20-30 minutes twiddling your thumbs and waiting on them to begin – https://t.co/ppm12 EvZnV

— Vanessa Friedman (@VVFriedman) July 6, 2020