upFront is interested in wider grand culture and experimental views, that’s why we sent L5 Journalism with Creative Writing student Christopher Parlett to report on this year’s Paris Fashion Week. This is his take on the latest Balenciaga spring/summer collection.
It’s the month of Halloween, so what better way to strike terror into my heart than watching a ghoulish parade of unholy stick insects clad in weird cloth?
The SS24 collection begins with mournful strings and a French lady talking. Women in black gowns stride confidently alongside ceiling-high crimson drapes, looking for all the world like Red Priestesses ready to birth shadow demons and conquer Westeros.
Suddenly, a lady dressed like Columbo just escaped from a velociraptor cage appears behind them. She’s carrying a bag and an expression that would make me anxious about getting on a plane with her. Next, we have a person who clearly got tangled up in her Nan’s old curtains while escaping a house fire.
On the conveyor behind, we have your old physics teacher whose Robert Smith impersonator husband just passed away so she’s wearing all his black clothes at once in commemoration. I’m not even two minutes in and the dirge of strings with no emotional build-up to the music is draining. It’s in the same key as the song at the end of Arrival, but I didn’t just see Amy Adams learn the language of time from the heptapods so she can relive the life with her dead child. Instead, there’s a bald woman with wrap-around shades, her head looking like a reverse Robocop made of bubble gum.
Finally, some colour, and it looks like a soiled bib. Next up, a grimacing woman with a bag and she looks the type to put that bag on the seat next to her on the bus then refuse to move it, even when it’s really busy and I’m clearly on crutches.
The wide shoulders are walking now, their bald alien androgyny reminding me that I’d rather be watching Star Trek. The charcoal vomitorium soldiers on. The strings have gone, now someone’s cat is walking up and down a piano. Even if I could speak French, I wouldn’t be able to hear her over this cacophony. Then the tempo rises, electronic instruments join the fray. It sounds like 90s sci-fi now and the French lady is positively insistent but still drowned out by the fever.
I swear to God that last model had tattoos like track marks up her arms. How chic. The Star Trek villains and alleyway dealers are back. I have tremendous anxiety and want a Marlboro for the first time in seven years. This is horrible. Why are that lady’s hips a bookcase?
The haunted bride that ends the show, I fully expect to find sitting on my chest tonight.
Looks like Iceland are getting some inspiration from Balenciaga this year too:
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