The Japanese invasion got to Paris on Tuesday evening as Anthony Vaccarello showed his take on the season’s sharp asymmetrical layering. It was something that suited his aesthetic well – you might even say it’s what he’s been doing all along – but despite the somewhat minimalist austerity that defines the look in question, Vaccarello managed to bring it to its raciest level so far. If the skimpy, skimpy skirts, slashed-to-the-hip-bone dresses and tiny little shorts didn’t strike the desired cord with the, at this point, pretty shattered press corps, the triangular hemline of several looks placed insinuatingly below the belt certainly railed everyone’s mind in on the same track.
In so many senses of the term, the air was pretty moist on the mezzanine at Palais de Tokyo, even if Janis Joplin’s soulful voice on the soundtrack added a less oversexed element to Vaccarello’s strands of crackled lace and the giant fetishy bolts, which appeared on garments throughout the collection. The designer had chosen Joplin’s evergreen Summertime for the first half of the show, but if it signified a less hyper take on the summer party mood for which Vaccarello’s clothes are practically made, the nineties-like synthesizer track that took over from Joplin once the final segment of the show entered the room definitely had sexy summer island party written all over the place. It reached its climax in a red leather take on the triangle dresses (with a cleavage from here to Mexico, as Destiny’s Child once so eloquently put it in Nasty Girl) before the collection found its way back to some more of Vaccarello’s trademark little black dresses, which closed the show.
