Paris (AFP)

Young designers launched women's ready-to-wear week in Paris on Monday with digital presentations, a format chosen by most brands in the midst of an epidemic, except the tenors like Dior which is preparing to parade on Tuesday.

American actress Sharon Stone kicked off by calling for a "fairer representation of today's strong and emancipated women," in a video posted on the website of the French Fashion Federation.

“To be relevant, fashion has to be fairer, more diverse and more egalitarian,” she said, wearing a low-cut beige jacket with pronounced shoulders over matching pants.

Of the six brands that unveiled their collection on Monday, four are new entrants to the official calendar which welcomes 84 houses this season, a sign that Paris is the place to be, despite the progress of the Covid.

Among them, Situationist, a house founded in 2015 by Irakli Rusadze, in Georgia, a former Soviet republic, in the footsteps of his famous compatriot, Demna Gvasalia, artistic director of Balenciaga who had left his brand Vetements with strong messages a year ago. political and societal (now out of schedule).

Author in recent years of powerful figures, seen in Milan, inspired by the strength of Georgian women who had to face the post-Soviet chaos, Irakli Rusadze is also a defender of the LGBT community in this country marked by patriarchal traditions.

In his film, he takes his models, women and men, for a walk in the streets of Georgia, creating a visual shock between their structured locker room and that of the people they meet.

Models are faced with spontaneous reactions, sometimes negative and disapproving, for example when faced with a man in a skirt.

Londoner Wales Bonner's film, whose style mixes black culture and British tradition, was shot in Jamaica, where her father is from.

It features young men, wearing sports outfits or long shirts who evolve in the paradisiacal landscapes of the island.

Inspired by 1970s Jamaica and Bob Marley, the short film aims to "explore how the essence of a place and a people is revealed through its attire".

With Danish designer Cecilie Bahnsen, ex-collaborator of John Galliano who gave her a taste for romanticism, head for Jutland, the windswept west coast of Denmark where young women walk in white or black aerial dresses.

- "Orphans of the show" -

The Dior show on Tuesday at the start of the afternoon will be the event to follow, after the previous Fashion week this summer, entirely virtual.

Hermès, Chanel and Louis Vuitton are also reviving the excitement of the parade, even if their shows will be held in small groups, because most celebrities, buyers and foreign journalists cannot make the trip due to restrictions linked to the health crisis.

"The previous fully digital Fashion Week left us all orphans of a very living form of spectacle," fashion historian Olivier Saillard told AFP, yet not convinced that it is time to redo the parades.

"It's a lot of effort, which we must of course welcome, but if there are no American or Asian buyers, no journalists, what is the point?" He wonders. .

For him, the health crisis will change the way fashion is presented in the future.

"There will be fewer parades, fewer cruise collections, we will not all go back to the other side of the world to see a 15-minute collection!

"It will put out some excesses. Everyone has refocused on what they knew how to do, it's a form of introspection that is good for homes: less but better".

© 2020 AFP