Paris (AFP)

Without the excitement of fashion shows for the first time in its history but with high artistic ambitions: fashion in Paris is looking for a new language, creatively defying the post-Covid depression.

Dior opted for a collection of miniature dresses that could travel in a trunk to meet customers stranded at home, far from the fashion capital. It was presented in a dreamlike staging by Matteo Garrone, director of "Dogman" and "Gomorra" who were awarded at Cannes.

"Digital language is not something that belongs to me, it is generational. I was not ready to face a very technological language. I wanted craftsmanship, handmade to be visible in this film , aspects that belong to me culturally ".

The collection inspired by women surrealist artists is reduced to 36 looks of 40 cm that can contain a trunk in the shape of the building located 30 avenue Montaigne, historic seat of Dior in Paris, with sandals and small veil bibis.

- "From theater to cinema" -

This experience at the time of the Covid refers to the Fashion Theater, this traveling show based on dolls presenting French know-how in fashion during the Second World War.

A mannequin, four colors inspiring those of the sunsets over the rooftops of Paris: in the video of the Italian designer Maurizio Galante, the sequences are shot in slow motion.

The parade is "a beautiful thing", but so is a film: "It's like theater and cinema with their completely different languages".

"Confinement was for me the moment of great reflection and cleaning up of the fashion system where sometimes too much is happening", confides to AFP the creator.

For him, online fashion is "a great opportunity to send messages to an audience who will be focused on images rather than looking at who is sitting in the front row", that reserved for celebrities.

"It pleases me to work calmly, to tell a concept," he adds. Being able to touch "millions of people" with this film all over the world, the Italian designer wanted to invite them to his Parisian workshop.

- "Just my imagination" -

With a film of less than four minutes, Schiaparelli opened the haute couture season, a very select and exclusively Parisian event which promotes handmade and will last three days, before being followed by Men's Fashion Week until July 13.

In this "imaginary collection" of Schiaparelli, we see its American creator Daniel Roseberry drawing sketches in a park during his confinement in New York.

Bulky sleeves, surreal jewelry, "shocking pink" felt lines, color launched in 1937 by the founder of the house Elsa Schiaparelli - no dress is presented but the style is recognizable.

"The pandemic has turned everything upside down. Now, instead of a team to run this collection, I just have my own imagination. Instead of Place Vendôme in Paris, it was designed and sketched on a park bench", says Daniel Roseberry in a press release.

According to him, "the surrealist universe of Elsa Schiaparelli and her fascination with reversing our everyday reality" resonates more than ever with the times.

- Live performance -

Hermès presented its men's collection on Sunday in an artistic performance filmed in real time by the theater director Cyril Teste, in the workshops of the house.

Casual collection, nonchalant presentation with a zoom on the stripes or accessories in fetish leather of the saddler-leatherworker. Details that you would barely see during parades.

"The unexpected is creative," said Véronique Nichanian, creator of the Hermès men's collections.

"One thing particularly interested me: getting into the creator's eye and into the backstage to which the parade audience never really has access," said Cyril Teste in a press release.

"If you have nothing, not even electricity, you can still create," says Vietnamese designer Xuan Thu Nguyen, whose "artistic video" is "a teasing" to draw spectators into her universe.

© 2020 AFP