Paris (AFP)

This is a first: the students of the French Institute of Fashion opened Monday the week of women's ready-to-wear in Paris, again virtual, always more upset by the Covid and deserted by several heavyweights.

Cure anguish with "cuddly" sweaters, fill the void of a city in curfew with volumes or revisit nightmares: young people have provided their response to the pandemic.

Their creations were showcased in a video that inaugurates Fashion week, a way for the Federation to support these generations particularly affected by the health crisis.

- Shining and American Psycho -

"People have been much more open. We want to keep fashion alive and give young designers as much as possible," said one of them, Clément Picot.

The collection with jackets with oversized graphic shoulders is inspired by the horror films "The Shining" and "American Psycho".

“I created my own dream and nightmare narrative. It's the time that suggests that and my creative universe,” he explains.

Entering the big leagues with a video, a format to which all brands are forced for lack of physical parades, does not bother him.

"I will be able to watch this video all my life, it's more personal."

"It's not as if we didn't have an audience, it's just another relationship with the audience," says Lucie Favreau, also a master of art at the IFM.

- Hair dress -

With large superimposed sweaters, with a blue-yellow-purple gradient and a "shaman jumpsuit" with prints with healing hands, the designer wanted "to create a garment in which you feel comfortable, de-stressed".

"I designed this collection during confinement, I couldn't take it anymore, I needed to find a way out," she told AFP.

Originally from Taiwan, Meng Che Chiang signs "a love letter to Paris" with exaggerated volume outfits made of new or second-hand materials such as faded and repainted towels or jeans.

He is learning French and is fascinated by the word "poubelle", a metaphor for his collection which "juxtaposes the ugly and the beautiful, the old and the new".

While the big brands are shying away from the official calendar more and more, some small ones dream of integrating it, like the creator Victor Weinsanto whose presentation closed the first day of Fashion Week.

"It is a sign of credibility with professionals," he told AFP.

Her collection is dedicated to a "courtesan mistress of the game", "a little domineering" wearing a hybrid of bomber and corseted dress that adapts to her morphology.

She is staged by her dancer and performer friends.

- "Radical" changes -

This Paris Fashion Week, fourth since the start of the Covid epidemic, is more disorganized than ever.

Dior and Louis Vuitton, houses belonging to the luxury group LVMH, had to change the dates of the broadcast of their presentations at the last minute, while no house of the rival holding Kering (Saint Laurent, Balenciaga ...) does not. is on the calendar.

Saint Laurent was the first to announce its removal from the official calendar during the first lockdown in the spring.

Others have not made any announcements but are increasingly presenting the collections at their own pace.

Hedi Slimane, artistic director of Celine (LVMH) unveiled his men's collection in early February, outside of Fashion Weeks in a video showing modern knights in leather jackets parading on the ramparts of the Château de Chambord, on the Loire.

"Everything is called into question", summarizes to AFP Kris Van Assche, Belgian creator of the historic French house Berluti (LVMH).

His collection was not presented during men's ready-to-wear week in January in Paris, but will be presented in Shanghai in April.

"The main talent that must be ticked off on a CV is flexibility, the ability to adapt to the unexpected", underlines the stylist who has never known such "radical" changes in 20 years of career.

© 2021 AFP