PARIS — The Courrèges invitation was a metal Möbius band: no beginning, no end, no inside, no outside. Infinity. Somehow, Nicolas Di Felice used that concept to design a collection of entirely finite clothing. His post-show explanation made infinity dressing sound like a possibility, even as my tiny mind wrestled with his logic. “It’s the notion of evolution,” Di Felice said. “I always started from what I just did.” So Look One was the base of Look Two, Look Two was the base of Look Three and so on. It’s impossible to assess the success of such an effort from 2D runway thumbnails, so you’ll have to take his word for it. And, to be quite honest, the evolution wasn’t remotely obvious while we were watching the show. But what was reinforced is how 41-year-old Di Felice is one of fashion’s deepest thinkers. He’s the full mind/body package, brainiac on the outside, taboo-worshipping sensualist on the inside. And so it was with his latest show.
It began with a solemn all-embracing leather cowl, harking back to a cape from a 1963 collection by Andres Courrèges. The cowl turned into a coat turned into a dress turned into everything that came afterwards. It culminated in dresses that moved up and around and down the body like waves, said Di Felice. Transmogrification was the theme. Bras became collars, collars became straps that suspended slips of dresses. The constant undulating movement of the clothes and their components was designed to duplicate the movement of water. The lapel of a stark black coat unfurled on one shoulder like the curl of a wave.
But the collection also celebrated the patriarchy-defying power of female physicality. True to the original spirit of Courrèges, Di Felice bared the body in audacious ways. His signature bra top looks like the censor’s strip that Instagram insists should cover bare breasts. It harked back to his childhood, when any programming for over-18s was signalled by a white square, un carré blanc, onscreen. That was one sensibility-shaping way to teach a young Walloon what was so right about what was so wrong.
Speaking of white squares, the huge void in the centre of Di Felice’s show space has become an artistic extension of his intent. Last season, it heaved and breathed. This season, it oscillated with thousands of ball bearings making the soothing white noise of waves as they ebbed and flowed. It fed in and out of a dissection of Underworld’s rave anthem “Born Slippy.” Quite stunning.
Later in the day, Di Felice went to see the show of his friend Julien Dossena, who designs Rabanne, the modern incarnation of fashion’s original heavy metal kid. Dossena called his collection Material Girls. Towards the end of the show, Mancunian Model of the Moment Libby Bennett walked in a dress that left flutters of gold leaf all over the catwalk. She was carrying a bag made by Maison Arthus Bertrand from 371 discs of 18 carat gold. No one in the audience could have known, but it was, nevertheless, a moment you might classify as pre-revolutionary, if and when such a moment ever arrives in our ethically stunted era. And I wouldn’t want to impose a political sensibility on Dossena, because he was talking about Todd Haynes’ movie Safe as a reference point, and the idea of a woman sealing herself away from the world in a profoundly paranoic state, wrapped up to protect herself.
Mind you, Dossena’s wrappings were, he said, like the silver foil of a candy, or the layers of paper that encase a gift, or even the transparent wrapping you get on fruit in Japan. He liked the naivete of the idea, but there was obviously something protective about it, like Safe, or even like Paco Rabanne’s original chainmail and armour-influenced looks. I was seeing men’s boxer shorts too, chucked under substantial outerwear. Dossena called it toughness filled with tenderness. The layering was the key. You could take what you wanted from it. Soft banker-stripe blouson on Gigi, metallic geometric breastplate on Loli — that was the Alpha and Omega of Dossena’s Rabanne. It was quite the gamut. I’m not convinced. But still, I want to see more.
