Clothing line by Lamine Badian Kouyaté, a Malian/Senegalese fashion designer. In Wolof, “xuly bët” means “open your eyes wide”. Lamine Badian Kouyaté was awarded the New York Times “Designer of the Year” in 1994,[ref. needed] and the ANDAM Prize in 1996. His designs were also featured in the “Afrique 2005” exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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ARIE KOPELMAN DIES AT 86
Kopelman’s daughter, Jill Kargman, posted the news of his death on her Instagram account and said the cause of death was pancreatic cancer. American businessman and philanthropist. He served as the President and COO of Chanel from 1986 until 2004, when he retired and was succeeded by former Banana Republic President Maureen Chiquet.
He remained at Chanel as vice chairman of the board until 2008 at the recommendation of Jacques Mouclier, is friends. Arie Kopelman, the former chairman and chief operating officer of Chanel Inc. who was credited with driving the French luxury brand’s massive growth, died Monday night at age 86.
ANOTHER VISION OF FASHION WEEK
Who will realize that the Fashion Week of these last days could take on another dimension, a sort of life with wings for a week, like Icarus, Athenian son of Daedalus and Naupactus. Here is the vision of photographers Sophie and Caroline Moisan who capture the precious moments of an entire generation. Because when the day fades, and through the droplets of rain, it sublimates a clarity that perfumes the soul, and shines the landscape with such an artistic blur, that finally everything lights up.
A sort of golden thread to weave our day, in a prism with brilliant colors, that the Trumps voters will never see. A dream, that the Balenciaga knots, too tight, could not have contained. On the window where my gaze passed, it was the farewell of an angel obtained by chance. And in the still damp street, in the droplets reappears the clear surface of the pavement and the cafes so cluttered with threads and needles, in an image fleeing the invisible, for a moment that no one would have imagined.
FM
Y PROJECT CHAPTER 11
Y/Project, following the death of its co-founder Gilles Elalouf in June and the departure of its artistic director Glenn Martens last month, was placed in receivership by the Paris Commercial Court on September 26, according to legal documents.
Potential buyers have until October 16 to submit an offer for the company, which has 24 employees and generated revenue of just under €11 million in 2023, according to a press release published by the receivership firm 2M & Associés.
But without a creator, there is little chance that a buyer will take part in this adventure.
The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret laboratory created by the Manhattan Project and operated by the University of California during World War II. But let’s not talk about that, but about fashion designers
Y/Project was initially launched as a collaborative project between designer Yohan Serfaty and businessman Gilles Elalouf in 2010. Sadly, Serfaty passed away from cancer in 2013, leaving the brand without an artistic director. After Serfaty’s passing, Elalouf turned to Glenn Martens to lead the brand.
THE CHINESE INVADE THE SAMARITAINE
A wall of 10 Chinese designers took over the Samaritaine’s favorite places during Paris Fashion Week to present looks inspired by traditional Chinese arts and crafts. The lord plays diplomacy with the country that now represents 50% of its sales.
The event named Celestial Embroidery: for an exhibition on fashion culture until October 23 and is part of the celebrations organized by Samaritaine and its desire to attract more and more Chinese customers.
THE COCO HEDI SLIMANE
The departure of star designer Hedi Slimane, replaced by Michael Rider. The rumor was circulating during Paris Fashion Week: on Wednesday, the LVMH group brand announced the departure of its designer, who will be succeeded by a relatively unknown American in the industry, again Wintour behind this. Continue reading
VUITTON THE MIDDLE AGES GOTHIC
With a patchwork of trunks as a podium, we thought Nicolas was packing his bags, he who transformed the iconic Vuitton trunk into a “Chiquito” for supermarket bimbos. Yesterday, I saw a strange world, that of the unreal empire of the irrational, on the edge of the realm of the night, of a house more than a hundred years old. I saw an ancient world, a blurred reflection of the past, and a fairground of memories that have sprung from the waves of a path of suitcases.
Jackets with balloon sleeves, striped capri pants and skirts with sequined fringes that give me no emotion in a world without echo and whose horizon is so dreary. I saw the nascent city of apostates, sectarians and iconoclasts materialize before my eyes. They adorn these models not with one bag, but with two to always increase sales.
In the Cour Carrée of the Louvre, they wanted to sell us an era embellished and flamboyant with sparks to better blind us. As for us, we saw fairy monsters, populated by fictitious beings, elves and illusions that glided on the sea of lost imagination. And in the distant sky, under the dawn of my dreams, the dark night of disappointment arrives.
FM
BALENCIAGA VERY NEGLIGEE
Demna should silence the critics who complain that he has no new strings to his bow with his spring 2025 collection for Balenciaga, which opened with a series of underwear looks in his own way: embroidered, encrusted, or jacquard-knitted garters, bras, and stockings over flesh-colored bodysuits. Continue reading
HEARST PARIS 2025
Gabriela Hearst brought the American spirit to Paris’s Left Bank on Monday afternoon, presenting her spring 2025 collection at Karl Lagerfeld’s former home to an audience that included Lily Gladstone, with live music by Wesley Schultz of Colorado folk rock band The Lumineers.
The Uruguayan-American designer served canapés and champagne on the verdant lawn. Inspired by female artistic heroines (you have to find inspiration somewhere)! The ultimate irony for a journalist is to be “on the verge” of death, but I’m still forcing myself to write a few pages about Saint Hearst’s muse who is carrying an estimable corpse: her former collections for Chloé.
Gabriela acts on me like a remedy for love and even with viagra, reason and logic always take over for me. At the word “Hearst”, nothing hardens, the nothingness more staggering than sidereal. This hippie nostalgic for the 70s, the wealthiest of seamstresses, is the bluff on the self, egocentric by her miserable vision that pushes you to a ridiculous dive into the sewing of ready-to-paste and who, to the extreme, to come to Paris for a “show of rags” for the story of a eunuch without head or tail, but do not say: “A man without equal.” Say: “A eunuch.”
ELIE SAAB 2025
Charm, elegance, grace with an apparent sweetness, for a sensitivity sweet as the honey of Lebanon, in a clever mix, it emanates in the room these princess dresses of which the couturier leaves his mark and is part of the lineage of the greatest creators by leaving to fashion an immense heritage of finesse. Continue reading
RICK OWENS PARIS 2025
It was indeed deeply moving and uplifting as a demonstration of unity, diversity, dignity, and defiance that Rick Owens described his spring 2025 men’s show as being like watching a biblical epic by Cecil B. DeMille.
He cast real people of all shapes and sizes in his women’s show on Thursday, culled from fashion schools and his own company. Facial tattoos and piercings seemed to be preferred. Continue reading
CHLOÉ GAME SET AND MATCH
A poem sprayed into the room by a platinum blonde, child-woman, who takes us on her journey to the land of dreams. She is entrusted, after the prenatal darkness and the harshness of the profession, with the light, finally! Kamali, not to be confused with Kamala, that seed of kingmakers, who flutters in a kind of languorous laziness, looking with perplexity at the features of the sublime, not to name her; the Wintour.
COURREGES THE COLORS OF THE INVISIBLE
Let’s make an assumption that the word “couturier” is pronounced “costumier”, that the word “creation” is pronounced “crémateur”, that the word “piggy bank” of the lord is pronounced “tricherie”, and thus, the dictation of fashion, all of a sudden, will have a very strange aspect. But, by starting to make too many assumptions, everything will go to hell, and nothing will be straight anymore. In this eventuality, I will sign “hedgehog”, because I sting like the latter, unless you catch me with gentleness and condescension.
YSL THE LABYRINTH OF LUXURY
It was in the center of the Champs de Mars, where there are usually the street vendors of the Eiffel Tower cleared by the police for the occasion. The way Vaccarello stigmatized this change of location or better, is to return to the style of the founder of the house. Instinctively intelligent collection, for a dive into the brain of the master of Oran. Despite all the challenges that the luxury industry faces, the Kering group has just understood that, besides communication, the most important thing is to sell in stores.
While it was becoming increasingly difficult to identify the singularity of writing among all French designers, here is the blandness of the “good” but especially of the “safe” for a perspective of a winning ticket that slides gently on the 70s and the 54 club. Life is like fashion, an eternal recommencement! It is certainly safe to say that Vaccarello has found the door to Yves Saint-Laurent or the archives, depending on your point of view. Sometimes, when creation lets you down, it is better to dig into others, but not being able to go back is a form of progression in essence.
FM
DIOR AMAZON PRIME
Diana is the goddess of hunting, war and the night in Roman mythology, assimilated to “Artemis” in Greek mythology. Artemis, well, funny, isn’t it! Daughter of Jupiter and twin sister of Apollo, she wishes to remain a virgin forever, and when beauty makes its bed, sublime, always alone, she builds her reputation alongside men, but strangely apart too.
The one who invents, unlike the one who discovers, adds to things, and Maria Chiuri, for once, adds a touch of femininity without inventing anything. Amazon huntress to hit the nail on the head, but with the lord, it’s in the thousand billion “bollards”.
Damier Vuitton at Dior for brand synergy and a play of black and white light without the little Pharrells, but also very expensive “flesh”, and as a wink, a little Breton sailor’s shirt to infuriate the prince of Venice. With a Dijon “biker” jacket on her hips, the woman wants to be both masculine and feminine. So here I am on a journey towards my fiery thoughts in the black gravel of the thrill. Beyond the words through which I saw legs walking that stretched out to Dante’s Peak, and how far I pushed into the depths of a dream to write these words. Continue reading
PRESSIA PARIS 2025
A precise image that we recognize at first glance: elegant and… provocative. A depraved bourgeois. The night is a space of freedom, I worked a lot in the cabaret, as a room driver, he tells us, it looked like a Studio 54 type route, people were stylish, I like this show time side.
GUCCI THE DUKE OF GENOA
It is true that after the devil Alexandro Michele, who dressed as Nada, the worst could not be even deeper at Gucci, but will that be enough to excite the millennials who consume luxury in a declining market?
PRADA NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MIUCCIA
The man who didn’t like women continues his vacation by imposing his non-talent at Prada. This is the story of the thousand failures of the one who doesn’t like women. He is like La Fontaine: his couture is affable, but with the only test he has, to his credit, in fashion, that is to say his urine tests, they can’t ask for more from him.
This ambitious ascetic of the fashion sphere, who had mistreated the Dior brand in his time, this ‘Politico-media’ heterogeneous and without real talent, remains the shadow of Miuccia Prada. Desire for movement and energy, without being able to achieve it, he plays with confetti and redesigns the models of yesteryear from the 70s. For me, between the guillotine and Raf’s work, I always prefer the guillotine.
GUCCI 2025
MARNI 2025
KNWLS LONDON 2025
Grunge and sexy that pays homage to fashion apparently! Since it is agreed that the eyes are the mirror of the soul, why not admit that the mouth is also the interpreter of the heart, but that is another story…
FENDI ART DES JONES
Art Deco is making a comeback, and next summer, the Paul Poiret retrospective, the turn of the century for the free woman and today’s vision of the world. André Breton’s surrealism is not far away. The abundant Art Nouveau, cut down by the war, is giving way to the precious purities of Art Deco.
ANDERSON DYNAMIC DRESSING
This JW Anderson collection is young, dynamic and fun, built around simple cuts, window-dressing prints and tutu-like protuberances, you have to find something! The models crossed a vaulted room of light, passing between rows of white cubic seats, they are shod in speckled leather low boots with zippers, which were a hit, but not to be smoked.
The Irishman likes to tease the eye and tickle the minds of journalists by transposing the archetypes and details of clothing such as the dragonfly and its metamorphosis, as well as a purse that has become the main detail of a handbag, each own “Chiquito” in the end. A gray hoodie, with a photorealistic print on a silk sheath dress, and a large leather clasp on the neck, an imposing detail on a short raincoat, but it’s sunny in New York.
How to interpret this large typewritten text that appeared on some clothes? It was borrowed from an essay on design by the late English art critic Clive Bell, but who will understand! In any case, certainly not the bimbo, on my left, who sucks her teddy bear as if it were a cream ice lolly, and visibly more effective than therapy.
THE LUXURY DEPRESSION
As organic sales momentum slows even more than initially expected and visibility on a potential rebound in luxury sales in China is really low, the French group is increasing its prices.
Over the summer, luxury consumption remained strong only in Japan, driven by Chinese tourism, while the Chinese cluster slowed down, the US cluster did not improve as much as expected and Europe delivered a mixed picture.
On the continent, many consumers have adopted a wait-and-see attitude, victims of “greedflation” and price increases by many brands after COVID-19 “simply because they could get away with it rather than simply because they were a reflection of inflationary pressures. Is there a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel for the luxury sector?