‘Nothing Will Ever Replace the Unity of Time and Place’—IRL Runway Shows Will Always Have a Place in Paris

When it rains, it pours—and the downpour we are currently weathering in fashion is the oncoming, if temporary, shift toward digital fashion shows. With travel mostly impossible and countries in varying states of lockdown, the international cycle of resort, men’s, and couture shows that typically takes place from May to July has ground to a halt. Well, almost. In London, Milan, and Paris, fashion’s governing bodies have unveiled plans for online fashion weeks. In London, content of all types will be aggregated to londonfashionweek.co.uk from June 12 to 14, organized by the British Fashion Council. In Milan, Milano Digital Fashion Week will bring together men’s and women’s collections as well as additional content to the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana site from July 9 to 13. Paris, where men’s fashion week and couture are usually teamed together with a short break in between, has announced a video week for the men’s shows from July 14 to 17, organized by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. Presumably it could create something similar for couture.

The Fédération’s president, Ralph Toledano, has a broad and quite passionate view of what his country’s first foray into digital fashion might look like. “In Paris, June is by nature dedicated to menswear spring/summer collections so, as usual, we will stick to this. Video is the final format requested,” he wrote Vogue via email. “However the creative content it will be made of is fully open and may be diverse (show, performance, animation, photo shoot), as long as it refers to a spring/summer 2021 collection. Paris is about creativity, diversity, and quality; we expect houses to express themselves in the same perspectives.”

In a normal season, menswear editors and retailers would flock to Paris to see what was new from headliners (Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton and Kim Jones at Dior Men) and inspiring new talents (Emily Adams Bode and Craig Green are recent adds). As of yet, many of these brands have not announced any firm plans for spring 2021. Dries Van Noten, for his part, organized a letter to the fashion industry demanding seasonal selling changes.

Still, Toledano and the Fédération are hopeful that Paris’s digital-facing fashion week will be a success. The Fédération, which is organized into three Chambres Syndicale that oversee menswear, womenswear, and couture, met on April 9 to discuss fashion week’s future and decided that a digital menswear week would be the best option for now. “Postponing the week [to July, instead of late June] was an operational decision to give houses extra time to organize their production,” Toledano says.

He continues: “Digital is clearly part of the shape of fashion to come and we will take it as an opportunity of innovation to complement tradition. This being said, [in the] last weeks behind our screens, we all felt that a dimension was missing: the sensorial one. This has tremendously reinforced our position that nothing will ever replace the unity of time and place. Shows are a major component of the fashion industry, and this will remain.... Physical events will always have our preference, but as long as there is uncertainty, there should be flexibility.” To those among us who revel in the sensory delights of Pierpaolo Piccioli’s featherwork, Sam McKnight’s croissant updos at Chanel, and the flutter of anticipation as a Dior couture bride hits the runway, the confirmation that some time soon physical fashion shows will continue presents a huge relief. It might not be in July—but at least the drama and performance of fashion week is promised to continue.

“Who Wouldn’t Want to Do the Versace Show?” Stephanie Seymour Reflects on Her Milan Comeback

In 1991, Stephanie Seymour was not yet the household name she would become. She was just starting out as a runway model, having appeared in editorials since the ’80s, arriving in Milan as the “new girl” backstage. Her first show may have been for Jil Sander’s Fall 1991 collection, but it was on the Versace runway days later that Seymour cemented herself as the catwalk’s newest star. With Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista, and Karen Mulder, Seymour strutted—trust, this is a capital S strut—the runway in a black off-the-shoulder dress and thigh-high boots, posing with the rest of the model clique at the back of the runway to signal the start of the show.

Almost 30 years later, Seymour was back on the Versace runway, closing Donatella’s Fall 2019 show in a glittering, bondage-inspired black dress. “Who wouldn’t want to do the Versace show again after 20 years?” Seymour mused backstage pre-show, where she had just finished rehearsal and was getting her hair touched up by Guido Palau. “It feels different, but the same,” she continued, saying that after all these years, her single tip for the runway is still “relax, relax, relax.”

Remembering her early days, Seymour said, “I never did shows until I started doing the Versace shows, and they were all, always, really fun. Backstage was really fun, and the girls would all give me lessons because they knew that I had no idea how to walk on a runway. We were all really close and we had a great time.”

Casting director Piergiorgio Del Moro called Seymour one of Versace’s iconic muses; he and Donatella had been hoping to confirm her for a show for several seasons. This time, in Milan, everything came together perfectly—take the audible gasps heard in the front row when Seymour appeared as proof.