Paris Fashion Week: trends report

Leather

The Lanvin show combined two of this season’s biggest directions (pleats and leather) to eye-catching effect. Anthony Vaccarello’s shiny synthetic leather outerwear and dresses contrasted with some stellar shearling coats (a dip into more practical pieces for the notoriously sexy brand). Meanwhile at Balmain, Olivier Rousteing mixed the leather up with woven African tribal influences, and also cut the material into multi-pocketed safari suits, while at Balenciaga Alexander Wang served up some stunning leather dresses which were belted at the waist.

High boots

Whether knee-high or thigh-high, tall boots are definitely in for Fall-Winter 2014. Carven showed the way to do it, with some stunning thigh-high black accessories which skimmed the bottom of the models’ skirts and coats. Rick Owens’s soft leather boots came with rubber, plimsoll-style soles, and were worn ruched around his models’ knees. Nicholas Kirkwood also offered something a little different with a knee boot featuring laser cut-out patterns. Nonetheless, top prize in the innovation stakes goes to Gareth Pugh who managed to combine his footwear into a sort of trouser-shoe hybrid.

Logos get twisted

Following on from last season’s logomania (and Jeremy Scott’s recent pop-culture Moschino mash-up in Milan), logos have been all over the street-style scene this Paris Fashion Week, but when it comes to the runway the appeal appears to be slightly waning. That’s not to say it’s totally absent — A.F. Vandevorst hired Stephen Jones to create felted baseball caps and plastered them (and their giant sweatshirts) with a baseball-style print of the brand’s name. One of the key figures behind the trend, Alexander Wang, also stamped the belts at his Balenciaga show with the brand’s modernist logo, but on the whole Paris’s designers scaled back a bit. Karl Lagerfeld (as usual) had a twist to bring to the mix. His Chanel prêt-à-porter show featured a runway/set which turned the Grand Palais venue into a giant supermarket with a kitsch Chanel logo. Models dressed in the label’s latest collection wandered around behind trolleys, picking Chanel-branded household items (replete with cheeky puns) off the shelves!