There was something strange about the suits at the Miu Miu show. At first glance, they looked polite enough: in chunky gray felt, with narrow little skirts and jackets with sloping shoulders. But what was going on with the darts? They looked more like … oversize folds. The breasts jutted out like howitzers, while the back tapered down to a narrow waist, with a fillip at the end.
And beneath the coats, poking through thin silk knits, or exposed by oversize sundresses slipping off the shoulders, were bullet bras.
Bullet bras? Really? That staple of 1950s sweater girls and Bond villainesses (the ones whose undergarments turned out to contain actual bullets)?
Sure, underwear has become something of a Miu Miu signature, as the various influencers wearing panties with their cardigans on the front row demonstrated. And sure, the elements in the show were almost stereotypically ladylike: giant brooches pinned on lapels, box bags hung neatly from the crook of an arm, cloche hats and faux fur stoles.
But those bullet bras were, well … the point. They looked as if they could take your eye out if you got too close. You can bet money they will be coming soon to a TikTok video near you.
“All the girls were excited,” Miuccia Prada said after the show, referring to the models, who were not all girls and who happened to include the rapper Cortisa Star, and the actors Sarah Paulson and Laura Harrier. In fact, “they wanted them more pointy,” she said.
It could have been the epigraph of the season.
What began in New York with designers grappling with the question of what it meant to dress like a woman, continued in Milan at the Prada show where Mrs. Prada and Raf Simons, as co-creative directors, challenged the old clichés of prettiness, and expanded at the start of Paris to transform womanly curves into a challenge. And had, by the time the week wrapped up, coalesced into something altogether more powerful: the weaponization of femininity.
It goes much deeper than the bouncy prosthetic boobs that Duran Lantink, one of the most promising nextgen designers and the rumored next creative director of Jean Paul Gaultier, attached to his male model at the close of his show. Those were more like an attention-getting gimmick than an actual idea. (For that, look to his exploration of shape and silhouette.) And deeper than the woolly tights tossed over the shoulders or tied around the waist like cardigans at the Row, a silly styling trick used to add some alt-ness to its otherwise typically zen-like collection.
After all, in what Mrs. Prada called “difficult moments, dangerous times,” you’ve got to use the tools available to you. Bras and bouffants happened to be her armaments of choice. There were others.
There were, for example, silk dresses in the form of major inverted triangles at Saint Laurent, with a bow at the hip or the back of the neck, that turned women into jewel-tone Hulkettes in stilettos and shades. Also slithery silicone-covered silks in leopard that hinted at transparency, but rather than inviting the touch, repelled it. And black leather bomber jackets over bouncing ball skirts suggesting that even a black tie evening could end in a dust-up.
Black leather has been the single most ubiquitous trend of the Paris shows. Not motorcycle black leather or beatnik black leather but butter smooth, don’t-mess-with-me dominatrix black leather.
It showed up in the assertive debuts of Sarah Burton at Givenchy and Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford. Came in an Irma Vep-inspired catsuit at Marine Serre because, the designer said backstage, she liked the danger and daring of that seductive renegade. Was worked into a chimera of wool and fringe in a wonderful Sacai collection, where Chitose Abe used her magical mixing skills to create looks with integral scarves, each tossed around the neck like an independent embrace. And was part of the designer Nicolas Di Felice’s ingeniously streamlined meditation on the rectangle (with some survivalist detailing thrown in) at Courrèges.
There was even some black leather at Chanel, amid the endless and increasingly uninspired riffing on house codes like pearls, bouclé and bows. (The house is still treading water as the design team waits for the new creative director, Matthieu Blazy, to arrive.) Not to mention Nicolas Ghesquière’s eclectic 61-characters-waiting-for-a-train collection at Louis Vuitton.
No two looks in his station were the same, so a bias-cut devoré slipdress trailed a ribbed cashmere bodysuit with matching cape trailed a prim little skirt suit trailed a Kraftwerk-inspired sci-fi shirtdress. But at least three were in black leather (as was Mr. Ghesquière, when he took his bow).
But the best black leather was at Hermès, where shorts and trench coats and slim dresses all had a certain gorgeously severe frisson. Zippers opened windows in unexpected places. Quilted hot pants covered tights. Nadège Vanhée, whose work has been taking on an increasingly compelling edge, even named her collection “Leather Dandy.” Hermès did begin as a saddle maker. There weren’t any riding crops around, but they were there in spirit.
Just what you need, next season.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
