Official Joe Biden 2021 Kamala Harris 4th of July shirt

babynaby02
Jun 20, 2021
2 min read

And in the absence of standardized criteria (as in, showing a minimum number of looks, specifying a time range), it was interesting to observe how heterogeneous these experiments proved to be—quasi–ad campaigns versus short films, conceptual or fantastical visions versus raw and documentary style. Indeed, some of what we saw this past week was only possible through film. I’m thinking of the special effects (Issey Miyake’s pleated flowers; Louis Vuitton’s animated Parisian adventure), the camera and editing mastery (the multiple vantage points in Rick Owens’s studio; the live action at Hermès; the styling triptychs from Y/Project; KidSuper’s stop-motion plastic people), and the decentralized locations (Reese Cooper’s river as runway; Études through the streets of the Belleville; Lanvin at the Palais Idéal). And if that palpable energy that infuses a live show was impossible to replicate, I felt a certain frisson in the storytelling and/or emotion while watching Rabih Kayrouz, Dior Men, Thom Browne, Botter, Pigalle, and Rhude, to name a few. Viktor & Rolf’s “pageant of couture 2020 loveliness” proved delightfully meta, equally relevant and irreverent. Our Zoom call actually felt like quality time compared to our rushed backstage moments. But the most normal moment of all was my visit to Officine Generale’s Pierre Mahéo in his showroom, even though at the end he offered me masks made from shirt fabric (much nicer than my generic versions, in any case). For all the people forced to skip the season, the credits that accompanied the films this week attested to sizable teams who deserve credit for working through extraordinary circumstances. It was a show-must-go-on attitude minus the shows.