From left: Valentino, McQueen and Balenciaga
Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Courtesy of Valentino; Courtesy of Alexander McQueen; Courtesy of Balenciaga

The Paris shows have roused fashion from its slumber. Even the humorless hammer of Anthony Vaccarello’s half-naked dresses for Saint Laurent, at the start of the week, made a point by their sheer number, if not a pretty picture. But three shows over the weekend — Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino, Demna of Balenciaga, and the newcomer Seán McGirr at Alexander McQueen — felt locked in a more urgent contest: to define what is young and modern.

After unloading lots of color in his January couture collection, Piccioli made a pitch for dead black, even invoking “the prince of darkness,” the mid-19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire, in his show notes. On a glossy black runway specially laid in an 18th-century hôtel particulier, under a gold-leaf high ceiling, Piccioli sent out 63 looks in black, each one — including a mini-shift with plumped, satin rose-shaped cuffs; a flared mid-calf dress with a transparent top; straight-line wool coats sheltering lace or dripping with quill-like embroidery; a siren gown slashed to the navel — a variation on a soberly elegant uniform.

To complete the trance, the models were all neatly coiffed, and some looked like they’d been wolfing blackberries; their lips were a deep shade of purple. But although the clothes will almost certainly be a hit with customers, because their tone and lines are so flattering and forgiving, the proportions just right, it was ultimately a static kind of elegance. Baudelaire hated the progress of his age, maybe with good reason. But so in a funny way does Piccioli.

Before the start of the Balenciaga show, in a purpose-built, box-like tent by the Invalides, with soaring “walls” of concrete, a bright blue sky appeared through the opaque ceiling, with streaks of sunlight on the walls. But it was an illusion. Demna was even controlling the weather, which has been mostly wet and cloudy. Within minutes, the walls and runway — all digital screens — were alive with tranquil scenes of mountains, glaciers, and forests before being disrupted by urban landscapes and a jittery montage of people in front of their own screens and finally, near the show’s end, complete digital snow.
I sometimes find myself worried for Demna. He seems so restless. Is he happy at Balenciaga? He has done so much in the past five years to overturn assumptions about fashion, beginning with the so-called “parliament show” that brilliantly questioned power dressing; the surprise and rare silliness of the red-carpet show and the Simpsons collaboration, and the reopening of Balenciaga couture, which saw the remarkable melding of his style and that of Cristóbal Balenciaga.

But then I realize, when he talks about changing direction, it is I who doesn’t want to accept change. The thing about Demna is he questions everything. He said a few days before the show: “I feel like fashion has to be edgy. Otherwise it’s just a scam. And I don’t want to do scam fashion.” Having done many direct interpretations of Balenciaga’s famous architecture and volumes, he could easily do more, he said, but that would be “too lazy and boring.” He is even thinking of doing shows combining ready-to-wear and haute couture, partly because he thinks the separate couture shows, in July and January, feel out of date. He has a point.

This time, the mission was to consider good taste and trashy taste, a well-traversed path in fashion. But, as the list of concepts on the show notes indicated — more than a dozen each for clothing and accessories — this was a sharp assault on high and low, with fun and novel takes. Demna has lately reprised Balenciaga’s formality but with a whiff of irony, and he has done that again — with a sheath sequined in a blurry leopard pattern and another in shimmery aqua, with pronounced hip pads to disturb the elegant lines.
Everyone is doing fake-fur coats, but Demna and the Balenciaga team wash theirs, including a dirty white one, until they’re as soft as an old bath mat. Then they’re clipped for a rattier texture. They look like no one else’s. Many designers are also showing suits in lightweight fabrics, for a more draped and fluid look. But, again, Demna takes his suits further. They appear to be almost liquified on the body — indeed not unlike super-baggy jeans and cargoes that remain popular with young people.

In ways less obvious than the glitter gowns, Demna drew inspiration from other original Balenciaga designs, like tops made from a pair of jeans — with the crisscrossed legs forming the front of the top and the upper portion of the pants, the back. The iconic Balenciaga bubble dress gave rise to new styles simply crafted from three or four mismatched T-shirts placed horizontally and stitched together. One of the best looks in this jam-packed collection was a cotton shirt dress comprised of two black dress shirts, one wrapped at the waist and hips, over a navy-blue cotton skirt.

The silhouette was a decidedly modern version of Balenciaga, and the offhand technique was pure Demna. As he said of the result, “I like when it’s nothing and everything.”

That should be the declaration of every young designer. And, in a way, I think that’s what McGirr intended from his debut collection for McQueen, which he joined barely three months ago. (The brand has apparently lopped off “Alexander,” as other brands have done with the founder’s name.) McGirr, a Dubliner, who previously worked at JW Anderson and Dries Van Noten, has a tough act to follow — not only McQueen but also Sarah Burton, who spent 26 years at the house and became creative director after his death, in 2010. But many, many people are also emotionally invested in the McQueen legacy, as McGirr must also realize.

It was clear at the outset that McGirr wanted to root his story in London’s gritty East End, where McQueen was raised and held some of his early shows in the 1990s. He also wanted to harness some of the original McQueen sexuality, when his clothes seemed less constructed and the fabrics and details less precious, mainly because he had relatively little money. That ambition is admirable. It squares with Demna and a few other designers’ views about luxury, that it becomes a rut where creativity can die.

McGirr opened with a long black dress in draped laminated jersey, the model’s hands tucked into an opening in front, as if touching her skin. It was followed by taut, sharp-shouldered belted coats in black or brown leather with matching fedoras and jeans bound with denim ties at the ankles, over pointy Oxford shoes, and later lean, fluid trouser suits, including one in white worn by a man also wearing a common henley undershirt. Behind him in the line, glaring, with slicked hair, was a man in a drab navy cotton overcoat trimmed extravagantly with cheap-looking brown fur. It seemed like a gangland funeral. Or a gang of cool London kids.

For me, those looks held promise, and their strutting glamour made me smile. Also strong were two pieces — a sleeveless top and a shift dress — embroidered to resemble smashed glass. Quite a few styles fell short of the mark, such as the clunky molded dresses meant to evoke a McQueen silhouette, in car-paint finishes. And though McGirr said he wanted to capture the essence of McQueen’s early work, “when the clothes were simple but slightly twisted,” reviewers in that period almost always remarked on McQueen’s amazing attention to cut and detail. McGirr’s tailoring in particular needed more of that care. Here’s another thing: As scruffy as a Demna look may be, like the fake-fur coats, it looked resolved. That sense wasn’t as clear in some of McGirr’s ideas.

I also think that aspects of the show’s production didn’t serve his debut well. The runway (in a former train depot) was too long; it didn’t help to establish intimate contact with the audience. And the seating — fat Styrofoam tubes meant to suggest straw bales — were tacky and ungainly. When a designer takes over a storied house, you expect every detail to be highly considered.

In the main, though, this was a decent beginning. McGirr has only been with the brand a short time, and he hasn’t yet looked in the archive. The general reaction among people at the Paris shows — it’s been a hot topic — has been horrified. But isn’t that usually the case in high fashion? Consider the response from the French elite to John Galliano’s first collections for Dior, or Martin Margiela’s for Hermès, or Demna’s at Balenciaga. In each case, public opinion gradually changed. Then, too, many designers take a number of years to find the voice they actually want to use.