Rain, art and winter wonderlands at Paris Fashion Week

Haunting music greeted drizzled-on VIP guests, including singer Janelle Monáe, who braved torrential rains in Paris to get to Valenti’s experimental fashion show near Invalides monument on Sunday. At Issey Miyake, a lone artist strode out to create an artistic installation on a vast white sheet of wallpaper that h guests reaching for ir cameras. Here are some highlights of fall-winter 2020 rey-to-wear shows at Paris Fashion Week.

VALENTI EXPERIMENTS WITH SUBTLE KINK

Valenti’s designer Pierpaolo Piccioli has been in an experimental mood of late.

In Sunday’s rey-to-wear show at Paris Fashion Week, this was more than apparent as Italian-born designer dramatically departed from house’s oft-angelic signature designs. It was a nice change. In place of purity, this season was a subtle kink.

See-through black mesh gowns followed sheeny thigh-high black lear boots, while split-leg bustier gowns bore inches of flesh and some visible nipples.

Even Renaissance-style capes, a Valenti touchstone for s, were crafted for this fall in a provocative sheeny black on a model with dark eye make-up, stomping black wedge boots and long blood-red lear gloves. This angel h fallen from heaven long ago, show seemed to say.

Aside from kinky elements, re were lots of great fashion-forward plays on shape. A black scarf insert fell off back of one shoulder with an off-kilter air, like single fallen wing of a dark angel.

ISSEY MIYAKE’S VISUAL POETRY

With a black felt-tip pen at start of Issey Miyake’s Paris fashion show, an artist sketched out a human shape on a paper sheet with speed and impressive precision. n, to gasps from audience, that shape — and ors next to it — were cut out.

As sections of paper fell to ground, models appeared from behind holes.

It was an imaginative start to designer Satoshi Kondo’s fall show, which began with a geometric series that riffed on this idea of thick lines cut out on clos. All sorts of shapes and square sections flickered out. collection soon expanded into bright hues — with sheeny silk fabrics, weaves in extra-fine nylon yarn and colorful knits.

Several busy jazzy prints — one in particular in apricot — seemed a little unnecessary and distracted from beautiful shapes in designs. But Kondo me up for it with a deft play in form using codes of Japanese maison.

Silk dresses curved back around at bottom — like a sort of parachute sleeve — and formed a cape-hybrid. It filled with air as models walked, and in beautiful motion, it seemed as if models might take flight.

CHANEL TO LIVE-STREAM

Luxury French brand Chanel said in dition to hosting its Paris Fashion Week show Tuesday, it will live-stream it on all of storied house’s social media platforms and its website, due to new coronavirus outbreak.

Editors, such as those from China, who have t traveled to Paris or ors in industry who have anxiety over possibly contracting COVID-19 can thus see display.

France has banned all indoor public garings of more than 5,000 people to slow its swballing spre of virus cases and recommending that people longer greet each or with kisses. At Paris Fashion Week, this has created a new form of greeting — elbow touch. number of French virus cases almost doubled to 100 over weekend, including two deaths.

Chanel’s U.S. office staff will t be in Paris for show, owing to fears over virus.

THOM BROWNE’S -FLUID PINSTRIPES

pinstripe-suited and -fluid designs of inventive U.S. designer Thom Browne were shown again this season in a winter wonderland swscape where spring was a frozen garden, fall was a white wood.

Models, in twos, passed through large wooden doors in center of runway — evoking magical furniture in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia chronicle “ Lion, Witch and Wardrobe.”

Indeed, animal masks — such as a horse and a rhi — appeared on some models, who also h handbags in form of a dog and or creatures. models wore unusual black mesh hegear that shrouded eyes.

Fashion-wise, wacky designs meshed multicolored stripes and occasional lozenge-shaped argyll check, often in socks, in intentionally divergent styles. One blown-up check plaid in Yankees blue was inserted unexpectedly as sleeves of a striped coat, above a gray skirt and white-laced sw boots.

Corset-style items and large bows on hip — almost celebrating a Christmas gift — ded to Browne’s magical eccentricity.