Big Drama Cannot Distract From Irrelevant Clothes

It’s the wrong moment for the fashion theatrics of Valentino, McQueen and Dior. But Balenciaga got it right.

The Valentino show took place in a bathroom.

Or not a bathroom, exactly, but a big box in the courtyard of the Institut du Monde Arabe constructed to look like a large genderless public bathroom. One lined in toilet stalls and sinks (no urinals) and glowing luridly Valentino red. The models emerged from the toilet stalls in full, kooky Valentino-by-Alessandro-Michele glory: long lace dresses with cats’ faces on torso or waist and short bourgeois skirt suits over bike shorts; polka dot pants with floral neckties; balaclavas and handbags galore.

Why? Well, according to Mr. Michele, it had to do with peeking into what he called the “metatheater” of intimacy and the liminal space where we transform our private self into our public self through dress. Though a stage set that suggests a brand, or at least its heritage, is in the toilet is perhaps not the metaphor he really should have been going for.

Instead it seemed more like a potent example of the current problem with fashion’s amateur theatrics.

Once upon a time that sort of fantasy role-play framed a bigger point; one that gave an origin story to the garments and created a dazzling emotive connection. Or so it was at the turn of the millennium when these sorts of productions transformed the catwalks of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, the masters of the craft (that’s also why that Galliano Margiela couture from January 2024 is still a reference point).

Increasingly, however, as shows have gotten ever closer to entertainment, designers seem to have lost sight of that connection, using visual histrionics and grandiosity to get attention (and break through the chaos of social media), rather than focusing on the reason the collections exist in the first place: to offer succinct propositions for how we want to look next. It’s as if they believe that, with enough decoration, no one will notice that they haven’t actually come up with any new ideas.