This season in Paris, the catwalks had to vie for attention for another kind of fleeting happening, the posthumous realization of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude artwork, L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped. This “no-sew” design was executed in a metallic blue recyclable polypropylene fabric tied by ropes, which created a sort of classical effect, which was in keeping with the fact that the commemorative arch is a monument, albeit not a classical one.
Interested in the architecture of the body, designers like Rick Owens, Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, and Thom Browne, reinterpreted the draped goddess look for the 2020s. Anatomy and skin were focus points throughout a season that seemed singularly focused on the reveal aspect of fashion. There were exceptions, veiling was seen in the collections of Vaquera and Melitta Baumeister, but no one did “conceal” as dramatically as Demna Gvasalia for Balenciaga. Both the designer and Kim Kardashian West went “incognito” (as if!) to public events in head-to-toe black. The results underlined the power and surface aspects of fame, suggesting that the very person of a celebrity (or their outline) functions like a computer icon or logo.
In their work, Christo and Jean-Claude reframed the familiar, and took art out of the frame and the museum. In light of the spring season, I was especially fascinated to learn that the first monument Christo ever wrapped was a classic (naked) sculpture in Rome’s Villa Borghese. Adorned in plastic secured with string, the sculpture took on, what the artist described as “the loving form of mystery.”
Right now, the reveal/conceal binary in fashion is tipped exponentially—or should that be reductively?—towards exposure. Maybe it’s time to redress the balance and leave something to the imagination. As the impermanent but potent L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped shows us, imagination can take us to places that have no coordinates or urls.
