As the crowd spilled down into the Carrousel du Louvre space, the Givenchy chitchat was eventually quelled by a group of eight performers scattered around the space. They threw various half-hearted tai chi moves and dynamically stretched as we settled. In the room were five low, small pedestals on which were placed garments—a pair of sky blue slacks, an asymmetrical orange-to-red guernsey, nothing crazy—next to which were some diagrams of wearing instructions. These, it turned out, were materials for the One Minute Sculptures of Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, around which an Issey Miyke collection titled [N]either [N]or was based.
The pedestal nearest to me was the site of those slacks. Two of the performers approached it, and one helped the other inhabit the pants from a fresh angle: Everything from the waist up went in one leg, everything else, the other. Once she was fully inserted in the slacks and hinged forward as if touching her toes, it was if the pants were being worn by an invisible person.
The first walking installation of runway looks were similarly perspective-distorting—cotton garments printed with images of the ribbed garments that followed them. Then came a fresh take on that classic runway theme of deconstructed tailoring. (Is a show even a show without a menswear jacket worn backward?) Particularly interesting here was how the papery-finish material Satoshi Kondo used appeared almost like carved alabaster as it draped in meandering curves that defied conventional expectations of the tailored silhouette.
A series of padded looks—a shift dress, T-shirts and shorts—were sometimes squeezed into sheer outer garments to create the impression of overstuffed pillows. These echoed Miyake’s famous futon dresses and coats, while also furnishing Kondo’s half-this, half-that collection direction. The following Moschino-reminiscent looks that used shopping bags and totes as garments were an ingeniously meta marketing ploy for an imagined exhibition named Abstract, Concrete, and In-Between.
There was a lengthy series of cheerily colored knitwear, some ribbed, that played dramatically fast and loose with convention: Extra sleeves and unsettlingly placed pockets were everywhere. Really beautiful was a short series of layered fabric swaths in white, then black, that came twisted full length around the body, before we saw some much more ornately upholstered futon pieces. Hard to parse as they passed were a few photo-print items that preceded a final section of garments in stripes and block colors whose volume was as mighty as the materials were light. This ambitious collection seemed to benefit from a fresh curatorial approach and great creative energy. It explored concepts of ambiguity in clothes, but speaking unambiguously, it was excellent.
