Fashion shows are about so much more than clothes today. In front of a crowd of thousands or in a showroom with barely enough room for a hundred, they re instant branding campaigns in our social media age. Karl Lagerfeld had bullhorns and protest posters at Chanel this morning. It was a classic case of co-optation, but cleverly done. A.P.C. s Jean Touitou, who went up an hour later, had a placard of his own: "Fashion changes, being itself begotten of the desire for change," it read. Touitou has never been short on words, but he didn t say that first. Marcel Proust did. And Touitou s point wasn t that this season s A.P.C. collection would be so very different from last season s; that s not the business A.P.C. is in.
What Touitou was getting at with that little line from Swann s Way, we suspect, is that A.P.C. is the thinking woman s and man s fashion brand. A maker of essential clothes, rather than frivolous ones. Just don t call them basics—Touitou hates that. A.P.C. s Spring essentials are just about what you d expect, then: khaki trenches and red ones, LBSDs (i.e., little black smock dresses), shirtdresses in prints by the artist Pierre Marie (back for a return engagement), a great-looking fatigue green jumpsuit, and of course, denim—but soft and washed, not the raw, dark rinses we re all familiar with from A.P.C. s stores. Touitou brought Vanessa Seward up in front of the crowd. Spring 15 will be her last capsule offering for the brand, but she s not going far. She ll launch a collection of her own with A.P.C. s help in March. Another thinking woman s fashion brand? We ll take it.
