Having hit London, New York, and LA since launching his brand just four years ago, Barcelona-born designer Luis de Javier made his Paris debut as Fashion Week got underway, at the Espace Niemeyer way up in the 19th arrondissement. A line snaked around the block well before start time. The kids knew something was up: In the fashion biz, finding a mentor like Riccardo Tisci is rarer than a blue moon. And something worth standing in the rain for.
Backstage, de Javier described meeting Tisci at a party in LA. “It was like a movie. He told me that 20 years ago he was in exactly my position and all it took was one person who believed in him. And he said, ‘I’m going to be that person for you,’” he recalled. Fast forward to this season, and the enormity of showing in the City of Light sent de Javier into homage mode, including to his own viral hit from his February 2023 New York show. (“The only way to face it is to take it by the horns,” he quipped).
His compatriot from couture’s golden era, Cristóbal Balenciaga, was first on the tribute list. Christian Dior’s New Look and Madame Grès’s art of draping also got nods. But seeing the latest iterations of that horn dress, it was impossible not to cast back to the golden coif Alexander McQueen put on Naomi for his fall 1997 couture collection for Givenchy. Or how, at the same house, Tisci once toyed with horns on baseball caps and the like. Here, such excrescences appeared stylized as cone breast numbers or amped-up shoulder constructions and as makeup stunts, notably on Georgia Palmer with a faux pregnant belly (just to take it utterly over the top, the wails of an infant were piped in for that moment).
The main event, design-wise, was squarely north of the belt line, as below most looks skewed more latter-day Pigalle: Next to these lace numbers, McQueen’s bumster moment felt prim in retrospect. The Spanish influence continued in matador hats refashioned from Nike baseball caps, and a neat matador jacket embellished with hand-knit rosettes made by arte sacro artisans in Seville. The embroidery on a corset and a hand-shredded tulle shrug also owed a debt to Cristóbal’s archives. The materials, however, were strictly 21st century, and included sustainable fabrics from Ecco Leather, Beglarian Fabrics, and Eyand.
It didn’t take a leap of imagination to envision de Javier’s notorious dress, its horns now curling over the collarbone, around a hip, or down the upper arms, on a red carpet somewhere. “I felt like I had to embrace the fearlessness I had before,” the designer said, adding that having trained in menswear, switching to women’s entailed a personal journey. With this collection, he dipped back into his very first women’s lineup, which he had wiped clean digitally and refused to lend. And he circled back to his alma mater, the Istituto Europeo di Design, working with recent graduates to produce the pieces.
In the front row was Tisci, in a fly-by on his way to New York. “I saw something very fresh in Luis. He’s bringing back some of that sexuality, which has been a bit silent lately, but today is very different [than it was for me],” he offered. “I try to use my platform, my experience, to help him find his own way without being scared of the big monster that is the fashion business. The most important thing is to be free and look to the future.” To that end, de Javier is currently apartment hunting in Paris. Now that he has our attention, it will be interesting to see where he goes with it—especially if he gives himself the freedom not to lean too hard on the horns.
