Ask Boramy Viguier If a Runway Show Still Matters (He Just Did His First)—The Answer Is Yes
Do up and coming designers still want to do runway shows? Ask Boramy Viguier and the answer is yes. Viguier presented his fourth collection, a terrific showing of snappy broad-shouldered suiting cinched at the waist with bag belts mixed with Technicolor parkas and Burning Man ponchos, in Paris on January 16th at the Palais Brongniart—don’t French venues have the very best names? He brought to the proceedings his typically idiosyncratic and compelling spin, with an atmosphere that was positively Umberto Eco. (Read the interview with him below to find out exactly why.)
Of course, you could argue that plenty of menswear shows, particularly this Fall 2020 season in Paris, have been making a terrific case for why the show must go on; they’ve become meditations on gender, power, sexuality, desirability, peacocking, and the collision of tradition and modernity. In other words, food—and clothes—for thought. Boramy Viguier, one of the 2019 crop of LVMH Prize finalists, had plenty to say on the subject, all of it laced with his usual poetic, philosophical, but decidedly unpretentious way of thinking.
Boramy, we keep hearing that the runway show is over, yet you just did your first one. Why?
For several reasons, and one of those reasons is really selfish! I can see myself when I see my clothes. I might have seen what I do in a showroom, on a rack, in a store, and the product has to speak for itself. But when you see something worked into a look, and it’s styled, which I love to do—like, mixing a vinyl and nylon coat with a pair of leather pants—you can tell a whole other story, and then to see that look on a human being, walking...the clothes aren’t just a product anymore. When I was backstage yesterday, looking at the lineup before they went on….I was just so happy to see my clothes moving, in life!
And I have another reason. In fashion, we talk a lot about being avant garde, and ahead of our time. I like those ideas, to push my looks and my style forward. Yet I also like that there is a tradition in fashion, this tradition of catwalking; that you are presenting your vision with 25, 30, whatever looks. I recently watched a documentary on Parisian couture, and they had the shows, with the models, holding up numbered cards and putting their hands on their hips, and there was no music. None of that works for today, but still: they were shows, they were part of the traditions of fashion, and sometimes traditions are here for a reason. I like to embrace that. I was so excited about doing my first show for that reason. This is it. I have to do it.
What about the experience of the show itself? We hear that being rethought and challenged more and more these days.
Before the show started, I played Jocelyn Pook’s soundtrack to Eyes Wide Shut, and then the soundtrack [to the show] was a mix of war movie music, and the work of Arvo Part; he’s an Estonian composer, a contemporary of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, but very different to them. I wanted people to feel that the show...was almost like a temple, to create something mystic and sacred. The religious feeling was very important to me, the sense of creating a communion. Even if you’re not religious—and I am not—there’s still a feeling that we all need to commune together sometimes. We live in such a pragmatic world—too pragmatic for me—that even without thinking about religion, we can still want to believe in something mystical, with spirit.