PARIS FASHION WEEK: A UNIVERSE OF COLORFUL HEROINES

A Ground Zero design at Paris Fashion Week 

An outlandish kind of joie de vivre has been the order of the day since Paris Fashion Week began Sept. 23, with designers seeming ready to spring a new race of playful superheroines on the world.

Ground Zero's 'comic' creativity

From the very first day of the Womenswear Spring/Summer 2015 collections,  the London and Hong Kong-based label Ground Zero set the tone, with designs that could have been inspired by a childhood spent reading Marvel Comics.

The label's Eri and Phillip Chu, brothers, delivered a show that an onlooker described as “X-Men (or women) leisure style” for a day out in the sunshine.

Later in the week, one of our favourite designers, Manish Arora, also went in for that otherworldly heroine look, with characters in gladiator cyber sandals waiting beside their spaceships to welcome you into a pastel universe.

Arora can always be relied on for creating a buzz during Fashion Week, and with this exuberant collection, he didn't disappoint - as long as you were ready and willing to enter his "kaleidoscopic lunar world". 

Manish Arora: peace, love and pastels despite the gladiator look.
(Photo by Y. Vlamos)

NEW FESTIVAL LINKS FILM AND FASHION IN MILAN

For some, it’s just a natural fit - film and fashion - and Constanza Cavalli Etro is among those who believe this. She is the founder and director of the first edition of the Fashion Film Festival Milano, held at the start of Milan Fashion Week in mid-September.

Escandalo: A Cruise, by Dean Alexander,
won for best editing

With sponsorship mainly from the Italian Fashion Council (Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana), the hugely successful festival was the first event of this kind in Italy to showcase fashion movies from around the world.

According to Etro, famous feature films such as Prêt-à-Porter and The Devil Wears Prada indicate the  public’s interest in the world of fashion, and the festival wanted to take things further.

The long-term aim is to become a “meeting point for designers, video makers, directors and artists, who share great talent from all over the world”.

The event, which took place on Sept. 14 and 15, comprised two sections, a film competition and an exhibition. The competition featured  30 finalists selected from more than 300 submissions, while the exhibition portrayed the top fashion films from well-known directors and established brands.

Poster for the festival, with inspiring quote.

A panel of five judges selected nine winners in categories such as best fashion film and  best Italian fashion film, among others.

Cavalli Etro described the initiative as a means of combining her love and respect for fashion and her passion for cinema. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she lived for many years in Mexico where she  became the fashion editor of Fashion Week Mexico and co-founded the first Latin America Film Festival. She now lives in Milan with her husband, the designer Kean Etro.

Her Fashion Film Festival Milano joins the ranks of other festivals devoted to the art of fashion. In Paris, A Shaded View on Fashion Film (ASVOFF),  was launched in 2008, and this year’s edition will take place in November, after Paris Fashion Week (Sept. 23 - Oct. 1).