The governing body of French fashion, Fédération française de la couture, has now announced its official schedule for Men's Spring/Summer 2021 Paris Fashion Week, which will take place July 9-13. 

Set to be supported Launchmetrics, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Hylink in China, the event will serve as a digital take on the annual fashion celebration. Labels on the official calendar will offer video presentations which be viewed again after the initial broadcast. 

The Institut Français de la Mode fashion school will plan interviews, making-of clips and zoom meetings with participating brands and designers, cultural bodies, media companies and others. There will also be meetings, concerts and cultural events from experts and official partners such as DEFI, L'Oréal Paris and DS Automobiles. 

In addition, Sphère, a showroom devoted to young brands, will be held online, France's Canal+ Group will act as a channel for events, The New York Times will broadcast videos and Radio Nova will animate editorial material and events. The cultural institutions taking part in this fashion week include the Louvre Museum, the Palais de Tokyo, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Musée de la Style de la Ville de Paris and the Théâtre du Châtelet. 

Catch the official schedule for men's SS21 Paris Fashion Week on the website of the Fédération française de la couture. It is interesting to note that the Paris Fashion Week Women's SS21 will see physical shows with sufficient social distance, supplemented by a digital network, which will be held September 28 - October 6.

P.S. Yohji Yamamoto and Rick Owens digital shows will be held on the 10th of July at 17h30 and 18h respectively. Rhude and White Mountaineering on the 12th at 18h and 19h, we will be able to seer Lanvin show on the 13th at 10h and Dior Homme at 14h30 on the same day. Stay tuned! No invitations needed this time.

PARIS FASHION WEEK MEN'S SS21: OFFICIAL SCHEDULE

Following the cancellation of men's fashion week earlier this year due to the Coronavirus pandemic, regular scheduling is set to start again in September. Paris Fashion Week will return in September for the Spring/Summer 2021 women's shows, according to a statement issued by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. 

No other details have been released re the schedule or its participants but the shows shall take place between September 28th and October 6th. The statement of the Federation goes on to add that the event "will comply with the recommendations of public authorities for its implementation." The physical fashion week will run alongside a specially created online platform. 

The Coronavirus crisis has led brands to search for new and innovative ways of showing their fashion weeks collections. London staged an online-only event earlier this month, while Burberry has announced their plans for a show in the "British outdoors" in September. Also in September both Pitti Uomo and Milan Fashion Week are set to go ahead. 

Although New York hosted the first Fashion week, the event itself derives from "salon shows" ("défilés de mode" in French, literally "fashion parades") in couture salons in Paris. 

A fashion week consists of events showing collections of multiple designers. Before this event has been recognized in New York City, fashion showings were held in Paris as early as the 1700s. These early collections have been shown on mannequins only to customers purchasing products. Showings began to change during the 1800s. Charles Frederick Worth, noted for haute couture, started to show many pieces together with a higher style. Jeanne Paquin was the first designer to publicize her shows, and after her events, Paul Poiret was the first to host parties. 

In the mid-1800s, an Austrian princess and wife to the Paris Ambassador, Mme Pauline von Metternich, saw one of Worth's sketches and employed him to make her a gown. Through his powerful clients he gained much recognition and in 1858 he opened his own haute couture house in Paris which would sell luxury fashion to women of the upper class.

In September, we will be publishing footage from Rick Owens, Mugler, Courreges Parisian shows to name but a few. Stay tuned!

The womenswear shows will run from September 28 to October 6.

Parts of Four is the brainchild of Evan Sugerman, a designer born in Los Angeles, California. He studied fine art at the University of California, Santa Cruz, focusing on multimedia installations based on mechanical movement and sound environment.

In 2011, Evan Sugerman founded his company for the manufacture of jewelry, decor items, lighting fixtures, and installations. Evan was once asked where the name “Parts of Four” came from, to which he replied: “The Parts of Four brand arose from a note made in my sketchbook. The note was a reminder to me that in the process, I have to divide the subject into four parts. “

From the sculptural processes, Parts of Four can be represented as a provocative system of rituals and memories: men, animals, geology, stars, and others. This is the meditation of forms, materials, and processes. Material is a substance. Parts of Four believe in magic and the ability of materials to preserve history and power. It is the material that draws the form. Rather, it is a dialogue, a spiritual dialogue, born in our multifaceted history. This is not a reflection of world events, but a study of the inner space, the construction and expansion in it and ourselves, in its layers and parts, slowly and suddenly.”

The hallmark of the brand is the jewelry being created in a concentration of kneading of such styles as rustic, loft, and industrial. According to Evan Sugerman, Parts of 4 represents a rethinking of the newly “invented” modern jewelry with a complete disregard for traditional trends based mainly on seasonal fashion. For him, this project is a manifestation of the practice of slow design, a more conscious philosophical approach to design. Evan compares his creative process with the processes of synthesis, stratification, filtering, rebuilding, and tuning. Thanks to the constant establishment of errors and successes of the past, new ideas are generated in his mind.

Parts of Four is the brainchild of Evan Sugerman, a designer born in Los Angeles, California. 

Demna Gvasalia is widely credited with popularizing blown-up proportions anew — to the point where Frankenstein shoulders and sleeves dangling past the fingertips invaded runways in all fashion capitals in recent years, not to mention the high street.

“Oversize, it’s my territory,” he said. “I definitely intend to defend what is my design territory.”

Big clothes are part of his personal fashion lore. Growing up poor in Soviet-era Georgia, he wore hand-me-downs from cousins who were five or six years older than him. New clothes were purchased in larger sizes to grow into. Hence, Gvasalia is like a fish out of water when he isn’t swimming in his clothes.

And that’s why he feels so at home in the house Cristóbal Balenciaga first opened in 1937 and helmed until his retirement in 1968. Among the most famous designs of the late Spanish-French couturier, prized for his spare and sculptural designs, are the cocoon coat, bubble skirt, and semi-fit jacket.

“He worked on volumes first and foremost, and not decoration,” said Gvasalia, who in an early collection for Balenciaga transposed the flaring back of the semi-fit jacket into a black sweatshirt. “What I found at Balenciaga was kind of a gift for me. I found Cristóbal Balenciaga’s approach to volume was so perfectly suitable for me with my personal taste for volume.”

Born in Georgia, in 1981, to a Georgian Orthodox Christian family, Gvasalia fled when he was 12, during the country’s violent civil war, and went on to live in Düsseldorf from 2001 onwards.

Gvasalia studied international economics for four years at Tbilisi State University and later attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where he graduated with a Master’s Degree in Fashion Design in 2006.

In 2006, Gvasalia collaborated with Walter van Beirendonck on his men’s collections.

In 2009, Gvasalia joined Maison Martin Margiela, where he was responsible for women’s collections until 2013. In 2013, he was appointed senior designer of women’s ready-to-wear collections at Louis Vuitton, initially under Marc Jacobs and briefly under Nicolas Ghesquière.

Together with his brother Guram, Gvasalia launched the brand Vetements in 2014, along with a small group of friends, displaying their work in small gay clubs in Paris. Gvasalia has said that his original purpose with the brand was to subvert the high fashion status quo. Vetements’ first women’s ready-to-wear collection was presented at Paris Fashion Week in 2014.

In 2015, Gvasalia became the creative director of Balenciaga, succeeding in Alexander Wang.

In 2019, Gvasalia left Vetements to pursue new artistic ventures, having accomplished his goals with the company, telling Highsnobiety that he had “accomplished his mission of a conceptualist and design innovator.”

Gvasalia developed a unique style as his company, Vetements, grew in size and popularity. Much of Gvasalia’s approach still stems from his initial purpose of creating subversive fashion. Collections such as Fall/Winter 2017 included design inspired by archetypes, diverging from the typical haute couture method of radical redesign and avant-garde appearance. Other common themes include baggy, loose-fitting clothing, and street-style jackets.

Gvasalia won the International Award for Vetements and Balenciaga at the CFDA Fashion Awards in 2017. He also won the Accessories Designer of the Year award at the Fashion Awards 2018.

“Oversize, it’s my territory,” he said. “I definitely intend to defend what is my design territory.” 

BALENCIAGA’S GVASALIA: OVERSIZE, IT’S MY TERRITORY

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