Fashion

In this edition we meet three up-and-coming fashion designers. Victor Weinsanto studied fashion in Paris before going on to work with Jean-Paul Gaultier. He later went on to found his own exuberant label, this year inviting his drag queen friends to model his latest collection. Meanwhile, Kevin Germanier wants to break with the bad habits of the past: he loves upcycling and breathing new life into old fabric. For Alain Paul, meanwhile, fashion is the work of marrying choreography and clothing to the human body. 

"Ressusciter la rose" (Revive the rose) is an original musical tribute, a marriage of fashion, music and design, to celebrate the centenary of the Villa Noailles. This collection of Cubist-inspired buildings in the south of France was designed in the 1930s by architect Robert Mallet-Stevens. It was commissioned by an iconic couple: Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles. The villa quickly became the go-to meeting place for the French avant-garde. So what exactly is the couple's legacy? We take a closer look in this edition of Fashion.

"Woman is an active subject of the historical process and cannot be confined to being the object of desire of patriarchy." That was the strident slogan written in letters on the wall of Dior's recent show, where creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri leant into the historically fraught image of the witch. The feminist fight was also at the heart of the offering from Valériane Venance's young label Indépendantes de Cœur, where a cage motif was central. The model within is entirely naked, but simultaneously protected.

For their summer 2024 menswear collections, not one but two French designers have sought inspiration in literature. Louis-Gabriel Nouchi turned to Christopher Isherwood's "A Single Man", while Jeanne Friot dived into "The Little Mermaid", both books that explore the complexities and the often-repressed desires of the queer community. We also meet Mark Bryan, a robotics engineer who loves subverting the sartorial status quo by wearing skirts and heels in his daily life.

For his next film, "Finalement" ("Finally"), French director Claude Lelouch places his characters at the heart of a fashion show. The collection in question belongs to Parisian couturier Stéphane Rolland, who reveals his haute couture 2023/2024 winter offering on the grand staircase of the Paris Opera. The event pays homage to opera icon Maria Callas, and recreates the star’s “grande nuit de l’Opéra” that took place there in 1958. Lelouch’s actors, who perform in the midst of a live, real-world fashion show, only have one chance to get it right.

July 2023 saw the third edition of a fashion competition in Paris called Africa Fashion Up. It aims to give a platform to young, up-and-coming African talent. Five designers from across the continent presented their collections at the Musée du Quai Branly, as they celebrated local craftsmanship with a global appeal. The winner, Aristide Loua, is an Ivorian who lived in France before returning to his home country, where he spent two years reacclimatising before embracing fashion. FRANCE 24 went to meet him and the other designers.

Haute Couture is part of French soft power: creating thousands of jobs and huge profits, a world away from a dramatic news cycle. This season's Paris Fashion Week was no exception. Dior's show saw Maria Grazia Chiuri reinventing the pleats of ancient Greece, while Iris van Herpen experimented with new shapes to allow movement. In their new collections, the two fashion houses are creating an ode to lightness – perhaps an antidote to our turbulent times?

It was the fashion event of the season, if not the decade! Fashion journalists, buyers, celebrities and influencers from around the world descended on the French capital to see Paris's oldest bridge, le Pont Neuf, decked out in resplendent gold. The occasion was Pharrell Williams's first ever collection as head of menswear at Louis Vuitton. Another big celebrity draw elsewhere in Paris was the indefatigable Yohji Yamamoto, who's just a few months away from his 80th birthday. FRANCE 24 got a glimpse of the action.

This year's Tunis Fashion Week took place at the Museum of Carthage, a recent recipient of some hefty funding from the European Union. The setting for the 14th edition was chosen by event founder Anis Montacer. He's launching his own label, Outa, with a collection made from recycled plastic waste. Also worthy of mention are Portuguese designer Joana Maltez, young Tunisian designer Haroun Ghanmi and Mouna Ben Braham, who reinvents traditional Tunisian wedding attire. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look.

An enormous part of a museum's success depends on its curators. At Paris's Palais Galliera fashion museum, curator Alexandre Samson has declared 1997 a year unparalleled in its influence on global fashion. It was the year Jean-Paul Gaultier designed the costumes for Luc Besson’s film "The Fifth Element", Comme des Garçons and Martin Margiela revealed iconic collections and Tom Ford embraced the porno-chic aesthetic at Gucci. We check out a celebration of 1990s audacity at the exhibition "1997 Fashion Big Bang".