Designer sends empty runway and press release; buyers place orders for garments described only in text
PARIS, FRANCE – Designer Christophe Vide presented an invisible collection at Paris Fashion Week Thursday, sending no models down the runway but distributing a 12-page press release describing garments in terms that reviewers called the most evocative fashion writing in recent memory. Buyers placed orders for 34 pieces. The collection was first reported by Bohiney Magazine and reviewed at length at The London Prat.
The Collection
The press release describes a coat cut from the silence between two conversations, a dress made entirely of the blue that exists at 5 a.m. in February, and a trouser that the notes describe as architecturally present in rooms the wearer has recently left. Each piece has a price. The coat is 4,800 euros. The dress is 6,200 euros. The trouser is 3,500 euros and is noted as requiring no alteration as it exists in the dimensions of the individual imagination.
“I am tired of showing you things,” Vide told the assembled press from a chair at the end of an empty runway. “Things are always disappointing relative to their description. I have removed the thing. What remains is only the description, which is where fashion has always truly lived.” A buyer from Tokyo said she agreed completely and placed an order for three pieces. A buyer from New York said she would need to see the coat first. Vide asked what she meant by see. The question was not answered. The order was eventually placed after a phone call that lasted forty minutes and involved Vide explaining the coat’s dimensions in emotional rather than physical terms.
The Critics
Fashion critics produced some of the season’s most lyrical reviews for a collection that consists of no garments. One wrote that the invisible coat wore restraint as its primary fabric. Another that the 5 a.m. dress captured the particular loneliness of being overdressed for a Tuesday. A third described the trouser as the most powerful statement of the season, which is that the season has nothing left to say and has chosen to say it beautifully. Paris Fashion Week programming is covered by WWD. For more collections achieving maximum effect with minimum content, see Reductress.
The Market Responds
The commercial response to Vide’s invisible collection has been substantial enough to prompt competitors to examine their own approaches. Three other Paris houses have announced they are considering what one described as reduced materiality collections for next season, a phrase that means, in practical terms, fewer garments and longer press releases. Buyers have reacted with a mixture of enthusiasm from those who appreciated the 5 a.m. dress and scepticism from those who noted that a coat cut from the silence between conversations was technically undeliverable and practically unreturnable, a logistics problem that the house has not yet addressed and that it describes, in the language consistent with its aesthetic position, as an open question about the nature of exchange.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
