AW12 Paco Rabanne at Totem PR Paris

The Paco Rabanne Office

When it comes to fashion history I can just about recognise the decades thanks to Disney princesses (gets a little fuzzy when it comes to Mary Poppins though) (Does she even count as a princess? I always thought she’s more of a witch…) so I’d like to apologize first if you’ve spent a week in a dusty library memorizing the influence of Alberto Giacometti in the work of Schiaparelli for your fashion exam. I say this because I had no idea who Paco Rabanne was, even when I was buzzing up to the showroom in Paris I was in the dark as I hadn’t had a chance to look anything up. Mind, this is highly irregular, for someone who even looks up her postman in Google. This is also irregular, for someone who owns MANY bags of jumprings and pliers.

Paco Rabanne, simply put, is the father of unwearable, fantastic, otherworldly garment concepts. Think dresses pieced together with metal chips, paper, plastics, rubber. Think early 60’s, the novelty of the decade is tie-dye and shorter skirt lengths – the architect turned designer produces dresses out of metal sequins so that the light catches the texture brilliantly on black & white TV. If your dress breaks, the tools you have in your bag can also fix your drainpipe. After years of hiatus in the design front, the brand is designing again with Manish Arora leading the creative. I’m loving how he’s managed to take all that history and character and translate it into such a sleek wearable collection. Chainmail and fuzzy knits, so Joan of Arc.

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A big thank you to the Paco Rabanne team for the warm welcome, and Ykone for the organization.

Leather shorts – Vintage, Shoes – secondhand Alexander Wang viaVestiaire Collective, Trench – Uniqlo, Bag – Marc Jacobs via Monnier Freres, Stripe Top – Uniqlo, Last pic necklace – DanniJo

Let me just answer that tickling question – did I peel off my striped-top and give it to Carrie while she waited topless on my bed? No. Not in that order anyway. I mean, no. We just happened to bring one top and they both happened to be striped – but picture us walking around Milan looking like girls who ran away from mime-school; amusing is one way to put it.

Anyhow. It always feels wonderful to be back in Milan, the intensity and… ubiquity of sunlight is really something here. Whenever someone tells me how a country’s climate make all the difference in a person’s temperament, I like to wave my cynicism stick at them (shaped like a frantically-purchased, over-priced corner-store umbrella, naturally), but in Milan I always stand corrected. I stood, in fact (but no miming, I swear), in awe of the well-dressed, well-groomed men and women, while happily soaking in the beauty of the sun-kissed city. It wasn’t necessarily hot or anything, but I loved the fact that light was so abundant until one moment around 9pm you look up to realise the sun has just quietly melted away. Whereas in London the sun is really just a matter of abruptly switching it ON or OFF – at  7pm the sun goes OFF; in October, the sun goes OFF. Sometimes it does disco-hour and does ON-OFF-ON-OFF for half the day, like how we all played with the light-switch when we were seven or eight. I tell you, if I find that kid who’s behind this perverted weather I will put it in a box and send it to Korea.

Thank you Ykone and Bottega Veneta for the much needed break away from cold & wet London; thank you Carrie for the shots of me.

More to come in Part II & III with Bottega Veneta Initials concept and a peek into Salone del Mobil!