From today, Monday 5 July, it begins Haute Couture week in Paris, which will continue until Thursday 8 and will feature 33 maisons from all over the world, for a total of 34 autumn-winter 2021-2022 collections. It's not just the fashion shows that are restarting in Paris, it's the luxury sector that is riding the recovery after the long apnea from Covid-19. Lvmh and Kering with their brands are ready to hook the progressive return to normality and start again thanks to the Paris stage. Of the fashion houses involved, they will be eight to show their models in the presence (the highest number for a fashion week since the outbreak of the pandemic). In chronological order, these are Christian Dior, Azzaro Couture, Chanel (with two fashion shows), Giorgio Armani Privé, Balenciaga, Jean Paul Gaultier, Zuhair Murad and Vaishali S. Instead, Valentino will be missing, which will show in Venice.
The other fashion houses, however, will show their collections on video. These include Iris Van Herpen, Giambattista Valli, Stéphane Rolland, Alexandre Vauthier, Viktor & Rolf, Rahul Mishra, Julie de Libran, Fendi Couture and Maison Margiela. The models will also be visible on companies' websites, social media and the web platform of the Federation de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, the body that governs French fashion.
According to insiders, the most anticipated fashion show among those scheduled is probably that of Balenciaga, which returns to a catwalk of haute couture tailoring after more than 50 years, or since the founder of the house, Cristobal Balenciaga, closed his fashion house following the mass student protests in 1968, which blocked the center of Paris for different months.
To characterize this edition of the Paris Haute Couture Week is internationalism. In fact, most of the stylists are not French: in all, 12 of the houses were founded by Frenchmen, another 6 are Parisian companies founded by non-French stylists and as many as 15 are based in other countries (the most represented is Italy ).
If autumn-winter women's fashion shows in Paris, far away, in seoul, instead the spotlights are focused on the date of July 7th. Louis Vuitton has in fact announced its autumn-winter 2021 men's show for that day in which BTS will participate live, a Korean pop group that immediately sparked the attention of fans with hundreds of thousands of visits and video downloads. Enough to enter the hashtag #LVMenFW21 among those trending on Twitter from the early hours of the morning.
Updated at 16hrs Monday 23th July 5
