Paris Fashion Week: Heritage and Handbags Define Contemporary Brands

Across Paris during fashion week, contemporary brands appeared to be playing it safe, leaning on familiar signatures and proven commercial formulas as they look to strengthen their positioning in an increasingly challenging market.

Collections focused on updating the wardrobe, particularly with accessories. Brands are increasingly looking to handbags and shoes — what with their “accessible luxury” pricing plus the higher margins they provide — to stabilize sales numbers. That was evidenced by several brands introducing new styles, or adding multiple sizes.

Across collections, floral prints and texture were used to create a soft embellishment, with looks capturing the more feminine energy on the runways.

Aigle took a more functional approach, introducing fashion-forward details to its technical heritage without sacrificing wearability through its collaboration with Setchu.

But as brands are concentrating on strong commercial offerings, they are continuing to turn to heritage, art and cultural partnerships to do a lot of the heavy lifting for differentiation. The presentations’ locations and elaborate experiences gave the season a strong sense of elevation — and provided some pretty good canapés.

Here, a roundup of what some of the leading contemporary brands showed in Paris.

Aigle by Setchu

Aigle is continuing to step into more fashion-forward territory, with Setchu designer Satoshi Kuwata bringing his twist to the French outdoor brand’s functional wardrobe.

The standout of the season was a pair of thigh-high rubber boots finished with oversize bows. Part fisherman, part Parisienne, he transformed the practical rainwear staple into something decidedly more fun.

Yet they will stand up to the elements. A keen fisherman, Satoshi personally tested the prototypes on a trip to Greenland, putting the garments through cold and wet conditions before bringing them to market.

Elsewhere, other fishing-inspired details ran through the collection, balanced by kimono references such as a wrap trench, as well as vintage French workwear touches.

It was Kuwata’s second collection for Aigle. While the brand is encouraging him take all the risks he wants, he’s working with restraint to create clothes full of shape and volume that he called “charismatic carryover” garments, instead of one-season statement pieces. His updated safari jackets, as well as messenger bags in an expanded size range for the chic commuter, expressed this.

Claudie Pierlot

Claudie Pierlot is entering a new chapter, trading girlish frills and flourishes for a more grown-up expression of femininity.

The shift is expressed in a new boutique concept, conceived as a chic summer house rather than a conventional retail space. The interior swims in faded blues, mint greens and powdery neutrals with neoclassical moldings, offset by black lacquer, frosted glass, mosaics and polished metal.

The brand held its presentation at the new store, and the same sense was threaded throughout the collection. House codes were distilled into stronger silhouettes, particularly on day dresses with considered details such as pleating. Longer skirt lengths, generous volumes and slouchy jackets added to the sense of easy separates, while statement blouses with lavallière collars and reworked leather outerwear added definition.

“We decided to be a little bit more focused on the brand vision, which is really based on the [founder] Claudie Pierlot, which is more assertive femininity,” said chief executive officer Anne Cottin.

The brand also introduced a new bag shape in two sizes, as the category continues to gather momentum. The boutique is the first of a concept intended for further flagship locations in Europe.

Iro

Iro’s latest collection looked to the late 1990s and early 2000s for inspiration, though the pieces being revived here felt less like the era of elegant minimalism than its cheaper-looking aftermath. Mesh, lace, metallic studs, crochet and tie-dye competed for attention, while fitted party dresses and washed denim leaned heavily on familiar notions of off-duty rock-chick dressing.

The brand tried for a balance of sensuality and sharp tailoring, but the distinction got lost in a jumble of embellishments, stretchy silhouettes and aggressively nostalgic styling. There were linen jackets and shorts, suede-and-metal combinations and a new studded mesh Club Night bag, as the brand expands its commercially successful accessories range.

Yet more detail did not necessarily translate into more design, and the collection often felt trapped in a dated idea of party dressing. The collection’s attempt at provocation was perhaps best illustrated by a top with underboob exposure that seemed intended to signal a rebellious edge but came across as little more than an ill-fitting garment in search of a point of view.

Longchamp

For the spring, Longchamp’s artistic director Sophie Delafontaine drew on the French New Wave, a cinematographic period whose heroines were “really characters with temperament, a strong personality.” This inspired silhouettes for the French brand where delicacy was balanced with an active, assured attitude that she called “elegant femininity for an active woman,” filled with clean lines, beautiful materials and judicious infusions of boyish shapes.

A secondary inspiration was Parisian architecture, as evidenced by a set mimicking its well-known roofs, and summer light in the city. The collection moved from graphic black-and-white checks and dots to lilac, muted rose, wasabi and layered greens and pinks.

Cuts epitomized Delafontaine’s inclinations for pieces that “can be a base in a wardrobe and then be remixed as you like,” with midi-length dresses with the slightest flare in their skirt, straight collar shirtdresses that fell at the knee, lush leather blousons and an overshirt that fell in soft folds thanks to its peachy textured washed silk.

Other items played on the idea of layers, already built into them, like a skirt that looked like an apron wrapped over a shorter look, or a shirt with long shoulder flaps.

Accessories reinforced the mix of polish and practicality, with a new twist on the Roseau bag with an L-shaped profile and the petite Le Joli vanity.

Loulou de Saison

For her latest collection, Chloe Harrouche stayed close to the formula that has made Loulou de Saison a reliable fixture in the contemporary Parisian wardrobe. Draped dresses, soft cashmere twinsets and tactile details set the tone, from a fringed dress and matching T-shirt to three-dimensional floral appliqués on tops and dresses that gave her softly romantic silhouettes extra texture.

With models seated around a grand dining table, one black ballgown with a looped-fringe skirt was a standout.

Harrouche stepped beyond the brand’s usual ivory and black palette to include the absinthe green that continues to have fashion in a chokehold, as well as pearly pink, celadon blue and a deep plum. It was all safely within the house’s established aesthetic, which is what has spurred its success. Harrouche knows her customer and is providing easy, convincing day-to-night solutions.

After opening at Bloomingdale’s in the U.S., the brand is continuing its French expansion by entering Galeries Lafayette in Bordeaux this week.

Maje

Maje is continuing to evolve, balancing a familiar femininity with a more commercially minded offering. This season’s setting at the Musée Carnavalet reinforced the SMCP group brand’s alignment with French cultural heritage, but there was more substance here than atmosphere alone. The collection put real emphasis on materials, including Nativa traceable wool sourced from Uruguay, alongside a brand-wide push toward organic fabrics.

Delicate floral prints were an emphasis this season, the first inspired by the Marie Antoinette exhibition at London’s V&A, and the second from Italian vintage archives. Both were reworked by into something lighter and more contemporary. Those motifs were threaded through the collection on embroidered denim, textured silks and transparent skirts.

It was all upscale after a few seasons that veered toward Miami party girl, coming together with sharper brand identity under chief executive officer Elina Kousourna. Maje is currently the best-performing label among its SMCP stablemates, and with an ever-expanding accessories play, including new sizes of the Miss Hobo this season, the effort to reach a more mature customer without losing its youthful appeal appears on track.

Sandro

Sandro again demonstrated its flair for location scouting, taking its presentation to the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, where architectural models and monumental reproductions provided a grand setting for a collection that offered the familiar Sandro formula of sporty separates.

This season juxtaposed those house codes with sharp tailoring notes, such as piped shorts and pleated skirts, which sat alongside strong outerwear in leather bomber jackets. Soft yellow and tricolors of the French flag brightened the palette.

For womenswear, a white tuxedo-style button down, with its bib front and high pointed collar, struck a familiar note this season on the shirting front, but paired with fringed trousers and a cowboy-esque belt it added an off-kilter edge, while menswear continued its balancing act between contemporary tailoring and Mediterranean ease.

Sandro has been sharpening its commercial proposition as it recalibrates its retail strategy. Still, accessories remain a priority, and the brand is growing the category with new colorways of its popular Light Wave vintage-style sneaker, and introduced the new Prado bag — named after the famous shopping street in Marseille — for spring.

With the normally off-limits rooftop Eiffel Tower view, the backdrop was certainly doing its part.

— With contributions from Lily Templeton