PARIS — Innovative details, pops of color and simplified cuts for easy mixing and matching were employed by exhibitors to address price-wary retailers at the inaugural edition of the Who’s Next Prêt-à-Porter Paris trade show.
The transformed salon, which merged rival shows Who’s Next and Prêt-à-Porter Paris in one hall, ended its four-day run at the Porte de Versailles here on Jan. 24.
Faced with negative economic forecasts in Europe, many of the younger artisanal brands showing at the event said it was increasingly difficult to compete with large distributors due to price differences. A conference addressing the issue of how to boost local sourcing addressed some of their concerns.
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Among trends, the palette for next winter included warm reds, golden mineral browns and forest green, plus a muddy light blue often seen on South American, folk-influenced patterns. Operating in a fragile economic climate, however, the trick for designers playing with color and busy embellishments was to aim for originality shy of eccentricity.
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Roseanna, a Paris-based label with a rocker edge, pushed the theme with its vivid patterns on loose blouses and jackets designed to be worn with skinny-leg pants. Dressy jackets with Eighties-style rectangular, longer silhouettes portrayed a bold masculine note, balanced with feminine experiments with color and motifs.
Valentine Gauthier’s novel collection, inspired by a fishing village in Uruguay, included loose, feminine tops recalling post-World War II silhouettes, and some pale geometric patterns. The folk trend also surfaced in the men’s apparel area in the Mr. Brown halls, with layered, bourgeois-meets-rustic silhouettes, as well as hand-sewn details inside collars and cuffs.
Several retailers expressed fatigue with an ongoing Parisian contemporary look they felt was ruling women’s silhouettes, which they described as “straight” and too “simple,” or occasionally girly.
“I feel the trends are turning toward more simple lines, no curves,” said Julia Tatiana, buyer for the Moscow store, Terra Moda. “The Russian woman doesn’t want straight lines, so it’s hard for us.”
Sweden-based retailer Eric Hammel bemoaned, “This is very Paris-oriented and mainly for French customers.”
French exhibitors represented 45 percent of the 2,500 labels showing at the event, including accessories brands. Forty-three percent of exhibitors were from elsewhere in Europe, 7 percent were from Asia, 3 percent from the Americas and 2 percent from the Middle East.
Other retailers struggling to find original and diverse styles reasoned that the euro debt crisis could be dissuading brands from taking creative risks.
“It’s the crisis,” said Nelly Boscaro, a buyer for the French store Indiana in Chambéry, lamenting she had trouble finding “anything new.”
However, many of the French visitors, who accounted for 68 percent of the 65,682 attendees, were more enthusiastic. Chloé Dommergue, a buyer for a store set to open in Dinard, France, called Bliss, said she saw Parisian trends for “simple, not vulgar” cuts, and felt they were “boosted with freshness and crafted detail.”
Buyer budgets were down by roughly 20 to 30 percent, but many exhibitors encouraged sales by relaxing minimum order requirements. Organizers said they plan to converge efforts to increase international visitors from 30 percent to 50 percent over the next two years.
But for now, even the salon’s key “professionalizing” conference addressed a francophone debate on how to lure French manufacturers back to their homeland, plus a sales tax initiative to help reduce France’s national debt.
Addressing the need to safeguard French savoir faire in apparel manufacturing, lawmakers debated a new proposal for a stringent test that would guarantee the authenticity of a product being made in France. Under the proposal, companies meeting those requirements would benefit from an elite, Made in France label.
Opponents of the initiative feared companies who buy mostly foreign materials for production in France would be unfairly punished.