Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant didn’t do a show for fall, but stood in front of a large-scale video screen at Courrèges headquarters to deliver a speech about the collection as it was projected behind them. It felt a lot like a Mac commercial. “We are 27. We are born with the Internet and social media in our blood — it’s like breathing,” Vaillant said. “We live with screens, liking and swiping. It’s second nature. At the same time, we think the greatest luxury of all is to be in the same room, all physically here and to speak together in reality.”
The designers disclosed their plan to focus on four of their “strength” categories — jackets, miniskirts, knits and the architectural dress — and three core values — optimism, smart design and dialogue. They asked friends and models to choose one piece from the collection and style it any way, with their own clothes, which was what was displayed on the video. Seeing a purple laminated apron minidress worn over a vintage T-shirt and beat-up Chuck Taylors; a lemon-yellow cropped classic Courrèges Mod jacket with exaggerated sleeves with a casual T-shirt and ostrich-skin pants and black butch boots, and a lime green minidress traced in a swirl of white zippers with a gray hoodie definitely put the collection in today’s context. All together, it can look like a time capsule. So it seems like the future of “futuristic” Courrèges will be a range of items as opposed to a fleshed-out collection.