Cozy is not a word that brings Paco Rabanne to mind. Remember, the label was essentially founded on an opposing principle, a prime example being Rabanne’s 1966 collection “Twelve Unwearable Dresses.” But here in 2017, Julien Dossena has caught on that women don’t really want experimental unwearability. “I really wanted to clean shop on the clothes in general,” he said backstage, adding that a satin palette and the “coziness effect” were key to the fall collection. “It was how to make things really body-conscious but have soft comfort.”
Dossena delivered on his premise. He has already been treading lightly on house codes, being careful to make Paco Rabanne’s ideas plausible on fast, sporty stuff that tilts “futuristic,” but this lineup was further stripped of its angles — in a good way. Nothing was clinical, and some things were actually warm.
Languid knits opened the show — a bottle-green apron top with long uneven panels that slinked over a swishy, clingy skirt, followed by a similar oatmeal-colored shirt and skirt. Dossena quickly dove into metallics, one of the show’s key statements, with slinky silver and gold mesh and chain mail-draped tops and asymmetric skirts gleaming in the brilliant white light of the stark set. Loose and unrestrictive, they poured over the body in a sensual, feminine way.
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A counterpoint were crisp collared shirts and an athletic silver tank worn with shiny tailored pants with a sporty, cummerbund/fanny-pack tail. The fluidity was punctuated with chunky, thick-soled mannish flats in lacquered optic tones, like orange and white. Dossena cut some of the silver and gray with ice blue and worked chain mail concepts on slipdresses crafted from tailoring fabric cut into squares and linked with hardware, which was one collection’s only sturdy embellishments. “I wanted everything to be light and soft as possible,” he said. “Even a button sometimes seemed like too much to me.”