Tea dresses inspired by the 1940s, a light dash of grunge-era check, big fake fur–lined jackets, and layers of knits and sparkly things. How did this add up in Julien Dossena’s collectsion? His research had an interesting starting point: “I went to London and found all these ’40s dresses, which reminded me of the war, of resistance,” he said.
That time of the French occupation, privation and fascism—and how women survived it, or didn’t—has a sharp resonance today, of course. But that’s a lot to hang on the shoulders of the pretty vintage-y crepe dresses, lingerie slips, and granny blouses that dotted this Rabanne collectsion. Dossena’s idea transmogrified more into an exercise in layering, seeing the result as “a tough femininity, not polished. More like you see girls on the streets in the area around the Gare du Nord, maybe.”
Maybe piling on as many layers as you can is the new grunge, or perhaps, in these freezing winters, a defense against soaring heating bills in student flats that becomes a style. Anyway: For the purposes of this luxury brand, it’s also a device for displaying as many of the house’s categories as possible. Since Dossena has been here—his first show was in 2014—the brand output has multiplied and its techniques improved beyond all recognition, and somewhere far beyond the space-age legacy left by Paco Rabanne. That’s a big achievement to be chalked up to Dossena’s talent as a designer and brand developer. Nevertheless, it’s always what he does with the sparkle, sequins, and chain mail that steals the show, this time transforming them into a twinkling beaded twinset, a flapper dress, rustling plastic paillettes on skirts, and finally—yes—into one of his micro-floral tea dresses, but in super-slinky metal mesh.
