SPHERE Paris Fashion Week® Showroom - Dreams on the Seine

3.PARADIS enters the Official Calendar of Paris Fashion Week® this season. Keep dreaming, despite everything. To find within ourselves the keys to affirming our style. This is undoubtedly the motto of the designers exhibiting at SPHERE Paris Fashion Week® Showroom, as the Fédération benefits from the ongoing support of DEFI and l'Oréal Paris, official partners. This season's Menswear session takes place at the Palais de Tokyo from Wednesday, June 19th to Sunday, the 23rd. Six brands – 3.PARADIS, Bianca Saunders, C.R.E.O.L.E, OUEST PARIS and Rolf Ekroth – are in the spotlight, with two of them joining the showroom this season: 3.PARADIS and Bianca Saunders. London-born Bianca Saunders, winner of the ANDAM Prize in 2021, and who joined the Official Calendar a year later, is carrying on her research centred on her Jamaican heritage.  Drawing on the influence of a de-gendered aesthetic, her influences became clearer, giving pride of place to a more unstructured silhouette, combining the rigour of tailoring with baggy ease. C.R.E.O.L.E has a similar take on unisex, workwear and queer identity, while Vincent Frederic Colombo, born in Paris, draws on his Guadeloupean heritage for his “creolity.” Jeanne Friot didn't hesitate to name her collection ‘Idols.’ “I started looking at the personalities and idols who gave me strength, who are my reference points,” she said. From Sagan to Bowie to Kurt Cobain, from Grace Jones to Debbie Harry – and with Joan of Arc at its centre – here they are at the heart of a collection that combines gender-neutrality and radicalism, with brilliance. The night expresses itself with a more positive message lit up with lurex and sequins: “I need to share the dream again at a complicated time.”  

“Existing, defending ourselves. The challenge is there, and it's up to the venue to set the standard”, says Arthur Robert, creator of OUEST PARIS. “SPHERE is important, it's a validation. It means being acknowledged as a recognised brand on the Paris scene. It's a stamp of approval. The showroom has enabled some great names to emerge. It's an honour… I wanted a twist, as if we wanted to drop everything and go surfing in California. I took all the inspirations from the beginning, the photographs by Karlheinz Weinberger and Gus Van Sant, and concentrated them.” A good half of the collection is denim, with shapes inspired by workwear and the West, only in washed, pastel, Californian tones. A jacket fitted like a suit of armour or a corset, with very wide, surf-style baggy trousers. It's as if all the pieces came out of the ocean. “At the heart of the brand are my origins, and the bridge between the Basque coast and California. There's something quite magnetic about it, even if you can't say that America is an ideal. It's somewhere between endless summer and queer culture. I started thinking about West during the pandemic: it was very frustrating and very fertile at the same time. It's good to hold on to this imaginary world. Denim is a uniform. You can live in it all day long, it's very functional, but I like there to be a little something that makes you dream.”

A digital version will also be available by invitation with the support of Le New Black and Grand Shooting from 19 June 2024.