Middle East-inspired collection hits the runway at Paris Fashion Week

A model presents a creation by Christian Wijnants during the women’s 2018 Spring/Summer ready-to-wear collection fashion show in Paris, on Friday. (AFP)

PARIS: Soirees merged from night to day as design houses showed off color-rich creations in Friday’s instalment of celebrity-filled Paris Fashion Week. Belgian designer Christian Wijnants’ collection took inspiration from the Middle East.
It was prints galore for Wijnants as his guests were treated to the silks and decorations of the Ottoman Empire.
The talented Belgian designer evoked the floral motif found on fine Ottoman and Persian ceramics — that also adorns manuscripts and miniatures — in his diaphanous array of fluttery, lightly-colored printed silken gowns.
There was great thought behind the deceptively-simple collection.
A loose blue embroidered coat had a shimmery finish like the glaze on pottery. And a beautiful jade green dress had an Eastern feel with its swirling multitudinous layers and long fine neck scarf.
At several points, an Arabic text print covered the bust. Flashes of the West — like denim dungarees — added a fun contrast.
American model and actress Emily Ratajkowski posed ahead of the Nina Ricci show in a checked brown 70s-style suit taken from its fall collection.
But for spring, designer Guillaume Henry channeled suits of a different nature: The military.
It was a theme that spoke to the show’s venue: The former French military hospital, the grand Hotel des Invalides, which is now home to France’s Army Museum.
Meanwhile, the great mysteries of nature and Iceland were touchstones for Issey Miyake in its Paris show.
Loose silhouettes — the display’s principle style — hung from the shoulder featuring hazy images of the Icelandic landscape.
The blurred motifs were created by baking printed glue on the fabric, sealing the fashion house’s reputation for cutting-edge clothes-making techniques.
Elsewhere, fabric panels of colorful checks folded haphazardly across the torso used a brown hue taken from a natural mud pigment. To end the show, squares were pieced together, creating a dark, geometric fabric that evoked light reflecting on volcanic Icelandic rocks.