It’s About The Runway, But Really It’s Always About The Front Row

Since the invention of the fashion show by English designer Charles Frederick Worth in the 1860s in Paris, there has always been something liberating, if not also libertine, about fashion shows in the global capital of them. Industrially speaking, everybody — houses, designers, retailers, editors, critics and all their many legions of wannabes standing in the wings — seem to feel the need to make bolder statements by exercising the freedom to be more purely, jaw-droppingly themselves in Paris. Whatever it is that they wear or seem to do just seems more inevitable.

In part, it’s the sum of the grand old French houses and the irreverent indie designers who have to try harder to gain the world’s fashion editors’ eyes — they go all-out. The result is that no city — not New York, not Milan, not London, and certainly not Berlin nor any of the towns hosting lesser fashion weeks that follow — stages any fashion week better than Paris.

At the same time, the global denizens of the front row — aka, the FROW — feel the pressure as well. Naturally, day-to-day, we all change our clothes but do not, overall, change our ‘look.’ Those rules are differently written in what we can call fashion-week FROW-World. As per the prescription of celebrity life world-wide, denizens of the front row are under arguably even greater pressure than ordinary to change their look. They must shape-shift, for that is part of the lingua franca of the front row.

As in the lead photograph above: When Ri-Ri rocked the Super Bowl halftime and several billion people broke internet because of the new bump-reveal, she was (within the boundaries of a Ri-Ri stage outfit) demure. In a way. Now that the ‘secret’ of the pregnancy is out, and the singer pops up in Paris, as above, she can go all-out: A supertight nude leather number covered up with a hemless sheepskin cape-coat thing harking all the way back to Raquel Welch’s fur bikini in the legendary cave-woman vehicle-thing. The message? Get out of the way. No momma does a second pregnancy like Ri-Ri.

The rules for models in Paris, Milan, New York and London are pretty much the same: It’s a work day, and a hellish work week if you are booked well, so if you’re gonna walk, as Kendall Jenner did in the Off White show just before the paparazzi snagged her en route out of the venue in the photograph above, then covering up and getting on with business is what it’s about. Unclear in this shot is whether the masked Ms. Jenner is actually worried about a resurgent pandemic in Europe or whether she’s just taking a page from her often-masked-in-public-venues former brother-in-law, Kanye West.

French international soccer star-man Paul Pogba, a top player for his own national team and for Milan’s Agnelli-family-owned Juventus, and his Bolivian model wife Zulay are pretty much welcome any place in France, or the world, that they care to visit. Paris fashion week’s Off-White front row was a stop they didn’t want to miss. Mrs. Pogba stayed admirably and with brio true to the brand with a black turtleneck number topped with a chunky gold necklace and a pair of hoops, while her celebrated husband was elegantly turned out in an off-white suit and some fine chunky shades, but wait! What cryptic fashion and/or sports-biz message was the fabulously talented Mr. Pogba telegraphing with those two outsized — white — paper clips in the breast pocket of his jacket? A new multi-year-multi-million-dollar contract offer from somewhere up in the Premier League, perhaps? Windproofing for his (eventual) giant pocket square? A note from his tailor or his dry cleaner that he didn’t quite get around to reading yet? At Paris fashion week, some mysteries are best left unsolved.

The title for the popular Off-White womenswear Fall/Winter 2022-2023 was “Spaceship Earth: An Imaginary Experience,” which, gauging from Ms Jenner’s rather formal dinnerwear/night-on-the-town strapless bodice with her veiled reversed-baseball-cap topper and the full-length opera gloves, must have been intended as evening wear at this or that celebratory ball in one of NASA’s planned moon or Mars colonies in a decade or two. Theoretically then, as imagined on Paris’ little chunk of Spaceship Earth, Ms. Jenner’s ball outfit would be the kind of thing that would be possible after NASA gets the kinks ironed out of how to cater such an affair in microgravity.

By contrast, it’s not entirely clear just what model/author/businesswoman Emily Ratajkowski’s full message is with her breezy top in Paris’ bracingly pale late winter sunshine — pictured here awaiting her seat at in Loewe’s womenswear show on March 3. Although Paris — and by definition Ms. Ratajkowski — were a few weeks away from the vernal equinox at the time, the blouse seems to be meant as a harbinger of spring, or, on the cultural high end, it could just be an oblique fashion homage to Igor Stravinsky’s revolutionary Rite of Spring, which did famously cause a near-riot at its Ballets Russe debut in Paris in 1913. But that was then; this is now: Paris fashion week being arguably attended by the most unflappable audience on earth, we don’t think this top, however arresting, caused the arguably wished-for riot, proving one again that the best sorts of advertisement are not necessarily advertisements for oneself. Practically speaking, it’s also unclear how the effervescent Ms. Ratajkowski, once shown to her seat among the great and the good, actually managed to sit down. That’s the kind of thing that takes practice.

We are digging Pharell at any time — the man can do no (almost) no fashion wrong. But his edgy latter-day take on Peter Falk’s tenacious police lieutenant Columbo — again, at the ragingly popular Off-White show — minus Falk’s ever-present nickel stogie and his crushed-up porkpie — leaves us with just a few little questions. First, great trench, and we like that whole retro-tech portable-CD player pocket on the sleeve! That thing is flat-out cool. But were those blingy shades truly your choice? Are you entirely sure that some well-meaning stylist didn’t foist those things off on you at the last minute in the radio car? Don’t get us wrong; bling is fine. But next time you’re doing your Peter Falk, go hard-core: Big chunky Sol Moscot shades and a Falkian beat-up Stetson lid.

Serena Williams, no stranger to fashion weeks’ front rows, put the punctuation mark of her intense cool and global renown on the Paris runway this time around. The new-mom and recently-retired world champion is a role model and then some, and she brought every last volt of that power to her shirred cloudy-gray bodysuit with its statement black dress. With that walk, Ms. Williams certified the Off-White show as the hippest show of Paris’ week, bar none. Message to the wannabes: You can’t fake this.