Yang Li Spring 2017 Ready-to-Wear Paris Fashion Week

Yang Li Spring 2017 Ready-to-Wear Paris Fashion Week

Is it too soon to start pulling out fashion month trends? From Milan to Paris, already we have a series of similarities among the clothes—or is it the lack of clothes? From Anthony Vaccarello’s 1980s-inspired decadence (and diamanté pastie!) for his debut at Saint Laurent to the sheer gestures at Lanvin, or Philosophy di Lorenzo Serafini, or Giamba, I think it’s safe to say that for Spring 2017, the nipple has been freed already. And then here comes Yang Li, in his 10th season, with what would otherwise be an appealing ensemble, were it not made from what looked like one of those expandable net market bags and a pair of black bikini briefs. It is hard to imagine the woman who sees a sheath dress made of generously spaced beads and wants to shop. Fashion Week—with its fights and flights of fancy—can be fantastical. It can also be grueling. Either way, it doesn’t have to feel like a meat market. An appeal to the better angels of our reigning designers: If you’re going to sell the dress with a lining, why not show the dress with a lining?

Back to the other skins on display at Yang Li: A thickly glossy oxblood snake, cut into jackets and hot pants with uneven sheer black trim; a biker jacket made of different-color leathers whipstitched together; leather pants laced up the front in thick contrasting cords. “Yang Li has always been about destroying luxury to give it a raw and spontaneous element,” asserted the show notes, likening the designer’s preference for raw edges and unfinished seams to the difference between live music and recorded.

And on the matter of music, Jehnny Beth (lead singer of the band Savages) provided the soundtrack: an original composition she wrote with Johnny Hostile. Astride a small central stage, she was clad only in a starched white shirt and black trousers, with a slick red lip. It was pared back, it was adult, it was totally alluring. Who needs destruction when simplicity looks this good?

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