The fashion house’s creative director, Nicolas Ghesquière, presents the Cruise 2022 collection on the catwalk and chooses the city of Cergy-Pontoise as the location. Cergy-Pontoise was born from the union of two cities and in 1980 Dani Karavan, an Israeli artist, built the Axe Majeur, a monumental sculpture that stretches for three kilometres, starting from Place de la Concorde, crossing the Champs Elysées and arriving at the Défense.
I decided to show the collection on Karavan’s Axe Majeur while I was in California designing the collection. In a way, I thought that utopian architecture could build a futuristic landscape on our doorstep.
The utopian, modernist installation creates an environment where space and time relate to the natural elements of water, light, wind, sand, concrete, stone and steel, creating a suspended moment, an ideal. The architecture symbolises the union between the city centre and the satellite suburbs. Based on this geographical connection, the show acts as a bridge combining Eastern and Western aesthetics in a way that cancels out differences in the name of accepting diversity. Ghesquière does this by using the shapes and volumes of clothes, putting a wide, short cape over a miniskirt or fluttering a pleated caftan over a leather skirt.
The collection continues with metallic coats with varnish pockets and trapeze dresses worn with boots, there are flouncy cocktail dresses made of coloured neoprene, there are illustrations reminiscent of 1970s sci-fi comics. The dense details and bold shapes of the collection express its premise of imagining horizons without boundaries. Like the uniforms of a band, the collection is presented in an energetic and joyful parade.
A set of proud gazes advance straight ahead. They are the image of harmony in an environment that is so near and yet so far, without borders and open to adventure.
