Photo : © Laurent Julliand

“Buyers of Parisian models (…) hold an important and discreet role (…) Three times a year, when it’s buying time, or during fashion season, they come from New York, Rio de Janeiro or Rome, attend to fashion shows, and go back home two weeks later, fashion in a suitcase.”
Léon Paul Fargue, Piéton Paris, 1939, p.236

Léon Paul Fargues, son of a humble seamstress, explains since 1939 the principles, still in use nowadays, on which what is now a flourishing and powerful industry – more powerful than the turnover of big couture house – worked.

Twice a year, the Fashion week’s ultra ritualized ceremonies bring together a handful of journalists, buyers and opinion leaders who will decide what is allowed to wear, and then to look like, during the next 6 months.

With their choices and personal tastes, they will impose to all a way to be and in fine to consume, thus maintaining the cyclical and seasonal mechanism of fashion industry.

Far from the controlled go-between photos of a glamorous representation of the haute couture universe, what are these immutable rites that make Paris the world capital of fashion, and its microcosm the centre of the universe?

 

Partners :
CONTEXTES Photographes and Galerie Quai 26
www.contextes.org


Exhibition from 15 May to 14 th June "Wiplashion"

Preview: Thursday 15th May - 7pm
Exhibited at Galerie Quai 26 - 26, rue de l'Hospice - Roubaix
Phone: 06 80 66 46 59

Open till Thursday to Friday from 11pm to 6.30pm, Saturday from 10am to 1pm and from 2pm to 5.30pm.