Christelle Kocher is moving to the pre-season calendar, hence her absence from Paris Fashion Week. Going forward, her plan is to host presentations during the city’s men’s shows, the idea being to maximize her exposure at less intense moments and capitalize on the bigger budgets that buyers have those times of year. Other Paris brands from Paco Rabanne to Lemaire have experimented with a similar format.
Without the fuss of a runway, Kocher focused her energy on pattern making. She likes to splice (sometimes surprising) fabrics together on the diagonal, or place them together like geometric pieces of a puzzle. It gives her tracksuits, slip dresses, tops, and skirts plenty of surface interest, a quality she has a lot of affection for, having spent many years at Maison Lemarié, the plumassier, or feather maker, for Chanel. The star of this collection is an evening cape made from colorful feathers and bits of shredded fabric.
Mostly, though, Kocher was working in a lower key, creating pieces with a more day-to-day feel, like a crystal dotted trench with architectural 1980s-ish shoulders that reappeared throughout the collection, an array of easy-wearing knit dresses in varying gauges, and sportswear separates with racing car stripes. Adapting her signature splicing technique gave the sweaters a visual punch. Elsewhere, delicate evening dresses tucked and pleated à la Madame Grès demonstrated her couture training without being uptight or fussy.
