Paris Fashion Week opens with Vaquera and CFCL

Paris Fashion Week for women got off to a good start on Monday. Light or dark? On the opening day of the week, it was a matter of choosing between two completely opposite styles. Between the irreverent and ironic fashion of the New York label Vaquera and the delicate style of the Japanese label CFCL, a mix of contemporary minimalism and ancestral techniques.

Vaquera surprised her guests with a show in a dark garage and a soundtrack that made their eardrums explode. The tone was clearly set, with giant hats, blooming volumes and sexy outfits. Denim and leather looks, along with sporty and relaxed clothes. Designers Bryn Taubensee and Patric DiCaprio had a lot of fun, mixing genres without ever losing their sense of humor and creating a young, free and striking wardrobe.

Founded in 2013, Vaquera has just celebrated its 10th anniversary. For Spring/Summer 2025, it has gone back to basics. The show featured iconic pieces such as black leather jeans, a sailor cap with the Vaquera logo and a maxi belt with multiple rows of giant eyelets. Not to mention faux fur, used on oversized coats for that Yeti look, undoubtedly ideal for next summer, and the bra with pointed cups, worn this season like a corset that covers the entire torso, even incorporating the arms, to better immobilise them.

As usual, Vaquera's style was full of subversive touches, although it also seemed to soften a bit. While still wanting to retain its identity, the brand now bets “on easy-to-wear clothes and a new idea of [wardrobe] “It is not so much about starting from scratch, but rather about perfecting concepts and ideas to transform them into Vaquera essentials that are easy to wear and buy,” the brand states in the presentation note.

In addition to cycling jerseys, lace corsets, cotton shirts, blazers, crop tops, distressed jeans and shorts, Vaquera presented a complete wardrobe for day and night, interspersed with extravagant pieces such as the white satin tutu shaped like a giant donut.

Vaquera is distributed through 60 multi-brand retailers worldwide, particularly in the United States and Asia, where it has seen recent growth and is looking to expand its product range. This season, it has introduced a footwear collection, notably with stiletto-heeled cowboy boots, a striking eyewear line and a first jewelry collection, developed in collaboration with D'heygere.

At CFCL (Clothing for Contemporary Life), the record was different. Yusuke Takahashi, a knitwear specialist who founded the brand in 2020, is parading in Paris for the second time, having made his first appearance in February. Like last season, the brand was appreciated for the simple elegance of its creations, both practical and sophisticated. Dresses, skirts, trousers, shorts, tops and suits were mostly in white, black or navy blue.

Hooded, zipped jackets with ruffled sleeves, knitted from ultra-fine yarn, created an almost transparent effect, paired with short, flared skirts. A royal blue dress expanded with wavy volumes, as if modelled by hand. Other garments, with micro-channels, gave a feeling of extreme lightness. In some outfits, coloured threads were mixed to create striped folds and 3D effects.

Takahashi, who worked for a long time at Issey Miyake, has developed a 3D weaving technology that combines traditional techniques with digital tools, allowing him to greatly reduce fabric waste. He also uses recycled yarn. Takahashi is unrivalled in his skillful use of piping, pleats, stitches and threads to create unique garments. In this latest collection, Takahashi was inspired by the age-old experience passed down through generations in many countries around the world, especially in Asia and Africa, as he explained.

To further illustrate his point, Takahashi chose Slovenian musical trio Sirom to provide the soundtrack for the show. The trio “plays all kinds of traditional instruments,” said Takahashi, who loves to adopt ancient techniques to create his contemporary, everyday collections. While some styles, such as the long black mermaid dress, are efficiently machine-woven, it takes the painstaking work of human hands to decorate them, inserting countless tassels into more than 2,000 tiny holes, one by one.

The last two models to be presented on the catwalk, a white minidress and a longer black one, had a more experimental feel. They were made without using machinery, by stitching together a mosaic of crochet doilies with organic patterns.