{"id":65735,"date":"2026-08-16T03:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T03:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/65735\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T03:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T03:10:10","slug":"black-reigns-supreme-from-chanel-and-hermes-to-yohji-yamamoto-and-comme-des-garcons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/65735\/","title":{"rendered":"Black reigns supreme, from Chanel and Herm\u00e8s to Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Gar\u00e7ons"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is an inherent, and entirely alluring, contradiction about black. Partly because of course it\u2019s not a colour at all. It\u2019s the absence of one.<\/p>\n

We say we are \u2018in the black\u2019 when times are good, and yet in many cultures we wear it to the funerals. It\u2019s the colour of the goths and the classicists. Of Audrey Hepburn<\/a> nibbling a croissant in front of Tiffany\u2019s in black Givenchy and Morticia Addams\u2019 signature look in The Addams Family. It\u2019s sombre and modest. It\u2019s also the sexiest colour you can wear. A little black dress \u2013 ask Princess Diana<\/a> and Gabrielle \u201cCoco\u201d Chanel<\/a> \u2013 can be the ultimate form of revenge.\"PrincessPrincess Diana arriving at London\u2019s Serpentine Gallery in 1994 in her \u201crevenge dress\u201d, a gown by Christina Stambolian. Photo: Getty ImagesIndeed the revenge dress was on Matthieu Blazy<\/a>\u2019s mind for his first cruise collection for Chanel, held in Biarritz in April. In a collection that brought to mind glamorous mermaids, the first look was a drop-waist, deep V black shift dress. Backstage, Blazy spoke of Gabrielle Chanel creating what he called the first \u201crevenge\u201d outfit in 1926 with a simple black dress. Chanel believed black to be the superior colour (or absence of one), once stating, \u201cWomen think of all colours except the absence of colour. I have said that black has it all. White, too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony.\u201dBlazy was not the only designer to be thinking about the power of black \u2013 its balancing act \u2013 in recent seasons. Comme des Gar\u00e7ons<\/a>\u2019 Rei Kawakubo, usually opaque to the point of taciturn in her show notes, expanded on black\u2019s power ahead of her fall 2026 show, writing, \u201cIn the end, there is black. Ultimately Black. I have come to realise that, after all, black is the colour for me. It\u2019s just the strongest, the best for creation, and the colour that embodies the rebellious spirit. And has the biggest meaning: the Universe and the Black Hole.\u201d\"ChanelChanel cruise 2026-27 collection. Photo: Handout<\/p>\n

Kawakubo then sent 16 all-black looks \u2013 ruched, padded and swathing the body. Then the music cut out, and six bubblegum pink looks completed the show. What did it mean? Well, in Kawakubo\u2019s world, everything can be distilled to the questioning of things, of challenging ideas of the body, of clothes and of beauty. When Kawakubo made her Paris debut in 1981, her acolytes were dubbed \u201ccrows\u201d by the fashion press. And Comme-heads are not the only \u201ccrows\u201d this season.<\/p>\n

This was especially so at Maria Grazia Chiuri\u2019s debut show<\/a> as chief creative officer at Fendi. Almost every look not only played on Chiuri\u2019s take on the Fendi silhouette, but on black. There were lean black suits, inky, chubby mid-length fur jackets and wrought iron-like lace midi-skirts and off-the-shoulder dresses.\"FendiFendi fall\/winter 2026. Photo: HandoutPierpaolo Piccioli was another to explore dimensions of black for his fall 2026 collection for Balenciaga<\/a>, opening with an all-in-one voluminous leather bomber jacket and pencil skirt, the hard-edged glamour of it leading to more classic black coats with funnel necks and cinched-in jumpsuits. Throughout the collection \u2013 one that danced between the couture classicism of Crist\u00f3bal Balenciaga and the streetwear legacy of Demna, the house\u2019s previous creative director \u2013 the use of black allowed for such stretchiness of ideas.Nad\u00e8ge Vanh\u00e9e too opened this season with all black looks at Herm\u00e8s<\/a>, in a collection that explored the tension between practicality and sensuality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is an inherent, and entirely alluring, contradiction about black. Partly because of course it\u2019s not a colour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12919],"tags":[15139,20009,5702,7128,40815,2096,40813,15578,12850,40816,4953,20497,40814,8664,27231],"class_list":["post-65735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hermes","tag-audrey-hepburn","tag-azzedine-alaia","tag-balenciaga","tag-biarritz","tag-camilla-and-marc","tag-chanel","tag-comme-des-garcons","tag-demna","tag-fendi","tag-gabrielle-chanel","tag-hermes","tag-miuccia-prada","tag-morticia-addams","tag-rei-kawakubo","tag-yohji-yamamoto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}