fashion review by Chance Goode
all images by Emma Jones (courtesy of People’s Revolution) and Maël Gicquel
Paris Fashion Week Gets Punk and Political
Fashion has always been political. With all the hate and fearmongering happening in the world, it is no surprise to see protesting in the form of fashion. This was especially true at the menswear shows at Paris Fashion Week. While I was still on the plane heading to Paris, Willy Chavarria had his Paris debut, where he and his models walked out to Bishop Maryann Edgar Budde’s speech to Trump. When my Celine boots finally touched down onto the cigarette butt littered streets of Paris, I was just in time for another designer’s Paris debut that had its own powerful message.
Charles Jeffrey Loverboy
After doing the usual fashion week “sizing-each-other-up dance” with photographers, influencers, and other journalists, I was led down to the basement of Dover Street Market Paris. A boxing ring had taken up space in the retail store for Charles Jeffrey Loverboy’s 10th anniversary presentation. Instead of having a traditional fashion show, Jeffrey collaborated with the experimental visual artist group BULLYACHE and Pornhub to put on the performance of the season. I pushed my way to the front of the ring, where I saw Diane Pernet and her crown of black hair sitting directly across from me, looking like a high-fashion boxing judge.
ROUND 1:
Model, dancer, and activist, Sakeema Peng Crook was in one corner, with her heels rested on another model/wrestler, using him as a foot stool. Crook was dressed in a tweed skirt suit, accessorized with a wrestling singlet branded with a Pornhub label. In the other corner was dancer Wilchaan Roy Cantú wearing an oversized striped blazer and a latex cap with cat ears. Like two panthers on the prowl, they crawled on all fours to the center of the ring. The dynamic duo had a theatrical fight that ended with Crook choking her opponent out with her red braids. Crook celebrated her win by voguing around the defeated Cantú.
The Ring Girls:
Pornhub brand ambassadors Natassia Dreams and Queenie Sateen came on stage holding giant white signs displaying the number of each round. They were both painted in silver and gold glitter, like they had just stepped out of the 2016 horror film The Neon Demon. Jeffrey dressed the pair in handcrafted crotched bodices, Dreams in red and Sateen in black. They took turns seductively moaning different phrases into the microphone, such as “cunt” and “j’adore.” It was so provocative and campy.
ROUND 2:
Slithering into the ring for the second round were model Sam Dilkes and dancer Oliver Rumaizen. Dilkes and Rumaizen were dressed in distressed sweatpants, Pornhub-branded singlets, and clawed Loverboy x Converse sneakers. Their makeup was a mix between clown paint and something from an eighties Guy Bourdin ad. In typical wrestler fashion, the two flexed their muscles and spit on each other. Dilkes and Rumaizen’s wrestling was the most realistic and homoerotic. The smell of their sweat and testosterone was intoxicating as it filled the room.
ROUND 3:
Before the final round started, BULLYACHE’s founder, Courtney Deyn, came on stage and applied bruises with makeup on a “knocked out” Dilkes. Deyn serenaded the audience with their vocals and guitar playing. Dancer Connor Scott then jumped into the arena wearing custom banana peel Converse. Deyn and Scott had a standoff in their gray corporate-meets-punk ensembles. The two put on an electrifying performance, incorporating sparring and tango dancing. The show ended with all the performers piling together into a ball of flesh, pulsating their bodies to the beat of the music.
Jeffrey did a fabulous job at presenting a fashion show that represents the fight that the LGBTQIA+ community is currently facing against right-wing conservatives. The show was heavily stylized and performative, but the message was crystal clear. We aren’t going anywhere, and we will fight for our place in this world.