Article by Frank Cierpial

Yes folks, that time of year has arrived. The time of the year where you get out your fabulous outerwear and your fabulous gloves. It’s Fall, the Pumpkin Spice Latte is back in season. This Fashion Week, however, Paris is not the only thing cooling down. The Spring/Summer Collection by Xuan Paris is pretty cool right now and we got to see it first.

I have never been a man of trends. I have also have never had the intrinsic desire to wear what everybody else is wearing. Fashion is personal and it is an expression of how I feel. Don’t misunderstand, I love the trends, but I have a lot of respect for designers who don’t base their entire collection off of what is happening on the runway. Paris is a great place for people watching but even more during Fashion Week. You never know what or who you are going to see walking down Place de la Concorde. I decided to walk from the trade show over to the 16th district for a little presentation for a label known as Xuan Paris. I walked up to the most dreamy Paris apartment and proceeded up to the presentation. Once there, I was met with a major surprise. All of the clothes were encased in ice sculptures. Between New York and Paris, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it. The colors were light and the fabrics were very light too. At times, they were almost transparent. When you see an innovative presentation like that, the only thing you can do is steal an interview with the designer. So that is exactly what I did.

The designer is an adorable little lady named Xuan-Thu Nguyen and she is of Dutch and Vietnamese decent. Of course at first, I told her what everybody else did. I told her how beautiful her collection was and that the presentation was amazing. I told her how I felt, that I have never seen anything like it and I wanted to learn more about where this idea came from. So I asked. The first thing she told me was that she was thinking about summer and sitting under the sun with a cold refreshment and how that feels. As her designs are expressions of her inner feelings, she started to wonder how she could capture that moment. She went on to say that she wanted to « freeze » this moment and the ice sculptures were her way of freezing this moment.

Getting away from the fact that her clothes were encased in ice and getting to the collection itself. The collection was full of bright colors some green , some turquoise. Colors that will of curse invoke feelings of summer. I pointed to a coat that I really loved and she proceeded to tell me that there are flowers on it that were stitched by hand.

Xuan really set the bar high this Fashion Week. Fashion Week is a time to let your imagination run wild to capture those of others and that is exactly what she did. I encourage you to go and look at her website. She has some fantastic silhouettes on there. You may also get the full scope of her collection. Enjoy !