Paris couture: Stéphane Rolland and Ashi Studio
See catwalk
Entitled "Argument", the collection was imagined as an encounter between ballerina Ida Rubinstein, and composer Maurice Ravel. The result was a Hispano/Arabic meeting of cubic shapes, baroque detailing and sensual style.
Rolland makes couture with great gusto, never more so than this season, where his show was presented inside the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, which despite its name is located on the capital's most important luxury thoroughfare Avenue Montaigne. The avenue of Dior 's headquarters, Marlene Dietrich's apartment, and the gilded Hôtel Plaza Athenée. And this theater is where Stravinsky first performed "The Rite of Spring", and where Karl Lagerfeld debuted the first Fendi 'haute fourure' show.
Rolland made the Art Deco space his own, inviting conductor Zahia Ziouani and the Divertimento Orchestre to come and play Ravel's synchronic Bolero. Though the muse of the collection was Rubinstein. Born into a wealthy family, Ida escaped Russia to become a star dancer in Les Ballet Russes, and an icon of the Belle Epoque. Though in 1938, she had to flee her beloved Paris for London due to anti-Semitism and the looming war.
Ida's legendary sensuality and dramatic poses were seen in some majestic clothes. From the cubic blazers paired with pencil skirts or jersey dresses finished with huge regal collars, to Stéphane's signature one-shoulder cocktails with single enormous leg-o'-mutton sleeves to excellent tuxedo jumpsuits with tulip sleeves. Everything trimmed and finished with crystal brooches, buckles, piping and mini skullcaps.
See catwalk
For evening, Rolland went gang busters with a series of sinful red crepe robes and gowns in sculptural shapes worthy of Brâncuşi.
Rolland remains an Indie designer devoid of a deep pocketed investor, and his skill in using limited resources to great powerful images is also part of a rich Paris artistic tradition. Like today, when he projected huge images of musical metronomes on the stage curtains in a Man Ray-worthy opening. Later, as the models began to mass on the famous stage, he projected 1930s black-and-white videos of sewing machines and spindles as the backdrop.
The mood rising to a crescendo with Ravel's "Boléro", as statuesque models appeared in long gazar skirts topped by bolero jackets embroidered in gold and crystal. Leading to a huge roar of applause when Rolland took his bow, justly recognized with a standing ovation for respecting the duty of artists in Paris. And in fashion terms, continuing a tradition that has lasted since the Sun King.
Ashi Studio: Subtle salon style
Couturiers can come from all over the planet, but once they settle in Paris, the mysteries of the city almost inevitably feed into their designs, as happened in a rarefied and refined couture show from Ashi Studio on a steamy Tuesday evening.
See catwalk
This season, the Saudi-born Ashi's inspiration came from the flea markets of Paris, though the real source was an evocative invocation of Paris couture.
At times the show felt a little like a fashion tutorial, where Ashi was determined to show his atelier was capable of matching any of the great Paris houses. A tutorial he passed with honors, from the remarkable silver sequinned gown over which flew small, embroidered birds, to the two playful monkey clambering over a leather corset.
There were echoes of other couturiers – Galliano, McQueen and Gaultier - but all very much on Ashi's term. Nothing was copied in this show. Neither the superb white bustier dress with long train, nor the magnificent Restoration moll ecru lace dress with tulip sleeves
See catwalk
Ashi's beige silk coat sprouting micro feathers was also excellent. And full marks to stunning cut-out corset dress with a train decorated with curling stays.
Staged with subtlety inside a triangular shaped Haussmann-era building in the 16th arrondissement in classic salon style, with an ecru carpet and matching ottomans for seats, it felt like a quintessential Paris moment. Which was surprising, as Ashi has built his reputation on evoking the raw desert and gritty topography of his native land.
But also great news, since this show marked Ashi out as a couturier determined not to rest on his laurels, but experiment and broaden his creative spectrum.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
LeMonde
8 hours ago
- LeMonde
'Here, you can dress however you want': Women-only parties make crowds feel freer
In the back room of the club, near the smoking area, awash in seductive red light, Allison (people mentioned by their first names did not wish to share their full name) paused for a moment. With one leg propped up on the bar, the 21-year-old accounting student stretched her muscles, which were already sore after an hour of uninhibited dancing. "I tried to do the splits, caught up in the heat of the moment," said Allison. She said she found it impossible to hold back her joyful energy on the dance floor where, on this May evening, she felt freer than ever to let loose, without worrying about intrusive stares or inappropriate gestures. Allison also felt free to wear whatever she wanted: a shirt tied up above her navel and a short plaid skirt. "Normally, I would never dare go to a party with my stomach so exposed," said the young woman, who sported a long afro haircut. Yet that Thursday night, she approached the event, held in a downtown club in the southern French city of Toulouse, in a new way. The party was for women only, and, along with their coats, guests were invited to leave their self-censorship at the cloakroom. "Girls only!" read the warning on the site when booking a ticket for a "Bringue," a series of women-only parties that have sprung up across France and Belgium. The idea began when a young Parisian woman in her 20s wanted to go dancing but had no friends available to come with her. Clarisse Luiz posted a tweet inviting other women, all strangers, to join her: in the end, a group of 10 women got together and had a great ladies' night out. A social media manager by profession, she wanted to repeat the experience, and thus La Bringue was born in 2019. It is now present in about 10 cities, with women as both partygoers and DJs – only the venue staff is, at times, men. In the post-#MeToo movement context, the concept of a party without men has found a wide audience. So much so that other companies have entered the market, such as "mom parties" aimed at mothers.
LeMonde
17 hours ago
- LeMonde
Isaac Asimov, Elon Musk and the replacement of humans by robots
Surprisingly, Elon Musk and French leftist politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon share common ground: Both are admirers of the work of American novelist Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). Considered one of the founding fathers of science fiction, this tireless writer published an astonishing 500 novels between 1939 and his death. Within this vast body of work, these two famous fans are especially fond of the Foundation cycle. This saga, widely regarded as the gold standard of science fiction, was initially launched as short stories in 1942, reworked into novels in the 1950s and then extended at the end of Asimov's life. As early as 1966, the series won the Hugo Award, a literary prize for science fiction, for "Best Series of All Time." It was a remarkable feat in a genre not lacking in masterpieces. Asimov had a scientific background, considered a prerequisite at the time for being recognized as a credible author in the genre. He was also a versatile, eclectic thinker. According to his autobiography I, Asimov (2000), his precocious brilliance set him apart from other children his age, leading him to retreat into reading. Gifted, by his own account, with a phenomenal memory, he retained everything he read. Musk's entourage said the same thing about him when talking about the American entrepreneur's childhood with his biographers, Ashlee Vance and Walter Isaacson. Aside from science, Asimov's great passion was history. Foundation tells the story of the fall and then the resurrection of a civilization. In the 13 th millennium, the empire Asimov imagined was at the height of its power, yet had already begun an irreversible decline. Asimov drew inspiration from a 1776 classic by Edward Gibbon (1737-1794): The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. According to the British historian, whom Asimov read countless times, Rome's fall was due to two causes: one external, the pressure of migration; the other internal, the rise of Christianity. Asimov's futuristic empire collapses under centrifugal forces, which is logical since it encompasses the entire galaxy. There are no external threats or borders. However, the loss of entrepreneurial spirit and love of innovation proves fatal. The empire suffocates under the weight of its own bureaucracy. Only someone like Musk could appreciate this kind of dramatic tension, despite Asimov's progressive views. Both Mélenchon and Musk were influenced by the character Hari Seldon, the inventor of a predictive science called psychohistory, who manages to influence humanity's future by wielding the law of large numbers. Asimov, who trained as a biochemist, was inspired by the kinetic theory of gases, as astrophysicist Roland Lehoucq of the French Atomic Energy Commission – a major science fiction enthusiast – wrote in the journal Bifrost in 2012. Universal reach As Asimov explained in the preface to his major opus, it's impossible to predict the motion of a single isolated molecule, but you can say with precision what quintillions of molecules will do. So he applied this principle to human beings. Foundation actually translates philosophical debates on historical determinism into science fiction narratives, making them accessible to everyone. Thanks to its universal scope, the series has remained in the science fiction bestsellers' top 10 and continues, generation after generation, to serve as an entry point into the genre. Due to its internal contradictions and the forces at play, the galactic empire in Foundation is destined to fail. Just as no one can escape climate change on Earth in the 21 st century. However, Seldon uses psychohistory to influence history, though not to reverse fate. With his plan for a foundation that preserves knowledge, he reduces the transition period between the empire's fall and its successor from 30,000 years to 1,000. In the story, this is viewed as a decisive push forward. In Marxist terms, Seldon would be considered a positive hero. Indeed, it was precisely because he found Marxism "a bit dry," in his own words, that Mélenchon became fascinated by psychohistory. Anticipating the crises that punctuate Foundation 's plot, Seldon recorded messages for his distant successors to view as holograms – effectively, oracles. The stage device used by Mélenchon in his 2017 presidential campaign was a nod to this gimmick from the saga. Although Musk has never used holograms for communication, many of his public statements refer to the idea of positively influencing sweeping changes around us. In 2017, he quoted Asimov almost verbatim at a TED conference in front of a captivated audience: "I look at the future from the standpoint of probabilities. It's like a branching stream of probabilities, and there are actions that we can take that affect those probabilities or that accelerate one thing or slow down another thing." "Philosophy underlying my actions. It's pretty simple and mostly influenced by Douglas Adams [another science fiction author] and Isaac Asimov," he wrote in 2018 on X. If Adams taught Elon Musk the art of questioning with his answer 42 in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, then Asimov taught him that every major turning point in humanity is always driven by a technical innovation. For those who claim to follow in Seldon's footsteps, there is only one way to influence history: through science. Although Asimov considered himself an optimist, his work reexamined the dichotomy between good and bad science established by British author Mary Shelley in Frankenstein (1821). When confronted with scientific progress, as with social and political organization, humanity is invariably torn between individual freedom and collective security. While Foundation remains his seminal work on determinism, his other major science fiction series, I, Robot, delves deeper into this contradiction. Replacement by robots In 1942, a particularly productive year for Asimov, he formulated his "Three Laws of Robotics." Intended to protect humans from a robot uprising, also known as the infamous "Frankenstein syndrome," in which a creation turns against its creator. These laws raise the question: Who counts as "human"? The individual, or humanity as a whole? To resolve this dilemma, Asimov's robots invent a fourth law, as Anne Besson explained on the French podcast C'est plus que de la SF ("It's more than SF"). This law prioritizes the species. One of the final stories in the series describes a revolt by humans that is suppressed "for their own good" by robots. As a rationalist atheist and staunch believer in evolution, Asimov did not believe that Homo sapiens was the ultimate stage of life. Whether it be astrophysics or the laws of evolution, recent scientific advances all indicate that the days of the human species on Earth are numbered. This bleak finitude pales in comparison to the space epics of Star Trek and Star Wars, with their hyperspace and distant galaxies. As always, Asimov was provocative when he predicted that robots would replace humanity. Far from being a cause for anxiety, he considered it a hopeful prospect, as he stated in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in 1985. He argued that robots would be the next step for humanity, more rational and unburdened by emotion. Musk, raised on dystopian visions like Terminator (1985) and The Matrix (1999), where robots and computers enslave humans in apocalyptic futures, has distanced himself – at least in his public statements – from his science fiction idol on this point. In 2017, essayist Ariel Kyrou recalled Musk clashing with Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook. Musk accused Zuckerberg of being reckless about the risks artificial intelligence poses to humanity. Musk had already directed similar criticisms at Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co-founders of Google, and he would later target his new nemesis, Sam Altman, his rival at OpenAI. By Musk's logic, his competitors are followers of transhumanist ideals, which claim that technology will allow humans to transcend their limitations, such as mortality and terrestrial life. Musk sees them as distant descendants of Dr. Frankenstein, ready to sacrifice humanity's interests. However, his critics argue that Musk's fratricidal attacks are motivated more by economic self-interest than genuine ethical concern. He often sounds the alarm when others are making advances without him. As Kyrou pointed out, with Neuralink, Musk has taken a position far closer to transhumanism than he admits. His company's neural implants are designed to eventually serve as an interface between human neurons and computers. They are named after Iain M. Banks (1954-2013), the Scottish author and creator of the celebrated series The Culture. In that saga, every humanoid is equipped with a "neural lace" that serves as a means of communication and ensures their safety. This lace connects them to intelligent machines that handle production and the distribution of resources. The machines perform the labor while the humanoids enjoy the pleasures of hedonism. "In a way, it is anarchism assisted by artificial intelligence," said Yannick Rumpala, a political science researcher who analyzes the relationship between politics and science fiction. Backed by these vast computational powers, Banks's utopia resembles a successfully executed "Gosplan" (a Soviet-style planning committee), with AI serving as a vast thinking infrastructure and omnipresent planning authority. As Rumpala points out, this vision would have appealed to Asimov, who, in Foundation, imagined another form of collective consciousness – more organic – with the planet Gaia. In 2018, Elon Musk described himself on X as a "utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks," an avowed socialist who is no longer here to defend himself. As usual, Musk interpreted Banks's work through his own lens. He said, "The Iain Banks Culture
LeMonde
2 days ago
- LeMonde
Elon Musk, Robert A. Heinlein and the urgent call to colonize space
On April 28, Elon Musk asked his artificial intelligence Grok to define itself. As usual, the Tesla CEO's messaging was cryptic. His posts on X (formerly Twitter), and even the names of his children, often feel like riddles, decipherable only to those in the know. But for newcomers, this moment of self-definition offered a rare clue: The name Grok was an homage to science fiction novelist Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988). Heinlein, along with Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) and Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), is regarded as one of the "Big Three" of the Golden Age of American science fiction, which spanned from the late 1930s to the 1960s. In his 1961 bestseller Stranger in a Strange Land, a Martian uses the word "grok" to describe his way of understanding Earth. Musk echoed the spirit of the novel in a February 2025 post on X, writing: "The word 'grok' means to fully and profoundly understand something." Heinlein was trained as both an engineer and a military officer. A key figure in hard science fiction – a genre rooted in scientific and technological rigor – he also had a strong interest in psychology. In a 1947 lecture, he regretted that "too many so-called science fiction stories forget about human beings and their problems." Stranger in a Strange Land follows a human born on Mars and raised in Martian culture as he struggles to adapt to life on Earth. Gérard Klein, a leading French science fiction editor, described the novel as a philosophical tale in the tradition of Montesquieu's Lettres persanes (Persian Letters, 1721). Confronted with political intrigue and human greed, the protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, is baffled by the Earthlings' obsession with power and property.
