Emerging talent opens fashion week

PARIS

A model displays a creation by Anthony Vaccarello for his Spring-Summer 2013 collection. ABACAPRESS photo

Fashion week in Paris is always a race against time. Paris, the last city after New York, London and Milan to host shows, is offering up 95 frenetic catwalk spectacles back-to-back over eight days at opposite ends of the French capital.

So it’s perhaps fitting that the spring-summer 2013 season got going behind a giant clock: The iconic timekeeper of Paris’ grand Gare de l’Est train station. The setting may have been grand but the shows on the first day in Paris are often low-key, a showcase for emerging talent. Young knitwear designer Alice Lemoine emerged from the shadows of her former mentor to produce an unassuming but highly accomplished show.

 Belgian-born designer Anthony Vaccarello delivered a slick and revealing show Sept. 25, channeling black and white in an unusual summer collection.

South Korean designer Moon Young Hee also threw away the color wheel to produce a sophisticated, demure show, while Impasse de la Defense mixed bold colors with retro and street styles.