It’s become a TikTok phenomenon to snap a selfie in mirrors on Paris streets—for fit-check purposes or for your friends back home, depending on where you fall on the local/tourist continuum. Nicolas Di Felice adapted the concept for his pre-spring collection and lookbook. “I like the idea that the models took their own pictures,” he noted.
Di Felice said the future—meaning us—got the futurist Andre Courrèges all wrong, or at least mostly wrong. If Courrèges wanted to dress people for the moon, he was equally interested in dressing them for the streets. “And that’s what we have in common,” he said. Di Felice’s got a knack for this sort of thing; the brand’s distinctive geometric AC logo is becoming a more frequent sight in fashion circles and beyond, thanks to his bodyco knits and clever ergonomic accessories.
As much as Di Felice has an inner sense of what young people want to wear now, people watching wherever he goes, he does keep one eye on the archive. The find of the season was a pair of stretch crochet flats from André’s time; Di Felice has updated them in a technical knit, injecting the shape with a sporty element. The collection’s cap sleeve tees and t-shirt dresses and strappy maillots worn as tops all have their starting points in vintage Courrèges editorials, though the oversize bermudas paired with those bathing suits, he pointed out, are a direct lift from his careful observation of the current moment.
One shape we’re likely to see in the streets going forward is his short-in-front, long-in-back skirt, which he showed in stretch denim and baby pink jersey. A dress version comes in all-over sequins. On the opposite end of the exposure spectrum, a boxy polo tucked into a micro skort was a fresh proportion here. Lots to keep the selfie takers engaged and to lure some newcomers too.