Times may be strange and Fashion Week stressful, but Paula Canovas del Vas admits that she thrives in chaos. On their way into the Spanish embassy on the Avenue George V, where her presentation took place, guests were handed cards with a jumble of letters and symbols and invited to parse them, create a message and leave it on a board. The first up was an all-caps, underscored “No One Owns Me,” by the designer herself—the title of her show.
The project was inspired by the work of the conceptual artists Jenny Holzer and Gillian Wearing and how creatives can be catalysts for others’ thoughts and expressions. “I wanted to share that freedom. Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to express themselves freely,” she said as the first round of wordplay got underway.
Inside the embassy dining room, models carrying giant letters dressed in lime tissue paper took turns depositing them on a massive mahogany table to spell out words, in English, French and Spanish.
Transposing that into a sartorial proposition, a short lineup of clothes sported the designer’s usual playful colors and graphic motifs. Among these, a lace-up bustier inspired by an iconic sneaker, the Converse Chuck 70; she also sent out versions of the shoe itself, customized with flowers hand-sculpted by her mom.
A first foray into shirting offered up some clever twists. An elongated shirt printed with a pink, red and burgundy diamond motif was mounted back-to-front and embellished with furry cuffs to become cocktail-appropriate. A few others sprouted an extra pair of sleeves—all of them wearable—that can hang loose or be wrapped and tied to customize a look. Ditto a new lineup of keyrings, necklaces, and hats.
Also new was a first step into men’s wear, with manga-inflected T-shirts and denim. “As a designer I’ve always been reluctant to do T-shirts,” Canovas said. “But then again I do wear them, so I pushed myself.” (The grey jumpsuit festooned with pink bows will probably appeal more to the feminine set, however.)
In a season that’s all about texture, there were some shaggy options for the trend-obsessed. But the tiered, puffy skirts—designed as a commentary about defying gravity among other constraints—were the ones that had legs.