http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/fashion/paris-fashion-week-dries-van-noten-chloe-rihanna-fenty.html 2016-09-29 18:36:54 So Was Rihanna’s Show Any Good? And More Pressing Questions from Paris Fashion Week How do you reconcile the desire to preserve the past with the need to accept the present? From Dries Van Noten to Chloé, some answers were designed. === PARIS — Twenty-three blocks of ice, each almost five feet tall, enclosed perfectly preserved gardens of flowers at the peak of their color and bloom on the second floor of a long, cavernous warehouse space at a grungy edge of the Eighth Arrondissement of Paris, just beyond the railway tracks of the Gare St.-Lazare, like a three-dimensional gallery of Dutch flower paintings. Then the melting — and the “Nothing gold can stay” is sort of the refrain of the moment in Paris, for obvious reasons, and during fashion week the metaphors were in full swing. Change and transformation (and decline) is inevitable. The question is how you handle it. Fashion, at least, is trying to figure out the answer. Looking backward and forward and sideways for some new ideas. Welcoming outsiders in. Hint, hint. Rihanna But there she was, on the second season of Although a more accurate way to put it might be: “A gender-fluid version of what Rihanna would wear if she was playing at being Marie Antoinette going to the gym,” with a dose of Gucci influence on top. There were ruffled nylon babydoll windbreakers and sweeping floor-length parkas with silk chinoiserie hoods; pink silk floral boiler suits with tightly shoe-laced corsets underneath. Lingerie played a role, so did hot pants and so did sweatpants, all of it in shades of powder pink and lilac and ivory and army green, all of it accessorized to the hilt with ropes of pearls, lace do-rags, backpacks ruffled like petticoats, baseball caps with net veils complete with little leaping pumas, giant platform hi-tops, and a fanny pack made in the shape of a big pink bow. Sure, it was silly, but it was also fun, in part because under all the frills and frou frou it was about standard streetwear basics, reworked in luxed-up fabrics; in part because Rihanna just seemed so excited to be there, instead of wildly defensive; and in part because even though fashion has been filching from the sports complex for a while now, it didn’t look as if she had just shopped her closet (i.e., copied what was already in there), but tried to come up with a fresh hybrid. It’s not going to change fashion, but it might change SoulCycle. And in its own way, it fit in with the more general conversation. With, for example, And even with For an example of why that is necessary, consider At the very least a vegan truffle or two. This is not a time that anyone can pretend is about a single kind of taste (maybe that explains the many straps and strings to hold the sliced and skewed tailoring together at Ann Demeulemeester). To do so is a recipe for limited appeal. Which is perhaps why Mr. Van Noten said he was thinking about “opposites” — the high and low, courtly dress and denim, kimono silks and Victorian decoration — and the result was both deeply nostalgic, and entirely contemporary. In that tension, we all live. And, maybe, dress.