Irish Fashion Influencer, and Today Show's 'Men’s Fashion Expert’, Rob Kenny was in Paris for AW20 Men’s Fashion Week. Here, he spills the couture beans exclusively to RTÉ Lifestyle about what it's really like to attend the most coveted fashion week of all: Paris.
Attending Paris Fashion Week has always been a huge dream of mine (cliché, I know and accept it). However, it has always been out of reach for an abundance of reasons. The primary one being, PFW is simply near impossible to get in to. Anyone who has ever applied to any Paris shows before, I feel you, hun.
London Fashion Week? You can be a blogger with 20K followers and blag your way in, but Paris – bonne chance.
On the one hand, it's a very simple system as to how one gets their name on a show’s list. You don’t actually have to do anything too complex. Yet, simultaneously, there is a confusing maze of high fashion French road-blocks you have to first even find before you, hopefully, clamber over in order to get on that highly coveted list.
You have to be in the know. The only way to get into a show is to get on that brand’s PR invite list, and finding the relevant PR person’s email address is the first main hurdle. These fabulous contacts are in no-way Google-able.
Trust me when you type ‘Lanvin PR Manager Paris’ into Google, you won’t be brought to a contact page of emails. They’re very purposefully hidden. Making this barricade numéro une – if you do not know, or personally know someone who knows, you’re getting nowhere near that first-look couture.
It has taken me years to build up my little black book of contacts, and they have primarily come from friends of mine who are in this game longer than I am. Or if you work in media and have more direct access.
Yet obtaining the relevant PR contacts is only step one – the much harder part is then getting them to say yes. Essentially you have to pitch yourself to them all individually, convincing them as to why you should be there. And then wait anxiously until you get either further questions, refused or accepted.
It is not until you are Influencer with 1M followers or the Editor of Vogue Homme that those stunning invites are sent to you by the PR teams directly (ordinarily also accompanied with an outfit for you to wear to their show, FYI).
Once you're there... what’s it like?
I have been to London Fashion Week a few times and, at age 20, I was actually on the PR team for a number of the biggest brands who show in London – including Erdem, Topshop, House of Holland and Tom Ford. So LFW was the only comparison I had arriving.
Of course, London Fashion Week is amazing, glamourous and has a great buzz, but even being in Paris alone instantly makes PFW feel more couture and more important before you’ve even seen a garment.
You get sent the venue and time details for each show in advance, and as I arrived at my first show I was dying with butterflies as we pulled up. Generally, the shows are all held in the most avant-garde, breathtakingly beautiful venues that only Paris can offer, such as Pompidou or Palais de Tokyo.
Anywhere from 20 to 100+ young fashion enthusiasts, in their most outrageous and stand-out ensembles, swarm the entrances, dying for one of the PR girls at the door to tell them they can enter. I even heard a few this year being quite mouthy regarding who they "are online" and demanding to be let in – not a route I would recommend.
Once you’re seated and the shows starts, it really is a buzz like no other. You feel amazing. And generally (well for me, anyway) it is a mix of gasping at the fabulous collections as well as people watching all of the attendees - and excitedly spotting those you recognise.
Once the show is over, you generally have very little time to get to the next one, so you're constantly caught up in a whirlwind of commotion, excitement and glamour.
My AW20 PFW Collection Highlight
I’m going to cheat and give my show highlight to one designer instead of one brand – our very own Jonathon Anderson, the creative genius behind both JW Anderson and Loewe (incroyable).
Loewe was heavy on androgyny and I was so here for it. Mixed with lots of leather, oversized chains, and beautiful coats. JW Anderson then was definitely the collection I would have most loved to take home and live in forever (closely followed by Berluti and Gmbh).
Watching the layering, shapes and oversized coats on the models felt like watching walking art. Which, of course, fashion is - a total art form.
The post-show venue
When pushing Holly Carpenter, Stefan Langan, and James Kavanagh to meet me in Hotel Costes one evening post-shows I genuinely said: "This is a bold statement – but I think Hotel Costes is my favourite place in the world".
The lights are super low and atmospheric, there are huge bouquets of roses everywhere, the décor is like Marie Antoinette meets the Moulin Rouge and the large courtyard in the middle is the best for people-watching in the world.
A-List celebs are the norm in Hotel Costes, with the likes of Beyoncé and Rihanna staying here while in Paris. Even the waitresses take part in Paris Fashion Week as models.
From the mind-blowing architecture around every corner to the world's most beautiful language and the effortlessly cool and stylish Parisians - year-round Paris is my favourite city in the world.
Attending Fashion Week in Paris, however, multiplied everything ten fold. I now completely grasp why Emily from The Devil Wears Prada based her whole year around Paris in the fall.
