PARIS — There’s a French term for a certain strategic approach to bilateral relations often applied with great approval to President Emmanuel Macron of France: opération séduction. It’s what (“they” say) got him invited as the first guest of honor at a White House state dinner; what marked his trip to China early this year. It’s an accepted political tool, a part of the patrimony. Sometimes, a newspaper headline.
In fashion, however, it’s the subject of some trepidation. For obvious reasons, many designers don’t want to touch the issue of allure, actual or implied. Instead, we’ve been getting a lot of sweatshirts.
Or, as the voice-over at Virgil Abloh’s Off-White show went, musings on “the challenge of storytelling now” — i.e., in a world of social media imagery and cacophony.
Mr. Abloh contributed to that one, in any case, with a mob scene at his front door (it was so bad some attendees were terrified they were going to be crushed against a street lamp) that spoke to his current status as the Guy Most Rumored to Get a Big Job. Though the surprisingly tame horse-riding tapestry separates, the spliced leather ’n’ lizard dresses, molded moto breastplates and sheer ruffled nightie gowns atop buttoned-up bodysuits that he put on the runway did not.
It was enough to make you think: Feh with the trendy social media meta-commentary! Bring back the sex problem.
Which is why, when the Rick Owens show began to a medley of voices singing “Baubles, Bangles and Beads,” a tune from the 1953 musical “Kismet” that has been covered by everyone from Peggy Lee to Frank Sinatra and that features a woman musing on whether her sparkly accessories will help her catch a man, it was kind of a relief. Hello there, elephant in the dressing room.
But then, Mr. Owens often likes to go where many other designers fear to tread: to climate change, the refugee crisis, stuff like that. “Listening to the words, which are completely innocent, is chilling at this moment,” he said backstage after the show.
“It’s a very sensitive time right now, and I would not presume to know what women are feeling,” he continued. “But I know what I feel is appropriate to propose to them.”
Which turned out to be a questioning of the old sartorial tools of seduction — bustles, panniers, the classical underpinnings that transformed the body to exaggerate its sexuality for the male eye — via the template of the traditional strapless dress and the idea of curves. But curves according to who? It’s a good question.
From there, swathes of felted camel’s hair and linen in complementary shades (ivory and chocolate, dusty pink and gray) wove and curlicued around the torso and upper legs, flirting in tandem. Giant fanny pouches bumped along over one leg of cashmere running shorts and tubes of fabric stuffed with goose down swathed the shoulders and hugged the thighs.
It was, on the Owens continuum, which has occasionally involved what looks like alien pregnancies, surprisingly wearable — especially the jackets hung from straps that could be slung around a shoulder like a tote bag, and the tailored collarless coats with enormous patch pockets and bright turquoise satin linings. It hinted at a different kind of come-hither.
By contrast, you could hear Julien Dossena’s Paco Rabanne from a mile away. This thanks to his embrace of seemingly every permutation of the brand’s signature futuristic plastic disc and chain mail dresses. They came in a mesh of silver flowers, iridescent rectangles, bobble-trimmed cilia and plastic paillettes, all of it hooked into slip dresses and skirts and T-shirts that could be worn over and under and amid classic French basics (a camel turtleneck, a blue blazer, a black trouser pantsuit, a faux fur).
The overlays jingled and jangled and shimmered as they came. And, if they didn’t, the chain-mail-bedecked shower slides that went with almost every look did it for them, and had a soap bubble appeal.
Maybe it’s a fools game to wrestle with the big S issue right now. Even with “Tainted Love” on his soundtrack, Olivier Rousteing at Balmain seemed more interested in virtual reality escape than physical reality. He remade his signature blingtastic bandage dresses, broad-shouldered martinet jackets and “I Dream of Jeannie” pants in silver foil and holographic fabrics; traced motherboard patterns in neon crystal; and otherwise bedazzled the JavaScript in a show so long that watching it was like being caught in an infinite loop.
And Mr. Owens did call his collection “Sisyphus,” as in the Greek guy condemned to roll a rock up a mountain every day, only to have it roll down again. At Loewe, Jonathan Anderson handed out copies of “Don Quixote,” which suggested he felt much the same — except then he also distributed “Dracula,” “Heart of Darkness,” “Madame Bovary” and “Wuthering Heights” (Loewe has gotten into publishing). A cheery reading list, that. But he aims high. And he likes pulling apart the classics.
Literally, in the case of clothes: houndstooth suiting sliced up the sleeve; trench coats with bare backs; column dresses sliced into horizontal bands and connected by sandbars of fabric wound with yarn, like an evening archipelago. Shirts were long and untucked, held together along the spine by neatly spaced bows instead of a seam, with collars that extended into lapping tongues, and sometimes trailing foulards. The silhouettes were urbane, with an arts and crafts edge.
They made you feel … what is that again? Oh, yeah. Desire.
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