Manish Arora cheered us up with a collection, which seemly out of candy explosion. Sweet.
Super vivacious sound of Candy Chrush Saga cheerfully welcomed us, and for those who don't know what Candy Crush is, well,.. Where have you been?. I saw many people are crazy about it (a man killed his friend fighting about this mobile game, I read). And one little nod of the girl with the headset at the venue was confirming my fancy idea about how the clothes would look like (I pointed on the roof, frowning and mimicking 'Candy Crush?' with my lips, and she whispered, "Yes").
So here they were. MANISH ARORA HAPPINESS was printed on a tee at the opening. The model was wearing Anna Dello Russo-esque cherry head piece. Cupcakes, doughnuts, sweet colourful bonbons, skittles, candy canes, lollipops, ice creams, popsicles, gummi bears, and all of the süßigkeiten you can imagine were printed, pressed, and became the embroidery shapes on the coats and dresses. But not only that. Manish Arora also brought the beauty of aurora borealis and milky way sky line on his clothes (he called it galaxy girl), with still, sweets scrambled here and there.
However, the most interesting part of this collection was not the colours. It's the idea of the shapes, the silhouette. What I imagined as the traditional mongolian Deel and ancient chinese dressing, with bow belt, loose gown cut in one piece with the sleeves; it had a high collar and widely overlaps at the front. The deel was girdled with a sash, decoratively cut overflaps, small round necklines, and some looks contained a Mandarin collar. Kirgiz costumes were apparently the inspiration as well, with the bright flowery mottifs and velvet cape and skirts, red velour round caps with adornments and embroidery.
The face was no less cheerful. Decorated with what looked like red M&Ms and bright shadows, it' only the gesture and the mimicks that was missing from the models (aren't you supposed to be laughing - smiling - when you have such joyful make up?). The hairdos were full of braids and buns. Divided into two pigtails, each of which would be divided into three braids. The ends of the braids would then be looped up and bound to the top of the braid behind the ears. Bogtag headdresses and gold Tibetian jewellery seemed to be put there to balance it, that after all, it's the glamour that people were looking for. Even though it's difficult to see it behind this shalala boom boom clothes and blinky sneakers with little LED lighting, this time Manish Arora presented us the sweetest collection during this rainy Paris Fashion Week.
We all left the venue with smile, just like kids leaving a candy store.
Signorfandi, dentist alert!