I was at the first editions! I remember the necessary emergence of this show, which was a symbol. A new generation was arriving and wanted to do battle. The other brands that were supposed to speak to young people suddenly seemed like ankylosed monoliths. A fight in every sense of the word! The chaos was there because once the routine walls of ready-to-wear had come down, these things could be done with joy and glee. The improvisation of the obvious. I remember a hall where there were dozens of stands, each one like a birthday party, a housewarming party, a wild cabaret. A cheerful atmosphere. Everyone looked like a DJ.
Everyone was playing at the same time. The cacophony was real. Everything hybridized, subdivided. Clubwear, skatewear, bmxwear, cyberwear, snowwear, workwear, clubwear, technowear - these were just some of the categories I had noted in my spiral notebook (we had spiral notebooks). The -wear words were all trends, and made it clear that this was all about the generation, about happy, vibrant lifestyles that were less than five years old.
The boys on the stands already had their nails painted blue. I noted the encounter between "two Italian buyers from the nearby women's ready-to-wear show, bewildered by these iconoclastic outfits" and "an ultra-fashioned model dressed in a Hindu cosmonaut outfit". This one was amused by the clash of cultures: "Wow, these grannies are tripping out! Aaaaah! Where are we?!" The ideology of clothing was changing.
Who's Next was designed to have fun, but also to last. From the very first edition, brands were already creating something new from upcycling. In those days, we called it recycling. Brands turning T-shirts with cheeky slogans into gold. New materials that, yes, make you sweat but their iridescent effect is worth it. Outfits that were too tight and too panther-like (never too tight, never too panther-like).
If the astute curator of a fashion museum had collected the best and the strangest from these first Who's Next shows and designed a time capsule that would have revealed the mantle of the 1990s, it would have reflected the different aesthetics that ran through it, its incredible morgue as well as its concerns. We were already talking about the "barons of wear", and today this greenhouse of beautiful butterflies has become the leading fashion and lifestyle show, a three-day city that emerges at Porte de Versailles with all the oddballs and new brands, the visionaries who are inventing their own space and the quiet forces, the jewellers, the denims, the joyful and the funny, always the avant-garde of eco-responsibility, always the diffracted and therefore faithful radioscopy of current times.
The name Who's Next was a promise that has clearly been kept.
Loïc Prigent
