Fans and water guns: When the heat wave takes its toll on fashion shows, too

An unwelcome guest: the heat wave sweeping through Paris is disrupting Men’s Fashion Week and forcing designers to come up with last-minute solutions, such as moving up the schedule of the runway shows or handing out fans and water guns.

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With temperatures peaking at nearly 40°C since the middle of the week and very hot nights, people are sweating no matter what time of day it is.

Many of the runway shows during Fashion Week, which ends on Sunday, are held in prestigious or unusual venues across the capital—sometimes outdoors—and most are not air-conditioned.

So it’s time for guests and designers to get creative.

“I’ve packed a lot more outfits so I can change regularly,” Hao, who is attending his third Fashion Week—undoubtedly “the hottest one yet”—told AFP.

For Segoo Kang, a buyer from Japan, “it’s really hard to focus on the shows” because of the heat.

The outdoor shows by Jonathan Anderson for Dior on Wednesday and Rick Owens on Thursday were moved to an earlier time in the morning to spare the models and guests from being exposed to the stifling heat at midday.

With just 48 hours to go before her show, Jeanne Friot had to move it to another room at the Palais de Tokyo because of the glass roof over the originally chosen space.

In the gardens of the Nissim de Camondo Museum, Dior’s guests were given fans, small damp towels, and white parasols. Waiters served elaborate refreshing drinks with ice cubes topped with a flower.

At Egonlab, empty water guns were placed at each seat, and the staff used them on the guests at the end of the show.

At Issey Miyake, bottles of water were taken straight out of the freezer, and the audience received instant cold compresses, while the sidewalk was sprayed with water to cool off Auralee’s guests waiting in line.

Journalist Diane Pernet, a regular at fashion shows and always dressed in black, had brought out her Japanese-style parasol to attend the show at the Institut Français de la Mode (IFM). But “I don’t want to die for fashion,” says this American living in Paris, who is ready to give up if the stifling heat persists.

“Underground venue”

Other designers are managing to come out on top.

At Jeanne Friot’s show on Wednesday, the invitation noted that the event would take place “indoors with air conditioning,” so as not to further discourage guests before it was too late.

Some designers had a keen eye for choosing their venues, such as Études Studio. For its collection inspired by the work of American artist Gordon Matta-Clark, the Parisian brand chose the Galerie Basse, a vast space located deep within the Palais de Tokyo, even before knowing that a heat wave was on its way.

“In the end, it turns out that an ‘underground’ venue was very well-suited,” Aurélien Arbet, one of the two artistic directors, told AFP, though “there’s an element of luck,” acknowledges his partner Jérémie Egry.

The heat is also forcing designers to pay closer attention to their models backstage. “We try to make sure the models are ready as late as possible and that everything is in place to make them as comfortable as possible,” emphasizes Aurélien Arbet.

Model Jonathan Masher, 20, has attended several castings during Paris Fashion Week: “Very often we wait outside (…) in endless lines for an hour, sometimes an hour and a half, and we stand in the blazing sun,” he tells AFP.

With the increasing frequency of intense heat waves, fashion houses will soon have no choice but to fully take this factor into account in their process of creating collections and runway shows.

The designers at Études Studio already assure us that “in the fabric selection process, all materials are chosen for their suitability to the climate,” using very fluid fabrics such as linen, lyocell, silk, and organic cotton.