It is a “useless” object like a work of art and which says a lot about the wearer, say the designers selected at Hyères Fashion, Photography and Accessories Festival (Var). The accessory is popular with luxury houses and independent fashion designers, who appropriate it to convey ecological and societal messages.
Two years ago, the creator of Capucine Huguet jewelry left with glaciologists in the Arctic to “see and understand”. Before designing a collection of rings dedicated to melting ice. “Jewels are vectors of personality, they express a lot: our religion, our love life … They must also represent an environmental value”, explains to AFP the young woman, one of the ten finalists of the international fashion festival in Hyères, in the accessories category.
Each ring represents an aspect of melting ice. One, imposing, is inspired by icebergs “naturally sculpted” by the elements, and its structure recalls that, “hexagonal and crystalline, snowflakes”. The pieces are made from “gold or recycled silver, the stones are ethically traced and everything is made to order” in the Parisian studio of the stylist.
The American finalist Benjamin Spencer created during the confinement his collection of plastic clogs, “a reflection on mental health during the pandemic” of Covid-19. Anxiety, depression, every pair of shoes, more or less wearable, is inspired by an illness. “Wearing a shoe that symbolizes a negative emotion helps to fight this emotion”, he said. Massive lavender blue clogs seem heavy, but, once put on, are very light and ergonomic.
Frenchwoman Mathilde Heintz transforms old clothes into bags to give “the desirability of things that we no longer want to put on”.
Lou Chartres bags have an additional function: they become travel pillows, even allowing you to sleep upright or on the shoulder of the wearer.
With her bags that refer to the bell around the neck of mountain cows or that hang on the wrist with a nose ring (the one attached to the nostrils of bulls), Manon Marcelot “wants to reconnect the breeding and leather goods sectors”.
The rings and bracelets of the Japanese Rayna Amuro, in silver and wicker, synthesize the contrast between “the organic and the artificial created by man”.
“The accessory is like an architecture, it changes everything. It gives a style, it’s your style, your choice”, says Pascale Mussard, president of the Hyères festival, to AFP. After 40 years at Hermès, she worked for the creation of a specific category (since 2017) at the Hyères festival, the 36th edition of which ends on Sunday.
“By accessories, we can go on paths that fashion looks a little less, such as disability, sustainable development, ethics, which interest young people”, emphasizes Pascale Moussard, recalling that a winning piece (a “patch” for the breasts), in 2019, was intended for women after breast cancer. “Before, a woman never went out without her hat and gloves, often matching. In the 1970s, the accessory no longer had the same place. Today it is regaining importance”, she says.
“These young people who make accessories are new. Before, it was integrated into fashion houses. But as it is no longer as codified as it used to be, the accessory allows a lot of freedom” and to identify, for example, with marginal currents, “such as punks”.
The accessory allows you to “to put very personal accents in a form of dress standardization”, told AFP Christian Louboutin, president of the accessories jury. Unlike clothes or shoes, jewelry has no “no use”, but the talismans that protect us are associated with this universe.
Member of the jury and winner of the previous edition, Ddiddue Etcheberry, believes that the accessory should “tell a story”. “Visual pollution no longer lets you breathe. Perhaps there must be in a shop, as in a museum, atria to tell the object, its origin, the materials and the history of the person who created it “, he advances.
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