Want to look fashionable? Buy some shiny clothes (2024)

It’s the fashion event of the year, but you’ve probably never heard of it. In a cavernous warehouse outside Paris, buyers and other industry professionals converge in February and September – lined up with the fashion week calendar – to peruse fabrics. Première Vision, or PV as it’s known, is as much an arbiter of trends as pop culture, influencers and even designers.

Actually, it may be even more influential. PV is where fabrics become clothes, where the blueprint for what we will wear is written. From more than 2000 exhibitors showing 20,000 different kinds of materials (as well as more than 10,000 varieties of leather, a category of its own), designers select the building blocks for their collections.

From the looks of the resort and autumn-winter runways, PV must have been incredibly shiny these past few seasons. How else to account for the PVC, polyurethane, latex, lurex, lamé, patent leather, leather and duchesse satin that now abounds? If the beginning of 2023 was defined by quiet luxury, then the end will be characterised by high-octane, brilliant, gleaming, glossy shine.

The recent resort and autumn-winter ready-to-wear collections show that for many, plastic is fantastic. Cult Gaia’s design director, Jasmin Larian Hekmat, came to the party with a collection that emphasised sparkle and sheen; one of the most standout looks was a puffer jacket with bulbous sleeves, made with a metallic lamé fabric, intricately pleated to refract even more light.

Christopher Kane’s resort collection showed skintight latex shift dresses, playing the subversive nature of the material against the conservatism of the shape. At Diesel’s resort showing, newly supercharged under Glenn Martens, there were blue sateen and hot pink metallic silk lamé mini dresses.

At Stine Goya in Copenhagen, liquid-like leather suits, and at Tibi, a leather maxi skirt with a shine like an oil spill. Versace interpreted the trend with heavy pink duchesse satin. Valentino’s couture show rendered the look with silver lamé trousers. Wallflowers need not apply.

There is something primal – oddly enough – about glossy fabrics. It’s thought that we may be attracted to shiny surfaces because they remind us of water. How curious that we should be so enamoured of high-shine because it reminds us of something so natural, when these fabrics – with the exception of leather – are anything but. So why are we so thirsty now?

Shannon Thomas, owner of Sydney boutique Désordre, loves a bit of gloss. She pointed to brands such as Aya Muse, Magda Butrym and Mirror Palais as custodians of the high-lustre trend. “It’s about pleasure,” she says. “The shapes are actually very simple, but the sheen makes these clothes feel luxurious and sexy. If you took away the fabrics and made these in, say, wool, they would be timeless. But these materials make them a statement piece for now. They’re a little way to rebel and stand out.”