Hotel Pozzo di Borgo, a
hôtel particulier in the seventh arrondissement in Paris, hasn’t seen this much action since it was Karl Lagerfeld’s home back in the day. Thursday night it was the venue for
Vogue Paris’s masked ball. Saturday, Dior was filming a commercial with Kate Moss. (I can tell you it involved a stately green vintage limousine, but no spotting of the English super,
malheuresment.) Elsewhere in the house at the same time, working in an airy, gorgeous white stucco room, were Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen—who are using the space to present their latest collection for The Row on Sunday—with a few models and a video, which creates an idea of a virtual runway experience. Think of what we have here as a behind-the-scenes trailer for what will be screened in full in Paris, which can be seen at
www.bing.com/therow from Monday. “We looked at so many places,” said Mary-Kate—nursing the bane of the shows, the fashion-week cold—of the venue. “But this one was just right; it suited the cleanness the collection. It feels very New York in a way.”
New York, you may remember, was plan A—to do their second full runway show in the city during fashion week. But then the samples of the collection didn’t make it in time, so it was off to the Paris and plan B. This sneak-peak look should give you a taste of the collection, but suffice to say that: One, the Olsens were thinking of fabric wrapping around the body (bias cutting is a recurring theme); two, they’re voting for the new long silhouette; three, they have—not easy to find—many perfect shades of pink (“We looked at
hundreds,” says Ashley); and lastly, all the shoes are flat—crocodile loafers and slippers in shades of lilac, red, grey and, yes, pink—and by Manolo Blahnik, after the duo saw the slippers at the Tina Chow archive at FIT. The Manolo resurgence we’ve been feeling this season just got a whole lot stronger.