A grand parade will be organized on June 23 in Paris with the cream of the fashion and sports world, a “sort of opening ceremony,” one month before the start of the Olympic Games, its organizer, the international magazine Vogue, announced on Monday. “It will be outdoors, at Place Vendôme, and it will be a mix of a fashion show, entertainment, performances, and some surprises,” said Vogue’s editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, during a press conference in Paris.
Each decade an Olympic discipline. The very powerful head of international fashion “moved mountains,” whether with the Paris police prefecture or with the presidency to organize this event on this iconic square in Paris, she added. The date was not chosen by chance, June 23 being the International Day of Olympism, and it will be a showcase of the “great French houses, somewhat in the tradition of parades seen in the United States,” explains Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris. It will be a tribute to “a hundred years of French fashion,” since the last Parisian Olympics in 1924, added Anna Wintour.
Each decade of French fashion will be paired with an Olympic discipline, from athletics to breakdancing, fencing, taekwondo, and cycling.
Jacquemus, Olivier Rousteing, and Pharrell Williams. Several renowned designers will take part in this very rare collective event. Among them, the French designers Jacquemus and Olivier Rousteing, artistic director of Balmain, and Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton, all present at the launch press conference. “It’s rare that we are all gathered like this,” emphasized Olivier Rousteing. “Taking on Place Vendôme is quite audacious,” Pharrell Williams launched to Anna Wintour, ensuring that “the spirit of French fashion, the one we see on the catwalks but also on the boulevards,” will be represented in a spirit of “inclusion.”
This will be the third Vogue event, these mega-celebrations popular with the fashion world and celebrities that mix art, performance, and artistic creation, after those organized in New York and London, and which help to maintain the prestige of the magazine in a difficult context for print media. The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics will take place on July 26 on the Seine.
