JULIE KEGELS PARIS 2017

It does not pass. It lingers. And it is not a visitor, but a tenant who has finally paid the rent in lost hours. It is there when we open our eyes, in the grey light filtering beneath the shutters, before thought has even had a chance to defend itself.

Time no longer flows this Monday, the first day of Fashion Week. It festers. The clock ticks off its seconds like a condemned man counting the stones of his cell, each one resembling the last, each one destined to be the sister of the next. One wishes something would happen, anything, a catastrophe, a scream on the runway, anything to crack the silence of creation, but nothing. The walls keep their secret.

Somewhere behind the face, another self watches the scene from the bottom of a well, with anger, with contempt, ready to deliver the opening of Paris Fashion Week: the unfathomable banality of Julie Kegels.

Because here is the worst of it: boredom has none of pain’s dignity. Pain at least knows that it is alive, whereas boredom offers us a long anaesthetic, a dead sea like the Rance, where we float without ever being able to sink. The minutes follow one another, identical, like neatly aligned coffins, and we are barely surprised to find our own name there as a fashion designer; all we hear is the Brabançonne played for the LVMH Prize.

The afternoon is already falling without promise, and night will bring no consolation: it merely changes the colour of the void. And tomorrow, at dawn, in slow steps, boredom will reclaim its place, that faithful companion that never betrays. Welcome to Paris Fashion Week.

FM