How escapist should fashion be? | CNN

EDITOR’S NOTE: CNN Style is one of the official media partners of Paris Fashion Week. See all coverage here. “Stop this world, let me off,” the blues musician Mose Allison once crooned – a relatable sentiment when war has broken out, inequality is top of mind and a general darkness hovers over almost all things. Allison never intoned just which stop he’d like to get off on – but one imagines that Paris Fashion Week, where many of the shows this past week have been wackadoo with lovely, at times ditzy and always customer-pleasing prettiness, would make for a nice layover en route to something more permanent. Crises erupt across the world with alarming regularity, and yet the biannual fashion shows press on. Designers conceive of collections months (okay, at least weeks) in advance of their show dates, giving them little time to readjust to the outside world. Most keep calm and create a compelling-enough distraction as if fulfilling marching orders, their escapism a duty. For proof of why such persistence is good, look to Dior, the second women’s ready-to-wear collection from still-fresh creative director Jonathan Anderson. Staged outdoors on a stage hovering above a p