As Santo Domingo put it of Dossena’s work, “I find that while Julien’s clothing are fashion-forward to say the least, they are easy to wear, with both the quality and fit being spot-on.” But when the show began and the cutout tangerine-orange gowns bedazzled with pomegranate hearts began coming down the runway, she was gasping with desire. My seatmate, Lisa Rinna, laughed about the impracticalities of wearing a short suit whose fabric resembled upholstery, covered in a layer of vinyl. Guests at the Wednesday show who were dressed in Rabanne clanged up and down the plush-lined runway beforehand taking selfies with fellow Rabanne-clad attendees. In a sea of increasingly anodyne and wearable high fashion, Dossena goes his own way. Whether he’s headed elsewhere or not, Dossena this season is poised to elevate himself to a new level of fashion infamy. It was also the moment of the sexual revolution-Rabanne first emerged in the 1960s, and died earlier this year-and “women were acknowledging their bodies in a different way, and that freedom of sexuality, and the choice to be desirable in a new way.” Dossena’s description of Rabanne’s first moment of success sounds not unlike our present day, with women gravitating toward sexier or even more aggressive clothes. “That relationship between the body and this kind of material, for, it was what he found almost fetishistic,” Dossena said in a conversation in late February. And yet, they look absolutely come hither.

At a time when everything looks plucked from the Instagram mood board, Dossena makes clothes that are provocative and, in description, seem like they shouldn’t quite work-like fall 2023’s busy orange floral prints tiered between dense black lace on a gown, or beige plush wrapped around the shoulders like tentacles from a bad dream. But even when he ventures into other materials, the effect is thrilling. Like Rabanne, he uses plastic, chainmail, and metal, his atelier attaching shimmering discs and fringe blades by hand using small silver rings. This is Dossena’s signature key: His clothes are exciting and often confusing, and decidedly erotic. (She ended up wearing a knit gold-and-silver crop top and matching long skirt by the brand instead, and appeared quite comfortable.) Though she sounded sort of titillated by the experience. In the front row of his Paco Rabanne show on Wednesday afternoon-he has been the creative director there for a decade now-the actress Jemima Kirke was recounting how she’d tried on one of his metal creations, done in expert deference to Rabanne’s unorthodox, space-age creations, in the atelier the day before. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of one of Julien Dossena’s dresses against your skin.

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