Fan Season in Paris

Paris is not burning; it is slowly simmering.

HAKAN BAHAR

In the last days of June, walking from one end of the city to the other to see the Spring/Summer 2027 collections at Paris Men’s Fashion Week, I find myself witnessing an entirely different show beyond the runways. This season’s most striking accessory is neither a bag nor a shoe. It is carried not in the shows, but in the streets, at metro exits, in museum courtyards and beneath the trees whose shade people seek out: the fan. In this heat, the city’s most elegant sound is not footsteps echoing on stone streets or the hum of crowds, but the soft rustle of fans opening and closing in people’s palms. A tiny breeze that vanishes the moment it touches the face… a few seconds of relief. But sometimes it is precisely those few seconds that keep you going.

In the air made heavy by the heat, hands move to almost the same rhythm. Fans open and close gently. It is as if everyone were the conductor of an invisible orchestra, trying to recompose the air, to redirect the breeze. Every flick of the wrist becomes an elegant act of resistance against the heat. The little winds mingling with one another create a shared choreography across the streets of Paris, unseen but felt. Perhaps this season’s most remarkable performance is staged not on the runways, but in the palms of people’s hands.

The fan has never been merely a practical way of coping with heat. Its earliest forms appeared in Asia thousands of years ago; following the trade routes, it reached Europe. In France, particularly in the 18th century, it became an inseparable part of elegance within the etiquette of the court of Versailles. As much as the hand that carried it, the way it was held, opened and brought towards the face was a mark of refinement. This object, which produced a small breeze, also carried a cultural identity.

In the 19th century, something close to a mythology grew up around the fan. It was said to have a silent language that spoke of love, distance, waiting and desire. How much of these stories was truly part of everyday life is still debated today. But one fact is beyond dispute: the fan was an object that transcended its function and became memory. It carried the aesthetic sensibility, the body language and the social relations of an era.

Today in Paris, the same fan tells an entirely different story. Fashion editors waiting in show queues and museum visitors, tourists catching their breath in cafés and Parisians alike share the same reflex. Once a courtly accessory, it is today one of the most elegant witnesses to the climate crisis. Elegance has not changed; what has changed is our need for it.

Perhaps the true value of objects lies not in their unchanging forms, but in the new meanings they take on over time. The fan is still the same fan. What has changed is our reason for picking it up.

Perhaps, years from now, in a fashion or design museum, an ordinary fan will be displayed in a case devoted to the summer of 2027. And the small label beside it might simply read: “In the years when the world was growing ever warmer, people began to carry their own wind with them.”

And then, the most ordinary-looking object of today will become one of the most powerful witnesses of an era.