From Richard Serra to Stéphane Rolland

Despite moderately liking, Mabille and Dior’s collections presented at yesterday's shows, I must admit that it was Stéphane Rolland who raised my art interest with a collection that showed some clever inspirations and references.

Rolland claimed his A/W 09 haute couture collection was inspired by furniture designer Karim Rashid and sculptor Richard Serra.

If you are familiar with the work of Rashid and Serra, you may realise they could provide rather difficult fashion inspirations.

I actually mentioned Serra a while back in a previous post
in connection with architectural shoes, but in that case it seemed to me easier, almost natural to compare the heels or the shapes or a particular pair of shoes with Serra's works.

Yet I think that Rolland found a way to transform Serra’s minimalist concrete or metal walls into dresses, while the influence of Rashid’s was maybe stronger in the futuristic essence of the collection.

Serra's favourite materials, concrete and metal, were evoked by flannel outfits in charcoal, dove, camel and rusty faded bronze, though it was in the details that Rolland applied the most arty inspirations.

The designer used pleated and draped motifs, applied rib-like snakes of fabric that formed 3D labyrinth-like decorations, employed plastic beads and crystals that formed futuristic electrical circuits on dresses, jackets and jumpsuits, and reproduced a sort of tone on tone pebble print on a long evening gown.

The sharp geometries of Serra’s "Viewpoint" and the sinuous steel sheets of "Snake" and "Torqued Ellipses" appeared in futuristic little black dresses and in the layered and sculpted lapels of an elegant jacket.

These details retained the same qualities of Serra's works: they looked extremely rigid and solid yet they were actually very malleable.

The collection should have been maybe edited a bit: most of the dresses with voluminous trains could have been avoided, for example, since they didn’t add much to the collection.

Yet, as whole, Rolland's collection was fascinating since it showed the designer was able to apply rather unusual artistic inspirations to the universe of haute couture while touching upon themes as different as the physicality of space and the nature of
sculpture.

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