Beyond a Collection: Courrèges Takes Consumers on a Journey Through Cutting Patterns in A/W 2016 Campaign

Sections of cutting patterns for a jacket, a dress and a mini-skirt are peeled off from a white surface by an invisible hand as if they were white adhesive labels or stickers. The pieces gradually get together and show a three-dimensional version of a garment suspended in space.

This is the recently released campaign for the Autumn/Winter 2016 collection by Courrèges, the fashion house currently led by a duo of creative directors, Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant.

The main point of this campaign – that looks radically different from adverts by other fashion houses since it doesn't feature any glamorous model, but focuses on the garment – is to make consumers understand the importance of the construction behind a design.

The visuals chosen for the three garments also include the technical notes, with the name of the piece, the quantity needed, and the production time needed to make the garment at the Pau factory.

These elements hint at the technical prowess of the late French designer, reminding us all that André Courrèges was first and foremost an engineer educated at the National School of Civil Engineering who had served as an Air Force pilot and who eventually enrolled in 1946 at the training college for the clothing industries in Paris.

The campaign turns therefore into a celebration of the new collection, while introducing new consumers to the origins of the fashion house and to the importance of cutting patterns, key elements in fashion designs that seems to have found in recent years new fans also in the art world and in museum collections.

A final note: it is also possible to download from the fashion house's site a PDF file with the three patterns (Download CampagneCourreges_Patterns): this is a great way to teach consumers how to make a garment and maybe experiment with paper, scraps of fabrics and other random materials.

By showing the clothes via their cutting patterns almost as if they were exploded views of a machine, it's as if the brand was indeed advising consumers to expand their knowledge, rather than just mindlessly buying garments without understanding how they are made and in which ways their shapes may suit and empower their bodies.