A new haute couture is possible: this is the slogan that could be used to describe the Autumn/Winter 2010-11 Haute Couture catwalks.
When the Parisian Haute Couture shows first started, they inspired awe and reverence in the people who went to see them.
This happened for one main reason: every design was the perfectly balanced result of a sort of mathematical equation involving creativity, exquisite workmanship and dedication.
Many fashion connoisseurs started identifying the couturiers with Paris while the French capital became synonymous with style, taste and marvellous designs.
Yet, while Christian Dior stated that “the maintenance of the tradition of fashion is in the nature of an act of faith; the outward sign of an ancient civilization that intends to survive”, in the last few years, as the crisis hit even the wealthier customers of the most exclusive ateliers, fashion critics started raising doubts about the future of Haute Couture.
As a consequence, high fashion subtly started changing: in the past dazzling and amazing designs were the rule, now the keywords are perfection and quality.
The piping, colour blending, embellishments and embroideries are still a matter of life and death, yet there is a tendency, that is spreading at least among the youngest generation of designers creating Haute Couture pieces, to try and curb excesses and extravagances.
Alexis Mabille and Bouchra Jarrar's collections represented perfect examples of this trend.
The former opted for a rather compact collection that referenced Christian Lacroix especially in the black lace designs and in one creation in vivid red.
Mabille focused on separates, combining shirts, long gowns, trousers and coats. His trademark romantic bows were applied this time to the shoulders of lacy white tops and the most extravagant pieces were the powdery pink see-through shirts with frothy tiered sleeves.
Ample lapels gave a rather unnecessary funereally romantic tone to black jackets, but the best thing about this collection was definitely Mabille’s attention for details, from buttons to frills.
Bouchra Jarrar introduced instead a minimalist view of haute couture.
The designer previously worked at Christian Lacroix and Balenciaga (with Nicolas Ghesquière) and this was the second time she showcased her Haute Couture collection.
The palette revolved around cream, navy and black, with flashes of gold lame, but, the designer played around with these basic shades really well, perfectly incorporating them in her elegantly tailored looks.
The collection included single-breasted jackets and slim trousers; simple yet striking shift dresses and dresses with qipao-like fastenings and uniform shoulder straps that called to mind regimental styles; a top and a slim shirt that seemed to be kept together by just one stitch and a trompe l’oeil shirt and skirt ensemble with a slash that revealed underneath a gold lame lining.
The silhouette and the contrast piping was slightly geometrically Courregesian, while the cracks in the fabric through which gold lame emerged looked a bit like Lucio Fontana’s slashes filled with precious metals.
Evening gowns in cream and navy showed the same geometrical rigorousness of the rest of the collection, though there was a moment of excess in a
sleeveless goatskin dress.
Jarrar perfectly managed to nail down the new canons of Haute Couture and the transition of high fashion towards the realm of luxurious yet sober ready-to-wear even better than Mabille.
Another designer able to reinterpret Haute Couture pretty well is Adeline André. Her collections are usually presented in intimate settings, rather than through catwalk shows, and André usually stages a sort of work-in-progress installation during her presentations.
Deconstructing Haute Couture, André, assisted by a group of loyal helpers, dressed her models in front of the audience in long-tiered dresses made up using seamless pieces of fabrics over-imposed one to the other.
Creating interesting technicolour effects, André showed that, by simply changing the length and colour of a piece of fabric, the entire design can be altered.
It wouldn't probably be incorrect to state that, at the moment, André is the one and only conceptual Haute Couture fashion designer presenting her works in Paris.
It is somehow impossible to deny that Maison Martin Margiela's Artisanal collection is turning into a tiring exercise into recycling.
For the next season the Artisanal collection was based on reworking nappa, leather and snakeskin boots and clutches into trousers and jackets.
Unfortunately, there isn’t anything that great about going around with a jacket with a protruding clutch here and an open handbag there (besides that’s not really recycling, but applying this structure made out of old bags onto a new structured jacket...) or in a cowboy-boots jumpsuit.
Rather than oozing Belgian minimalism, the collection seemed to be a hymn to the maison's new owners' annoying "Be Stupid" campaign (Stupid says: 'Get your bag and wear it'…).
But while these were the trends when it came to reinventing Haute Couture for modern women, John Galliano showed once again what high fashion is about with a marvellously rich collection for Dior that respected all the high fashion canons.
The starting point this time was very simple, almost obvious in fact: Galliano moved from the French designer’s love for nature, plants, flowers and designing gardens, passions he got from his mother.
Christian's father, Maurice Dior had indeed accepted to move to a villa known as Les Rhumbs (the name came from the rhombus-shaped points of the compass in the mosaic floor of the house), in Granville, to make his wife Madeleine happy.
Madeleine spent most of her life cultivating flowers, turning this hobby into a mission, using it to mask the sickening smells coming from her husband’s fertilisizer factory.
Young Christian learnt the names of plants and flowers during his mother's conversations with gardeners and from colourful mail-order seed catalogues he found lying around the house.
Surely the horticultural endeavours of Madeleine Dior, but also Dior’s own gardens at La Colle Noire, his last residence near Grasse, were Galliano’s main inspirations, together with photographs of
flowers by Irving Penn and Nick Knight and with another more obscure reference that not many may have noticed.
The models’ heads were wrapped in plastic headgear by Stephen Jones and their waists tied in raffia-like ribbons, elements that transformed the models into upturned bouquets, referencing in this way not garden flowers, but floral compositions sold at florist’s shops.
In Dior’s life there was actually a very special florist, Madame Paule Dedeban.
She was in a small group of people who shared Dior’s favours and created for the designer extravagant yet stylish compositions of flowers and fruit, transforming the halls of Avenue Montaigne into poetical settings.
Shortly before Dior died, there was even a plan for the designer and the florist to join forces creating a sort of self-service chain of florist shops called Dedeban-Dior.
Apparently, the designer even had plans to retire himself from fashion and turn to his second passion, flowers.
Galliano must have therefore moved from this mix of inspirations to create a visionary high fashion dream.
His models were transformed through sumptuous gowns into sensual flowers: vivid blue or lime coats called to mind tulips or daffodils enveloping the models' bodies; hydrangea flowers were scattered on skirts; corsets were embellished with shocking pink cloverleaf-shaped beads; fluffy lilac skirts imitated clusters of wisteria flowers and dégradé chrysanthemums, while the elaborate surface of a beige dress referenced the velvety blossoms of cockscomb flowers.
In one case the cut of a dress imitated the shape of an iris, while even the 'Bar' suit was reinvented in its floral version with an orange rigid peplum jacket and a fronded and ruched skirt with an exaggerated silhouette.
Oversized ball gowns allowed the designer to hide huge hand-painted flowers like pansies in yards and yards of tulle and organza or to use fabrics that recalled the colours and shapes of roses and parrot tulips.
The scene was
striking as the observers probably felt like insects, mesmerised by the
giant parrot tulips at the back of the runway and enticed by
the dégradé effects, the beauty of the
textures and details and the vivid shades - such as violet, pink, blue, orange, yellow and green - of the leather gloves and sandals with heels shaped like flower stems.
This floral inspiration could have worked rather well also in a Spring/Summer collection, but Galliano developed it flawlessly even with Fall in mind by opting for autumnal fabrics such as mohair and felt and mixing them with layers of chiffon and tulle.
Galliano arrived at the end of the show dressed from head to toe in a design from his Spring/Summer 2011 menswear collection, but the black veil wrapped around his hat rather than calling to mind a Death in Venice look, turned him into a beekeeper of this garden of delights.
Roberto Capucci was among the first designers who turned women into flowers, shaping out of fabric different parts of the flower, from the petals, to the corolla, calyx and gynaeceum.
Yet, with his exuberant floral shapes, John Galliano went further, creating an overwhelming dream.
"I have always seen my profession as a kind of struggle against all that is mediocre and depressing about our age," Christian Dior once claimed.
Surely this Haute Couture collection reaffirms this statement and finally turns into reality the Dedeban-Dior partnership that never was.
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