The Haute Couture shows in Paris have ended. From Monday 20 to Thursday 23 January, Haute Couture presentations were staged, or one of the most anticipated and most important events for the fashion system and the few shows that follow one another, they tell the creative process of great designers, but also the savoir faire of each Maison and the long and careful work of seamstresses, embroiderers, designers. These are the fashion shows that best represent elegance and mastery. We have seen maisons like Chanel, Armani, Valentino, Dior, Schiaparelli, Givenchy, Iris Van Herpen. And could not miss the revolutionary and beloved Jean Paul Gaultier, who with great displeasure for all of us, with this show closes the fashion world for a while (read more details here). But let’s see and study more closely who proposed what and let us look again with these dream dresses which, in our opinion, are the most beautiful ever!
A strand of DNA that rotates at the bottom of the dark room of the Cirque d’Hiver. At the head are the studies of the Spanish neuroanatomist Ramon y Cayal. Iris Van Herpen presents a collection called “Sensory seas”. The whole wardrobe imagined by the stylist-engineer tells the movement and the three-dimensionality through futuristic clothes. Made of overlapping and hand-painted circles. Made of floating petals that move with each step. Made of voile waves moved by the wind and made of overlapping of immaculate organza. To paint a futuristic and science fiction, poetic and surprising universe. That ferries couture towards a universe of sci-fi art.
Chanel presents the parade in the historic location of the maison, at the Grand Palais, which is transformed for every occasion, and this time it was the reconstruction of the monastery where the stylist Chanel lived after the death of her mother. The models were transformed into schoolgirls. Virginie Viard, the designer, repeated cyclically in the Chanel collections also this time black and white, bouclé and chiffon. The accessory to keep an eye on? The white and sheer tights, decidedly 50s.
Armani Prive is inspired by the Orient. An ethnic fabric is the protagonist: ikat, widespread among the Malaysian and Indonesian peoples. The word “ikat” means “cloud” and they seem colorful clouds – electric blue, but also wisteria pink – the clothes that float on the catwalk, often combined with black tulle.
A large inflatable building in the gardens of the Musée Rodin in Paris to tell the mother-woman from whom everything is born. The seasonal story of Dior couture by Maria Grazia Chiuri starts from the work of the feminist artist Judy Chicago, called by the designer to collaborate starting from a question that dominates the entrance: What if women ruled the world? The show also moves around the same concept, proposing an elegantly sophisticated wardrobe inspired by important women such as Botticelli’s Venus, the Nike of Samothrace or the goddess Athena. Because all the looks that tread the purple carpet dotted with flowers, the work of Chicago itself, are deities dressed in peplums and crowns of golden leaves, architectural jackets and floating robes. Perfect dress code for a golden Olympus.
Valentino by Pierpaolo Piccioli, brings the dream and the world of the unconscious onto the catwalk. Very refined and rigorously cut dresses paraded, with narrow and long skirts that opened on the ankles, rigid bodices, hoods, giant earrings; black, red and white predominated among the colors, with the addition of wisteria, acid green and electric blue.
Clare Waight Keller, creative director of Givenchy, brings flower women and cascades of crystals to the catwalk. ‘PENSÉE’, for “Une Lettre d’Amour”, this is the title of the collection, is the love letter written by Virginia Wolf to her husband before taking her own life but which becomes, between Waight Keller’s fingers, a declaration of ‘love. The collection saw corolla dresses, bush volumes and cloaks draped like petals. Givenchy fashion is not afraid of being too romantic both in the choice of the color palette, pastels, and in the mischievous rigor of the classic black and white couple. And after the sensorial ecstasy of the creations inspired by floral creatures, the first drops of dew, crystals and embroideries of a bewitching lunar glow arrive. They are the evening dresses.
Au revoir Jean Paul Gaultier with a show-event that sees his career end. One after the other, the symbols of the Gaultier style parade: the marinière, the male-female, the pin up style, the legendary guêpière bra with the cone cups created for Madonna on the occasion of the Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990, the folk, camouflage, folk, nude and much, much more. On the catwalk many top (Irina Shayk, Karlie Kloss, Gigi and Bella Hadid, Joan Smalls, Coco Rocha, Erin O’Connor) but also Paris Jackson, Jasmin Le Bon, the actress Farida Khelfa, Rossy de Palma, the footballer Djibril Cissé , the former Miss France Iris Mittenaere and Dita Von Teese. Jean Paul Gaultier gave everything on this show, 5 decades of pure fashion, investigation and reflection, which led him to stardom. Themes all share the thread of irony, very heart for the designer.
