Paris Couture Week In Review: Armour, Artistry And Rewriting Beauty

Simplicity or theatrics? Femininity or neutrality? Tradition or progression? As always, Paris Haute Couture Week served up a tantalising banquet of contrasts. It also served up a question we’re still musing on: What is beautiful? Is a hand-embroidered cape with flowers crafted from feathers beautiful? Or is a 3D-printed chrome resin armour dress beautiful?

Correct answer is, there isn’t one. Subjective interpretations of these collections is, of course, part of haute couture’s allure. But a glimmering swish of this, a gothic shock of that, and everything else in between, seems to suggest that a cohesive idea of ‘beauty’ does not exist in couture as it may have in past decades. This season, Fendi said beauty is subtlety and flexibility, Valentino said beauty is the opulence of the past for a new generation, and Thom Browne said beauty is a melancholic opera in grey. Perhaps the real ‘beauty’ is not only witnessed on the runway. Maybe the true beauty of haute couture lies in the hours, stitches and stories that go into crafting every collection; a shared spirit of creation that transcends the physical garments themselves.

Castles, a thing of beauty by many standards. Naturally, Château de Chantilly was the backdrop of choice for Valentino Haute Couture. But it wasn’t just castles for castle's sake. Drawing a symbolic parallel between the unfathomably-grand French estate and haute couture itself as a ‘forum for equality and openness’, Pierpaolo Piccioli celebrated the power of the artform to unite artisans, craftspeople and humans from all walks of life in a universal creative exchange. Described by the Maison as ‘minimal maximalism,’ the collection’s silhouettes were effortless, its colour palette vivacious, and its headdresses towering at the best of times. The aristocratic grandeur of feathers and gemstones stood in contrast to a more streamlined ‘of the moment’ couture. At sunset, a swathe of artisans joined Piccioli on the runway for the show’s finale, their grins and watering eyes saying everything. Even the ducks were crying. In Piccioli we trust, and we tend to agree; the true value of a haute couture garment is not its price tag, but rather, the human hands that have crafted it into existence.

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Meanwhile, Kim Jones ventured ‘beyond the spectacle’ in his collection for Fendi, favouring a subtlety of form that emphasised construction techniques like corsetry and drapery. A collection without gimmicks or jarring thrills immersed us in the lived experience of a hand-crafted couture garment; a corset’s firm hug, or the weightless sensation of silk draped down the thigh. While the designer’s colour palette puzzled some, others swooned over luscious jewel-tones of garnet and aquamarine, which accentuated treasures from Delfina Delettrez’s debut high jewellery collection for the house – Fendi Triptych.

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Florals, fluidity and female archetypes remind us that ‘beauty’ – in a more traditional and historical couture context – is still a timeless point of reference for designers. Giorgio Armani reinterpreted the eternal rose as a motif of seduction in a symbolic journey from West to East in his Giorgio Armani Privé collection. Elongated silhouettes and scintillating textures were an alluring invitation to embark on a ‘transcendental voyage’ that explored femininity beyond traditional conventions. Beauty is beauty, according to Giambattista Valli. Gowns from the designer’s N25 Collection once again seemed to defy gravity as visions of feminine poetry-in-motion. Signature house hallmarks like voluminous bows and flowers evoked both spontaneity and sophistication throughout the collection.

Maria Grazia Chiuri reinterpreted Greco-Roman myth and costume in her collection for Dior, contrasting classical sculptural silhouettes with shimmering embellishments that reflected a timeless sense of vitality. As described by the Maison, the collection fused ‘the allure of classical costume with the lives and expectations of the women of today,’ reiterating the relevance of haute couture in contemporary society as a platform for creative and cultural exchange. At Chanel, Virginie Viard placed intense focus on the beauty of French couture handwork and techniques that have existed for centuries, like embroidery, embellishing, trimming, appliqué and beading - elements that ensure the very act of wearing couture inherently means wearing the hours of labour that go into creating each one-of-a-kind masterpiece.  

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“Full credit goes to the Dior Atelier for producing deceptively simple pieces. The collection may have lacked those ‘come hither’ looks that usually dominate the haute couture circuit, but it allowed pieces to shine for their craftsmanship instead of theatrics,” says fashion creative director, stylist and editor-at-large Dhav Naidu, who has seen his fair share of haute couture shows in his time.

Gimmicks, theatrics….call them what you will. Love them or hate them, they seem to have an increasing presence in haute couture to get heads turning and social media spiralling. Apologies, couture traditionalists, but this isn’t the news you wanted to hear. Viktor & Rolf did its thing again this season, albeit on a less voluminous scale, with its Embodiment collection featuring surreal iterations of the one-piece bodysuit reimagined in everything from bow-bondage to trompe l'oeil triplicates to sculptural 3D lettering that packed a punch (I WISH YOU WELL…what a deliciously ironic phrase to have plastered across your decolletage in a sun-yellow bodysuit). Generally speaking, it’s performative haute couture; garments we love to watch, if not to wear.

Balenciaga’s 52^nd Couture Collection paid homage to the house’s couture legacy with archival evening-wear silhouettes, elegant tailoring and opulent fabrications like guipure lace and silk taffeta. But Demna, being Demna, eventually gave us that little (or big) jolt we knew was on its way in some form or another. A 3D-printed chrome resin armour dress sauntered through the house’s George V couture salons like a modern Joan of Arc. Silver stars go to the model who continued to put one foot in front of the other under the sculpture’s unrelenting ‘skirt’ that glistened like a buttered medieval cake tin. Costume gimmick? Or a metaphorical statement by Demna, who perceives the ultimate protective power in clothing?

Indeed, we live in strange times, and frankly, ideal times for designers to play on our escapist fantasies and whisk us away to alternative worlds where the odd, the curious and the bizarre all seem to make perfect sense. Schiaparelli Creative Director (and haute couture’s darling of the moment) Daniel Roseberry conjured another artful tribute to Elsa Schiaparelli’s Surrealist legacy with his SCHIAPARELLI…AND THE ARTISTS collection. Roseberry’s audacious manipulation of form and proportion seemed to bear more of his personal stamp and less reference to the Schiaparelli archives than past collections, his own ‘touch’ also noted in the inversion of signature ‘Schiaparelli Gold’ to an intense burst of Yves Klein Blue.

Naidu reflects on the ‘stalwarts and raised eyebrow-collections’ in each season, including this one, reminding us that subjective interpretations of haute couture are part of the artform’s mystique. Reflecting on this radically-evolving notion of ‘beauty’ on the runway, Naidu muses on the absence of a simplistic, refined beauty which he believes, at times, is overtaken by gimmicks and shock value. “I feel there is abject fear and embarrassment of it (beauty); not just a white-lens version of beauty, but a universal appreciation of beauty. Beauty is not a bad word!” he says.

So there you have it. Paris Couture Week - it’s all very new. And it’s mostly very beautiful.