It was day 1 of the couture shows in a cold Paris, and the Schiap package staggered around the Petit Palais in their gold-toeen shoes and anatomical gold jewelry, waved their only bogs and waited for the Schiapararelli show to start .
That they were a bit – eh, oversessed at 10 am on a Monday, nobody seemed to be shocked. They had detached the tires of the convention and entered that liminal space that is known as a fashion country, where ball dresses are a completely reasonable answer to the trauma of waking up.
“The only thing I really want is suspending the weight of reality,” said Daniel Roseberry, artistic director of Schiaparelli, backstage for his show. “I hope that people will be transported, even if it is only 10 minutes. That is my goal. “
Then his first glance appeared, a lace top with a high neck with long sleeves covered with email flowers and in layers of organza ruches with the outdated look of canvas immersed in tea, as a remnant from the Hoofse Age. And it was clear: we came in a Trump-free zone.
Designers like to talk about ‘beauty’ and ‘elegance’ as their plaster for the ailments of the world; A panacea made to compensate for a reality that can be seen more difficult to see. This often appears as defensive; An excuse not to take a position or not get involved. Sometimes it can make the industry look like contact, so determined frivolous, it is paradoxically unattractive.
But sometimes it’s exactly what you need.
This is one of those times. The reality is so inexorably tiring, so overwhelming and uncertain that having a moment to escape from fantasy, to ogle for the pure skill of seamstress who can perform the kind of material alchemy that would let Rump -silencekin in awe, is a balm .
And for this, the couture, the handmade for the .001 percent piece of fashion that is not about portability but rather the impossible doing, almost perfectly conceived. It brings you down sliding worm holes of references and craftsmanship in moments of how-do-they-that-that pleasure that have nothing to do with whether you can actually buy the clothing, and everything to do with just enjoying the view. With thinking, “Yes, take me away!”
Perhaps that is the reason why, as the shows started, time travel something of a theme, with corsets and hoop skirts and the exaggerated S curve of the Belle Epoque – all the hips and soil and bust – dominate the landing courts. Even the body was transformed.
Perhaps that is why, for a show that was not officially couture, but that was entirely inspired by Couture, Simon Porte Jacquemus attracted his guests to a penthouse-aerie in the 16th district that was once owned by the early 20th-century French architect Auguste Perret, and that is now being restored. Then he brought them up in a lift manned by Bellhops and took them on a whistle stop tour through classic haute tropics such as the trapeze, The New Look and the Caban, built on Corsetry from the 1950s and filmed on a variety of iPhone 16s set up around the room. It had an illusory feeling, if not too much originality.
And perhaps that is why, in Christian Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri made a trip through the rabbit hole to a wonderland of her own imagination (and, she said in a preview, childhood memories) made of hoop skirts and frilly trousers, Edwardian tail jackets and little Black dresses.
Since she arrived in Dior in 2016, Mrs. Chiuri has often resolutely focused on clothing that is so subtly accessible that they can conger on the banal. But although there were such pieces in the show, including a great small sleeveless black trapeze shift with ruffles for belts, it was the skirts, built on a shield of bamboo, covered with vines made from raffia, feathers and lace, and looked like The love child of an octopus and a parasol that dominated. Also the playsuits and bloomers (items of clothing that normally have no place in the wardrobe of an adult woman) made of tulle covered with applications that seemed to swirl around the body, from the knotted Jane Eyre Jackets impossible to limit.
Imagine that the Minions of Queen Titania had escaped from the dream of her midsummer night and ended up in a Bordello in the French neighborhood of New Orleans, and you will get the idea.
That nothing was aware of the surrealist embroidery people designed by the Indian artist Rithika Merchant, who decorated the walls of the Dior tent in the gardens of the Musée Rodin and had their origins in a very different mythical tradition, simply added to the unreality of the experience.
Just like, with Schiaaparelli, the extreme construction of the clothing – sculpted jackets that circled the shoulders as well -worked orbital rings before they cinch at waist, so small, suggested that ribs have been removed; Trompe l’Oil hip bones built in dangerous points under bullet breasts – underlined the feeling that the clothing itself was practically decorative objects. The ability to sit down (or perhaps even breathe) was subject to the pure Dadaistic pleasure to wonder if what you saw was a goddess or a vase.
Anyway, it seemed like a dream.
