Couture Has Entered a New Era. What Does It Mean?

PARIS — Couture as soliloquy or dialogue? A designer’s flight of fancy or a tool for the wealthiest of women’s lives? Clothes to wear or objects destined for museums? These were some of the questions coursing through the shows this week in Paris as haute couture entered a new era, with new designers bringing their perspectives to a venerable old art.

Couture is relevant. There’s no doubt about that. As one of the last remnants of old world hierarchy, with its occasions and protocols, couture is in demand as a new world of privilege asserts itself: the ultimate signifier in a high-visibility culture that still craves materiality.

This week, those intent on showing art for art’s sake — the costume designers, in other words — outnumbered the realists. At Schiaparelli, Daniel Roseberry went as far as to say the collection, born from a visit to the Sistine Chapel, was made “not for the reviews, not for the public acclaim or the recognition, but for the pure pleasure of myself and the team.”

On the catwalk, which this season was black and velvety, this translated into a bestiary of women turning into snakes, scorpions, birds, as dangerous and spiky as they were glamorous, walking a fine line between strictness from exuberance. The visual impact was powerful. But Roseberry is a mannerist whose work often quotes others. This time around it was Alexander McQueen’s Autumn 1996 “Dante” collection, though the goings had a dash of Mugler too.

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Another designer prone to costume making is Alessandro Michele, whose second couture outing at Valentino dispensed with the blasting theatricality of his debut in favour of a stricter, cinematic perspective. The collection was a mash up of Valentino archive references with nods to Erté, Poiret and Theda Bara sprinkled with dashes of Krizia, Roberto Capucci and the 1980s couture tropes favoured by Princess TNT. What captured the eye — and the imagination — was the staging of the presentation: The set was a Kaiserpanorama meets peep show, which forced viewers to focus on the outfits, and not their phones. It made for a contemplative atmosphere but also highlighted the lack of narrative thread to the clothes themselves, the succession of looks making more for a series of epiphanies or illuminations than a clear story. As a spectacle, it was involving, even emotional, and the execution of the clothes was faultless, but it was hard to see a sense of purpose beyond the showmanship.

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For new Dior designer Jonathan Anderson formal abstraction is a signature, and with that the urge to create nets of connections between seemingly unconnected elements — meteorites and Rosalba Carriera miniatures, cyclamen and antique brocades, one eye on John Galliano and the other on Yohji Yamamoto, and so on. He works like a curator with a beautifully puzzling vision that’s still finding its way within the Dior template.

Haute couture — which Anderson sees as a lab for experimentation in which craft makes beautiful things happen — made for the designer’s most convincing outing since he joined the house last year, and yet it came with some unresolved questions. “Ideas can generate profit, and it is on ideas that I work,” the creative director said in a preview. That was clear. That’s what we got. In fact, it was all about finely chiseled abstractions. Beautiful abstraction, but still something detached, at times distant. That tends to happen when a modernist confronts the forms and codes of haute couture — many of whose archetypes, in particular the hourglass or corolla lines, were defined by Christian Dior himself.

Anderson focused on the pure sculpturality of streamlined shapes, warming it up by adding a poetic take on nature, though the comparison to Raf Simons, starting with the flower-filled venue, was immediate. The collection explored the tension between nature and artifice: a central topic in Mannerist thinking, always a harbinger of exciting iconographic transpositions, of singular detours of form and matter, which the savoir faire of the ateliers made outstanding.

A bouquet of cyclamen received as a gift from John Galliano lead to a mesmerising blossoming of buds made of feathers or organza, undulating crinolines recalling Magdalene Odundo’s vessels, and egg-shaped coats, liquid patchworks of different materials, and sensational meteorite appliquées. The visual impact felt lyrical, exhilarating, touching even, but when the dresses passed by, one couldn’t help but notice how firm they were, and how the relationship between dress and body felt estranged, distant. This is something Anderson has always done, to poignant results. The ineffability of his hand at Loewe, however, was missing. Subtracting weight, even on a conceptual level, would help, and with that reconciling abstract form with movement, much like Yamamoto does. Otherwise, the modernisation of couture becomes a museum-worthy endeavour, and that’s a pity, not least because Dior’s plan to introduce bags and other accessories to the couture offer is extremely wise.

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Viktor & Rolf have always been kings of abstraction, their couture an artistic exercise with no real purpose past the stage, though the theatrics often come with touching messages. It was the case this season, with a dressing performance that on the one side revealed the transformative qualities of a series of black dresses, and on the other led to the construction of a giant kite, with the model finally floating in air. The pursuit of lightness is probably a cheesy metaphor, but the presentation was oh so effective, and flawless in its execution.

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Then there were the realists. After more than four decades spent alongside her late uncle Giorgio, Silvana Armani has finally taken the stage on her own as the creative director of Giorgio Armani’s women’s lines, offering a feminine take on the Armani code. Feminine not as girly but as rooted in the reality of getting dressed, because in fact this was also the first Armani Privé collection in which the “woman dressed like a man” ethos, so intrinsic of the Armani language, was openly played out in couture form. The best looks were the pantsuits, all liquid lines and organza neckties, which were interspersed with too many long column dresses, tunics over pants and bustiers over trousers. It would be easy to say it was a case of plus ça change, but this was also a newish Armani: lighter, less opulent, more real, and it was good.

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At Chanel, under new designer Matthieu Blazy, we saw clothes for life and it was a relief. “This collection was born from a reflection on what couture represents: To me, the essence is a poetic exchange between the creator and the wearer; a dialogue that enhances the unique personality of each client,” Blazy said. There was that, and the deliberate choice of a whispered, more natural tone of expression, all of it while others get louder and louder.

This was his third show for the storied house in a few months, and his first haute couture outing. The change of pace was evident: A breath of fresh air washed away the grandeur and the pomp, caressing both thoughts and the skin. Everything spoke the language of magical realism. The solemn space of the Grand Palais welcomed a forest of giant mushrooms on a pale pink carpet, and the show began to the notes of Walt Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty.” Inspired by a Japanese haiku, Blazy thought of the lightness of a bird that lands for a moment on a mushroom and then flies away. It was only ten minutes, but one left the show feeling good.

“Everything is light because couture revolves around the body,” Blazy said. And indeed the sense of lightness was impressive as women, of all ages, beautiful with bare faces and no trace of makeup, transformed into a colourful flock of birds on psychedelic mushrooms. But no, it was not some fantastic, zoological image experiment, yet another costume fitting: Blazy delivered clothes that help women look and feel better, and that was the real paradigm shift.

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