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The days of haute couture in Paris are about tiny gilt chairs, glasses of champagne, unwearable ballgown and fantasy – wrong!
Yes, some of this is in there but at its heart couture is a business selling expensive clothes. It is also nowadays about global ambitions, internationals clients and multi cultural versions of the art of couture.
During the days from Sunday to Thursday we had exhibitions, ready to wear, high jewellery, museum events, and social gatherings from intimate dinners to huge gatherings of the fashion elite. We witnessed house debuts, and we watched genuinely great traditionalists offer their signature elegance, and we laughed, applauded, sighed, and gossiped until we were exhausted.
Firstly, I want to focus on the brilliant work done by the FHCM, the organising body of the collections in Paris. One of the reasons the week doesn’t offer safe trends for fashion people to jump upon is the range of designer viewpoints and client profiles offered. Dutch, Italian, French, Lebanese, Cameroonian, and Belgian to name a few. Each artist with their own specific cultural heritage, often trained in their own colleges, and working with their own craftspeople. This results in different audiences, different client aesthetics and expectations and of course a shift in creative attitudes from music to casting.
Paris offers an amazing range of locations for designers to show in, this week we went from industrial white space at the Palais de Tokyo to a tree shaded garden, to the gilded salons at the Opera Comique. We went from benches and no air to soft breeze and French park chairs, from pitch black basements to long narrow cloisters.
Each and every couturier wants to tell their story, each collection narrative is designed to seduce the clients and sell, it’s not about the press or the social media except in the sense that more free publicity is always good, but in the end couture is about the clients and what they will buy, and how they will buy. Selling enough to keep all the teams in the workrooms and ateliers busy, selling enough to enable next seasons show to be planned, and selling enough in the current global economic and political climate to survive.
Adeline Andre has been showing at Paris Haute Couture for decades; she is not famous outside France, and her shows have always been small, refined, and discrete. Surprisingly born in French Equatorial Africa she is Paris trained. This season her exquisite pieces in fabulous colours enchanted the audience. A jacket sliced in two colours back and front, an outfit layered under a coat of matching transparence, a long pleated dress swaying gently around the model. Models chosen amongst real women of various ages and types and each and everyone looking divine. This is whisper couture, connoisseurs couture, insiders’ couture. Born in Frejus on the Cote d’Azure, Franck Sorbier is also a French couturier with many seasons experience, he switches between staged presentations and catwalk, yet always intimate, to present his seasonal story. The performers and models convey his narrative with at its heart beautiful clothes and in the audience clients who collect his magical pieces. There’s a romanticism to his clothes, a kind of Vie de Boheme or an Alexandre Dumas heroine. A black frock coat drenched in swirling black ribbon embroidery, a long tiered silk faille dress with a huge bow at the neck, a swirling ruched velvet bolero in deep wine red worn over black, or tunic in crushed velvet worn with Three Musketeers boots. It is beautiful pieces in truly couture fabrics, and with intense embroideries. Generally, across the seasons, the waist is always emphasised, with a sash, a pleat, or a corselet; it is couture created to enhance the wearer.
By complete contrast Paris born Frenchman Stephane Rolland showed a collection at the Theatre de Champs Elysees inspired by Ida Rubinstein and Ravel. Ida Rubinstein was not a great dancer, more of a mime artist, yet her six foot plus slender figure and striking profile made her a legend. Interestingly, unlike more conventional muses, her clothes were not a direct reference for Monsieur Rolland, it was her essence he transformed. Maurice Ravel wrote Bolero for her and the live performance provided the soundtrack for the show. The long, long lines extended even the models height and hauteur, the encrusted embroideries strategically placed and the perfect red amongst the black and cool neutrals made this a show of presence and impact. Some clients adore the pieces that flatter, cover up, move with fluidity as much the other clients who go for sparkle and frame.
In a dark dark space Dutch-born and based couturier Ronald van der Kemp was inspired by nature, tendril or fronds, leaves, petals, and blossoms. Each season he describes the collection as a “wardrobe” and with his upcycling, recycled, repurposing and dead stock creations he offers snappy and short to long and romantic, tailoring and drape and black to exuberant florals. His mastery of couture and his knowledge of how clothes are made, alongside a brilliant atelier means patchworking fabrics together, piecing unlikely weights and mixing dissonant elements holds no terrors for him. His clients cover an extraordinary spectrum of types and ages, watch out to see RVDK in many different situations.
French designer Julie de Libran, born in Ai x en Provence, works quietly with her collections and her clients focussing on them and their requirements as real people who buy, rather than some fantasy pop star who will simply borrow, her pieces are terrific and in a totally different way she also focuses on upcycling and ethical sourcing. Her collections are mainly shown in her own home and about town dresses, special occasion sparkles and limited edition trimmings abound in her work, giving it a special Parisienne charm. Aelis, created by Italian Sofia Crociani, also uses both found and limited fabrics with some new textiles, her romanticism always reminds me of Chopin, a kind of waltz or nocturne, a twilight sensitivity that is both beautiful and melancholy. This season the use of red in tulle, velvet or satin was stunning either solid colour, mixed with tonal reds or with crisp white. Embellishments at Aelis are often vintage, restrung, and reworked, the huge burst of shaded brilliant red blossoms on a tulle dress I suspect were totally unique, as was a necklace like a long tassel of brilliants suspended from black ribbon. Each piece is unique, leading her to have clients literally across the world from Japan to USA.
Juana Martin is from Cordoba in Spain and her aesthetic this season was deep and darkly powerful, using Holy Week processions as amongst her inspirations. Andalucia and the ritual of the church was seen in flowers, gilded ropes, baroque ornaments, and the soundtrack of powerful massed liturgical voices. The ruffles and flounces, the black, the lace and the power of silhouette are all typical of Spanish dress, the great strength of the collection was that the fashion and the couture pieces under the styling remained beautiful and strong. The explosion of two pink pieces; one cascades of soft ruffles and the other of individual rose petals tumbling down the veil and dress contrasted with the rest of the collection, as so much of Spanish taste does, between the dark and the light. Rossy de Palma starred in her first Paris couture show and many other high profile Spanish clients understand her philosophy and attitude.
Imane Ayissi is Cameroonian and now an established couturier during the weeks shows, his mission is to combine his own culture with couture in a blend of two beauty aesthetics. He achieves this successfully by respect and understanding of cut, fabric and chic hair and makeup, with textiles and techniques from his personal heritage. His colour sense is brilliant and the way he uses hand woven textiles and trimmings such as raffia is very considered. The rosettes bursting onto silk taffeta or the hand woven cropped top with white crepe de chine demonstrate how his sure touch and eye allow him to dare. The clients wearing his clothes front row are a testimony to his success. Rahul Mishra p, who is from India, and his team of couture artisans dare to use intelligent and emotional narratives to create each season spectacular catwalk shows. Gravity defying silhouettes and unusual proportions mean extended, bejewelled, and stiffened collars and spangled red velvet roses on stems encircling the models are all part of the show. Golden fragmentary embroidery like. Gustav Klimt painting, or trailing loops of black silk faille may be followed by embroideries of flowers like a Victorian paperweight. It’s all breathtakingly exquisite but the underlying emotion is about the natural world, the world we live in and life, in all its forms. There is an emotional resonance and a deep rooted love and respect for India, its land, and crafts, at the heart and foundation of Rahul Mishra’s creativity. In India he dresses both men and women, centre stage stars and discrete aristocrats
As the first Syrian born couturier to join the official calendar Rami Al Ali poured his heart and soul into a collection of one beautiful piece after another. No tricks, no heavy narrative, but just exquisite couture ateliers showing their skills, and a designer at the pinnacle of his talent. A dress of fringe woven at the hips into lattice, a huge ruffle with fragments of gold embroidery inside, a dress whose embroidery seemed to be made of minuscule ruffles held by tiny beds in a pattern like jacquard, a dress created to look as though the model was inside an unfurling shell, and a bride whose hourglass dress was embroidered with blossoms which faded away towards the hem, and where the veil literally swept behind in a wave of white silk tulle scattered with a cloud of fragmentary embroidery and no edging. This lightness of touch is extremely difficult to capture even at couture, Rami Al Ali achieved it throughout the show, even on a stiflingly hot day a breeze wafted through the collection.
Peet Dullaert and Rami Al Ali could not be more different yet they both upheld the principles of couture as the raison d’être for their shows. Dutch couturier Peet Dullaert with his bustled and beribboned looks, for example in a black cloque skirt where the loops and knots fanned out behind the model, or the sky-blue ribbons on a white pants suit training along the parquet floor. The tuxedo looks and tailoring included a beautifully severe grey double breasted jacket and trousers with a wisp of black tulle skirt, or a tuxedo shirt with an elongated proportion shown with a deep navy blue long, slender silk skirt. Crushed wild tail coat and pants, long art deco spangled gown, the list goes on and on of pieces. Always, with different clients, different occasions and widely varying requirements for their wardrobe.
Zuhair Murad is Lebanese knows and understands his clients to perfection at couture, curves are always present, and glamour is paramount. This season as he showed I noted how often a cover up was present from a full length evening coat, through a short cape, a tiny cardigan jacket or simply huge matching or faux fur stoles. Colour balanced sparkling soft shades with rich stained glass tones like cranberry, forest green, and dark mocha, the fabrics ranged from fragile mousseline to rich velvet. The collection offered options and variety within Zuhair Murad’s signature style. It is not obvious or overstated but there are truly many ways to buy from the collection. Just as with Italian Silvio Giardina whose static display in shadowy grey salons had already sold a dress on opening to a client, it’s about the women who shop at couture and know what they’re buying.
Giardina showed silvery white, brilliant violet and black and white, there was short and sexy, and long and dramatic, encapsulating in the rooms a series of personal creative design statements, but also offering the clients witty or serious, covered up or revealing. It is how couture should be, a laboratory of ideas where the designer and the client can select which ones to develop.
Viktor and Rolf who are Dutch, showed each design twice, once soft and fluid, once stuffed with thousands of feathers. Lady Gaga or Lady Avon? Centre stage performer or centre of a banqueting table? It is a brilliant conundrum and the choice between trailing point d’esprit or softly tiered satin or huge vibrating volume with quills emerging must truly offer two completely different types of clients but the same collection. Of course, the startling millinery confections of Stephen Jones completed and complimented and no doubt that will be another decision for the the wearer.
Finally, Germanier Swiss designer Kevin Germanier– exuberant, lively, witty and I was struggling at one point to think who it linked too in some wild way – Bob Mackie. Beautiful clothes, but also wild pieces of fantasy shapes and silhouettes, but not costume because so beautifully realised. A fountain of silver leaves apparently made from recycled plastic bottles, a dress which will be re made for next season, a dress formed of layered and layers and layers of apparently plastic fringe trimmed into a sexy Las Vegas show girl silhouette. It’s all gorgeous and also magical. The story behind each piece, like last seasons vintage jackets beaded on top, is always so great. If you think this isn’t realistic, I can assure you from extroverts to collectors there will be clients.
So, international, global, from everywhere, all different, diverse, individual, from lots of different backgrounds and cultures; Haute Couture in July 2025 isn’t what you expect. It is not just old posh French Houses showing expensive clothes to celebrities; indeed, this season Dior didn’t show, they are awaiting the arrival of an Irishman, and Chanel showed a collection created by a long established studio team. Armani Prive is Italian, and Schiaparelli was founded by an Italian woman and today is created by an American. , and creativity at its core.
