My Paris couture starts on Sunday with galleries and preparations for the week. After the Eurostar and hotel check-in, it’s off to the splendid Le 19M, the headquarters for all the Chanel Métiers d’Art workrooms. The current exhibition, one of three they curate each year, is about savoir-faire in all the crafts, from flower making and embroidery to pattern cutting. As always, visitor participation is encouraged and it’s truly wonderful to watch people trying their skills alongside the artisans of the houses, from Montex to Goossens. It’s a fabulous mix of people, with many young children peering through magnifying glasses and wondering at this world of magic-making. It’s a brilliant start to couture, and my companion, who hadn’t been before, was fascinated. Note that the easiest way to get there is to share an Uber or taxi, since it’s not that centrally located.
Next we were off to Boloria, the first show of the new Olivier Theyskens label. It was set in a very dark space. The models walked, indeed stalked, around huge glass boxes filled with smoke, which also billowed and drifted around the catwalk. The beginning featured huge gowns and coats, but later both the menswear and the womenswear became more classic-focused, with superb nonchalant tailoring, bias-cut evening dresses, beautiful suits for everyone, and some superb details. The company in Belgium behind the new venture have apparently given Theyskens time to really work and develop the idea of a house and style with a history, not a new name. An interesting concept, this certainly didn’t feel like a “new” name, but rather a luxury house from Belgium that one simply didn’t know.
Time for supper at Café Marly with friends and a catch-up over gossip, rumour and expectations for the coming days.
Since I’m already in Paris, I can have breakfast at Café Le Nemours. It will be my last time until Thursday. Anyway, Monday is Schiaparelli time. Daniel Roseberry used the couture workrooms differently this time, introducing latex, rubber, plastic and other synthetics to mould and shape, slither and shine. Still, for me, the standout pieces were more traditional, with tiny flowers embroidered on a cropped Regency jacket, shell and flower embroidered trousers, or a dramatic chalk-white draped dress. The silver-on-silver Monroesque dress and the tiny flowered trousers were other standouts. It seemed a little less cohesive than some collections. Although Roseberry always darts around with ideas, this felt like a signpost to a new direction for next season.
Imane Ayissi took us back, in one way, to 1950s couture, with chignon hair, models pausing to pose, and elegance as the driving force. His show is at the splendid Aéro-Club de France. The salon has tall open windows onto a terrace through which the models make their entrance. Yet the Cameroonian roots were brilliantly embraced within the concept, as raffia fringe replaced fur or feathers, while stunning fuchsia pinks, electric blues and the deepest lacquer reds were startling in the colour palette. Gold crunchy brocade added glamour and drama to a ballgown and a strict trouser suit. It felt like a confident collection with clean couture lines, but never stiff or overconstructed in retro style. It was also great to see Imane himself dance with joy as he took his bow, especially as last season he was unwell for the show.
On to Georges Hobeika at the Bourse, in a big airy space with shadows and shadowy side rooms where the models presented a stunning collection. Now in collaboration with his son Jad, the aquatic blues and greens plunged to the depths of the ocean and rose to the crest of a wave. Indeed, movement is also apparent in every piece. Even the slenderest silhouettes slip and slide around the model; only in the corseted looks is the figure restrained. Beaded fringes swayed, hemlines flipped as the models walked, and ballgowns vibrated with rhythm as they sashayed past. The collection was beautiful, and each piece offered a thoughtful progression through the season’s theme and variations, like a piece of music.
I wasn’t at the catwalk show for Dior, but was invited to both the re-see and the beautiful exhibition in the gardens of the Musée Rodin. There are some lovely things, but I’m reserving comment on Jonathan Anderson in this role, since I feel he’s still finding his feet. The art gallery and creative side have not quite yet found their place next to the house’s heritage and story. The couture work on many pieces was stunning, and the designer is making big changes to the handwriting, indeed the signatures, of the house.
Silvio Giardino showed at the Musée de Cluny, and each piece was set in a gallery surrounded by the wonderful Moyen Âge collection. It was stunning, with the first red dress a masterpiece of pleating and plissé. The flared short dress, like three triangles, one for the body and then the two sleeves, looked like it might take flight, while the bubble-shaped dress with cream satin “bows”, which might actually have been petals, or the long strapless dress with appliqué flowers and traceries, looked so fragile, like spun glass. I loved last season’s collection, but this was spectacular.
Rahul Mishra, over in a vaulted cloister, took us to temples and celebrations, from Maharajas to the lehenga, and from black in every variation to blossoms of exquisite beauty. The collection balanced strong sculptural statements, seductive beaded eveningwear and Rajah coats. The sheer and the opaque, the fluid and the structured, the monumental and the romantic all took their place within the collection. The designer tells us a story, but it’s a true narrative with different notes and themes, offering the client options in the classic manner of true couture.
I wasn’t at Standing Ground, but even in pictures its beauty is obvious. Michael Stewart takes a long, lean line and then drapes, splits, panels or layers it. Café au lait, lemon zest, grass green or pale violet, his colour sense is lovely. Workmanship and craftsmanship are worn lightly, but close examination reveals the complexity of many of the pieces. It’s a great addition not only to the couture schedule but to fashion in general. This designer has his own voice and handwriting, and it’s a pleasure to see it in this context.
ArdAzAei, at a space just by Châtelet, showed complexity in construction, but with a true couture lightness. Her silhouettes weren’t over-complex in themselves, allowing the beauty of the workmanship to be displayed. Leaves forming flowers, swirls of mousseline flowing across a dress, and panels of intense plissé curving and shaping around the body. Or long slender torsos released into soft flowing skirts. It had a subtle sexiness without a hint of the obvious. The autumnal colours, with surprise accents of vivid blue, were also a strong element within the impact of the collection. Late in the evening, and the last show of the day, it was still very worthwhile seeing. Finally, dinner, more gossip and more discussion, now both about what we’d seen and what was still to come.
Tuesday morning I’ve an appointment at Chaumet, then several other jewellers in Place Vendôme, but Tuesday also starts with Chanel. I was not invited, but of course followed and watched online. I won’t, at this point, be reviewing from internet and social media pictures. I’m holding off, as with Dior and Jonathan Anderson, since I think it’s also still early days for Matthieu Blazy, so watch this space for later analysis.
Roger Vivier and creative director Gherardo Felloni now show at their headquarters in a Hôtel Particulier on Rue de l’Université. It was sensational. Now adding couture shoes alongside the bags, the collection was initially inspired by butterflies, a house signature under its founder. The shoes made me think they were so magical they might disappear at midnight. The bags were like objects d’art that might be on display. The craftsmanship, the attention to detail, and of course the way everything was perfectly displayed, with inspiration, mood and storyboards adjacent, were exceptional. Once again there were waistcoats too, and it’s time Monsieur Felloni did jewellery. He loves to wear and collect it, and since his pieces are like jewels, pourquoi pas? Truly wonderful.
Stephane Rolland was at the Olympia Music Hall, and it was here that the great singer, actress and performer Dalida played several concerts. The entire show was a tribute to her, closing with a live performance by the singer Oumaima Taleb of Dalida’s famous Arabic anthem, “Helwa Ya Baladi”. Her live vocals were backed by a full symphony orchestra led by Egyptian maestro Hany Faraha.
Eschewing colour except for one red look and a couple of black looks, including the final dramatic coat and dress, the whole collection was in ivory, white, chalk and silver. The long lines, the huge floating coats, the draped cowls and the slashed necklines all added up to a bold statement of beauty. The side splits, backless and wrapped lines were architectural, not sexy. There was a splendour and a stately beauty to the entire presentation. Glitter and decoration made themselves felt sparingly. Long, poker-straight hair, with hair ornaments or simply swaying freely, extended the linear silhouettes. It was superb.
Ronald van der Kemp chose a tiny gallery with two spaces and this “street fashion” became RVDK couture on the sidewalk. As ever, what I love is that not only is it a wardrobe, but each piece can be plucked out of the show and restyled a dozen ways. A black ribbon-decorated jacket could be shown with anything from velvet trousers to jeans to a tulle skirt. A brilliant pair of cutwork trousers would work with a simple T-shirt or a tailored jacket, and so it goes on. I adored a pale sky-blue dévoré velvet toga dress with a draped back tie; the pattern of the dévoré was huge palm fronds. Apparently, the fabric for the last dress had been meant for Josephine Baker. Monsieur van der Kemp whisked it into a flirtatious layered number, certainly ready for Josephine Baker to dance in, with a discreetly small fountain of black feathers and raffia hinting at her plumed headdresses. As always, it is the variety and range in these collections that astounds. I would summarise it as “from street to salon”.
Across town to the Palais de Tokyo for Germanier. I’m a fan, I must say. I find his sense of abstract pattern amazing, and he also has a great sense of colour. In this season’s collection, the menswear pieces re-embroidered onto vintage garments were truly stupendous. They must get selected for the red carpet, awards or something. There were siren evening dresses and a silver dress that looked like an explosion of glitter, secured by a huge bow, black and vivid lime green, black from top to toe, and many more delights. It’s upcycling, recycling and deadstock, and it’s brilliant. It’s not dull and worthy, or prosaic and humble; it’s exuberant and alive.
Time at last for supper, and by now we are firing on all cylinders. Discussion is heated, and it is brilliant to exchange views, challenge each other and switch off from professional likes to personal likes, often quite different from each other.
Day four starts for me at Dior at 8.30 to see couture and jewels. I meet friends and we share an Uber across town. Afterwards we again combine forces in a car across town to a pitch-black theatre for Yuima Nakazato. The show is like a ceremony or a ritual. There are elements from his past shows with fire, water and earth. The five models arrive in front of five panels on stage and the additions to their first outfits are suspended on fine wires. In the traditional Noh and Kabuki theatre, black-clad figures are “invisible”, changing each model after they have shown each look in full view. The fiery red is a thread throughout Yuima Nakazato’s collections, along with the ceremonial golden plaques and the feeling that each element has been analysed and discussed. Across the seasons the designer has explored fastenings, construction, fabrics, embellishments and indeed every element of the making of couture pieces. This has resulted in a truly unique approach to the wrapping and ruling of the model within the garments, the panels and sections of each look layered and mixed into a thousand variations, the surfaces and patterns plundering the earth from volcano to sea, from ancient buried artefacts to industrial modernity. Careful post-show examination is essential to understand these pieces. As the show unfolds the audience is enraptured, the models are observed with bated breath. We applaud and emerge into the sun still slightly spellbound and enchanted by what we have seen.
Just around the corner is the private viewing for the Maurice Auction/Kerry Taylor Auctions sale of the Martin Margiela Archive. It is his personal archive, plus the Hermès wardrobe he gave his mother during the years he was the designer at that house. I talk to Kerry, who explains Martin had done all the display, selection and curation of the exhibition himself, which I then look around. Back in 1997, as Martin showed his first collection at Hermès, this happened. My friend Jodie, a model, actress and photographer, was one of the models in that show, held in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré boutique. After the show, I asked Ina Delcourt, then Head of PR, if we could shoot the collection with Jodie for Vogue Australia, where I was working at the time. We shot seven of the models from the show and ran a huge story. This later appeared in the Margiela and Hermès book. Imagine my pride on discovering that the book was taped open at one of my story pages by Martin himself. I am floating on air as I wait outside in the sunshine for my Uber to take me to my next appointment.
At the Hôtel Regina, Franck Sorbier has taken over the Edwardian reception hall, complete with revolving door, and his globetrotters enter through it. He opens the show like a magician with a vintage suitcase, which might contain anything from diamonds to railway timetables to a secret diary. Each model is a character: a Russian princess, a tarot card reader, a Chinese hostess, an explorer or a courtesan. Clad in sumptuous embroideries, deep red plush, shimmering kimonos or vast capes, they stroll from salon to salon, peering through telescopes, offering us a card or walking their pampered tiny black bulldog. A pith-helmeted gentleman in a safari suit accompanies a woman in a floor-length zebra-pattern coat. It’s possible that a story from Jules Verne, a murder mystery by Agatha Christie or Tintin will appear. Whatever the narrative, they’re beautifully dressed and timelessly glamorous.
I’ve seen every collection Robert Wun has shown at couture since his debut, and for me this was the best. From the paint-spattered opening to the extraordinary balloon-decorated final look, it had extraordinary moments but with a new editorial rigour. The draped blue ball gown with the encircling egrets, or whatever birds they were! The intense deep fuchsia pink dandy look, a swathed stole over a floor-length skirt with geometric corset bodice and hat, matching gloves and a square portfolio clutch, all in that deep, deep blue Wun loves, and the slightly trapeze-line dress vibrating with thousands of feather fronds were spectacular. It seemed that these visitors from another planet favoured abstract ribbon headdresses, full-skirted dance dresses, long trailing mousseline clouds of blue or even a man’s evening coat embroidered with a cosmic galaxy. Robert Wun had expanded his handwriting and signatures, developed his silhouettes further and gained, I felt, a new confidence in his editorial eye. Brilliant.
I next ran across town to Rue Royale to see By Fang, a display of pieces in cool rooms, which also gave the chance to talk to the designer, Fang Yang. The exquisite micro-origami in silk and the woven ribbons forming complex lattices and geometric patterns were so lovely. Peering closely at the workmanship and the exceptional use of colour and black was fascinating. There were also pieces using plissé on sheer fabrics, forming fans almost like petals around the body or exploding like fireworks. Based between Paris and Shanghai, the collection balanced the two cultures perfectly: quiet but strong. Each piece told a story, and one piece was especially fascinating. Tiny black-on-black origami decoration spread across the bodice, while the skirt was formed over a roll, just as the Elizabethans would have created the silhouette and skirt shape centuries ago. Hurried thanks, and time to race across the tropically hot city once again to the next catwalk show.
Zuhair Murad is a designer whose work is all about couture beauty. Wonderful silhouettes, seductive colours, exquisite decoration and a desire to make amazing pieces. Emerging through mist in the high-vaulted chamber, each model is a vision. This season we had some especially beautiful draped dresses whose asymmetric panels and twists were the pinnacle of couture craft. There was a floor-length black velvet double-breasted trench coat shown over black lace embroidery that transcended fashion and time to become simply perfection. A vivid grass-green silk taffeta dress swung out from a slender body line into a fan-like train, while a pale flower-patterned dress had a cover-up like a bubble slipping seductively off the model’s shoulders. The colour palette linked the richness of deep stained-glass colours with barely-there watery pales. Silken velvets sat alongside filigree embroideries and, as each model passed, it seemed the designer was challenging us to choose a favourite. In my book, everyone was a favourite. This is classic couture. It may not be wild or revolutionary, but in its beauty it distils the essence of couture and offers a lesson in how to achieve it. Congratulations, Zuhair Murad.
Manish Malhotra dedicates his collection to his mother, who died earlier this year. It is his Paris debut and, no doubt, her presence is missed. The work and craftsmanship are stunning, and, adding his name alongside Gaurav Gupta and Rahul Mishra, it’s great to see India represented in the couture schedule. He, like the others, uses his culture, his heritage, traditional crafts and the extraordinary handwork available to create some staggeringly complex embroideries and silhouettes. It was a marvellous debut in this arena, although the designer is already well established. A coat seemingly formed of rose petals dragged seductively behind the model. A siren dress in white-on-white-on-white had tassels that swayed as the model walked. Golden dresses with seductive and sinuous lines again had tassels or coils of golden beauty. They reminded me of the temple dancer in the ballet La Bayadère, choreographed for the Opéra Garnier by Rudolf Nureyev and currently in revival. Huge cocoons of flowers and decoration were like the opening costumes of Cecil Beaton’s film My Fair Lady. Applause rang out through the huge hall of the Espace Cambon as the designer took his well-deserved bow.
The last supper, we decide, must be outside the restaurant. A late guest adds to the opinions and the exchange of views. I bid my friends farewell, decide on a final glass of wine and, without thinking, suddenly find myself working and writing until late. That is Paris couture for you. I finally return to the hotel, pack and go to sleep. One more day.
Thursday. Many people will have gone, but I carry on. I’ve always loved the smaller names, the new, the off-schedule. Today many of the smaller names run successful businesses without huge demands, simply the right clients, stockists, partners and supporters. Demand for the less recognisable, the special and the collectible in couture is surprisingly important. There is a massive power cut in my area of Paris, so it’s a cold shower and off for a short walk to a café I know for breakfast. Then it’s time to start the last shows.
I’m off to the new Espace Wagram salons to see Peet Dullaert, who has carved a niche in couture in just a few short seasons. I receive a message early from my friend Jade Parfitt, on her way across town to model for Peet. Menswear and womenswear, drape and tailoring, swagged taffetas or strict tuxedos, he encompasses both the flou and tailoring ateliers with panache. He will often show a slender column of lace, then follow it with Art Deco patterns in sequins and then an animal-print coat with an extraordinary high, curved and pinched sleeve head. A ruffle may conceal sparkling embroidery; a sharp man’s jacket may extend into a sheer georgette panel from one shoulder, dragging along the floor like a shadow. It’s always a collection of fragmented eras, stories and atmospheres, pulled into being through the vision of one man. It’s haunted, searching and yet supremely confident. It’s wonderful. I rush backstage to hug Peet and Jade, who is travelling straight back home to England. Fashion, like old age, is no place for sissies.
Rami Al Ali drained the collection of colour, the better to show off the work, I suspect. His subtle and discreet cultural references add to the story, but it’s each piece, in its beauty, that stays with you. Crisp encircling layers of organza, the finest spiralling waves of silk or long fluid lines of crepe. Palest dove grey, pale beige, straw, flax and buff, with embroideries that matched and blurred into the pieces. In one case I wondered if the beading was ombré, but in fact it was simply the light and movement that made it seem so. There’s a rigour and a severity to his editorial eye, a beauty that says less immediately but has great power as one inspects the pieces. It is a very sophisticated approach to haute couture.
Aelis designer Sofia Crociani works with upcycling and recycling, and even with the Paris Opera, using old costumes. Her romantic vision of couture creates truly special pieces for clients scattered across the globe. Her show was in a gallery in the wonderfully romantic Place des Vosges. This season I especially loved white feathers unfolding around the edge of a sleeve, a deeply sashed dress of layered mousseline in Grace Kelly style, white tulle embellished with necklace fragments, or the deepest azure blue taffeta. There is a deep sense of experimentation in each piece, allowing the fabric, the colour and the collating of fragments to speak. It is special, and not for everyone in its lightness and transparency. It’s almost assemblage, like a painting, and I love its personality.
To close the season, I went out to Adeline André. I took the press bus since it’s an exceptionally long way out of the centre of Paris to Passage Danzig. It’s in the tree-shaded gardens by her atelier: seventeen looks on models who are real and who have often worn her pieces before. The three-sleeve innovation and her ability to cut and construct in linear forms are truly special. Her colour sense is bliss, and her juxtapositions of fabrics are perfection. A deep green three-quarter-length coat over a grass-green skirt, a deep cinnamon knitted dress, a lemon-zest cashmere plush coat with a swirling silk mousseline skirt, a deep dense navy coat, a brilliant blood-orange dress with diagonal buttons. In fact, every piece was perfect. I spoke to her briefly before the show, since, as a legend, it’s special to be welcomed into her world of couture. It was the perfect finale to the shows.
I hurried back into town to Saint-Germain, did some light shopping, crossed the river and had a glass of wine at Le Nemours, a café famous for once having been the haunt of Claude Montana. Time to go to the hotel, pick up my bag and head to the Eurostar, and also time to try to make sense of it all and, of course, write. Until the next time, dear reader, when it all starts over again.
