Anatomy Of Couture. Valentino SS22 Couture

January 28, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

And just like that, Pierpaolo Piccioli is the king of spring-summer 2022 haute couture season. The latest Valentino collection is everything a truly phenomenal couture collection should be, and more. You could see the emotion in the eyes of some of the models as they glided through the maison’s Place Vendôme salons to a specially recorded soundtrack by Anohni. “She was told she’d never walk couture,” Pierpaolo Piccioli said of one of. “In couture you never see these bodies. Never.” It is in large part thanks to Piccioli that haute couture is finding relevance in an age set on breaking the constructs of the past. On his mission to make this elitist corner of fashion matter to the generations dubbed “woke,” he has decided to “keep the codes, but change the values”: to give the broad spectrum of humanity the chance to mirror themselves in haute couture, in place of the waify, white, classical beauty ideal of its past. In front of a distanced audience of just 65, he broke with the skinny stigma of that heritage in a collection titled the Anatomy of Couture. “When you do couture, you have the house model. And you apply the body of the house model to 50 or 60 models on the runway. I wanted to break these rules and embrace the idea of different proportions of body, different sizes, different ages. But it was impossible to do this with just one house model. So, I broke the rules and got 10 house models in with differently proportioned bodies,” he explained. The idea of haute couture was always to adapt silhouettes to the client’s body. But those silhouettes are typically dreamt up, fitted and realized on a tall, slim and young physique. This season, Piccioli changed that model, in more than one way. And in the process, he said, “We got to create new silhouettes.” A partly fuller-figured cast than what you normally see on a couture catwalk did change Piccioli’s silhouette. His signature monastic Roman lines and Hellenistic drapery morphed into shapes that registered more dynamic, more mid-century, more glamorous. Through a Hollywood lens, you might call them sexy. But it wasn’t as if his new cast looked shockingly different in size to the runway norm, which was perhaps testament to his method – and skill. “In runway shows, sometimes there are 50 skinny models and one bigger-sized. I feel like you don’t really relate to that. You don’t believe that. You just tick the box,” Piccioli said.

His consistent cast helped to illustrate the power of the craft. The intertwined straps of an ebony velvet gown framed the shoulders of the model and pulled in her waist, the volume of its skirt balancing out the proportions. A chocolate stretch tulle dress covered in two kilos of Venetian glass beads hand-embroidered for three months hugged the body, allowing the beads to shape and support the model’s frame. Piccioli employed his approach to surface decoration, too. A lilac faille gown was adorned with great big bows around the neckline, something that could easily look overwhelming on a fuller figure, but didn’t because of the custom proportions and placements of those bows on that particular neckline. In his couture take on the stretchy body-con favored by the generation who coined slim thicc, Piccioli proposed a neon coral ankle dress, which wasn’t stretch at all, but created through four layers of georgette whose interaction created a natural elasticity that adapted to the body. Throughout, he demonstrated how couture can build a silhouette around the body, and either highlight a person’s shape or manipulate it through dressmaking. It made all the difference, because clothes are construction. One size doesn’t fit all, but one blueprint scaled up or down certainly doesn’t, either. We’ve all seen that in practice on red carpets where people of a different physique to the body that modeled the dress on the runway can end up looking under – or overblown, because the dimensions and adornments of the silhouette don’t take kindly to the scaling process. And then, the confidence goes. “I feel that if you don’t deliver the ideas of power and strength and fierceness with these kinds of shapes, you’re missing the message,” Piccioli said. If body empowerment is something he is sensitive to, it’s also because his own three children are in their teens and twenties: Gen Z-ers raised on social media in an age where body ideals have the added extremity of plastic surgery normalization. “That’s what I share with them,” he said, referring to the connection he felt with his cast through the experiences of being a father to young people today. “This could deliver a strong message for young people who are struggling with something. If she’s beautiful, you can be beautiful,” Piccioli said, gesturing at one of his gorgeous cast members.

For his own generation, the message was the same. “The body modifies with age. They’re still as beautiful but the shape is different. I wanted to capture the beauty of how the body modifies.” Models older than the couture show average – Kristen McMenamy, Marie Sophie Wilson, Lara Stone, Violetta Sanchez, Lynn Koster, Jon Kortajarena – hardly looked out of place. On the contrary, the character that comes with age brought a confidence to their looks. It was never more pronounced than in Piccioli’s most “normal” silhouettes infused with the gestures of haute couture, like Sanchez’s white T-shirt (in silk sablé crêpe) worn with a pearl gray duchesse satin skirt wildly hand-embroidered with silver sequins, or Mariacarla Boscono’s tailored sequinned trousers (silk poplin with hand-embroidery) worn with a dramatic fuchsia stole in faille. Piccioli’s collection was another brick in the legacy he is building for himself as a couturier of change. If used as a laboratory to develop techniques that can inform both the possibilities and values of ready-to-wear, haute couture becomes the most relevant part of a contemporary fashion system. It turns into the think tank of fashion. “Since the Middle Ages, there have always been canons of beauty,” Piccioli said, listing all the body ideals of the times. “Once we’d had enough of all the canons, we discovered that humanity is the only canon that’s valid: freedom; be yourself. That’s the real canon.”

Collages by Edward Kanarecki.

Just Pretty. Chanel SS22 Couture

January 27, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Chanel‘s spring-summer 2022 couture collection was as predictable as Virginie Viard‘s description of it: “it’s a summer collection, so it’s very fresh, even with a lot of embroideries. I was inspired by the ’20s a little – the feathers, the fringe.” Well, nothing ground-breaking – this collection isn’t for the ones who seek haute-novelty. To set the scene, Viard reached out to the artist Xavier Veilhan whom she met at the home of their mutual friend, musician Sébastien Tellier. “I always wanted to work with him because he did something for Chanel [fine] jewelry 15 years ago in Place Vendome, a great installation,” Viard said. “I love his work and I needed someone to work with for the sets – the way Karl did. Me, I can’t do that! He loves Constructivism, that kind of thing which is so Karl!” she continued. “In fact, I found some notes from Karl in Rodchenko and Malevich books that he always gave me – so many books and documents with notes on details that could be used for embroidery and so on. It was always Constructivist with Karl!” Veilhan, who was chosen to represent France in the 2017 Venice Biennale, drew on this century-old, but still revolutionary period in art, for his Chanel set, with its giant spinning discs and sandy walkways, crafted from sustainable plywood and matting in his preferred (and appropriately Chanel) palette of black, white, and beige. The set he created springs from this thought, inspired by 1920s World Fairs and artists like Sonia and Robert Delaunay. The makeup was also inspired by the pre-war era’s avant garde creatives, although the dark circles around some of the models’ eyes looked rather unfortunate. “I like the classic Chanel,” added Veilhan, “and I like sport and it’s funny to think that the Chanel tailleur is something you can wear for playing golf, or riding a horse.” To prove his point, the show opened with Monaco’s Princess Charlotte, dressed in a Chanel jacket, riding the beautiful eight year old Spanish bay horse Kuskus, first in an elegant “collected walk,” then a canter. What about the actual fashion? Sadly, it was the biggest downer of the entire event. That 1920s and ’30s Gatsby mood that Viard discussed was manifested in filmy chiffon and organza dresses with uneven hems, and trailing scarf panels that drifted from the shoulder. Satin evening dresses seemed to be suspended from necklaces and were draped to reveal the back, and tiny beaded gilets could be slipped on to amplify the glamour quotient. All of it looked pretty… but pretty is kind of boring, right?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

L’Appel du Vide. Schiaparelli SS22 Couture

January 27, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

If there’s a real sense of return in the air at this season’s haute couture shows, Daniel Roseberry’s collection for Schiaparelli will be its defining memory. Passing through the Petit Palais, each of his looks was as intriguing to the senses as the inspiration behind them. “There’s this word in French for when you’re driving on a cliffside and you have the sudden urge to go off the road. It’s called ‘the call of the void,’” he said during a preview the day before. In French, the term is l’appel du vide and it’s not as hopeless as it sounds. Psychologically, it’s an intrusive thought that affirms our urge to live. “I think that’s what this spaciness felt like to me,” he explained, surrounded by orbital dresses and planetary bags in his Place Vendôme salons. “The void is the absence of this reality.” In times of refuelled space races, missions to Mars, and the metaverse, Roseberry is not alone in looking to galaxies far way. It’s a mindset that comes natural at Schiaparelli where surrealism goes hand-in-hand with existentialism. If you can use the word effortless in haute couture, that’s what Roseberry’s collection felt like: a seamlessly executed idea for a house it was just right for. “We kept saying ‘Planet Schiaparelli’: I wanted to do something that looked totally unlike anybody else. Nothing else should look like this.”

Roseberry exercised his objective in creations forged in the images of the galaxy and the science fiction we relate to it. Quite literally, saturnian brass rings orbited around a black canvas corset bodice woven with black flowers in jacquard, and encircled a gilded metal bustier that wasn’t just for show. Like previous seasons’ breastplates, Schiaparelli will cast them on the client’s body in-house. A Medusa dress debuted a new technique developed for the collection in which wet gold leather had been stretched and moulded over clay sculptures of the house’s emblems-the lock, the lobster, the dove—which had then been latticed into a mind-blowing jeweled cage and encrusted with cabochon stones from the 1930s. A series of structures evoked the movement of jelly fish, which in turn evoked James Cameron’s The Abyss. A matter of exposed crin gathered around the shoulders of a minidress in black silk crepe and bounced like tentacles as the model moved down the runway of the Petit Palais. A similar effect took form around the ankles of a strapless velvet dress, and in the brass tentacles that vibrated around Mariacarla Boscono’s long black jersey dress. Interestingly, if you removed the science fiction elements, you’d be left with a series of sophisticated black dresses more lightly imbued with what Roseberry referred to as “aerodynamic” details, like the stretched-out neckline of Kiki Wilhelm’s black twill bustier.

That sense of simplicity was the intention. After a year of celebrity exposure that has catapulted Roseberry’s look for Schiaparelli into the consciousness of a new audience he wanted to pull back. “Let’s take a deep breath and start refining the language,” he’d told his team. “How do we illicit the same emotional response that we get from the couture without volume and without color?” It’s why – stripped to their core – his little dresses and jackets were almost down-to-earth in a collection literally based on the opposite. It was a clever way for Roseberry to unite anticipations for Schiaparelli grandeur with expectations for something new. Of course, Roseberry isn’t dialing down on exposure. The day before the show he had fitted Julia Fox in a denim cone bra jacket to wear to the Kenzo show with Kanye West. The new couple also attended Roseberry’s show, with West in one of his masks that completely covered his face looking as existentially stirring as the collection itself. Maybe it’s Roseberry’s genuine affinity for pop culture that makes his haute couture feel so fresh. In its fusion of stupefying craftsmanship, splendor, and consistent sense of humor, the show kind of evoked a time when the likes of Christian Lacroix, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Thierry Mugler – may he rest in peace – opened Paris’s eyes to a different kind of fashion theater.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Powerful Beauty. Alaïa AW22

January 26, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Second collections are always the most difficult to pull off, especially when done for a legendary maison like Alaïa, where the heaviness of legacy might simply overwhelm the most talented designer. Great news: Pieter Mulier nailed it. For autumn-winter 2022, “we translated the DNA of Alaïa with a little bit more of what I like,” he said after the show presented at Azzedine Alaïa’s “cathedral” (the Marais building holding the brand’s atelier, flagship boutique, foundation and the late designer’s home). “It’s basically about beauty. It’s the next step after the last collection: a push forward. I didn’t want a concept. Just beautiful girls and beautiful clothes.” Beyond Alaïa’s loyal following, Mulier is faced with bringing the brand into the consciousness of new generations. His method seems to be this: stick to the codes but turn up the volume. He did so in a collection largely dedicated to bell-bottoms derived from Azzedine Alaïa’s Spanish skirt shapes. Their presence was determined, from denim bell-bottoms to a one-legged jumpsuit bell-bottom and bell-bottoms attached to thigh-high boots that bounced up and down and looked like chopped-off bloomers. The silhouette was echoed in dresses like those of Mulier’s first collection with lively mermaid hems, and in ladylike peplums on skirts that were positively polite compared to their effervescent cousins. While jaunty bell-bottoms are sure to get attention on the daily algorithm scroll of younger generations, there were more intellectually intriguing elements to Mulier’s collection. A series of knitted dresses with face coverings executed in close collaboration with the Picasso Foundation (Azzedine Alaïa was a collector and friend of the family) interpreted ceramics created by the artist in the 1940s through impressive embroideries that turned the models’ physiques into optical illusions. “There’s a rough, pagan beauty about it. Ultimate goddesses,” Mulier said of the dresses. Exactly that component was an interesting contrast in a collection otherwise embodied by upbeat sass and glamour. They kind of cut right through the fun and made you take notice. If they inspired a surrealist streak in the collection, it was there in the biker and flight jackets Mulier morphed into body-con dresses, padding and all, or the dress made entirely out of Alaïa multi-buckle belts. A variety of coats showed what a new Alaïa could also be: big, enveloping shapes borrowed from the gentleman’s wardrobe and sculpted in thick wools, then nipped-in delicately at the bottom of the back to define a feminine silhouette. Mulier said that “the little bit more” he had added of himself to the collection’s genetics was mainly tailoring-focused. That was clear in those coats, but also in louche suits and tuxedos, which accomplished a delicately oversized line that didn’t get overwhelming. Love, love, love!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Men’s – High School Lovers. Alled-Martinez AW22

January 26, 2022January 26, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Ending this menswear season with one of the emerging Parisian brands, Alled-Martinez, which after last season‘s success continues to celebrate and embrace queerness. After telling a story of love and tragedy between two men, Archie Alled-Martinez takes a less melancholic approach for autumn-winter 2022. “I was wondering what would it be like to have been openly gay during high school,” he told Vogue, “and how difficult it was for people in my generation to be themselves growing up. When I go online now and see all these queer kids, it warms my heart.” Alled-Martinez translated the high school codes of the early aughts into his garments. There are tiny tees, and tinier, tighter trousers, and perhaps most symbolically laden for those actually in high school in the aughts, jeans shrugged down so low that boxer shorts peek out from the waistband. Bruce Weber’s Abercrombie hunks come to mind, but Alled-Martinez has a more approachable look—think of this like a Hollister fever dream. Furthering the theme, he’s made tees that say Top, Bottom, and Vers. The star of this season, though, is Alled-Martinez’s film. Beautifully directed by Pau Carrette, the film chronicles a boy’s high school loves and losses. The designer plays a track and field coach, while guys run around in their tiny A-M outfits. Unlike many of the other fashion films we’ve seen during the two-years-and-counting pandemic, this one actually has a plot and resonates beyond fashion.