At the pre-COVID couture shows, it wasn’t unusual to see ball gowns and diamonds in Vogue’s street style coverage. While our “regular” Fashion Week outfits were getting more casual, couture has always been an occasion for glittering dresses, sweeping capes, and black tie-worthy tuxes. Last week, however, the looks we saw outside the fall 2021 couture venues had a refreshing new energy: People were still dressing way up—we’re talking feathers, rainbow jackets, and towering platforms—but in lieu of straight-off-the-runway finery, there were more personal, eclectic ensembles. It felt like a continuation of the creativity Vogue’s photographer Acielle observed at the men’s shows, not to mention the boundary-pushing new ideas we saw on the actual couture runways.
To this digital viewer, it all coalesced in two themes: going-for-it experimentalism and… jeans. But not your average Levi’s. Like the couture jeans at Balenciaga, Alaïa, and Jean Paul Gaultier x Sacai, the most inspiring looks on the street used denim not as a mundane basic, but as a foundation for expression and individuality. “To remain relevant, the couture needs to relate both to contemporary modes of living and to fantasy,” my colleague Laird Borrelli-Persson wrote—and what could be more relatable and fantastical than Demna Gvasalia’s impeccably-cut, handmade jeans? This denim-head likely won’t be acquiring a pair, but Look 25—the faded jeans with a fluffy, peaked-shoulder jacket—is going on my eternal moodboard, along with all these great dressed-up denim looks on the street.
We gathered our favorite looks from both sides of the style divide, though you certainly don’t have to choose. With the September shows just around the corner, we’ll be revisiting these images (and all of our street style coverage) for shopping and styling ideas all summer long. Scroll through them below.
