Fashion and sports, sports and fashion…. The topic du jour carried over from Vogue World: Paris to the first days of the fall 2024 couture season where the work of the ateliers was dazzling and used to different effects. Team Thom Browne deserves a medal for endurance as they spent 11,000 hours on a single embellished jacket.
Browne took things down to basics in the sense that he used muslin, or the material toiles that are the first drafts of a garment, almost exclusively. And while his show closed with looks in bronze, silver, and gold (representing Olympic medals) the story the collection told was really about how to get to the podium. His focus was on deconstruction; garments were inside-out and incomplete, and the process of their making was revealed. Bodies were not, however. Browne’s focus remained on tailoring, corsetry (control), and layering (volume).
Ancient Greece, home of the Olympics Games that are returning to Paris after a 100 year absence, was the one point of commonality between Browne’s collection and that of Maria Grazia Chiuri at Christian Dior. Chiuri’s designs demonstrated that her view of classical culture is aligned with the idea of the natural body and wellness. “I want to do clothes where the body stays well, and can move freely,” said the designer, who put aside the stays and padding associated with the house’s early years, in favor of leotards and pleated and draped dresses. Using flowy fabrics, she built movement into these clothes. In most looks you could imagine a woman not only being able to sit down (this is not always given, especially with eveningwear) but also, in theory, hike up her skirts and kick a ball across a lawn, or dance a samba.
Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry was aided in his own bid for gold by references to the 1950s, Paris couture’s Golden Age that was documented in photographs where models with unimaginably tiny waists struck angular poses in dresses—edifices, really—of incredible opulence and beauty, but little comfort. (A surely apocryphal story I’ve been told is that owners of Charles James’s structured gowns would slide down the tops of their baby grand pianos into those architectural marvels.) Look 15 in the Schiaparelli collection looks like an homage to James’s Butterfly dress, currently on view in “Sleeping Beauties” at the Met. The long-line corset was the anchor of many looks here.
Corsetry was also key to Nicolas di Felice’s tour de force collection for Jean Paul Gaultier (a designer who became synonymous with that particular piece of women’s wear when he designed a cone-breasted bustier for Madonna in 1990). His take on the corset was rational rather than romantic. The abstraction of its hooks and eyes into a chain mail, and the way he used those lingerie closings to allow customization was ingenious. The clarity of his vision, and the strictness of his line was impressive.
This season the contrast between the stiff corset and the supple leotard (seen also at Chanel and Giambattista Valli) was unmissable. The former looks back, the latter forward. Unlike Olympians, who are focused on what their bodies can do, it often feels like couturiers are focused on what can be done to a woman’s body and how they can mold it.
A focus on deconstruction suggests that perhaps change is afoot, however. At Balenciaga, Demna threw down a gauntlet by focusing on the vernacular garments and materials he prefers within the rarified confines of the metier. And why not? Comfort and drama are the divergent needs of a modern customer. For couture to continue to exist as more than a marketing exercise, clients have to want to buy it. Couturiers have traditionally catered to their customer’s needs (i.e. Cristóbal Balenciaga’s gardening togs for Bunny Mellon). But what makes couture couture is less what it is made of—Christian Lacroix once repurposed a vintage jacket (turning it into a skirt) and Jean Paul Gaultier used upcycled denim in his couture debut—but how it is made.
Demna’s provocation had more to do with time. By closing his show with a piece of “ephemeral couture” made minutes before the show (and which “will come with three Balenciaga staffers for its assembly for the client who buys it,”) he countered the long-held idea that the value of a couture creation is related to the hours of handwork that went into its making. (His layering technique also hewed close to the 2018 Vetements windows featuring piles of clothes.)
Plentitude took the form of pearls at Armani Privé, where they were applied with painstaking care, and often paired with pants that looked like molten metal. Mingling with the week’s more traditional prettiness were reminders that even the .001% can’t wholly avoid what is happening in the world. Protective shields were seen in various collections. There was a Cubist-like skewing of silhouettes at Viktor Rolf and elsewhere as well as a feeling of clothes falling away from the body.
The dream of escape was present in the references to birds, which more broadly equate freedom with movement. This was built into clothes that torqued around the body or whose angular extensions seemed unsusceptible to gravity.
Gym Class
Tanks, track suits, leotards, and bathing suits swam upstream into couture collections.
What Lies Beneath
Designers move beyond naked dressing to the endoskeleton.
Off-Kilter
Garments that reveal their making or seem to cling tenuously to the body are evidence of designer’s interest in deconstruction.
Legs for Days
Pants looked easy, mobile, and modern.
Micro Management
The magic of couture is often made visible through beadwork and embroidery.
Flight Patterns
Fashion can be a way to escape (by wing or foot, or private plane) to another place or time.
Shield Gang
There is a protective aspect to some couture garments for fall.
Find Your Best Angle
The naked dress, seen from a sharp angle.
Bodacious Side Eye
The Cubists’ altered vision seems to have influenced designers.
Only Happy When It Rains…
…rains diamonds and rubies and pearls, that is.
Ghoul Oriented
Finally, there’s room for emo clients, and Evanescence fans, at couture.
Avoir du…chat?
Avor du chien is a french expression meaning to possess chic, but this season’s focus was on cats.
Transformations
This season included witty takes on the possibilities fashion offers for change.
Fleet of Foot
They’re built for speed and easy on the eyes.
Big-Impact Bridal
For your special day, a dress that speaks volumes.
