Everything You Need to Know About Couture Week in Paris
For the past four days, Paris has been the scene of the Fall 2016 haute couture shows—and what a week it’s been. Kicked off by Vetements’s not-really-couture collaborative collection and closed out by the news that Valentino co–creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri is departing the house, the couture shows have given the fashion crowd plenty to talk about. Here, we recap the newsworthy moments on the schedule and off that are sure to light up the Twitterverse and real world alike for weeks to come.
Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigital.tv1/9Collaborations, the Vetements Way
Demna Gvasalia and co. presented their Spring 2017 men’s and women’s collections on Sunday. Held in the Galeries Lafayette, the show was entirely comprised of collaborations with the likes of Reebok, Levi’s, Champion, Brioni, and Juicy Couture, the latter of which birthed a red tracksuit sure to be seen around town come the ready-to-wear shows.
Photo: Alessandro Garofalo / Indigital.tv2/9The Atelier Takes Center Stage at Chanel
Sure, we all know that it takes an army of seamstresses to produce even a single couture creation, but we rarely meet or even see these petites mains. At Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld put them front and center, creating a set in the Grand Palais that mimicked the interior of an atelier, with the sewers working hard as models in plumed creations strutted by.
Photographed by Kevin Tachman3/9The Eyes Have It
Interim Dior designers Serge Ruffieux and Lucie Meier presented a streamlined, mostly monochromatic collection at Dior. The talk of the show, or rather its most Instagrammed aspect, was the many iterations of cat-eyes designed by Peter Philips, creative and image director of Christian Dior Makeup.
Photo: Courtesy of Brioni4/9Meet the New Brioni
A lot of eyebrows were raised when tattooed buyer extraordinaire and street style star Justin O’Shea was named creative director of Brioni, an Italian house founded in 1945 and renowned for its expert tailoring. For his debut collection, O’Shea sent out an army of Brioni bros—and some babes, too—made in his slim-cut, high-waisted image. Will it sell? These rocker styles are available now at Brioni’s stores for aspiring Lars Ulriches to cop.
Photo: Courtesy of Giles Deacon5/9The New Kids of Couture
There was no shortage of fresh faces at couture this season—no, not just the models, but the designers themselves. Giles Deacon, Iris van Herpen, J. Mendel, <Francesco Scognamiglio , and Alberta Ferretti represented a new group of brands either completely shifting away from ready-to-wear (as is the case for Deacon and Van Herpen) or new to Paris’s couture scene. The influx of new takes on couture was welcomed.