15 Shades of Grès: Fall Fashion Goes Neoclassical

Blink and you might have missed the neoclassical thread that was running through the fall collections. Not yet a full-blown trend, it can be read as a reaction to an uncertain future. History shows us that a renewed interest in antiquity is often used as an antidote to turmoil. Romanticized and seen from a distance, Greco-Roman cultures can be read as unchanging and solid—qualities that give comfort in times of uncertainty. The fall 2020 collections were designed in a pre-pandemic world, but it still felt like it might spin out of control.

Dress by Alix (Madame Grès). Boucheron jewelry. Photographed by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, September 15, 1937

Central to the work of several creatives this season were references to Madame Grès, a designer of the early 20th century who is revered for her sublime draped designs—what Vogue called “frieze figure” dresses—in the classical mode. (She’s also one of fashion’s most mysterious characters: “To get Mme. Grès to speak of herself is an affair of State,” noted editor and historian Edmonde Charles-Roux in Vogue in 1964, years before the designer’s death in 1993. This itself was a drama, as her passing was kept a secret for a year.)

“She is like Mélusine, the fairy, playing at being a nun; she is an Abbess riding in a Mercedes; she is something effacing itself and yet triumphant...a timid pirate with plenty of nerve under his turban,” wrote Edmonde Charles-Roux of Madame Grès (above) in the September 15, 1964, issue of Vogue.Photo: AFP via Getty Images

Name-checked by Area’s Piotrek Panszczyk and Beckett Fogg, Grès’s influence was seen on their runway and well beyond. Of note were Olivier Rousteing’s molded leather folds, Richard Malone’s architectural pleating, and the tension between control and release created through Demna Gvasalia’s use of stretch fabric at Balenciaga.

Here, 15 designers giving new life to Old World techniques.