Giambattista Valli Debuts Haute Couture

The Fall Haute Couture shows last month in Paris flew by and I still have yet to say a word about them. Haute couture has recently been called into question in terms of relevance. In response, Alex Fury wrote a fantastic piece about its significant role in fashion today. Another voice bent on asserting haute couture's importance is Giambattista Valli. In the face of doubt and pessimism, Valli debuted a couture collection that provides hope and perhaps a new direction for the tradition of haute couture.

Valli has a cult of young wealthy girls who are devoted to supporting his ready-to-wear business, so it should come to no surprise that his couture debut is quite youthful. In the haute couture business though, youth are not typically the clients of couturiers. Thus the frequency of shorter hemlines and the exuberance in this collection mark a turn for haute couture.

In typical Valli fashion, expressly decorated elements stood in contrast with more classic, streamlined elements, as in look 32. Between the fabulous use of coral, the feathers, the leopard print, and the dramatic capes, Valli has created a highly iconic collection that capitalized on unabashed glamour. He has not strayed from his DNA—something of great importance in couture—but he's challenged himself and proved what he can do with an atelier.


Hanaa Ben Abdesslem

Aymeline Valade

Tati Cotliar

Hanna Sorheim

Sasha Pivovarova

Hailey Clauson

Kinga Rajzak

Ajak Deng

Nyasha Matonhodze

Aymeline Valade

Caroline Brasch Nielsen

Jac

Jacquelyn Jablonski

Sasha Pivovarova

Elena Todorchuk

Joan Smalls

Ruby Aldridge


Photos via style.com

Jean Paul Gaultier

I couldn't help, but to feel a bit irked when I read the beginning of Tim Blanks' review of the Jean Paul Gualtier couture show, which started, "The invitation safety-pinned a piece of fishnet to a piece of cardboard." The punk frame of reference is one I love if done right (most recently by Balenciaga and Balmain), but Gaultier's last ready-to-wear collection was an unsuccessful take on 80's rock and roll. I love the man, which made it all the more disappointing. Fortunately, Gaultier got it right this time. Naturally, the collection had a renegade quality to it, as Gaultier's work always does, but it wasn't contrived. It felt like an honest declaration of a feeling. This is what I think is beautiful. This is what "couture" means to me. Seeing a highly tailored, pant-heavy collection is always a fresh sight during the couture shows, which are often laden with billowing skirts—not that these were completely factored out. The models walked out with mohawked manes and number cards, the latter being a tongue-in-cheek reference to the couture shows of the past. Other notable show elements were the impossibly gorgeous Andrej Pejic as bride and a Can Can dancer whose upturned skirt revealed an excess of legs printed on the inside. There was something rough-and-tumble about each look, whether that be the addition of a chained choker or bondage-like buckles on the front of a ivory gown. Gaultier gave himself freedom within the collection, avoiding a singular statement, and providing an array of looks. A coral, silky, one-shouldered trench dress—a play on his trademark, the trench coat— served as a reminder of his talent and legacy, lest anyone forget. You had better not either, Monsieur Gaultier.

Frida Gustavsson

Bojana Panic

Kristina Salinovic

Yulia Kharlaponova

Joan Smalls

Karolina Kurkova

Frida Gustavsson

Julia Saner

Lindsey Wixson

Olga Sherer

Katlin Aas

Magdalena Frackowiak

Joan Smalls

Sigrid Agren

Alana Zimmer

Kate Somers

Andrej Pejic




Photos via style.com

Chanel

Karl Lagerfeld's latest couture collection for Chanel was a argument for the delicate and pretty, laced with a bit of symbolic black. The girls paraded down the runway in what seemed like an endlessly embellished show. Tailoring seemed the focus at the outset, but in time Karl gave in to dreamy pale pink looks that sometimes felt like they might float right off the models. There was a bit of a "playing dress-up" quality about the collection, but it was refined and whimsical, not messy or silly looking. The inspiration for the collection was the artist Marie Laurencin. The long version goes something like this, "In 1923, she designed Les Biches, a ballet commissioned by Diaghilev with a scenario by Cocteau. Chanel was designing Le Train Bleu for the ballet impresario at the same time. She asked Laurencin to paint her. The languor and sweetness of the portrait that came from the sitting weren't pleasing to Chanel, but Lagerfeld seized on those qualities to reinterpret her ethos in a way that was paradoxically provocative and modest." (style.com). The ballet inspiration was seen most prominently in the loose-fitting, sometimes-sequined leggings and the barely-there flats, paired with every look. The leggings in particular, contributed a perfect amount of perversity, ensuring that the collection wouldn't be a flat statement about the beauty of pretty things. Karl never makes a flat statement. By the looks of things and my limited knowledge of his brain, such a statement won't happen until the day he says, "I'm done."

Freja Beha Erichsen

Melissa Tammerijn

Caroline Brasch Nielsen

Dorthea Barth Jorgensen

Abbey Lee Kershaw

Daphne Groeneveld

Snejana Onopka

Freja Beha Erichsen

Melissa Tammerijn

Alina Kozelkova

Lindsey Wixson

Sigrid Agren

Magdalena Frackowiak

Frida Gustavsson

Stella Tennant

Anna Selezneva

Julija Steponaviciute

Freja Beha Erichsen

Kristen McMenamy


Photos via style.com