Return to order, not as a restoration, but as a search for authenticity: the ultimate meaning of the Parisian haute couture week, which ended Thursday, seems to be the renunciation of excess. While prêt-à-porter veers decisively towards flamboyant entertainment, high fashion brings attention back to clothes, even if by now the influencers sit on the golden seats in addition to the madames.
Sinuous volumes by Schiaparelli
It is significant that even Daniel Roseberry, the creative director of Schiaparelli that to the sound of kitsch surreality has earned infinite media attention, opts for a new sense of rigor, all sinuous volumes in black and white with gold flourishes, instead of continuing along the familiar path. The new Schiaparelli is severe, monastic, but also carnal, exuberant and glamorous, the son of an ideal ménage a trois between Elsa Schiaparelli, Cristobal Balenciaga and Thierry Mugler.
Many silhouettes (of different ages) from Valentino
Pierpaolo Piccioli, from Valentino, starts from the body. The collection is a very Valentino excursus of vibrant perfection, boiling coldness and other world colors, condensed in silhouettes, now vertical and graphic, now horizontal and fluffy and presented on different bodies and women of various ages. Piccioli’s inclusive drawing, which has been expressing itself for some time on the theme of opening, succeeds because the bodies – elongated, statuesque, junonic, minute, voluptuous, dry – are the tool, but not the final message, and this leads to a rewriting of the creative process, developed on several bodies instead of an ideal one, keeping intact the rarefied and graceful aesthetic, even when one touches the sexy.
Fendi, the inspiration of the priestesses is Rome
Gives Fendi, Kim Jones tackles the sacral aspect of Roman life – Rome is caput mundi and inspires all the values of the maison – in a hieratic fantasy populated by long-clad priestesses, hoisted on infinite stilts, alien faces studded with diamonds. The celestial aspect, condensed by whites and blues, mixes with something darker, if not infernal, certainly esoteric, in a profusion of reds and blacks. It is Jones’ most successful performance since joining Fendi, even if the expression, at times, remains rigid.
Best of Paris, da Dior a Chanel a Gaultier e Viktor & Rolf
“Couture needs humans, and it seemed important to me to highlight it now” says Maria Grazia Chiuri, who gives Dior celebrates the manual work of the ateliers in all its forms: from the inapparent one that disappears into perfectly simple clothes to the evident one of embroideries that multiply and swarm everywhere, including socks and shoes. The collection oscillates between these two poles: it is of absolute purity or it shines and sparkles; it covers and hides or reveals the body and emphasizes it.