Couture Fashion Week 2013: Chanel, Dior, and Ulyana Sergeenko

Click here for previous Chanel posts. 

Chanel's Mary Queen Of Scots collection last season was fantastic, so I can only assume that Karl Lagerfeld used up his yearly quota of awesome on that one. Bearing in mind that this is a Couture show, one would think that it would be better than Pre-Fall. Not so. Instead, the theme (Weimar Germany... something...?) was unclear at best, and totally absent at worst As a kind of psychological palate-cleanser, I'm going to start this post with the ugliest outfit of the show, just so we can get it over with and move on to better things:

This looks like someone put a bunch of lei garlands in a blender, spackled them all over a tube dress, and accessorised it with an apron jacket worn by a Midwestern housewife in the 1980s. Karl Lagerfeld, what were you thinking?

Most of the show was rather more sedate. 68 looks in all, this collection was mostly dedicated to Chanel-classic suits, although the tailoring was unfortunately even boxier than usual. Most puzzling of all were the shoes, which in addition to being open-toed boots (WHY?), were attached to lacey leggings that looked itchily uncomfortable and made the models' legs look wrinkly and shapeless.

The one dress that I'd actually wear:

I find it constantly bizarre that for someone so pathalogically obsessed with thinness (both personally and for women in general), Lagerfeld designs clothes that are just... not slimming at all. I mean, the suits this season are pretty damn cuboid, but this dress is just... a cone. A cone with arm-protectors. No wonder the model is crying her mascara all over her face: her knees are bleeding because the dress is made of concrete and doesn't bend when she walks.

 This is what the woman from the blended-garlands picture wore to her Prom:

Instead of the traditional solo bridal dress finale, Lagerfeld ended the show with a pair of brides as a kind of "fuck you" to the gay marriage debate currently going on in France at the moment. I agree in spirit, but the gowns themselves were... really not all that great.

Dior
Dior relies upon the sweeping, formal gown in the same way that Chanel relies upon the skirt-suit. Moreso, really, since Chanel is really Lagerfeld's brand now, whereas Dior is still very much reliant upon the same designs it was producing in it's heyday, the 1950s. The hope is that new Creative Director Raf Simons will revitalise the brand and become their very own Lagerfeld (or a scandal-free Galliano), but I'm yet to be convinced.

Raf Simons' previous role was Creative Director at Jil Sander, where he introduced a very minimalist design style that led to the hugely popular colour-blocking trend that's been everywhere for the past couple of years. He wouldn't have been my first choice for a ladylike, old-fashioned brand like Dior, but perhaps Dior is trying to take a step away from ladylike and old-fashioned. Whether or not that was their actual aim, this show was not particularly impressive. It had little of the luxurious detail of recent Dior couture collections, seeming more like a combination of rather conservative classic Dior designs with a few jarringly unexpected Raf Simons outfits thrown in to remind everyone that he was there.

This yellow dress was one of my few genuine favourites. The two-layer cutaway is interesting, but the extreme simplicity of the shape and colour of the dress as a whole helped to balance it out. Honestly, it looks far more Raf Simons than Dior, but I'll take it.

 

Ulyana Sergeenko
I had nothing but good things to say about Ulyana Sergeenko's Couture show last year, and even though this was a little cheesier than expected, it had its good points.

In a complete u-turn from last year's nod to Sergeenko's Russian heritage, this collection was all about America. On the bright side, it didn't have any denim-clad cowboys, which is more than one can say for 99% of other USA-themed fashion shows. But it was guided by Hollywood's depiction of America (not exactly an unexplored topic in the world of fashion), leading to things like this pretty but somewhat pointless version of Scarlett O'Hara's green curtain dress in Gone With The Wind:

Rather more to my taste was this ultra-tailored black Puritan dress, which had a kind of fetishised conservatism that the goth in me just can't resist. I'm glad to see that Sergeenko is retaining the long, heavy skirts from her earlier work, since there are so few designers who ever go for this look. Most designers are so concerned with femininity and a slim silhouette that skirts like this are dismissed as unflattering, but Sergeenko is proving that they can be worn with style.

I'm not 100% clear on what this final outfit was supposed to be, but I'm pretty sure Tailor Swift is going to be wearing it in her next video.

Click here for previous Chanel posts.

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Haute Couture 2012: Armani Privé and Valentino.

Still no time to write a Teen Wolf finale post. Instead: FASHION.

Armani Privé
At first I thought this collection was terribly '80s, but then I realised that the clothes weren't particularly retro in themselves -- it was the styling. The colour scheme was all chilly blues and watercolour lilacs, and the long, loose silhouette looked like the fashion drawings of the '80s rather than the fashions themselves.

Overall I'd rate the accessories in this show far higher than the actual clothes. The plethora of simple, floor-length blue suits and dresses seemed rather boring, whereas the feathered headdresses and sparkling veils were among the few details that seemed worthy of a big-name couture show.

Valentino
This show included just enough moments of heavy-handed historical glamour for me to enjoy it. Valentino are known for their showy gowns, so a 19th-century inspiration was ideal. Not 19th-century in shape, though -- it was more to do with the patterns and colours of antique furniture and interior decor, heavy on the old-fashioned floral motifs and dense embroidery.

I love dresses like these, where the fabric pattern is so obviously taken from at least a hundred years ago but the shape is so unmistakably modern. As long as the fabric is interesting enough, you can cut it down to the simplest minidress imaginable and it's still very obviously couture.

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Haute Couture: Ulyana Sergeenko and Maison Martin Margiela.

I was going to write about Batman today, but thinking about The Dark Knight Rises for any prolonged length of time causes my brain to dribble out of my ears. Time for me to do a u-turn from one of my passions (superheroes) to another: FASHION. 

Ulyana Sergeenko
Outside Russia, Ulyana Sergeenko is still relatively unknown. A comparatively young designer, she's only shown a couple of collections so far but is already getting primetime Fashion Week slots off the back of her fame as a socialite, photographer and street-style star. I tend to be very wary of people whose supposed ~fame~ stems from street style because I don't believe that "having good dress sense" is a legitimate reason for critical acclaim, and is usually code for the person in question being the child of somebody famous. That being said, Ulyana Sergeenko's Couture show was very impressive, lending a certain gravitas to the kind of Eastern-European peasant styles that usually turn out looking twee.

This was an emphatically wintry collection, with each of the models looking far warmer and more comfortable than one typically sees in a Couture show. There was a noticeable absense of eveningwear, which I found rather refreshing considering how much of Couture season is ruled by glitz and extremity.

When I say that Couture is ruled by glitz and extremity I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism, but it can be a little limiting. The two extremes one usually sees are graceful, sylphlike feminity (Dior) and harsh, jagged experimentalism (Mugler; McQueen), neither of which lend themselves to bulk or comfort. High-end fashion's obsession with the appearance of thinness means that it's relatively rare for quilted skirts and thick, heavy coats to appear together. Ulyana Sergeenko's old-fashioned silhouette allows for a little extra bulk, though, as it's based on the kind of peasant styles that required a lot of heavy, practical fabrics for warmth and durability.

Long, 1950s skirts are a staple of Sergeenko's designs, almost always combined with a soft, clingy sweater tucked in at the waist. You can see some more summery versions of this look from last season's collection here.

Maison Martin Margiela
Only fifteen looks long, this "artisanal" collection was short and peculiar. The models' faces were covered by jewelled masks and each of the outfits was constructed from a different found item, beginning with a relatively conservative suit with a vintage doorknob as the fastener but quickly branching out into more outlandish designs.

Maison Martin Margiela is a label that seems in love with its own mystery. The masked models are an old favourite for their catwalk shows, and we don't even know who the head designer is -- if indeed there is one. Margiela himself left a few years ago, and it's unknown whether anyone took over from him or if the design work is now purely a team effort.

 Two of the outfits were partially constructed from the dismembered remains of basebal mitts.

 ... and this jacket was made from a windsurf sail.

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Jean Paul Gaultier Couture: Dandies, Decadence, and George Sand.

This review may be a little on the dodgy side because I wrote it through a veil of tears while pouring chocolate truffles and absinthe directly into my mouth and smoking a cheroot in a ten-inch-long holder. GUYS, I JUST LOVE THIS COLLECTION A LOT, OK. Gaultier's a triple-threat expert in the field of awesome yet faintly ridiculous haute couture, his main failing being the restrictive nature of his influences. This season, as with so many of his previous collections, Gaultier was inspired by Victorian dandies, vintage corsetry, tuxedoes, and classic Indian fashions, but even after thirty years in the public eye he still seems to be able to turn out new ideas for stunning couture.

photos from Style.com

The show opened with Erin O'Connor in a top hat and tails, dressed in an homage to George Sand. Gaultier has long enjoyed playing with gender-roles in his shows and even though his new Menswear collection was revealed only last week, this Couture show included new "menswear couture" items as well as several womenswear outfits worn by male models.

Tanel Bedrossiantz has modeled in over eighty of Gaultier's shows now, and as he ages he seems to grow more and more vampiric in appearance. Tanel commands a certain fearsomeness that can't quite be managed by the younger, prettier male models, which is exactly what Gaultier's shows need -- something to leven the slightly cheesy Moulin Rouge air for which he is so well-known.

It's unclear whether Andrej Pejic's first outfit was from the menswear or womenswear department -- perhaps intentionally so. On one side it was a relatively average dinner-suit, but the other side was completely sheer with an elbow-length leather glove. Even the shape holds no clues, because this season Gaultier almost entirely abandoned his love of corsetry in favour of a looser, more masculine silhouette for the womenswear. Corsets, in fact, were only seen on the men, with slight hourglass silhouettes being added to the suit-jackets through rigid structure-work and clever tailoring.

This collection wasn't so much a celebration of fresh creativity as it was about quality. While dandies and 19th-century decadence are by no means a new topic in the world of high-end fashion, a show like this proves that Gaultier can provide consistent excellence without resorting to gimmickry.

 Current mood: desperate to wear these iridescent grey velvet trousers and green shoes:

This is the kind of textured, luxurious couture work that makes me miss Christian Lacroix.

The one low point of the show was, for me, this purple tailcoat modeled by Erin O'Connor. It's a little too 1970s Vegas magician compared to the 19th-century sumptuousness of the rest of the collection.

The eveningwear ran from late nineteenth to early 20th century, with some outfits almost reaching flapper proportions. Fortunately the styling was such that most of the gowns didnt fall into the period-movie costume trap, although the colour scheme did remain securely in vintage tones of red, gold, and pale blue-green.

In among the out-and-out period pieces were some outfits that were harder to define, but no less beautiful for it. One of the things this season really made me appreciate was Gaultier's ability to balance a show: not too many costumey pieces, but enough that the collection seemed to vary widely from beginning to end. While the tuxedo-inspired suits (for both men and women) were relatively recogniseable as dandy-wear, some of the gowns seem to go straight for the faux-medieval trends of the early 20th-century aristocracy, and others had hints of angular Art Deco imagery:

Sidenote: My new hobby is printing off 1000 copies of this photo of the best spats of all time, folding the photos into a giant origami bed, and then rolling around on the bed until I die.

Tanel Bedrossiantz is Dracula.

While I usually dislike strapless body-suits, this gold outfit modelled by Karlie Kloss was so stunning I had to include it. The cape photographs so beautifully while in motion that it makes me sad this piece is almost certainly one of the ones that'll be bought up by a collector, never to be worn again by anything other than a mannequin.

These exterior-framework outfits were reminiscent of early Thierry Mugler or Gaultier's own designs from the '80s and '90s -- stripped-down corsetry and crinoline hooping, with a fetish edge. The gold bustier dress even seems to include some kind of chastity belt, and looks terrifyingly inflexible.

As is traditional, the show closed with a bridal gown, this one worn with a deconstructed top hat and made entirely from solid white fabric. Even this was dandy-influenced, with tuxedo lapels swooping down the model's back to join the floor-length skirts.

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