"Paris haute couture where a dress can take months to make by hand, and cost as much as a small apartment in the city is a shopping opportunity. For the rest of the fashion industry, it is a battle for bragging rights between the haughtiest brand names in the world. With ambitious young designers newly installed at Dior and Chanel vying for domination, that battle is feistier than ever. Haute couture is an arms race like no other."
"For this first haute couture show, the hourglass silhouette of Christian Dior's 1947 New Look became a silk georgette cocktail dress with pleats that twisted around the body like clay thrown on a pottery wheel. The shape, inspired by the work of the Kenyan-born British ceramicist Dame Magdalene Odundo, brought an urgent, kinetic energy to Dior's classic curves. Meanwhile, the charming floral motifs adored by Monsieur Dior, a devoted gardener, became snowball-sized earmuffs of cyclamen."
Paris haute couture operates as both extravagant retail for the ultra-wealthy and a prestige battleground for major fashion houses. Shows feature painstaking handcraft, extreme price tags and theatrical staging that attract celebrities and global attention. Newly appointed designers at Dior and Chanel are intensifying rivalry through bold reinterpretations of heritage silhouettes and motifs. Jonathan Anderson reimagined Dior’s 1947 New Look into kinetic, pleated silk shapes inspired by ceramicist Magdalene Odundo and enlarged floral references into cyclamen earmuffs. Runways staged in landmark venues employed mirrored catwalks, moss canopies and celebrity-driven timing to heighten spectacle and competitive positioning.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]