Photographs: Style.com
Words: Janice Breen Burns, editor
(This article first appeared in The Age Life & Style
Paris Haute Couture week may be fashion’s pinnacle spectacle but its value to everyday consumers is tricky to calculate. Right now, a handful of billionaires, stylists and fashion editors – haute couture’s only real clients – are still picking over the most recent autumn 2014 collections. The stylists “borrow” for their celebrity clients to wear on future red carpets, the editors photograph and return their picks, and the billionaires – mostly American, Russian and Chinese wives – pay prices for their dream frocks equivalent to what ordinary mortals such as you or I might pay for a luxury car, or an entire house.
Extravagant ombre effects and ballgown glamour juxtaposed with crisp classic shirt at Giambattista Valli
Most haute couture however, is not sold but carefully stored in the atelier’s archive. Sales are a bonus. The real purpose of these extraordinary frocks is far more valuable than the few hundred thousand Euro for a plumb sale.
Sheer organza, an airy transparent “canvas” at Valentino
Haute Couture collections ramp up the glamour of fashion brands’ lucrative ready-to-wear, accessory and perfume lines, and rocket-fuel reputations for originality and invention. Just 15 ateliers are currently approved by Paris’s Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture to showcase the French arts of “high sewing”. And without pressure to sell sell sell hanging over them, these designers – some of the best in the world – often play hard with risky concepts. It’s why haute couture has a reputation for catwalk shocks and sometimes, preposterous designs. And, it’s why trends that might have been languishing, unloved by mainstream fashion, can suddenly take off, fueled by their spot in haute couture’s limelight.
Dragged “bandage” panels at Alexandre Vauthier.
Haute couture, in other words, is your fashion barometer; what’s tracking, what’s breaking, what’s broken in and poised to blossom. Trends like the midi and ankle-grazer hemlines, for example. In upscale and designer markets, this elegant trend has sputtered along for a few seasons. But, resistance among mostly young women who understandably prefer to flash a bit of leg in their frocks, has kept mini, micro-mini and short-short hemlines higher on mainstream fashion’s preference list.
Raf Simons’ belled skirts and flattering, midi and ankle grazer hemlines for Dior
Among the first to show midis at Paris Haute Couture Week, Raf Simons’ heavy pale silk brocade bell skirts for Dior swelled out from the hip or waistline below lean bodices. Hemlines swayed away from mid-calf and ankles, emphasising the slimmest, most flattering point of models’ legs. In real life, the midi or ankle-grazer promises the same slim illusion, particularly coupled with sharp, dagger-toed pumps or bootlets that also optically “trim” the feet.
Wide-bound waistlines emphasise the ribcage at Valentino
Most elite haute couture designers showed versions of the midi and ankle grazer as well as dramatic, assymetric hemlines chopped short at the front and midi or floor-sweepingly long at the side or back. Donatella Versace’s showgirl version for example, featured an extravagant split ballskirt that chimed with dramatically tilted hemlines across the Zeitgeist.
Hussein Chalayan’s dragon tail knotted hemline for Vionnet
Hussein Chalayan’s version for Vionnet showed a simple side-dragged ruched mini dress with ankle-length extension pulled into a knot and draped like a tail at the side.
Dramatic tilted hemlines and batwinged sleeve at Martin Margiela
The last light’s winked off over the runways of Paris Haute Couture Week but its trail of trends is tracking, breaking, blossoming, marking out nowness in mainstream fashion.
THE HAUTE LIST
Midi and ankle-grazer hemlines, belled and full skirts, sporty classic items mixed into ballgown glamour ensembles, sunray pleats, sculpted or scalloped hemlines, full sleeves, corseted and cross-belted waistlines, floral embroidered and feathered surface effects, fringing including long-as-your-arm trims, ombre (shaded from light to dark) effects created by both dye and embellishments, transparent overdresses, sharper-than-ever dagger-toe pumps and bootlets.
