Above (L-R): Chanel, Fendi, Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier
Clothes so light they could float—these were the garments that proliferated at Haute Couture Week in Paris. Tulle and chiffon were the operative fabrics for spring/summer 2024, foaming and skimming the body like vapour. At Chanel, Virginie Viard sent ballerinas down the runway, balancing tweed with tutus and bows with skirts spun from sugar; at Armani Privé’s ‘Haute Couture en Jeu’, gowns were aqueous and semi-translucent. Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli noted that this lightness was also of figurative importance in the context of haute couture. Here the petites mains toil, but keep their labour imperceptible.
“You don’t have to feel the weight of the technique and of the handmade, because ultimately couture is about the illusion of effortlessness,” said Piccioli. “The technique must disappear so as not to lose the magic—a magician remains a magician only until he reveals his secrets.”
Piccioli wove this illusion into chromatic gowns and capes and coats. Elsewhere, at Fendi, Kim Jones’s illusion was textural; he abandoned both fur and faux-fur for trompe l’œil embroidery, tufting skirts and outerwear from densely sewn filaments. A robot baby at Schiaparelli, where Daniel Roseberry wrangled with questions of creativity in the AI age, certainly felt like a form of magic. At Jean Paul Gaultier, guest couturier Simone Rocha lifted looks from fantasy. Sailor girls! Gothic brides! Temptresses, sprites and Rococo faes!
But it was John Galliano whose illusions staggered most. Beneath the arch of the Pont d’Alexandre III at night, in a rain-soaked café, Maison Margiela conjured characters from Brassai’s Parisian nightlife. Porcelain-faced apparitions wore Belle Epoque gowns; eyeless figures sported merkins over their underwear, pubic hair visible through watercolour tulle.
Below, our trend report from the haute couture spring/summer 2024 runways.
