What did we learn from Balenciaga, Céline and Valentino?
If you’ve ever questioned Paris’s right to pronounce itself the fashion capital, Super Sunday’s line-up of shows should be prima facie evidence.
The manifestos delivered by Balenciaga, Céline and Valentino were each so cogent and compelling, that if you were pressed for time, you could skip everything else on the show calendar and take your readings of where fashion currently is and where it’s going, from these three.
Let’s go in order of their appearance on the schedule. Balenciaga, arguably one of the most invidiously influential visions in fashion currently, also demonstrated that it may be one of the cleverest. Like Cristóbal Balenciaga, the label’s genius-founder, its current creative director, Demna Gvasalia is fascinated not only by cut and shape, but by the spaces created between garment and wearer.
Jumpers puddled in seemingly haphazard folds had artfully been designed to do just that. Blouson tops cut from leather and silk panels, formed little pouches as the models moved.
There was much more. Coats and capes with swagged necklines were inspired by 1950s archive photographs of Balenciaga’s models during their fittings, when works-inprogress would be tried on and unresolved lengths of fabric flung round necks or draped across collarbones. Buttons were done up deliberately askew (post-truth buttoning?), a styling mannerism that will be taken up by groupies any second now, just as previous Balenciaga tics have been, including the current front row obsession with shrobing — the painstaking art of wearing your coat off-the-shoulder. The latter is a time-consuming display of studied nonchalance that has caused more than one fashion editor to be seriously late for a show, but scores top marks for dedication amongst the street style set.
It’s easy to roll eyes, but Gvasalia is breathtakingly talented at cutting, utterly forward-looking and an agile marketer with enviable amounts of chutzpah. Oversized matchy-matchy laundry bags and flounced dresses, stretchy fabric stiletto boots, clashy bright tights, charm necklaces and silk-scarf bracelets will all be snapped up by affluent fashionistas and vampirically devoured by high street copyists, making the label even more of a talking point in the coming months.
Phoebe Philo, another of fashion’s power-players, didn’t disappoint at Céline. Oversized tailoring, a key theme for next winter, looked persuasively elegant, as did an updated version of her high cut shoes, this time with a slender platform.
Fans who’ve found Céline challenging of late will have had their nerves steadied by Philo’s latest manifestation, where luxurious classics reworked with the designer’s unerring eye for arresting details and stealth edginess abounded.
Trenches? However many you have, her silky, flower incarnations will be a major contender for budgetary allocation; so too those long, sinuous shirt-dresses, many with matching trousers, some of which were slit at the knee. Philo, like Gvasalia, is inclining towards huge, squishy bags. Hers came with wide webbed straps. Alternative arm candy included big mohair shawls folded over the arms: security blankets for monied adults.
On the opposite side of the aesthetic spectrum is Valentino, a house where the designer’s adoration of the past is overt, but never heavy handed. Pierpaolo Piccioli’s favourite period is the Italian Renaissance. Cross-pollinating that era’s raised waists, pin-tucked shoulders and sweeping lengths with the Memphis movement of the 1980s was an energizing masterstroke, not least because while almost everyone agrees that Valentino has, under Piccioli, become a gravitational centre for all that is romantic, lovely and modern, Memphis has always been a polarising taste-bomb.
Collaborating with Natalie du Pasquier, a member of the original Memphis group on patterns, Piccioli introduced bold abstract and figurative prints, including lots of numbers, taking the often lurid colours typical of Memphis and running them through a delicate, cleansing filter.
The results were energizing rather than simply beautiful (God forbid fashion should ever “just” be beautiful). Patterned midi pleated dresses fluttered through deep vented cashmere coats. Flower speckled knits were spun into dresses so fine they looked almost like chiffon. The trouser suit was reconfigured as a zanily patterned velvet tunic-andtrouser proposition.
It was woozily desirable and unostentatiously luxurious. A “simple” dress consisting of 28 different sections flowed around the body like mist, but wore its complexity quietly. And it looked a dream to wear: elegant, comfortable and timeless.
They are however, madly pricy. Never mind. There were also multiple rings with numbers on them marking the day of the show across the models’ knuckles. Customers will be able to buy a wider range in store to commemorate their own significant dates. It’s not a Valentino dress, but it’s a start.
What do we take from these seemingly disparate — but in reality often overlapping — views? Freedom of movement, clever tailoring and a degree of covering up are the new emblems of feminine power. There are hints too, that while tugged by the past, fashion’s strongest talents are fully engaged with the now. And let’s not forget a sense of ease. As Pierpaolo Piccioli says: “the idea that beauty and elegance are antithetical is completely old-fashioned.”