Between the sensual and chaste
AFTER the fairyland fantasy of Dior and Chanel’s chill glamour, Paris haute couture shows veered between Vestal Virgins and the hot-blooded embrace of Mediterranean women last Wednesday.
Sunny skies
As the French capital froze, designer Jean Paul Gaultier escaped south to the sunny plains of Spain, his slinky frocks ablaze in a carpet of poppies and spring flowers.
All the stock characters of Iberian arcadia were there, from imperious marquesas down to gypsy glamour pusses, all dressed to the nines for feria.
Black cordobes hats topped Gaultier’s thoroughly modern take on the flamenco dress, one black, white and red number paired with a leather biker jacket in the same colours.
It has to be said his fantasy Spanish rural idyll was more movida than Andalusian feria, searingly silky reds, yellows, pinks and blues bursting out of moody black.
Despite the little ears of corn detailing, these were no hick chicks. His subtle series of rethought bolero jackets went from one ever so elegantly encrusted with tiny crystals to a killer blue denim jacket hybrid.
His knowingly cheesy payoff – couture shows traditionally end flowers, palm trees and forms inspired by Arabic calligraphy.
Saab said he was searching for the spirit of all the great Egyptian with a wedding dress – was a fairy-winged bride on the arm of a bare-chested hunk in dungarees who might have walked straight off the set of Jamon Jamon. leading ladies of the era and the legendary singer Umm Kulthum, “Strong yet delicate, elegant and free.”
Valentino’s Vestal Virgins
Having seen his longtime creative partner Maria Grazia Chiuri slope off for Dior having between them turned Valentino into a US$1bil (RM4.43bil) business, Pierpaolo Piccioli is in reflective mood.
His first solo couture collection is the blank slate of a new start, with a series of full-length robes you could imagine on ancient Rome’s most stylistically savvy Vestal Virgins.
The Italian designer called this restrained white-out elegance a “purity that sidesteps austerity”. Which you can take to mean what first looks simple and austere can also seduce, holding you in the spell of razor cut lines and quivering pleats.
Showing it in a contemporary art gallery housed in a Paris mansion, Piccioli hinted at the depth of conceptual thinking he had put into the collection.
This return to classical “vertical silhouettes”, he said, was about hiding the work that had gone into the dresses so as to give the women who wear them “the magic of the absence of effort”. – AFP