FASHION

The Couture Report

This week the fantasy world of haute couture continued apace. Read the full coverage at WWD.CHANEL: When most people have a good idea, they put it down on paper. Karl Lagerfeld cuts it out of...


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This week the fantasy world of haute couture continued apace. Read the full coverage at WWD.

CHANEL: When most people have a good idea, they put it down on paper. Karl Lagerfeld cuts it out of paper. At least that’s what he did for his spring haute couture collection, a show brilliant in more ways than one. “The idea was a white page,” Lagerfeld said days before his show. But there are white pages and white pages. For his, Lagerfeld commissioned a floral paradise crafted from 4,000 meters of plain, pristine paper… click to continue

CHRISTIAN DIOR: John Galliano is a master deconstructionist who can impose his way on a concept as remarkably as on a piece of cloth. The Dior couture collection he showed Monday offered a dazzling case in point. Galliano worked from an apparently limitless budget for a lineup rooted in New Look extravagance yet inspired by the Dutch Masters, from whom he pilfered a rich Vermeer palette (set against plenty of white), a stately “sittings posture” and gracefully flamboyant portrait chapeaux… click to continue

GIORGIO ARMANI PRIVE: The collection was an ode to a China, Armani said after the show, “that does not exist anymore.” Touché, as it was all about cropped-wig living dolls and hobble-skirted, baby-step seduction. But the biggest problem was neither the politics of the message nor the absence of the kind of brooding romance that might have hooked us in. Nope. It was those shoulders… click to continue

VALENTINO: Many of the clothes that Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli showed on Wednesday looked appealing enough: trim suits, mostly a megahomage to Valentino’s white collection; coats detailed beautifully, either with embroideries or intricate constructions; an extensive, quite Val-like pitch to the red-carpet set. These were impressively executed, lacking neither flourish nor couture-quality craftsmanship. But too many could have been sourced right out of the house pattern archive …. click to continue All photos by Giovanni Giannoni