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LUXE TREND 58
CARI COUTURE HAUTE COUTURE 2022 YOU'RE KIDDING RIGHT?

An interesting camera angle for Valentino’s Haute Couture livestream made for the most telling message of the entire season. Presented at the company’s headquarters on Place Vendôme, the high camera angle afforded a view of the collection while beyond the windows of the salon, a crowd watched the show on the street. It was an interesting metaphor for the relevance of Haute Couture in our time.

The downfall of Haute Couture has been often predicted in the last few decades. While we see HC as the ultimate fashion laboratory, we still expect to be entranced by its elegance and opulence, twice a year. 

A short coda: in the 1980s and 1990s, a designer by the name of Marc Audibet made the rounds in Paris, New York, and Milan. A member of a select group of fashion designers from the late ‘80s, M. Audibet can be credited for creating pivotal collections for Hermes, Prada, Fendi, and other high fashion brands. M. Audibet is a true fashion polymath, a behind-the-scenes talent other designers depended on to carry their name — and fame — forward.

Like M. Audibet, there are many unsung heroes in Fashion and especially Haute Couture. It is a rare combination of high skill and superb taste that elevates a designer to that strata. Haute Couture requires patience and time to polish these skills. It is Patience and Time current owners of Couture houses are short of.

In this new Haute Couture season, in-person shows resumed after two years, and the expectations for High Fashion were at an all-time high. For Spring/Summer 2022 the trends were strained and often painful. Skill and Taste were missing from most of the collections. A painful tendency to distort the body in search of a new aesthetic made these collections feel cartoonish. I’m officially trademarking the trend: CariCouture. 

VALENTINO

Pier Paolo Piccioli’s ethereal Venice collection from Fall/Winter 2021 moved to Paris for Spring/Summer 2022. PPP’s extraordinary color sense was evident in this collection, albeit without the magnificence of the last collection. Clouds of color-saturated chiffon cascading down the staircase at the salon of Place Vendôme seemed like leftovers from the last collection.

While PPP’s good taste is unquestionable, the only trend to underline here is the bold use of color. The proportions felt unfocused and inconsistent, even occasionally gaudy. There was the influence of — gasp — modern Balenciaga, as in the use of black embroidery to simulate brocade in a white satin gown.

This collection felt desperately in need of a deft editor. The restrained Valentino elegance was missing from this collection.

SCHIAPARELLI

While lauded as a masterful collection by the press, Daniel Roseberry’s ode to black and gold was all-show, no substance. Mr. Roseberry is a talented designer who knows how to put on a show. There were subtle references to Pierre Cardin — with architectural flounces — and Jean-Paul Gaultier — with shirred bodices and a tulle décolleté that morphed into a veil and wide hat.

Shapes that were punctuated by oversized gold jewelry and accessories would have made Dali ecstatic. And shoes with gold human claws that could have given Cocteau inspiration for La Belle et la Bête. In this collection as well, the sculptural clothes were designed to impress the fashion editors in attendance, and they were successful in doing so, judging from the rapturous reception of the press.

Schiaparelli is always theater and Mr. Roseberry — like Thom Browne — has been earning his stripes. Repulsion is just as powerful a force as enthrallment and this collection walked a tightrope — in clawed pumps!

VIKTOR AND ROLF

It’s hard to look at a V+R collection and not be amused by the creativity and the vision of this duo. The audacity of their design direction for Haute Couture is easy to underestimate, given the high standards of their chosen metier.

In the past, V+R explored their vision of distorted proportions and oversized embellishments. For Spring/Summer, the shoulders are huge and displaced high to sit next to the ears. No more swan neck posture; shrugging is now encouraged.

The clothes elongated the body like an El Greco silhouette or a Modigliani portrait. The effect was achieved through corsetting, which would be interesting in its own merit. The dressmaker’s art sacrificed on the altar or design.

Interestingly, outsized proportions were also seen at the Pret-a-Porter collections in Paris. Nicolas Ghesquiere’s collection for Louis Vuitton featured several examples of this — horrifying — trend.

In this climate of exaggeration, it was easy to miss more traditional Haute Couture collections. The subtlety of Armani Privé and Gaultier Couture designed by Y/Project’s Glenn Martens. Dior by Maria Grazia Chiuri was carefully edited, a masterful exercise in excellent…ready-to-wear. Suddenly, amidst the proportional cacophony, these collections felt under-considered.

In this age where visibility is the only measure of fashion success we are heading towards a time when raising the volume will be the norm. Extreme weather, extreme aggression, extreme proportions.

Welcome to the future.