Chanel and Armani celebrate big milestones at Paris couture week

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Haute couture is an enigma to most. Accessible to only a select few (an estimated few thousand people globally) because of the eye-watering price tags that such extraordinary designs command, the fashion designers who partake in the exclusive event in Paris must ensure that strict criteria are met, in order to be approved by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, France’s governing fashion body.

Taking place following men’s fashion week, during which ready-to-wear designs are shown, the haute couture shows serve a wholly different purpose. The pieces are not intended for everyday wear and cannot simply be purchased off the rails at a department store (couture clients make direct orders and have private fittings). With that, the designs are often more experimental than commercial, and showcase exceptional savoir-faire.

Major moments

The week had plenty of celebratory moments, including Chanel’s 110 years in haute couture. Presented in the Grand Palais, on a runway that featured a crossing C formed by two monumental staircases, reflecting the house’s double-C logo, the collection was designed by the studio while awaiting the arrival of new designer Matthieu Blazy, who is expected to join by April 2025.

The cropped skirt-suits in richly embroidered tweeds, embellished hem and shoulder lines, soft silk shirt dresses and capes with pussy-bow fastening offered a fresh take on the French house’s classic codes.

Another big milestone was celebrated by Giorgio Armani, who celebrated 20 years of his couture line Armani Privé with a collection that explored themes of light and shimmer. Titled “Lumières” (French for “light” and “enlightenment”, the 90-year-old designer’s show was held at the newly acquired Palazzo Armani in the 8th arrondissement, a lavish private mansion complete with gilded moldings and a marble staircase.

The collection, comprised of 94 looks, including beaded suits, sleek peplums, silky Mao jackets, crystal-encrusted evening gowns and 1920-inspired headpieces, revisited iconic moments of his career, providing a dialogue between the glamour of more recent and distant pasts, When it comes to Armani’s work, the devil really is in the details.

Patience is a luxury

For Alessandro Michele, the designer of Valentino, luxury means taking time, as he explained backstage after presenting his first couture collection for the Italian house. Under his creative leadership, Valentino now stages one couture show a year, instead of the typical two. Michele compared the experience of haute couture to a ritual, describing the process as a labor of patience.

Held at the Palais Brongniart, Paris’s former stock exchange, each look appeared with a number displayed behind them, a nod to early haute couture presentations, when models would carry cards with their look numbers. A Harlequin crinoline dress, moiré Ottoman pants, a poppy-red bolero jacket, ruffled collars and other nods to Ancien Régime, the social and political order that existed in France from the late Middle Ages until the French Revolution, seamlessly merged, underlining Michele’s knack for interweaving genres and epochs.

Among Michele’s influences were Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 black comedy-drama film “Barry Lyndon”, Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel “Orlando” and Umberto Eco’s 2009 literary anthology “The Infinity of Lists”. The designer also emphasized his fascination with the concept of lists, which served as a creative starting point for the collection. “Creating a handmade dress is like drafting a never-ending list, with many pieces composing this mosaic,” he said.

The inspiration also took a physical form on the runway, where a list of unconnected words, such as “Sigmund Freud”, “crêpe-de-chine” and “Bloody Mary”, alluding to each of the model’s looks, scrolled past on a giant screen.

Ideas of womanhood

Crinolines also appeared on the Dior runway. Held at Musée Rodin on the Left Bank, the show was something of a blockbuster event, attended by stars including Pamela Anderson, Venus Williams and Jenna Ortega, who sat on the front row

Some models wore crinoline styles in raffia and lace; others had embroidered butterflies and dragonflies that looked like a wearable garden. Natural materials like straw were woven with gold into a broderie anglaise. Evoking Alice in Wonderland, the collection also featured floral arrangements that had been woven into the models’ hair and the fabric of the clothes.

The trapeze lines — first introduced at Dior in 1958 by then-designer Yves Saint Laurent, who sought to make women look sexy without having to accentuate a slim waistline — also made a return. Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri shared that her inspiration was “the transition between childhood and adulthood and how this moment is represented in a transformation of what we wear.”

At Schiaparelli, designer Daniel Roseberry offered a contrasting idea of womanhood as he presented looks with extremely cinched waistlines. A dramatic corseted nude gown with Chinoiserie embroidery, worn by Kendall Jenner, showcased an accentuated hourglass shape. Alex Consani, who last year became the first transgender Model of the Year, wore a floor-skimming feathered coat.

For Roseberry, the collection was a nod to the past, as he took influence from haute couture pioneer Charles Frederick Worth. The goal, as stated in his show notes, was to “create something that feels new because it’s old” – encapsulating fashion’s ongoing love for archival pieces and the rise of vintage as a luxury status symbol.

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