Paris Fashion Week kicked-off yesterday, and here I'd like to give you a summary (part I) of the Haute Couture shows for spring 2015 presented in January, starting with Dior, VALENTINO, ALBRECHT OLLENDIEK, Atelier Versace, ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER, Chanel, ELIE SAAB, LA PERLA Atelier, ARMANI Privé, Giambattista Valli, Maison Margiela by John Galliano - enjoy stylish fashion news and follow me on Instagram @andreajankeofficial for live-streamed updates of the running Paris Fashion Week shows, today with ROCHAS Fall/Winter 2015/16! LoL, Andrea
There were beautiful pleated skirts and dresses of dramatically full proportions, striated with different colored ribbons. Guipure lace became a base on which to layer and layer and then layer again with rich encrustations of sequins, which were sometimes mixed with that spongey wool beloved by André Courrèges et al, rendered in a series of short, sixties-esque dresses.
For spring 2015 haute couture Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli are in the mood for love. Their inspiration board was lined with quotes from Shakespeare, bits and pieces of Dante's Inferno, and the paintings of Marc Chagall, hopeless romantics all. Chagall, in particular, captivated them. "He had an incredible life, very hard, but he maintained his optimistic vision," Piccioli said. The painter's Russian ancestry provided a leitmotif for the embellishments that are so central to the designers' aesthetic.
Couture collections by ALBRECHT OLLENDIEK have wonderful titles, such as 'The Black Sheep', 'LA FORÊT SAUVAGE' , 'Fare thee well my Highlands', or here linked to this 'extrait' out of 'La Princesse Bolchevique'. Albrecht's newest Couture 2015 presentation (always held very soon before the start of Paris Couture Week in January), presented each November at Schlosshotel Kronberg, entitled 'échappé !' featuring Eveline Hall. Enjoy these three ALBRECHT OLLENDIEK Couture-teaser, a sneak-peek of his creative work!
'échappé! by ALBRECHT OLLENDIEK Couture 2015
'Fare thee well my Highlands' by ALBRECHT OLLENDIEK Couture 2014
'LA FORÊT SAUVAGE' by ALBRECHT OLLENDIEK Couture 2013
The idea this season, as Donatella Versace put it, was "to go back to the shape of a woman's body, which is curvy." There wasn't a straight line to be found, not on the terrific black tailleurs that opened the show, nor on a trio of the youthful emoji-embroidered minidresses worn with matching knee-high boots, and definitely not on the evening dresses with their swirling arabesque insets of nude mesh.
'ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER Spring 2015 Haute Couture'
In December the Chambre Syndicale awarded Alexandre Vauthier the official haute couture appellation. For a designer, acceptance into what's arguably the most elite of all fashion circles ranks right up there with a royal endorsement in Vauthier's case, of the pop-culture variety. Beyoncé, Kim K., Rihanna, and Heidi Klum remain among the designer's steady patronesses, and one can confidently assume he designs with them in mind.
'Paris Haute Couture | CHANEL Spring 2015 Couture'
One definition of superb haute couture is that it’s the art of making impossibly difficult things seem as if they just poof! happened that way naturally. That’s precisely how Karl Lagerfeld’s spring haute couture was, a pleasingly unforced blooming of Chanel flower ideas set in an artificial hothouse.
'The Vision of Beauty by ELIE SAAB Spring 2015 Couture'
"Like the sun upon the Mediterranean Sea, accents of gold thread embroidery offset a temperate color palette of green, blue, pink and powdered ivory in evening glamour. The ELIE SAAB Spring/Summer 2015 Haute Couture collection expresses the poursuit of a dream in an orchestrian of soft hues scintillating light and an elegance that eludes time." - The House of ELIE SAAB
'LA PERLA Atelier 2015 Haute Couture'
Undress to Impress
In January saw luxurious lingerie label La Perla Atelier Spring 2015 Couture reveal a tantalizing glimpse of their breathtaking Inside-Out Spring/Summer 2015 collection in the opulent and intimate salon setting of Paris's Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild. Exploring the notion of ‘what we keep secret and what we reveal’, it represented ‘the underpinnings of the external image’.
'Paris Haute Couture | ARMANI Privé Spring 2015 Couture'
Giorgio Armani designed his Privé collection around a single motif, that of the bamboo plant. It was all over the prints on the daywear (multiple versions on cropped, wide pants), recurred in bugle-beaded embroideries, in Plexiglas neckpieces, in delicate appliqués on organza. The symbolism was primarily meaningful to him, but not because of its Asian associations, he said.
VALENTINO Fifth Avenue - For the occasion of the opening of the new VALENTINO flagshipstore, 963 Fifth Avenue in New York last August, the Roman couture house presented on December 10th, 2014, for the first time ever an Haute Couture show in NYC, 945 Madison Avenue. Though a fair number of fashion VIPs were over in Tokyo awaiting the Dior Pre-Fall extravaganza, there were still dozens of the industry’s great and good on hand last night at the Madison Avenue building formerly known as the Whitney Museum of American Art. They had come from places near and far to witness the Valentino Sala Bianca Haute Couture show.
Giambattista Valli’s inspiration board for his Couture No. 8 presentation this spring 2015 season featured images of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel in a pensive mood in the thirties, and then taking a walk in the gardens of the Tuileries in feisty later life juxtaposed with portraits of Janis Joplin, in hippie patchwork and bellbottoms.
Maison Margiela Spring 2015 Couture - You can usually tell how pleased a designer is with his or her collection by their end-of-show appearance. Last Monday in London, John Galliano took his first proud bow since his much talked-about leave from Dior in 2011. Wearing Maison Margiela’s signature white lab coat (his appointment there being another much talked-about incident), he was clearly happy to be back and rightfully pleased with his first couture collection for the house.
