ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories: Terry Richardson

Monday, 8 July 2013

DIOR Fall 2013 Couture Scenography

The scenography of the Fall/Winter 2013/14 haute couture collection by Raf Simons for DIOR took the show toward another horizon, between art performance and freedom of expression.

Upon entering the room, the guests had already forgotten that the fashion show was taking place in front of the majestic Hôtel des Invalides. Instead, they felt as though they'd crossed the Seine and found themselves at number 30, Avenue Montaigne, in the house of Dior's couture salons. On the four walls of the cube inside which they sat were projected images from the historic salons where fashion shows have taken place since the time of Monsieur Dior. It was all there: the Trianon gray carpet, the medallion-back chairs, the carved woodwork and the moldings. Then, the grayed images of the salons segued progressively into photographs of tapestries of flowers - orange, fuchsia, pale pink, or white and blue stripes.

Each wall-as-screen was given over to a different color and different flowers, just as at Raf Simons' very first couture show for Dior, exactly a year ago. As the models came out, the walls came to life with giant projections of photographs. Shot backstage, before the looks took to the runway, they were of the same models wearing the same looks. They were also the work of Patrick Demarchelier, Terry Richardson, Paolo Roversi and Willy Vanderperre: four legendary photographers, four artists asked by Raf Simons to convey their own vision of his couture, their idea of his women in Dior. And so Patrick Demarchelier gave his elegant and delicate interpretation of the looks evoking Europe, Paolo Roversi poetically captured the looks inspired by Asia, Willy Vanderperre's dreamlike aesthetic represented the Americas, and Terry Richardson's wit energized the looks symbolizing Africa. Fashion plates and masterly visions. On the runway, the models walked before their own images, providing depth to the dialogue between the presentation of the collection and its representation, between the universal and the personal. Contained within all that is the new dimension that Raf Simons sought to bring to the Dior couture.

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Photo credit/Source: The House of DIOR

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'Haute Couture | DIOR Fall 2013 Couture'

"As a force relatively new to couture, it is fascinating to watch Simons apply his experimental intelligence to creating an immersive experience out of his shows, while simultaneously thinking through what it means to design for Christian Dior’s global clientele."

Tuesday, 2 July 2013

Haute Couture | DIOR Fall 2013 Couture

“I think it’s time to free couture,” declared Raf Simons as he came up from hugging a delighted Jennifer Lawrence amid the backstage melee of congratulations after his third Christian Dior couture show. “It annoys me that couture is thought of as the circus clown of fashion,” he continued. “What interests me is to get down to a more psychological level. To think about individuality, and the cultures women live in.”

Enjoy the DIOR Couture fashion show video at the end of this post! Love, Andrea

As a force relatively new to couture, it is fascinating to watch Simons apply his experimental intelligence to creating an immersive experience out of his shows, while simultaneously thinking through what it means to design for Christian Dior’s global clientele. This time, he treated his audience to a show conceptualized to investigate the influence of Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa on Dior. Huge digital projections of the girls wearing the clothes shot by Patrick Demarchelier, Terry Richardson, Willy Vanderperre, and Paolo Roversi appeared on the walls of a white box as the models walked past.

Although he divided the collections into sections gray tweed tailoring symbolizing France, clean-cut coats and sporty scarves for America; spiky 3-D Japanese fabrics for Asia;and Masai-inspired drapes and tribal beading for Africa it was far from being a show about regional stereotypes (which might have fallen into Simons’s idea of couture as “circus.”) Instead, it was more of a series of investigations of form, color, asymmetric draping, and degrees of transparency (semi-sheer skirts are trending all over Paris). The underlying sense is that Simons is pushing himself both to explore possibilities beyond the classic Fifties Dior templates he honored when he first stepped into the house last year, and to challenge his own innate minimalism.

Among the diversity of looks there were beautiful standouts: a series of the strapless dresses that are sure to be a Simons-for-Dior hit on every red carpet; a scarlet fur coat with cutout shoulders; an amazingly regal black-and-white-spotted full-skirted dress with a caped back and matching elbow-length gloves. What the whole might have lacked in total coherence was more than made up for in the believability of every piece. Simons is outward-looking, keen to learn, and to tune into the lives of modern women; it’s easy to imagine his reality-couture being snapped up and worn in the four corners of the wealthy world.