Written by Allyssia Alleyne, CNN
If the prepared-to-put on shows are about promoting product, Paris’ haute couture shows, staged every year in January and July, are about promoting the dream. During the Spring-Summer 2021 season, which happened from January 25 to 28, the few designers working in this rarefied house as soon as once more got here collectively — this time, nearly — to parade their most fantastical designs.
While the theatrical collections sometimes embrace elaborate runway productions, world-constructing has change into tougher as a result of restrictions of the coronavirus pandemic — however not not possible. This season, numerous designers discovered methods to awe by the pc display alone.
Below are this week’s standout moments.
Kim Jones brings the celebrities out at Fendi
Kate Moss and her daughter Lila Grace Moss had been a part of the star-studded group of fashions presenting Kim Jones’ debut Fendi assortment. Credit: Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Imagane
Ever since he was first introduced because the successor to the late Karl Lagerfeld, the business has been eagerly ready to see what Dior menswear designer Kim Jones would do as Fendi’s new head of womenswear and couture — particularly contemplating that he’d by no means formally designed in both class.
This week, he leapt into each when he unveiled his first assortment for the Italian home, impressed by Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando,” a few male aristocrat who wakes up someday as a girl, and Charleston, the East Sussex residence the place Woolf and different members of the Bloomsbury Set would congregate. The present was stacked with gauzy, crystal-embellished robes; flowing capes and sharp, androgynous suiting. In place of a conventional runway present, Jones took over Paris’ Palais Brongniart, with fashions navigating a maze of interlocking glass “F” shapes in a pre-taped video.
The grandiosity and artistry was all however eclipsed by the star-studded solid, which included actress Demi Moore and 1990s supermodels Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss. It was additionally one thing of a household affair: Moss’ 18-year-outdated daughter, Lila Grace, and Turlington’s nephew, former skilled baseball participant James Turlington, had been additionally included, as had been the daughters of Silvia Venturini Fendi, the home’s artistic director for equipment, menswear and youngsters.
Demi Moore walks in Fendi’s couture present Credit: Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images
Charles de Vilmorin makes his colourful couture debut
A mannequin sporting a daring design from French dressmaker Charles de Vilmorin’s haute couture debut. Credit: STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/AFP through Getty Images
In December, lower than a yr after launching his made-to-order enterprise, 24-year-outdated Charles de Vilmorin, a graduate of the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, was invited to point out as a visitor member at haute couture week. And with a bombastic debut, he is established himself as one to observe.
In his video presentation, de Vilmorin’s associates are wearing his new designs, or else coated in rainbows of physique make-up. There are daring-shouldered coats, mini attire with constructed-in breasts, and cropped puffer coats, coated in butterflies, hearts, flowers and faces, all hand-painted by the designer himself.
So far, de Vilmorin has already been given the stamp of approval from designers Jean Paul Gaultier and Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, and he additionally participated in GucciFest, the Italian model’s style and movie competition final fall. After this displaying, his fan base is definitely set to develop.
Valentino proposes informal couture
The Spring-Summer 2021 Valentino haute couture assortment put daywear within the highlight. Credit: Valentino
Last summer time, working with British photographer Nick Knight, Valentino delivered excessive drama with a dwell video that featured fashions perched on rotating risers or aerial rings (all the higher to point out off the Autumn-Winter 2020 assortment’s exaggerated proportions). But this season, artistic director Pierpaolo Piccioli introduced issues again right down to Earth.
In a video titled “Temporal,” fashions sporting the brand new assortment walked by an ornate corridor within the baroque Galleria Colonna in Rome. There had been the same old superb moments of dazzle and sparkle, in sleeveless tops coated in jewels, metallic platform heels and a sequined jumpsuit, however for essentially the most half, daywear took heart stage: outsized trench coats, turtlenecks and chinos; poplin shirts and second-pores and skin attire; and a cashmere-lined hoodie thrown in for good measure.
“My idea is to witness the moment,” Piccioli advised Vogue forward of the debut. “It’s more about pieces that will give an effortlessness.”
Chanel phases a grand wedding ceremony on the Grand Palais
During his tenure at Chanel, the late Karl Lagerfeld remodeled the Grand Palais into every little thing from a grocery store to a rocketship. But this yr, artistic director Virginie Viard struck a completely totally different word in an intimate in-particular person affair.
“I knew we couldn’t organize a big show, that we would have to invent something else, so I came up with the idea of a small cortège that would come down the stairs of the Grand Palais and pass beneath arches of flowers,” Viard mentioned in her present notes. “Like a family celebration, a wedding… “
Chanel invited solely a slim visitor listing — together with model ambassadors Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard and Vanessa Paradis, all sitting far aside — to witness the Spring-Summer 2021 presentation dwell. In the video of the shoot, captured with drones and handheld cameras by photographer Anton Corbijn, fashions first descended onto the flower-strewn runway in a smiling, joyous mob to a slowed-down cowl of the Ronettes traditional “Be My Baby.” The garments themselves, trendy and romantic, included ruffled boleros, organza ball skirts and embroidered attire in pastels, in addition to sleeveless tweed pantsuits and beautiful sheer attire with properly-positioned pockets — appropriate choices for each sort of wedding ceremony visitor.
Christian Dior brings the tarot to life
A glance from Dior’s Spring-Summer 2021 haute couture assortment. Credit: Christian Dior
At a time when the long run feels much less predictable than ever, Dior artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri has taken inspiration from divination, presenting a dramatic assortment impressed by the tarot.
“(Tarot card symbols) provide insight into a magical world that allows us to explore the unknown and look inside ourselves,” Grazia Chiuri mentioned in a publish on Instagram.
In “Le château du tarot,” directed by Matteo Garrone, a younger lady wanders a Tuscan palazzo and encounters dwelling embodiments of a few of the tarot’s Major Arcana — like “The Fool” and “The High Priestess” — every dressed within the Spring-Summer 2020 assortment.
In phrases of design, there are many Grazia Chiuri’s typical hallmarks, together with romantic sheer robes, jacquard and velvet. “Justice” sits primly in excessive-necked inexperienced silk, whereas “The Devil” prefers a plunging neckline. “Death” prefers periwinkle blue and a series-mail veil.
