Couture Has to Be About More Than Just Gowns
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Hell hath no fury like a commenter wronged. In the hours after Balenciaga’s Fall 2024 haute couture show on June 26, conversations exploded across Instagram, TikTok, and X about Demna’s latest collection. “This is just ridiculous, irresponsible, and so against the codes of Cristobal,” commented one Instagram user.
Based on the vitriolic response, you might think the creative director had presented something chaotic, offensive, or transgressive. But no, no. On his ivory runway were jeans, sweatshirts, flannels, and a finale dress made of the black nylon traditionally reserved for the lining of couture gowns. The dress had been assembled in the 30 minutes before the show, wrapped around a model by the atelier team into a shape like a gigantic black tornado.
“I wanted to kind of leave it in that very primitive state of fabric because for me, the mastery of Cristóbal Balenciaga was also doing as little seams and darts as possible. That’s one of the biggest things I admire about his work,” Demna told reporters backstage after the show. “The last six looks in the collection, they’re basically based on that research of reducing seams, minimalizing, and it culminates with this dress that is basically 47 meters of nylon that is draped about 30 minutes before the show. The dress didn’t exist. I want it to be like this ephemeral dress, because nobody really needs couture, to be honest.”
To the masses, this was transgressive—disrespectful even. But against an increasingly stiff, formal, and sequined Couture Week, Demna’s relaxed collection of contemporary clothes exalted to couture status felt like a much-needed release. It wasn’t just the guided meditation that served as the show’s soundtrack—“Take a moment to consider what it means to live a truly happy life,” a calm female voice recited—that made the collection so compelling, but the relaxedness with which he approached couture itself.
In the post-pandemic fashion world, couture has become a safe haven for extreme silhouettes and extreme sparkle. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of supersize campiness—the incredible character-building of Robert Wun’s and Viktor & Rolf’s cartoon couture—but seven days of luxuriating feels not only overly saccharine but also unrealistic, given the state of the world. Couture cannot just be about preserving the past, the house codes, the silhouettes, and the attitudes about class and propriety. To be modern, it must also be about contemporary dress and contemporary life.
Look at it this way: Even the celebrities attending these shows aren’t wearing gowns. At Balenciaga, Katy Perry went nearly nude in tights and a black fur coat (it was like 90 degrees, by the way), while Charli XCX continued her understated Brat streak in a black shirtdress. Yseult wore a suit to Christian Dior. Kerry Washington wore a tweed skirt suit to Chanel. Even Jennifer Lopez—she of the glitziest entrances of contemporary history—wore a beige trench to the Dior runway. Glamour and gowns are fabulous, but against a summer of political unease, the sparkles begin to feel almost sinister.
What’s more, fashion is grappling with finding its new normal—not just in how it operates but also in the clothes it makes. No dominant trend has replaced the streetwear movement of the late 2010s, and in trying to define the “quiet luxury” of our moment, designers are struggling to make clothes that are minimalist in spirit but exciting enough to warrant a place on the catwalk. It’s something the menswear shows that immediately preceded the couture shows had to grapple with: What makes a suit runway worthy? Or chinos? Or even a hoodie? Couture could learn something from the best menswear designers about bringing ingenuity and grace to simple and viable ideas.
That might be why Thom Browne’s Olympic-themed collection felt so fresh. Levity was laced into Browne’s corsets and intricate beadwork. Nobody does a cheeky joke quite like him, and his best were trompe l’oeil bathing-suit printed dresses and semitransparent transparent suits that looked elegant and breezy. (They would have been well suited for the ultra-hot weather that descended on Paris Couture.)
Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri found a similar lightness by channeling the Olympics as well, creating bodysuits and elegantly draped dresses that flattered the models wearing them. Giorgio Armani found inspiration in pearlescent fabrics, offering one of his best collections of late, which, funnily enough, was on the lips of some of Paris’s most avant-garde independent designers. (People you’d think had never even clicked on an Armani runway slideshow were suddenly talking up his sinuous blazers over chilled reds at dinner.) Even Daniel Roseberry, who can reach the campy couture heights better than any others, offered monochrome suits and dresses with rounded shoulders and bow details that felt like easy alternatives to his avian-inspired gowns.
At Jean Paul Gaultier, Nicolas Di Felice brought the streetwise sensibility he has perfected at Courrèges to the couture catwalk. With little to no embellishment—the sparkling details are actually thousands of hook-and-eye closures layered together to look like beads—Di Felice walked through Parisian street-style staples. There was the belted trench, the skinny black trouser and tank, denim whipped into a bias-draped dress, and hot corseted minis, coming together on a cast of models and artists like Petra Collins and Arca in a way that made you wish the runway continued right into a party.
Those kinds of believable clothes were also seen at Julie de Libran, Patou, and across the ANDAM Fashion Award winners who were feted in the Palais-Royal at the end of the week. Led by Anthony Vaccarello, the ANDAM jury awarded the grand prize to Aussie Christopher Esber, whose slinky dresses are, effectively, cool-girl couture. 3.Paradis, a spritely brand of embellished and graphic sportswear, took home the special prize.
Two days prior, “everybody in fashion” as one friend put it, piled into the Dover Street Market Paris courtyard to celebrate the opening of the store. Guests clung to the giant wood cylinders printed with Paolo Roversi pictures wearing cotton Kiko Kostadinov tanks, eyelet Chopova Lowena skirts, and wafty denim Vaquera dresses. Up the grand staircase, just beyond the Simone Rocha for Jean Paul Gaultier haute couture installation—beautiful corsets and thorny little bras—were Simone and Jean Paul themselves. “Ooh la la!” Gaultier exclaimed upon seeing that Simone and I were wearing matching Crocs. “Do they come with the gems?”
Isn’t that just what the couture shows should be about? The irony, the beauty, and the functionality of clothing as useful as it is joyous? That kind of wearable, pragmatic, and devastatingly chic garment was the premise of Coco Chanel’s work—and it was her legacy that cast the longest shadow over the entire week. After Virginie Viard’s shocking departure, the brand presented a studio-designed couture collection, but the real Chanel story was the gossip about who would take over the storied brand. It must be someone who understands subculture, who can make whimsical sportswear and light eveningwear, and who can psychoanalyze women’s wardrobes and offer a beautiful, tough alternative to all the constricting schmaltz out there.
The biggest fashion job of this decade should be about making both elegant gowns and silly Crocs, pushing the conversation forward and giving women smart clothing to use and to love. So you sort of have to wonder why Simone was in Paris after all … and if it’s not her, Chanel should look to the contemporary couturists who follow in Coco and Karl’s legacy.
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