Two fashion heavyweights looked back to the
1960s at Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday, with Christian Dior paying homage to
the revolutionary “Miss Dior” line and Saint Laurent building a collection
around the transparent sheer outfits beloved of its founder.
The see-through dress has been a celebrity fashion staple over the past
year, and Saint Laurent took it to the extreme with extensive use of materials
“like mist”, according to the show notes.
Anthony Vaccarello, who has directed the French house since 2016, revisited
one of Yves Saint Laurent’s obsessions: “minimising the distance between
fabric and skin”.
Guests including Kate Moss and K-Pop megastar Jisoo were treated to waves
of chiffon, lace and tulle, offering a more risque version of the luxury
nightwear of recent seasons — and impeccably timed to coincide with an
exhibition entitled “Sheer” at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum.
Simon Longland, director of buying for London department store Harrods,
described it as “bursting with juxtaposition”
“The silhouette, cut and styling was in large part ladylike and
conservative in its femininity — think pencil skirts, pussy blow blouses and
delicate hosiery — (but) delivered in fabrications that were mostly sheer and
slinky,” he said.
‘Miss Dior’ reborn –
Earlier, a starry audience including Jennifer Lawrence and Natalie Portman
saw a very different ode to the past at Christian Dior.
Its collection was almost entirely monochrome and beige — a heady mix of
nouveau riche fantasy, from gabardine to the little white dress, via tweed and
more urban denim and leopard-print styles.
It harked back to the launch of the “Miss Dior” line in 1968, when a daring
new vision of femininity emerged for newly liberated women.
It was named after the founder’s sister, Catherine Dior, a resistance hero
who suffered a traumatic period in a Nazi concentration camp.
It’s a story told in the current Apple TV series “The New Look”, and the
stars were present for Tuesday’s show, including Ben Mendelsohn, who plays
Christian Dior, and Maisie Williams, who plays Catherine.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve become a fashionista since doing the show, but I’m
certainly more appreciative of the role that fashion plays,” Mendelsohn told
AFP.
“I’m still really just sort of hit with the force of the looks and the
enormous variety of it, I mean there’s a lot of pieces there!”
The first full day of the womenswear autumn/winter collections began
earlier with the typically classy stylings of Spain’s Victoria and Tomas
earlier in the day.
Their show, inspired by Auguste Rodin’s “The Kiss”, featured lots of
knotted details and scarves integrated into dresses that evoked classical
sculpture.
The husband-and-wife team — a rarity in the fashion world — founded their
brand in 2012 after Tomas Berzins and Victoria Feldman met at a Paris design
school.
“‘The Kiss’ is really a balance between something very heavy and cold like
marble and something warm and fast like movement,” Feldman told AFP.(AFP)
