The Past as Road to Tomorrow

At Dior, Marie Antoinette-worthy corsets and crinolined brocade gowns displayed a deft interplay between the past and the future. CreditValerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

PARIS — Fashion can occasionally seem as if it exists in its own bubble. (An allover sequined diaper catsuit? Who would wear that?) But this season, the Paris couture shows played out against a background of almost palpable conflict, from the organized and (mostly) entertaining — Federer vs. Djokovic; Brazil vs. Germany — to the unexpected and dismaying: Israel vs. Hamas, the civil war in Ukraine. Escapism was not on the agenda.

It raised the expectation that perhaps what we would see would be a fight, in this context as in those, over what exactly constitutes the point of the couture exercise. Is it about preservation? Employment? Artistry? Reality? Perfume? And a debate, once more, about whether it should exist at all.

It’s not that hard to understand: Fashion is at its best, and most broadly meaningful, when it reflects the mood of the world around it. If that world is divided — well, then, chances are fashion will be, too.

Except this time around it wasn’t. This time around, for the first time in a long time, the vast majority of the couture houses were in agreement, at least about the essential question it is their job to address. Or simply dress, as it were. What was it? Consider the following statements:

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At Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld struck a balance  between baroque gilt and the minimalism of Le Corbusier.CreditValerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From Raf Simons, creative director of Dior: “I was interested in the process of finding something extremely modern, through something very historical.”

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Giambattista Valli played with tulle and dense floral embroidery.CreditValerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, creative directors ofValentino: “We were thinking about how memory can become modernity.”

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Versace evening dresses with peekaboo detail. CreditValerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From Donatella Versace, creative director of Atelier Versace: “I wanted to make couture modern.”

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Armani Privé conveyed a stripped-down elegance, many looks in lacquered shades of red and black.CreditValerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

And that was just the beginning. At Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld took as his starting point a Le Corbusier apartment built beside the Champs-Élysées in the 1930s, and the juxtaposition of (yes) modern elements like concrete with baroque decoration. At Armani Privé, Giorgio Armani focused on youth as a way of skewing clothes (here we go again) more modern.

Valentino

At Valentino, the designers abstracted their starting point (pre-Raphaelites and Pompeii) to such a degree the collection felt liberated from the chains of time and place.

It could have been tiresome. “Modern” sometimes seems like the fashion equivalent of mouthing “watermelon, watermelon” over and over when you forget the words to a song — i.e., the fallback solution. Or suspiciously coordinated (what, did they all get together over croissants and café crème and make a plan?), except that the results were so good.

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At Schiaparelli, Marco Zanini relied on 1940s signposts — padded shoulders, fur and fringe — with tongue-in-cheek asides. CreditValerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

Besides, it was not just the giant global names thinking this way. Bouchra Jarrar, the relatively young independent French couturier, has always made something of a signature out of focusing almost obsessively on defining couture in her own terms, and this time round that meant exploring ways to reimagine that (what else do you call it?) modern classic, the motorcycle jacket: in metallic tweed, crystal and feathers; with rosettes blossoming from the buckled waist. And Maison Martin Margiela, in its Artisanal collection, revisited “a collective memory of Haute Couture,” so that archetypes (a scrap of a Paul Poiret cloak, old French francs, Japanese silk bomber jackets) were “erased and re-coloured” into contemporary lines. The coins were transformed into giant paillettes, the brocade into a gilet, the bombers into a patchwork gown. In other words, haute recycling. An only slightly edited catchphrase of today.

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Schiaparelli. CreditValerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

Plus, there were exceptions that made you long for the rule: Ulyana Sergeenko, whose love of a “fairy tale” had her spinning sartorial stories of Russia in the 1920s; Malevich and Tamara de Lempicka, as expressed in leather aprons over lace minidresses, cocoon coats with luxurious collars, and molded maillots paired with chiffon; and Jean Paul Gaultier, who once upon a time was the revolutionary of French fashion, but now seems like nothing so much as its relic, trapped in the old show strategies of theme with almost no variations. This season that meant Morticia Addams-meets-“True Blood”-meets-Club Kids, with the elegance of an organza trench coat, the collar a mille-feuille of layers, obscured by a silver sweatsuit of camp.

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Ulyana Sergeenko’s molded bustier over chiffon. CreditNowfashion

The lack of urgency in those collections was connected to their absence of present sense, as were the efforts that didn’t quite work, like Marco Zanini’sSchiaparelli. There, despite the designer’s stated goal of developing a new language for the brand to bring it into the 21st century, his reliance on a classic 1940s silhouette (exaggerated shoulders and overblown fur or fringed sleeves; high-waist wide-leg trousers) and jokey asides like an “ES” in giant letters on a pink cashmere bathrobe coat, or rats hidden among the squirrels on an otherwise lovely bias-cut gown, ultimately felt bogged down in history.

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A gossamer Valentino gown, left, and a patchwork gown at Maison Martin Margiela.CreditValerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

Even the abstainers, like Giambattista Valli and Elie Saab, both of whom have built their reputations on a consistency of aesthetic on which their clients have come to rely, and who did not seem inclined to rock that reliable cruise ship — see, for example, the party clothes for social girls of the first, from silk pajama-striped shifts and sheer floral sheaths to tulle feathered ball skirts smartly paired with PJ shirting, and the glinting, sparkling Cinderella extravaganzas of the second — seemed to be missing the bigger question, which was how to define a fluid interplay between past and future.

In other words: now.

By contrast, Ms. Versace took as her starting point traditional tuxedo dressing and then deconstructed and reconstructed it in the vernacular of the house, so that slim ankle-length skirts wrapped around one leg to become an asymmetrical trouser in the front and then segued into a truncated micro short on the other leg; miniskirts had corseted hip yokes; and evening gowns played peekaboo with bathing suits sculpted in crystals. It was weird and unexpected — not two garments in one, but three or four — and while it didn’t always work, it was never less than original; fully committed to a vision of what might be coming all its own.

Similarly, an unexpected move from Mr. Armani, who eschewed his usual fluid trouser suits for softly gathered shorts paired with trapeze jackets, conveyed a stripped-down elegance (better, ultimately, than the giant chubbies of organza faux fur), while Mr. Simons’s ability to conduct a conversation in tenses lent the Dior collection a clarity of purpose that telegraphed desirability, of both spirit and garment. His ball gowns were given the nonchalance of a tank top, Marie Antoinette-inspired corsetry transformed into quilted miniskirt suits, astronaut coveralls embroidered with just a bit of gilt, parachute silks belted into garden party frocks, and pastel frock coats paired with plain black trousers and T-shirts.

Any identifiable reference to ye days of olde had as its counterpoint a nod to the space age, and together the combination transcended both, as it did at Chanel, where Mr. Lagerfeld walked a masterful line between baroque not-too-much-excess and minimalist architecture and materials. Classic bouclé suits and A-line coats were layered with bicycle shorts; cocktail dresses in the same clean lines encrusted in tarnished metallics, industrial and gilt-edged; and balloon-shaped Neoprene gowns embroidered in rococo curls.

And so it was, too, at Valentino, where Ms. Chiuri and Mr. Piccioli abstracted their starting point (pre-Raphaelites and Pompeii) to such a degree the collection felt liberated from the chains of time and place. Corsets, for example, were reinvented as an external accessory in the form of black leather strips sewn into the side seams of simple silhouettes and crisscrossed and wrapped as the wearer desired, so that instead of an instrument of containment they became a tool of self-transformation; togas reduced to pure rectangular form, then draped or twisted around the body in one piece; and medieval heraldry and semiology married to the designers’ signature monastic silhouette via intarsia techniques, so that they seemed not a pastiche but an integral part of the whole.

Mr. Piccioli explained it thus: “Simplicity should represent the resolution of complexity; it should be the arrival point, not the starting point.” Though he was speaking of his own collection, he could well have been summing up the point of the week. It’s a truth that is not in any way unique to fashion, but one that in all contexts should be worth — well, fighting for.

Source: The New York Times