PARIS — The Dior brand opened its first Miss Dior boutique in 1967 as the ready-to-wear revolution was changing fashion. That was the archival moment that Maria Grazia Chiuri fixed on for her new collection. I was imagining it might have been the democratic essence of the concept that appealed to her, but Chiuri insisted ready-to-wear represented less democracy than an embrace of immediacy for a new kind of customer, all those daughters of couture clients who couldn’t be bothered to wait six months for a new outfit. They wanted their short skirts and pant suits NOW!
So that’s the vibe I expected from Chiuri’s collection. Something a little bit on the swinging side, more effervescence, less uniformed sobriety. Short, sweet, maybe a bit silly. But that isn’t what Chiuri does. Her essential seriousness won’t allow it. There’s always a female artist collab, for instance, and always a weighty manifesto to go with it. The collab this time was with Shakuntala Kulkarni, a multi-disciplinary artist from Mumbai who sensationally filled the central show space with cane frames, like samurai armour, that suggested “the fighting power of a woman’s body.” It was so gilded and glorious that you had all fingers and toes crossed for some of its energy to seep into Chiuri’s clothes. But, like I said, that’s not what she does.
Instead, there’s something banal about her designs, a sort of “everyday-ness”, maybe even the kind that Matthieu Blazy was talking about after his Bottega Veneta show in Milan on Saturday. Except he wanted to monumentalise his as a gesture of defiance, while she just keeps hers on an even keel of distinct ordinariness. But here’s where it gets a little weird. It’s Chiuri’s banality that is defiant. Like a force of nature, it is relentlessly, completely convincing, to the point where resistance is clearly futile. If her corporate paymasters are to be believed, her clothes are consummate ker-ching.
The primary graphic for Chiuri’s new collection was derived from the shopping bag Alexandre Sache designed for the Miss Dior boutiques in 1967. She opened the show with a pant suit, acknowledging the newness of trousers for Miss Dior’s first customers. There was a string of smart little skirts and jackets, some artfully worn denims, a double-breasted white trouser suit with black buttons, which would have looked smart on Emma Peel (especially if she’d whipped the jockey’s cap off the following model), a dress of gold bugle beads with gold fringing, and a rather fabulous belted leopard coat. Listed like that, it scarcely sounds banal. And Chiuri even suggested that her geometric silhouettes drew something from the forms of Gabriella Crespi, an Italian sculptor whose radicalism she has always admired. That’s scarcely the first time she’s expressed an admiration for trailblazers.
So why does her own work come across as so timid, so repetitive, so by the book? That’s why I’m suggesting she’s defiant. Every so often, she proves she knows better. But she is, after all, very successfully keeping her customer satisfied. Incidentally, Otter, my digital transcription app, translated “pret-a-porter” as “threat-of-poverty” tonight. Quite the Freudian slip.
Anthony Vaccarello’s defiance at Saint Laurent was something else altogether. Last season’s utilitarian cottons left him craving sensation. So he showed a collection that was barely there. It was literally body stockings, outfits made from sheer stocking material. Not muslin, not mousseline, but the stuff that clings and ladders. It was even seamed like stockings as it curved around hips and breasts. And when it wasn’t that, it was a knit onesie, woolen suspenders snapped to stockings.
It truly was the most perverse fashion statement I’ve seen in a dog’s age. “These dresses took four days to make and if you don’t treat them properly, they rip and have to be made again,” Vaccarello said just before the show. He acknowledged that the clothes were so fragile the models were standing motionless backstage in case something laddered. “But I like the idea of paying attention to something that will not stay forever,” he added. “I like the idea of something that’s over the day after.”
He had no idea how such clothes would actually be produced. Never mind how anyone would wear them in winter. Vaccarello agreed it was a sort of “fuck you.”
Saint Laurent Autumn/Winter 2024 (Spotlight/Launchmetrics.com) Saint Laurent Autumn/Winter 2024 (Spotlight/Launchmetrics.com) Saint Laurent Autumn/Winter 2024 (Spotlight/Launchmetrics.com)
“There are so many brands, so much stuff going on that looks the same that I want to propose something that’s different, or something that’s not been done before. I want to feel electricity, also controversy, something that people will love or hate.”
I loved it, like I loved John Galliano’s Margiela show a month ago, for similar reasons. The extraordinary craft, the fleeting gorgeousness, the ephemerality, literally here today, gone tomorrow. And the frisson. The culture is so crowded with naked bodies, we can hardly imagine the shock of Saint Laurent’s bosom-baring mousselines in 1966. “How do you shock today with see-through?” Vaccarello wondered. He is about to find out.
But there was also the frisson of his subtle tribute to Yves Saint Laurent’s most notorious collection, the “Libération” couture of 1971. The 1940′s silhouette, the wedged shoes, the huge fluffy chubbies spun from marabou were shadowy evocations of that controversial episode. There were a couple of cabans carved from black rubber, reminders of Saint Laurent’s equally provocative beatnik collection from 1962. All in all, a grand night for Anthony Vaccarello, poking the bear of propriety.
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