PARIS (AP) — The demise of couture has been long foretold: It's too expensive, observers say, too fussy, too time-consuming, too incompatible with the way people live today. Couture is breathing its last, they gravely assert, season after season.
But one look at the audience at Dior's spring-summer 2011 haute couture show Monday sufficed to suggest the contrary.
Nearly 1,000 guests braved a persistent drizzle and impossibly cramped seats to marvel at — and perhaps, later, invest in — the spectacular, outlandish, impractical and astronomically priced made-to-measure concoctions. That was about twice as many as attended last season's show, Dior staffers said.
Beyond the numbers, there were other reasons for hope: newcomers Bouchra Jarrar and Alexandre Vauthier, who both sent out bold, graphic collections — Jarrar's minimalist, Vauthier's over-the-top. Both collections underscored the fact that couture can evolve and adapt without losing its raison d'etre.
Jodie Foster's arrival at Giorgio Armani's couture show on the tony Place Vendome sparked a stampede, and the media scrum around the post-show meet-and-greet session between the perma-tanned designer and another A-list guest, Sophia Loren, got ugly.
Armani, a red carpet favorite, gave his celebrity fans lots to lust over with a high-sheen collection of futuristic column dresses.
Frenchman Christophe Josse — for his first collection as a bona-fide "couturier" — sent out featherweight gowns and flippy cocktail dresses in his hallmark materials, lace and tulle.
The couture displays, which began on Monday, run through Wednesday. On Tuesday, luxury supernova Chanel and cross-town rival Givenchy field their collections.
DIOR
Couture collections are a chance for fashion houses to pull out all the stops and showcase the savoir faire of the traditional craftspeople, from embroiders to seamstresses, who hand make the garments.
Most go the easy route, smothering the clothes in sequins and rhinestones, but for spring-summer 2011, Dior's designer, John Galliano, delivered something all together more subtle.
Layers of tulle were painstakingly applied to sumptuous, jewel-toned silks and satins to create gradations of color that evoked the shades of smudged charcoal or pastel. The house's petites mains applied up to seven layers of tulle to create the rich shading that enveloped princess dresses with full, swooshing skirts and cocktail numbers that sprouted bubble-shaped capes at the back.
This is the kind of work that can only happen in couture collections, where each garment requires dozens or even hundred of hours of work and cost as much as some cars.
Subtle and stunning at the same time, the Dior collection was as convincing an argument as any of the value of couture — despite the fact that only a handful of fabulously wealthy women worldwide still buy the clothes.
ARMANI PRIVE
It was like Pierre Cardin deluxe, complete with the flying saucer headgear.
Armani delivered slick and hyper-stylized variations on the futuristic styles that Cardin pioneered in the 1960s and continues to churn out today, without even the smallest change to the original designs, or the polyester fabric.
Armani, who has built an empire out of dressing A-list celebrities for the red carpet, wisely ditched the polyester, sending out long, lean sheath dresses in smoldering fabrics that shown like liquid mercury: A sure fire winner for the bright lights and insistent flash bulbs of the Oscars.
The shimmering fabrics held their shape, and Armani molded them so they alternately hugged and stood stiffly away from the models' bodies, in freestanding panels.
The gowns were like the sleeker, chicer, more highly evolved successor to Cardin's earnest designs. And the models also wore shiny plastic toques, like flying saucers balanced on their foreheads, that were clearly channeling some of Cardin's zany Space Age headgear.
Though lighter on the sequins than usual, the clean, futuristic lines and smoldering jewel-tone fabrics looked sure to please A-list actresses in the market for awards ceremony gowns.
BOUCHRA JARRAR
In the realm of couture, where the rule of thumb is the more bling the better, Jarrar stands out for her clean, pared-down aesthetic — with nary a sequin in sight.
For spring-summer, the Paris-based designer fielded a collection of simple dresses in navy and ivory silk where straight lines of contrast piping or peekaboo lining in shocking pink were as close to flashy as it got.
Still, despite their simple-lined shapes — some of the cocktail numbers were really just sophisticated takes on the pillow dress — the garments had a subtle sensuality. Vents that sliced diagonally down the back of the wide-cut dresses, leaving a swath of skin exposed, proved that clothes don't have to be skintight to be sexy.
This is not red carpet wear, as churned out season after season by other couturiers, but unfussy and appealing clothing for women sure enough of themselves to know they don't need sequins to shine. Coco Chanel would fill her closet with it if she were alive today.
ALEXANDRE VAUTHIER
And if Wonder Woman were a fashionista, she'd definitely wear Vauthier.
His long, lean dresses were made in the kind of clingy fabrics superheros generally favor, with bold, graphic detailing that made it clear it was the wearer's mission to save the world.
Thick gold belts punctuated the jumpsuits in metallic jersey, the wide-cut legs bisected by dramatic, skin-baring slits. A sheath dress dripped long fringe in glinting gold and black beads. A painted-on column dress had oversized Vs in sheer black tulle that effectively ruled out underwear.
And everything, but everything, had sharp power shoulders.
The collection's main flaw — and it was a major one — were the pencil skirts so tight the rail-thin models could barely walk. A ruched gold skirt suit that could only have been sewn on practically hobbled the poor, luckless model, who barely succeeded in inching her way down the catwalk. It was cringe-worthy, just to watch.
Note to Vauthier: Even though super women can fly, they also need to be able to walk.
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