Paris Fashion Week: Haute Couture

Atelier Versace Fall/Winter 2013 Couture | Paris Fashion Week: Haute Couture

The inspiration for the new Atelier Versace collection, easily Donatella's most confident since she returned to couture a year and a half ago, was the black-and-white photography of the thirties, updated for the twenty-first century. "Horst and Man Ray," Versace confirmed at the cocktail party that followed the show. Referring to the era, she said, "It was a moment about precision, about perfection, and lots of work." The brand made a triumphant return to the couture shows in Paris where Naomi Campbell took over the catwalk! Clearly Donatella wanted her presence to be known!



Giambattista Valli Fall/Winter 2013 Couture | Paris Fashion Week: Haute Couture

"Flowers and colors are what women want from me," Giambattista Valli said before his couture show - his fifth, the program notes reminded us. "That's what I give them, but every time I get inspired by something different." The something different tonight was porcelain. A photograph of Valli's own Meissen porcelain decorated the back of his invitation; on the runway, he divided the collection into neat sections, each influenced by a different country's china. To start, a series of eight looks in Capodimonte white, their tone-on-tone embroideries setting a sweet, if not quite virginal note that for the most part continued through the other groupings. With its leggy, vertical silhouette - even the floor-grazing trumpet skirts were sheer - this collection seemed to skew more toward Valli's twenty-something acolytes than to octogenarian fan Lee Radziwill.



Jean Paul Gaultier Fall/Winter 2013 Couture | Paris Fashion Week: Haute Couture

Jean Paul Gaultier works a theme like a last nerve. Today's was clearly big cats…big lady cats, to be precise: lionesses, tigresses, cougars. His Couture collection was a celebration of Woman as Predator. The outfits - and the names that Gaultier gave them - had a man-eating subtext: Pussy Faster was a leopard-spotted biker jacket, Catwoman a dark maîtresse-stern concoction of animalist jacquard and Lurex lace, and Cruella de Ville starred ocelot spots in a coat of feathers artfully "camouflaged" as fur. And Black Panther, the last look before the Bride, was modeled by Nabilla Benattia, a mantrap who is tabloid bait in France for her reality TV antics. The word bustier could have been invented just for her.



Maison Martin Margiela Fall/Winter 2013 Couture | Paris Fashion Week: Haute Couture

If fashion is alchemy of a kind, Maison Martin Margiela's Artisanal initiative is one of its most explicit expressions. Pieces from other times and places are restored, reworked, sometimes remade. Their provenance and the amount of man hours spent transforming them are meticulously detailed. It could so easily be an obsessive academic exercise, but in practice, there is something captivating and respectful about the process of giving new life to these old clothes, never mind that the results are often so beautiful. The alchemists wanted to turn lead to gold. If the Margiela source material today was scarcely lead - sequined costumes from the Beijing Opera in the 1930s were striking in their own right, as were two embroidered Art Nouveau curtains in silk tulle - it was gilded by the transformation. The tulle, for instance, was laid over a strapless column in lustrous fuchsia satin.



Ulyana Sergeenko Fall/Winter 2013 Couture | Paris Fashion Week: Haute Couture

After collections devoted to Russian fairy tales and American literature, Ulyana Sergeenko turned to orthodox architecture and priests' vestments as inspiration for her third couture show. Bell silhouettes replaced the wasp-waists of her recent outings, ruffled collars grazed the chin, and arms more often than not were covered. Deep pleats, dense wools, and an abundance of black and charcoal gray added a certain austerity to the proceedings, alleviated by a pair of cardinal-red dresses and another in absinthe-green silk velvet.



Valentino Fall/Winter 2013 Couture | Paris Fashion Week: Haute Couture

As couturiers, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli found the idea of the wunderkammer particularly appealing. "In a cabinet of curiosities, the pieces are very unique, very one-of-a-kind," Piccioli said. "We've tried to make something that is not only special, but also surprising, unexpected."

(via Style.com)