Fashion’s July is the month that starts with the sparkles and then sends everyone to Slim Aaron-esque summer vacation.
I am not referring to the 4th of July, but couture and, being Couture, it happens in Paris.
Angelo Flaccavento wrote a punkish article on Business of Fashion on the status of Couture and how it’s been somehow occupied and populated by aliens, that is the ones that don’t belong to Couture, but tag-along. It’s a bit like the phenomenon of Art Basel Miami Beach: from being an art show, to one of the most lucrative and successful art shows world-wide, to: everybody hops on the caravan and everything is dressed up as an excuse to create a party around it. And you see things of Fellinian envy.
“Couture is couture - fashion to the nth degree and the last remaining remnant of the old world concept of fashion as a language and privilege of the elite.”
Couture gives “validation”, couture is couture, “fashion to the nth degree and the last remaining remnant of the old world concept of fashion as a language and privilege of the elite.”
It’s a moment of change in Fashion, gender blending and that awkward almost blurring vicinity between ready-to-wear and couture, which is what Flaccavento is sensing after his week in Paris. Couture is old-school, based on rules that are crystallized in the past, it's slow, it's unique, not replicable or Instagrammable in a #ootd
If fashion were a religion, couture would be its god, the tipping point of Mount Olympus, very much noble and aristocratic and less democratic, if the parallel would hold.
Nevertheless, for a fashion hard-core extremist like me, confined in the steamiest and most un-glamorous corner I could ever be left at, I need beauty, I need Fashion with the big F, my “eye has to travel” like editrix extraordinaire Diana Vreeland said perfectly in her own special and creative language.
To make everyone up to speed, a couturier is a créateur de mode appointed by the French Chambre Syndicale de la haute couture and designated by France’s Ministry of Industry, a very specific denomination, it’s like the equivalence of a D.O.C. wine or being “Made in Italy” or being an OBE, it doesn’t happen overnight and when you are, you are. There are 8 Italian designers out of 98 and all I am going to do now is to share my absolutely favorites.
Some facts (you may know or not) in chronological order:
1. Valentino’s duo, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli after many years at the helm of the house, split. Rumors were circulating for a while, since the March runway shows, but it was announced the same day the couture collection was shown. Piccioli remains the sole creative director, Maria Grazia is out. They brought the brand up to the limelight, hard workers, skilled, tenacious and capable to maintain the high standards of the Emperor himself, Mr. Valentino Garavani.
2. Christian Dior, orphan for a few seasons of a creative director after Raf Simons left, tadaaaahhh, has a new creative director, the first woman in the history of the house, and guess who it is? Right: Maria Grazia Chiuri: all the best #girlsrock
3. Fendi showed the collection in Rome, because first they are from Rome and second this year they are celebrating the 90 years of the atelier. Models and furs seemingly walked on the waters (aka, a see-through plexiglass runway) of the Fontana di Trevi, in a fairy tale reminiscing of Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” . Karl (Lagerfeld, as you will get used at how in fashion we call the masters by their first name) even tossed the three coins. It must have been magic, that’s all I can say.
On another note, you may have seen some images of Dolce & Gabbana who threw their version of couture Alta Moda, closing off an entire neighborhood of Napoli: they are not couturiers.