| The Spring 2018 couture shows wrapped yesterday, with high points ranging from Valentino’s feathered “jellyfish” hats to Clare Waight Keller’s graceful tailoring at Givenchy. Today on Vogue Runway, Chief Critic Sarah Mower reflected on the week’s most noteworthy moments, themes, and surprises. Read on for a few of her highlights, and visit Vogue Runway for the full story. On couture’s modern relevance: “If there’s one thing that leads us in hopes to haute couture, it’s surely the longing to find something to look up to. Fashion needs leadership in these chaotic times, and couture is its high ground. Put aside, for a minute, that only a minute number of women can afford it. For all of us, we need ideas which will surprise and make us wonder, and things which will navigate the wide possibilities that should exist between preserving tradition and presenting a way to engage with today. “Tall orders, but this season, there were moments when they came true. For me, four shows met those longings, set new agendas, and just made me think. Valentino, Givenchy, Maison Margiela, and Ronald van der Kemp topped the leaderboard.” On championing the atelier employees: “One of the express points of couture is that it makes us dwell upon the value of how clothes are made—a fraught issue in this age of fast fashion, waste, and the treatment of workers. Making things by hand is laborious. The culture of producing beautiful things, and the people who make them, should be respected. This week, all of these designers consciously made that link in their own ways, syncing the values of timeless luxury, current relevance, and the work of human hands.” On what couture means in 2018: “[Clare Waight Keller’s first Givenchy haute couture] collection, like [Pierpaolo] Piccioli’s [at Valentino], succeeded in pointing a way towards how a modern woman might put herself together in dignified, graceful high style; a wardrobe to frame personality, beyond trend, to keep forever. It chimed with something Maria Grazia Chiuri had said to me at a lengthy fitting at Dior last weekend. As a pristine white faille trouser suit was tweaked by the team of tailors before us, she laughed, ‘Oh, this is the good thing about couture. It takes time. It can’t be rushed. It’s a good time to be able to think.’ “As an antidote to the fast, furious, and unthinking trajectory of the fashion industry, it turned out this week that the oldest practices in the book were suddenly opening up all kinds of possibilities for better ways of thinking.” Click here to read the full story on Vogue Runway. |
