Haute Couture Week A/W 2023 begins this week in Paris, seeing the historic medium – a couture gown is made nearly entirely by hand, for a singular client’s body – take the limelight as the city’s storied houses show off feats of craft and imagination in the season’s most dramatic runway shows. Expect opulent designs, showstopping show sets and a celestial front row – though this season, with some trepidation, as riots and social unrest continued across France over the weekend (Celine chose to cancel its S/S 2024 menswear show, due to take place on Sunday evening, as a mark of respect).
Alongside the titans of haute couture – namely Dior, Chanel, Valentino, Fendi, Schiaparelli and Giorgio Armani Privé – there is also set to be a new generation pushing the boundaries of the medium. Among them, American designer Thom Browne who will hold his first-ever haute couture show on Monday 3 July to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his eponymous brand, Paco Rabanne creative director Julien Dossena who will be this season’s guest designer at Jean Paul Gaultier, and Demna who will bring his no-doubt subversive take on haute couture at Balenciaga.
Here, reporting from the shows, Wallpaper* rounds up the best of Haute Couture Week A/W 2023.
Haute Couture Week A/W 2023: the highlights
Thom Browne
A new addition to the week, Thom Browne hosted his inaugural haute couture show at Paris’ Palais Garnier to celebrate his eponymous brand’s 20th anniversary. It was a natural fit for the American designer, whose ready-to-wear runway shows – presented alternatively in New York and Paris – have long demonstrated the sense of theatre synonymous with haute couture, as well as an intricacy of construction (often, he begins with classic tailoring, exploding it into bold new forms). Entering through Palais Garnier’s backstage area, guests took their place on the theatre’s stage before the curtain rose and revealed an auditorium full of cardboard cutouts clad in the classic Browne’s signature grey suit and sunglasses. ‘For one night only,’ said Browne of the collection, which saw him riff on the preppy American uniform ‘through the lens of haute couture’. As such, striped ties and grey suiting, evocative of collegiate uniforms, became trompe l’oeil designs on expansive wide-sleeved gowns, while flush-to-the-body knee-length latex socks recalled American sportswear. Layers of taffeta, intricate nautical embroidery and the final bridal look, meanwhile, recalled the abundance and handcraft of historic haute couture. Browne said he was imagining a traveller sitting in a station watching the world go by; as such, pebbled leather luggage, weekend bags, and a blown-up version of Browne’s dog-shaped Hector bag completed the look.
Dior
Surrounded by a set designed by Italian artist Marta Roberti – an ode to goddesses and the divine female – Maria Grazia Chiuri’s latest outing saw the designer weave a line between past and present with a collection which explored the relationship between couture and the body. ‘Couture evolves according to a liturgical rhythm, where the past is integrated into every beat of the present,’ she said via the collection’s accompanying notes. ‘In the atelier, there are no paper patterns, as the sketched form is morphed into a dress in the image of the imprint, embracing the body’s singularity.’ In a serene palette of white, beige, silver and gold, there was a reduced, near-ecclesiastical beauty to the collection’s looks. Jackets were pleated to recall ‘classical statues and the fluting of columns’, gowns and overcoats had caped overlays, while elements of richness – a demonstration of Dior’s historic haute couture atelier – ran throughout, from delicate pearls and rich brocades to tassels and shimmering embroidered flowers.
Schiaparelli
Daniel Roseberry said that he looked towards the art world for inspiration for his latest Schiaparelli haute couture collection; each look, he said, was influenced in some way by an artist, spanning 1920s to present day. ‘I wanted to make an impossible wardrobe – impossible not because it’s not wearable, but because it’s so extraordinary, a Surrealist’s interpretation of a woman’s essential closet. There’s a sense of freedom, of disobedience,’ he said, citing artists spanning Salvador Dalí, Lucian Freud, Henri Matisse and Sarah Lucas as informing his thinking this season. As such, the collection had a liberated, eclectic feel – looks were created just days before the show by instinct, rather than meticulously planned for months in advance as in previous seasons – where collars expanded into seemingly impossible sculptural forms, garments were stacked with trinkets or shards of broken mirror, or gowns came in enormous, duvet-like proportions (one was made from a mosaic of 12,000 hand-painted leather rectangles). Sprays of blue paint, edging up models’ necks or across the face, meanwhile, nodded to the work of Yves Klein. ’Going into the unknown, when creative expression and fame feels available to any and all, at least for a moment, we wonder: what can break through?’ said Roseberry. ‘For our maison, it is the power of design, the power of our artisans, and the power of the human hand at work.’
Alaïa
An emotive Alaïa show began with a personal WhatsApp message from Belgian creative director Pieter Mulier. ‘To meet all together on the bridge, just before sundown, when beauty spreads in the city, and colours expand infinitely. Time will tell, always,’ it read, referencing the show’s location – the Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor footbridge, which crosses the Seine from the 1st arrondissement to the 7th. A musing on temporality – ‘giving time, taking time, less time, timeless,’ began the accompanying notes – the collection itself infused 1940s silhouettes with the contemporary frisson of sensuality which has defined Mulier’s tenure at the house so far. Prim high-waist pencil skirts, buttoned-up dresses, and belted trench coats were reimagined in semi-sheer latex, while accessories spanned pillbox hats, wide waist-cinching belts and leather gloves and handbags, grasped to the chest. As ever, a series of astounding silhouettes showed off the near-unparalleled skill of the Alaïa atelier and nodded towards the work of the eponymous house founder, whether body-contouring semi-sheer gowns which revealed corsetry beneath – a play on the ‘bombshell’ silhouette – or the diaphanous final looks, where intricate folds of fabric emerged from the cuff or hip. ‘On a bridge – between the Maison Alaïa’s origins and its present – figures cross in perpetual motion,’ said the house. ‘Their march set against the eternal human backdrop of an ever-ticking clock – the sound of time, yet also the rhythm of life.’
Stay tuned for more from Haute Couture Week A/W 2023.
