Paris Haute Couture Week Fall 2013: Schiaparelli, Chanel and Sergeenko

By: Tamara Arnew

Few things can be comparable to the enchantment that comes with the shows of couture weeks. The only thing that might be as marvelous is the idea of having snowfall in July. In Paris, the summer shown collections for fall and winter spellbind us with both: the golden promise of a bewitching new season with floor length gowns and the most lustrous of winter’s textiles yet the iridescent feeling that our shift from summer still lingers some ways away yet.

SOURCE: THE HUFFINGTON POST

SOURCE: STYLE.COM

The awaited Christian Lacroix collection in the name of Italian, surrealist inspired Elsa Schiaparelli was more then an accolade to the work of the house that closed in 1954. The eighteen-pieces were shown in the Pavillon de Flore of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs that showcased Lacroix’s own final collection in 2009. His work marks not the end of Schiaparelli but a collaboratively inspired symbol of an artist openly admiring the subtleties in her design and style that so influenced his own patronage. In a space, with decor to resemble Schiaparelli's atelier, the Dali-ent creations were as unexpected as they were undeniably honouring an illusion of all things Elsa. 

PHOTO SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES, THE AUSTRALIAN

PHOTO SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES, THE AUSTRALIAN

Chanel's work may have rivalled that of Schiaparelli in wartime and a history of couturiers, but the season's perspective from Lagerfeld was with a post-apocalyptic eye to the future. While deriving first thoughts from the tweed sentiment we know best, there was a collection taking from an ocean of emptiness. The odyssey, mysteriously in the ruins of a metropolis Iliad, provided backdrop to subtly armed and adorned uniformity.  

PHOTO CREDIT: STYLE.COM

PHOTO CREDIT: STYLE.COM

Ulyana Sergeenko shows her third couture collection in Paris with elements of a once native Russia that moves with an architectural older worldliness and the provocative turn of an abandoned church. The collection gives a haunting feeling of fashion having turned away from folklore solemnity just as it becomes relevant in a way that resonates. 

Sources: The Huffington Post, Another Magazine, Style.com, Stylesight.com, The Australian