Paris Haute Couture Week Fall 2013: Viktor & Rolf, Maison Martin Margiela and Valentino

By: Tamara Arnew

PHOTO CREDIT: ALFREDO PIOLA, NEW YORK TIMES 

PHOTO CREDIT: ALFREDO PIOLA, NEW YORK TIMES

PHOTO CREDIT: FRANCOIS GUILLOT, THE DAILY BEAST

The Zen concept of Viktor & Rolf's first couture collection since their departure thirteen years ago, could not simply be regarded from a single behind-the-wall perspective that is traditional to Japanese rock gardens. The continuity of their technical black fabric choice through the pieces envisaged modernity with elemental meditation on garment shape and finite detail.

PHOTO CREDIT: STYLE.COM

PHOTO CREDIT: STYLE.COM

Maison Martin Margiela allows their masks continue to deceive us but never is the aesthetic inspiration of their collections dissimulated, even if the masks are made of Swarovski's collaborative material Crystalacite. The pieces were modified, made and reclaimed from found vintage garments, giving sustainability and the timelessness of eclectic dressing a forefront in their artist: an embroidered Eastern bird overlay, a Beijing opera coat, bared bust form tops and red platform boots. Denim was focal to styling a number of the looks, the most liberal (as of yet) approach to the daywear trending Fall couture shows. 

PHOTO CREDIT: STYLE.COM

Valentino was of the illustrated age with a collection of pieces that could easily have been for Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty or an antlered doe-fawn. The woodsman feel of the collection had all the regality of river pearls and an iron-vine welded menagerie with the curious nook and cranny nature of a herringbone coat overtop of something more extravagant. 

Sources: Style.com, Dazed Digital, The Daily Beast, The New York Times 

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