(Paris) Balenciaga presented a very streetwear and the Lebanese Elie Saab set his evening dresses with 1001 diamonds, while the crazy Viktor and Rolf transformed their models into graphic experiments.
At Balenciaga, the multi-genre and multi-season collection is a real jumble: XXL down jacket like a protective ball, ponchos with horizontal bands in green, pink and gray tones, trashy printed sweatshirt, Demna’s commercial signature.
“This couture collection is a tribute to counter-culture dress codes,” warns the designer in his note.
The long leather coat, a Cristobal Balenciaga archive that survived the style change, is followed by a dress in superimposed belts, a recurring construction of the season.
The fuchsia touches, in dresses or hair coloring, bring an almost manga coloring to the disproportionate silhouettes and often in black.
The final piece is an ephemeral dress, like a ball of crumpled fabric, made of 47 meters of black nylon, “which will only exist for the duration of the show”, specifies in its note of intent Balenciaga, historically based in Paris and of which Demna, 43, took the helm in 2015.
The Georgian is known for his ironic and zany style, which helped bring the old fashion house founded by the Basque couturier back to the center of gaming and social media.
Demna notably dresses Kanye West and his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, Aya Nakamura and the demanding French actress Isabelle Huppert.
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PHOTO JULIEN DE ROSA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
At Elie Saab, the evening dress, always long and more or less immodest, is set with diamonds, in waterfalls or rivers.
For this fall/winter 2024-2025 haute couture week, it was his friend, the singer Katy Perry, who came to support him, sitting on the first floor in a black fur coat despite the high summer temperatures in Paris, worn open and with nothing underneath.
At Elie Saab, the evening dress, always long and more or less immodest, is set with diamonds, in waterfalls or rivers. The final wedding dress, in ecru with very elaborate embroidery and a train several meters long, stands out as a future royal wedding must-have.
The designer duo Viktor and Rolf, kings of performance who can have their models accompany their models on the catwalk with headless male mannequins or create a wind-effect dress over their heads, have wandered with good reason this season.
The collection plays with costume graphics and animation, with a checkered jacket with meter-wide shoulders.
“We were in an abstract mood,” Viktor Horsting explained to the press after the show, with “very couture materials, with a lot of silk, lurex and also a lot of jacquard.”
“We thought in terms of blocks, cubes, balls, combining all that with the human body,” added his sidekick Rolf Snoeren.
In the evening, the Jean Paul Gautier haute couture studio, which the French designer left after a 50-year career in 2020, presents his collection with a rotating designer.
This season, it’s the darling of the moment Nicolas Di Felice, the artistic director who brought the Courrèges house back to life, which has become the idol of young people for two years.