At Couture, Olympics Inspire

The invitation had a gold skeleton key tied on with ribbon. So Daniel Roseberry was planning a seduction. The designer of Schiaparelli, whose work gets better and better, brought his audience on to the cellar of a Rothschild mansion — probably its former kitchens — and turned out the lights. That is, he blackened the room to suggest darkness and mystery. Then, evoking a Degas scene, he used a trio of chandeliers and stage up-lights to bring out the enchantment of the clothes.

Before the show he said, “Each season is about setting myself a new challenge and using couture as an experiment.” That’s what haute couture also means to Thom Browne and Iris Van Herpen, who presented their fall collections on Monday, too; less so for the pragmatist Maria Grazia Chiuri of Dior, who looked to ancient Greece and the Parisian 1920s for her lightly draped, athletic women. If you haven’t heard, the Olympics begin next month in Paris. The preparations have already closed down the entire Place de la Concorde and several bridges.

For Roseberry, the challenge this time was reduction. Remember: He’s the guy who caused a viral commotion with his animal heads and had a model carry a mirrored robotic-looking baby. “I kept thinking about Yves Saint Laurent’s first two years at Dior,” he said, meaning 1957 to 1959. “There was a purity and innovation to some of the clothes.” There was less embellishment in this Schiaparelli collection, or, at any rate, less of a feeling of excess and gimmicks. Every choice counted and every look, 31 in all, belonged to a consistent line of thought.

If this collection was more masterful than anything Roseberry has done before, it was because of the precision cut of the clothes, even — perhaps especially — the near-naked ones. Line matters more than embellishment. Here’s a curious thought: Did Elsa Schiaparelli understand that concept as well as Coco Chanel and Saint Laurent did? I think not. She certainly did not embrace it as fully as they did. It’s interesting, then, that Roseberry turned away from Schiaparelli a bit and considered, as well, the second golden era of fashion, the 1950s and early ’60s, which includes the designs of Charles James. This was before the Youthquake. He also insisted that his design team not look at computers and instead sketch everything. This might also explain why the forms felt so right — erotically charged yet still human.

I also sensed that Roseberry was influenced by John Galliano’s couture show for Margiela in January, that spectacular viral moment. Not that the fashion was at all similar. Nor did Roseberry’s models swan over the black carpet with Galliano’s degree of choreography. But they did make eye contact with the audience, and they did convey pleasure — unlike the male and female models at other houses, who mostly walked like stiffs. Van Herpen’s creations were exquisite, but for the presentation, her models stood on tiny plaster ledges in the form of shoes, high above the floor, their bodies using a wall to maintain balance. Essentially, though, the girls looked like insects mounted on a board.

Roseberry was naughty. Eroticism used to run through high fashion. Think of Mugler, Gaultier, Alaia, and of course Galliano’s Dior and now Margiela. So it was a delight to see the Texan Roseberry dig in, though he didn’t really need a dark (and airless) dungeon to suggest an erotic urge. Or, anyway, his desire to show in semi-darkness wasn’t as resolved as it should have been.
Still, you could see the clothes plenty. Feathers were a motif, though he didn’t use real plumage but, rather, the Lesage kind, embroidered in black velvet and celestial-like sequins on the sheer butterfly-shaped skirt of a bustier dress. The opening black velvet cape had shoulders adorned with golden feathers. According to Roseberry, they were tin galvanized in gold and hammered. To create the illusion of feather tips, people in ateliers made thousands of ultra-tiny cones in ecru silk and sewed them on a jacket, shown with black cropped trousers.

But whether the style was a sublimely austere black pantsuit with extreme shoulders and a spare vest of white pique, or an orange-red chemise with a plunging V-neck and a ring of organza circles jumping about the hem, or one of the nearly naked, corseted gowns, what came through in this confident showing was Roseberry’s passion for fashion. For its history and its heartbreaking beauty.

Browne also wears his heart on his seersucker sleeve, and his recent leap into haute couture (for men and women) has allowed him to dig more deeply into the craft traditions. This season he made the entire collection in different weights of muslin — the off-white cotton fabric that’s used in first fittings in couture and better ready-to-wear, before a garment is made in expensive fabric. Browne also used muslin for trims and flower embellishment, and a young member of his atelier crew found a way to turn muslin into a kind of yarn. It was spun around fine wire and then knitted into an oversized tennis sweater. Mixed with the muslin was blue-gray horsehair, the rigid canvas used in men’s tailoring. The difference was Browne made these elemental materials, along with basting stitches, the stars of the collection. He put them on the outside. Just as designers have done with deconstruction methods, he turned humble craft techniques into something essential.

The contrast of the horsehair against the muslin — say, as a lapel or the deconstructed front portion of a jacket — was particularly successful; a simple idea, too. As Browne said, “I use it so much that it’s nice to show it as a final fabric.” Many of the details, like tweed, were the work of embroidery houses, such as Lesage. Perhaps because he comes out of the men’s tailoring tradition, where he has left his mark, the most interesting designs were those that showed a lighter Brownian hand, like the coats or suits where the muslin seemed opaque and were composed of randomly sized pieces, almost like patchwork.

Browne also nodded to the Olympics. The show opened with a bunch of guys in white skirts and blazers pulling a rope in a tug of war, and there was a hint of musculature in some embroidery. A finale trio of metallic embroidered blazers — bronze, silver, and gold, naturally — were outstanding in design and craft. But the show itself could have been more robust. It seemed peculiarly odd to embrace the thrill and agony of sports and then have your models walk like zombies on the catwalk.

“The tank is the new corset,” said Chiuri before her streamlined, light-as-air Dior show, at the Musée Rodin. Leave it to Chiuri to present a refined collection with a whiff of history and an understated feminist point. The Olympic Games were held in Paris in 1924, at the height of the flapper era, and as couturiers like Jean Patou were turning to sports as inspiration for new kinds of knitwear. In the next decade, Madame Grès would do her Grecian drapes. It was clear that Chiuri looked at early Grès for her ivory or black gowns, often draped over an embroidered bodysuit.

But it’s the first time at Dior that a designer has used jersey in couture, according to Chiuri. Dior usually means tailoring — the famous Bar jacket — and feminine dresses with a defined waist and a bit of structure.

New or not, the collection expresses Chiuri’s belief that even couture should be comfortable, not confine women’s bodies. It’s hard not to like the idea of an embellished tank — essentially a bathing suit — under breezy yards of silk jersey, with flat sandals. Chiuri also showed looks in silk moire, trim pantsuits with a kind of trouser-skirt, draped cocktail dresses in muted metallic tones, and a fabulously odd poncho in wool jacquard with golden thread, over a pair of those trouser skirts.

But I wish Dior would show her couture in a different setting — that is, not the same box-like tent behind the Rodin, with the same runway configuration every season, and the same manner of displaying feminist-themed artwork on the walls. It’s becoming systematic. Instead, why not hold her couture shows in the house or somewhere equally intimate, where you can see the subtle differences in her work? It would also feel more special.