You Better Work, Karlie Kloss and the Little White Dress by Gordon von Steiner / Vogue.com

You Better Work, Karlie Kloss and the Little White Dress by Gordon von Steiner / Vogue.com

This collection (my favorite one this season) revisits the collective memory of Haute Couture ensemble and re-ensemble through periods, places and people. Such as recomposed relics and fabrics that have been transformed into a collection that blends the idea of love and memories worn proudly and passed to others that will later add another element from themselves.

Interesting the idea proposed for this season by the Maison Martin Margiela haute couture atelier to re-interpret old garments and transforming them from sample embroideries and ordinary items into new gorgeous pieces.

1. Look 1: white shirt cut from cotton and is decorated with broaches and buttons. The production time it took 22 hours to make. The broaches and buttons are gilded bronze which are thin as a nail. 
2. Look 2: Flowers motifs are re-interpreted from an 18th century-style wallpapers. Some of the fabrics are new, some are old re-interpreted to create a new haute couture garment. 
3. Look 7: The top is inspired by Louis XV’s wallpaper and the mesh skirt is embroidered with old coins (french francs) found all over Paris and Brussels in flea markets. 26 hours of production on the skirt alone. 
4. Look 8: The coat is made from different collage swatches of cashmere and the mess skirt is embroidered with old coins. Playing with the idea of the value of haute couture.
5. Look 11: 3-D embroidery creating a blue lobster worn as a shawl with a couture bustier and a mesh skirt embroidered with coins. 86 hours for the top and 26 for the skirt. 
6. Look 14: 20’s panel dress altered into a children’s party costume in the 30’s and it has been now re-resembled and restored on a frame. The idea was to take expensive embroidered fabrics from different places to create a new dress. 
7. Look 15: An aluminum “I Love You” party balloon embroidered with red crystals. The idea of wearing your favorite things as garments or items that would have memorable stories. The skirt is made of different sample embroideries attached together.
8. Look 19: The jacket has a description in the back saying “To the best father in the world from your loving son, Herbert. 1949 Tokio, Japan”  which has been restored and lined, worn over a couture bustier and the skirt made from different sample embroideries. 
9. Look 21: Japanese bomber jacket from the 50’s as a souvenir from antique dealers from New York which has been restored and embroidered with japanese motifs. 

Details from Chanel haute couture f/w 2014

That twistedness was the key to the collection. The word couture implies cutting and seaming. There was none of that here. Everything was molded rather than seamed. “It’s Haute Couture without the Couture,” said Lagerfeld, tongue firmly in cheek. And yet there was look after look of a gorgeousness so exquisite it could only be achieved in ateliers that were accustomed to confronting the impossible—and mastering it. It must help that Lagerfeld always has the future in mind as he cherry-picks his way through the past. Take lace and coat it with silicone. Think pink, but think plastic, too. Tatter, shred, disrespect…and make something new. That was all in keeping with the much-touted youth-ifying of Couture. Sam McKnight’s hair and Maison Michel’s little hats perched pertly on the back of the models’ heads had the effect of a Haircut 100 cover from The Face circa 1982. The effect was compounded by Lagerfeld building his silhouette on shorts. There were coatdresses over shorts, jackets and skirts over shorts, plus the perfect shoes for shorts—sandals. Given the molded, sculpted nature of the clothes, Lagerfeld liked the ease of a flat. “The models can walk in those dresses like they’re nothing,” he said.

                                           -Tim Blanks

Christian Dior resort 2008

Working in an electric-bright palette not unlike the one he used in his recent 1940’s romp, Galliano shifted forward a couple of decades and channeled Barbara Hutton’s sixties—a glittery, lamé, paisley, and leopard-print world of muumuus, bikinis, capri pants, trapeze dresses, cat-eye sunglasses, and scarf-wrapped hats. It bordered on camp, especially when one model, in sky-high heels with a cluster of logic-defying half spheres on the soles, had to be escorted down the runway. Kitschy or not, there was no denying the workmanship that went into crafting the large collection. And taken apart, there were some pieces that will mix convincingly into modern wardrobes—a lime-green chiffon gown with cascades of fluttering ruffles twisting around the body was Galliano at his languid best. Overall, the designer—despite the recent loss of his right-hand man, Steven Robinson—is in exuberant mode, which is how many in the crowd at 7 World Trade Center love him. As one prominent retailer put it on his way out, “If it’s shiny, we like it.”

                        -Nicole Phelps

Dolce and Gabbana s/s 2014