The Fall 2011 season haute couture shows are flowing down the runways in Paris (the Spring 2012 Ready to Wear shows will fire up in NYC shortly after), and the biggest anticipation has been over what the house of Dior will do, now that Galliano is out of the picture (and permanently out of the picture, says LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault)
Well, this is what they did:
Pop Art meets Party Girl at the Gehry . . . in Brazil
I’m not certain they could have come up with a stronger repudiation of the Galliano aesthetic if they tried, which leads me to believe that they tried very very hard to do just that.
And I certainly won’t criticize them for it — when life throws mud pies at your windshield, it’s not that bad an idea to turn on the wipers and fling that sh*t off!
Haute Couture collections are admitted loss leaders for big brand companies like Dior and Chanel, meaning they cost more to produce than they’ll ever pull in via orders from the kind of uber-wealthy that still shell out $150K for a dress — but the function of the contemporary haute couture show is not to sell dresses as much as it’s to sell an overarching image of the brand that can then trickle down through media advertising, the Ready to Wear collections, the diffusion collections, the accessories, perfumes and cosmetics.
For Dior, then, this latest haute couture spectacle speaks loudly and insistently about which direction the executives in charge obviously want the brand to march. Designed by Bill Gaytten, who was Galliano’s right-hand man for over twenty years, what hit the runway was an explosion of bright colors, dramatic shapes and youthful whimsy that’s in stark opposition to the lush, languorous and overtly sexualized allure of the Galliano years.
If Gallinao made women dream of courtesans in a slow-motion, old-world Parisian system, then Gaytten offers up slices of sharp glamor that cut a path through the crowded, pulsating environments of, say, 21st century Hong Kong and Sao Paulo, instead.
The reaction to the collection has been a near universal “Dior is dead!” wail from critics and die-hard fashion hounds, but I’m more curious as to what the average young designer-brand consumer will think.
Was the collection fun? Yes. Vibrant and energetic? Yes. Whimsical and street-fashion influenced in the way that cuts, colors, textures and patterns were layered? Yes, yes and yes.
Then maybe the critics and die-hards are wrong.
Several journalists noted that designer Gaytten was “elated” after the show finished, and most likely because he accomplished exactly what was required of him: the visual announcement of a clean break from the past for a full-on embrace of the high-energy, streetwise demographic.
Fashion writers have been authoring “The Death of Haute Couture” articles for years, but if Dior can revamp its old-fashioned aesthetic and shake off the tightly corseted cobwebs, maybe haute couture can still exhibit some relevance for the 21st century lifestyle.
If nothing else, all those bright colors on the runway are bound to translate into nail polish flying off the shelves — and make no mistake, colorful nail polish is a big booming business to the tune of hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars a year.
UPDATE:
Speaking of Dior and the new street-look couture: It isn’t in fashion if it doesn’t hit the streets!
***You can find further thoughts on the new Dior haute couture at the following link: The New Dior Haute Couture (Part 2)
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