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It’s fashion’s frothiest frock-worthy event but this year Haute Couture fashion week is set to look a little different.
From July 6-8, Paris’ bi-annual event will be rolling into your living rooms via digital steam, as it pivots to the constraints of the pandemic.
This may be the first of its kind for the fantastical event, but Haute Couture has quite the history. English couturier, Charles Frederick Worth established the first Haute Couture house in Paris in 1858, in a bid to champion luxury fashion for the upper-class woman, but it wasn’t until 1908 that the term was officially used for the first time.
Today there are 15 brands, including Chanel, Dior and Givenchy, that are part of the French Chambre syndicale de la haute couture – the organisation that decides who’s in and who’s out of the couture world – all of whom craft fantastical couture collections twice a year.
So elite is the world of Haute Couture, that it’s been estimated there are no more than 4,000 haute couture clients in the world.
While there may be no street style to lust over and no front row to dissect there will be dreamy dresses in droves this year, which is enough of an enticement for us.
Before the inaugural virtual couture week gets underway, we thought it apropos to take a trip down memory lane and pore over the most awe-inspiring moments from the bygone years.
Chanel autumn/winter 1983
Chanel’s couture autumn/winter 1983 show was revered Creative Director Karl Lagerfeld’s debut collection for the fashion house, which he designed having been inspired by the ensembles of the 1920s and ’30s.
His elegant oeuvre soon came to epitomise the fashion escapism that couture week is lauded for. The awe-inspiring sets he crafted were a work of art in themselves.
Yves Saint Laurent spring/summer 1993
1993 was a blooming brilliant one for supermodel-in-the-making Kate Moss. In February, she sashayed her way down the catwalk for Yves Saint Laurent wearing a bouquet of floral prints, and the following month she snagged her first Vogue cover (for the March issue of British Vogue.) Not bad going.
Versace Atelier autumn/winter 1995
Gianni Versace’s high-octane shows throughout the nineties were a sight to be beheld; all glitz and glam and more-is-more. His autumn/winter 1995 couture collection was particularly high-octane though, as he sent an army of models down the runway in bedazzled and shimmering ensembles, a move that perfectly epitomised the era’s hedonism.
Thierry Mugler autumn/winter 1997
Thierry Mugler was inspired by Kafka’s Metamorphosis for his Haute Couture show in 1997. Models were dressed as winged and hard-shelled characters, before a swarm of dramatic butterflies closed the show.
Chanel autumn/winter 2015
Haute Couture has always been about fantasy and, ever the visionary, Karl Lagerfeld crafted a Chanel Couture Casino for the brand’s autumn/winter 2015 spectacle in Paris. Who knew that Julianne Moore, Kristen Stewart and Lily-Rose Depp would ever be centre stage of a casino night that we’d be privy to?!
Fendi autumn/winter 2016
For Fendi’s autumn/winter couture 2016 show – and the heritage brand’s 90th anniversary – a swarm of models strolled along Rome’s iconic Trevi Fountain. In fact so dedicated is Fendi to the Italian city – its birthplace – that it made a $2.4 million investment in 2013 to the restoration of the fountain.
