couture show notes

Below, you’ll find some reflections on some of the Spring Summer 2024 Couture Shows.

MAISON MARGIELA: This was a historic show: transcendent, otherworldly, erotic, technical and philosophical, rich with both history and novelty.

John Galliano turned to Brassaï’s photographs of Parisian outcasts, from prostitutes and pimps to the outcasts and nighttime revelers who find solace and freedom under the moonlight for inspiration. The act of dressing, undressing, and dress-up were explored with the manipulation of the body from the model’s movements to extreme corsets and exaggerated forms.

Models did not walk down the runway. With their faces painted like porcelain dolls, they moved with the eerie precision of marionette dolls or lumbered down the runway looking for a fight.

To create the looks, the designer even invented new techniques as detailed in the show notes: “Posing as heavy-duty wardrobe staples, featherlight jackets, coats and trousers are constructed through the technique of milletrage: a mirage created from a filtrage composed of a mille-feuille of organza and felt under a wool crêpe printed with a trompe l’oeil of the texture of a classic gentleman’s cloth. It is draped – aquarelled – in a voilette of tulle illusorily printed to appear moon-faded, sun-bleached, tobacco-stained or oily as if illumed by the reflection of water at night. Exercised through emotional cutting, the garments are imbued with the unconscious gestures that shape our expressions: a caban pulled over the head in the rain, a lapel raised to cover the face, a trouser hoicked up to evade a water puddle.”

Watch the full show here.

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER: As the sixth guest couturier for the brand, Simone Rocha brought her eye for fantastical, frothy, and feminine details to Gaultier’s couture lexicon. Adorned with crystal embellishments on their brows, eyelids, and lips, models carried delicate rose sculptures in garments that played with the idea of bondage and provocation. About half of the looks featured a corset or harness. Albeit, the corsets of Rocha’s world are often undone with a stream of ribbons. Tellingly, under Rocha’s direction, the brand’s iconic conical bra transformed into two horn shaped thorns that promise to mix pain and pleasure.

SCHIAPARELLI: While Elsa Schiaparelli was fascinated by astrology, her uncle the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli was fascinated by Mars. In fact, he even coined the term Martian. Drawing on this familial obsession, the fashion house paid homage to the cosmic by exploring the tension between “the earthbound and the heaven-sent.” This translated to a surreal anatomy of sculptural, elliptical shoulders; swooping necklines; satin spikes; and even an exoskeleton necklace.

I was drawn to the robot-baby and motherboard dress. Both items fuse “old world techniques and new world technologies” while hinting at our technological dependency in a way that is frighteningly dystopian. I also can’t help but recall the 1999 artwork I shared in an earlier newsletter: “Contemporary Golgotha (assemblage)” by Stane Jagodič (1999).

I keep a running list of new words I stumble upon and it breaks my heart that I don’t often have a chance to use them. Below are a smattering of words that have taken my fancy. If you find an opportunity to use them in your life, pls lmk.

1. Effulgent (adj.): shining brightly; radiant.

2. Etiolated (adj.): having lost vigor or substance; feeble.

3. Inveigle (v.): persuade (someone) to do something by means of deception or flattery.

4. Profligate (adj.):

   1. recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources.

   2. licentious; dissolute.

5. Wroth:

   1. intensely angry.

   2. story; violent; turbulent.

Recent Reads & More:

• SSENSE’s Director of Content, Steff Yotka provided an interesting analysis of the Fall/Winter 2024 menswear collections where wearability was the theme running through the collections. The article had an electrifying conclusion: “Dress in double-face cashmere. Be elegant. Be sophisticated and surefooted. But you must change your life.”

• Also from SSENSE: They recently published an article exploring the relationship between virality and luxury fashion describing how the designers are creating for both the masses and the screens: “Today, convincing buyers, fashion critics, and the press that your collections are good is a difficult task, but it is one that is undoubtedly becoming less important for brands. It doesn’t matter what the industry insiders think, because with attention and support from the internet, success is sure to follow.”

• A brief guide from Blackbird Spyplane about dressing well in the winter. Unfortunately, hats do not suit me so I must forgo their first piece of advice.

• Lit Hub has one of the best lists for anticipated new releases, tackling both fiction and non-fiction. They include a brief blurb of the book and most importantly, a cover! Most of you have probably already skimmed through the list, but I really need to close my tabs and this list one of them and I want to memorialize it in some capacity so I’m sharing it here. The below stood out to me:

  • Carson McCullers: A Life by Mary V. Dearborn

  • Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen by Suzanne Scanlon

  • Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other by Danielle Dutton

  • Ask Me Again by Clare Sestanovich

  • Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable by Sarah Gerard

• I’m in the middle of reading Filterworld by Kyle Chayka and started reading a review on the book. I didn’t finish the review because I don’t want any spoilers on my non-fiction book (lol) but thought the below was funny:

  • “Stripped of its impressive compositional finish, Filterworld is an ordinary screed against capitalism, consumerism, and (above all) mass culture. This book is Super Size Me for intellectuals. It's No Logo for millennials. It's a "Kill Your Television" bumper sticker but with nods to Polish sociologists, Korean poets, and Indian literary theorists for clout. In 1990, David Foster Wallace noted The New York Times's "bitter critical derision for TV," its "weary contempt for television as a creative product and cultural force," its stream of articles "about how TV's become this despicable instrument of cultural decay." All Chayka has done is update the bête noire. In his rush to indict formulaic culture, he has composed a formulaic polemic.”

• Been meaning to look into: Revolutionary Girl Utena, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Junx by Tshidiso Moletsane.