Last week's Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week... for
the super rich, the super famous and for the super green-eyed. And me.
Gazing at images of Valentino's masterful and
exquisite creations on show at PFW last week caused some kind of physiological
condition that I can only describe as the feeling that at at any moment my
bones may actually melt and I would turn into a big heap of jelly on the floor.
Perhaps I should see a doctor. Or perhaps, that's
just couture.
Sure, if I were a hardened industry professional
maybe I'd walk away from viewing Chanel couture thinking about my next meeting
or how Miss Vogue has arrived about twenty years too late. Sad face.
As it is, I’m constantly moved by
fashion, and thank heavens for it. Of course, fashion can be about words:
Chanel, Prada, Dior or images: Cara, Kate, Louis Vuitton’s Edwardian train (PFW
2012). But the best fashion is more importantly about a feeling.
Jean Paul Gaultier’s couture offering for
autumn/winter 2013 epitomise the word “creation”. Ensembles of Off-his-rocker,
eclectic, magnificent, jaw-dropping creations. If God were on some
hallucinogenic drug when he created man, and decided, against his initial
thoughts, to clothe them, I think he’d have come up with something a little
like JPG’s haute couture collection.
Tribal printed enough to ensure survival, fur-lined
enough to stay warm (and ultra glamorous should Adam wish to whisk Eve away on
a pre-historic getaway) yet divine enough to remind us all that his creations
were heaven sent.
I’m as old-fashioned as one could possibly be at 26
but I do have to praise Sir Tim-Berners Lee for doing whatever futuristic,
techy stuff he did to form the World Wide Web. Why? Because last week I settled
down on my sofa with a cup of tea and watched the Valentino autumn/winter Haute
Couture collection live from Paris.
And if that weren’t pleasurable enough, I then, for
the next 13 minutes 17 seconds, barely breathed lest I somehow miss one drop of
the visual dream that was Valentino Haute Couture in the Rocco suite of the
Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild.
Intricate lace was worn high to the neck in
fairytale gowns of black, stark white or crimson red; soft enough to portray
the most delicate of femininity but plentiful enough to evoke drama and
heart-pounding romance. The iron-gate embroidery, intricate beading and
sumptuous antique florals were nothing less of exquisite.
Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli are fast
becoming two of my favourite people in the entire world because their designs,
in addition to being ju-ust beautiful, are perfect examples of
quiver-at-the-knees couture that is best appreciated with the most simple yet
euphoric sigh.
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| Valentino Couture, Paris 2013 Images from Google |
As much as fashion is about the words, the image,
the concept, it is that most important of things that keeps us yearning for
more. That feeling.
That couture feeling.
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