Christian Dior Couture Spring 2015
Couture collections have their go-to inspirations: flowers, aristocrats, the heavenly bodies and ballet. But Bowie? Believe it, because Raf Simons, who has been charting new territory with his collections for the always prim and proper Christian Dior, took inspiration from Bowie’s madcap personas and personalities for a collection that featured the couture handiwork alongside futuristic fabrics such as plastic and vinyl. Le Bar it was not, but in true Dior fashion, it was hyper-feminine and brought the future of fashion right to the present.
Classic couture shapes were present and accounted for, including the wasp-waisted dresses with full skirts, but instead of the usual crinolines or horsehair underlayers, Simons played with fabric manipulation, pushing each piece to the limit when it came to technology and mixed media to produce all-new hybrids of wools and lace, guipures and ribbons. So what looked like a simple mille fuille skirt was actually bonded wool embellished with ribbons or a tower of lace that seemed to float down the pink-carpeted runway.
Christian Dior Couture Spring 2015
Kansai Yamamoto’s psychedelic catsuits for the Ziggy Stardust Tour made an appearance via yellow kit jumpsuits and a splash of vibrant color on shift dresses — all topped with floor-grazing dusters. And while plenty of the collection was all about the new, including glitter boots with skeletal illusion blocked heels and plasticine coats that were mashed up with lace and embroidery (a haute choice for any rain storm, trust us), a few Dior signatures made an appearance too, albeit with a few extra cutouts for sizzle.
Christian Dior Couture Spring 2015
What looked like hand painting from the Summer of Love — a Bowie era if there ever was one — was actually embroidery, and it grounded the plastic pieces as well as opera coats and columns. But the glam rock glitter and high-shine vinyl was all taken down a notch by the romantic lace insets and the ribbons, which married together the tradition of couture and of Monsieur Dior with the more forward-leaning inclinations of Simons. And if it takes the chameleon nature of David Bowie to let Simons’ imagination run amok to create plasticine dreams and rainbow-swirled confections, then it looks like the stuffy salons of couture are long gone.
Images courtesy Style and Vogue
