Fashion: Haute Couture in Paris: fabric forgies and punks

The Paris haute couture shows saw real shows for the first time. Chanel celebrated this with a magnificent collection and rebellious hairstyles, Dior with an homage to fine fabrics.

The French fashion house Chanel did not show its first show after an 18-month break on Tuesday in the famous Grand Palais, which is currently under renovation, but in the newly renovated Musée Galliera – there is currently an exhibition about the fashion designer Gabrielle Chanel. After many purely digital events, the industry was looking forward to a real show. In the end, however, only very few benefited, as the quotas were considerably limited due to the ongoing restrictions.

The autumn-winter collection by Chanel creative director Virginie Viard was particularly impressive with its color accents and a mix of retro and modern. The typical tweed costumes were shown with red and white checked patterns or elaborate floral embroidery, the models also wore rebellious plaited hairstyles reminiscent of mohawks.

The fashion house Christian Dior also put on a real show at the usual location in the garden of the Rodin Museum. Creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri commissioned the French artist Eva Jospin to design the set, who created a huge, woven fresco that covered the entire walls around the catwalk. In keeping with this and inspired by the book “Threads of Life: A History of the World through the Eye of a Needle” by Clare Hunter, Chiuri concentrated this time primarily on fabrics.

There was an amazing amount of tweed to see, heavy coats and long wool skirts, but also fine silk fabrics with floral prints. For the normal haute couture customer who is looking for more princess-like evening dresses, there was less choice this time. As long as there are still hardly any events at which you can wear such robes, looks that are suitable for everyday use obviously have priority.