Christian Dior Haute Couture Autumn/Winter 2015: Art Attack

Fine art and artistry met at Raf Simons’ haute couture show for Dior in Paris this afternoon which drew on Old Master painting - throughout the ages and from Northern European and Latin culture - while showing off the unparalleled techniques that underpin this great French fashion institution to suitably spectacular effect. Medieval princesses in fragile and sinuous floor-length gowns were juxtaposed with more obviously grande dames wearing voluminous trapeze-line coats the sleeves and necklines of which were reminiscent of Grand Manner portraiture (men’s as well as women’s). The colour and surface of garments, meanwhile, was perhaps most beautiful when it brought French Impressionism and Pointillism to mind: impossibly delicate feathered embroideries in particular evoked colour dappled in light. Extraordinary.

‘I was intrigued by forbidden fruit and what that meant now,’ Simons stated of the concept behind it. ‘The idea of purity and innocence versus luxury and decadence and how that is encapsulated by Dior’s garden…’

There was indeed an almost virginal quality to lightweight white dresses that covered models from throat to ankle and were gathered into the tiniest pleats at the breastbone or behind. Some of these were overlayed with jeweled metal caging: the deceptively humble, even bucolic, and the evidently haute. A lapis lazuli silk velvet coat, open to the naval, appeared to be aimed at a more urbane woman. That colour was always synonymous with wealth and power. Throw sex into the mix and the three elements that make the fashion industry tick were all present and correct in a single exit.

The Paris couture season runs until Thursday and the business brains that head up this most rarefied aspect of fashion are unanimous in claiming rising sales. The economy remains unstable but the small number of women willing and able to part with five and six figure sums for a single garment, sewn entirely by hand then fitted to her every curve, is growing and keeping the fine craftsmanship that goes with it alive.

Couture is viewed by some as one of life’s great anachronisms: it is willfully inaccessible on so many levels after all. The secret of Simons’ success at Dior is always that he has his eye on modernity, however. The time-honoured Dior codes – the New Look and trapeze lines, the Bar jacket and more - have been duly reinvented by this designer and the effect, however steeped in history and respectful of tradition it may be on the one hand, is entirely contemporary on the other.