While the Haute Couture shows have historically been fashion's most exclusive events, Covid-19 meant that designers including Chanel, Christian Dior and Giambattista Valli were all forced to reconsider how they would show their most rarefied creations. These are clothes for the few – they come with eye-watering price tags, after all. But they're also an opportunity to bask in the glory of fantastical fashion, which – let's be honest – is the sort of escapist joy we could all do with right now.
Here's exactly what happened during the world's first digital Couture week, to which you have a front row ticket: your sofa.
Tuesday 21st July
Staged at Rome's Cinecittà Studios, and conceived as a creative dialogue between creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli and photographer Nick Knight, Valentino's breathtaking offering for the Haute Couture calendar was escapism at its best. Models swung from the ceiling, each wearing a snow white creation with vertiginous skirts and trains that provided a blank canvas for projections of flowers, fire and petals. The colour white was specifically chosen by Piccioli: 'White, the sum of all colours, captures the blank slate of this new beginning, the sense of infinite possibilities,' he said. Brides-to-be (with blockbuster budgets) need look no further.
Wednesday 8th July
Guo Pei
Her most famous design is the 'omelette' dress, the fabulous creation worn by Rihanna to 2015's Met Gala, and Guo Pei's couture 'show' is similarly statement-making. After a trip to Paris's National Museum of Natural History, she was inspired by animals migrating. 'I feel that on Savannah grasslands, all animals are full of life and vitality,' she explains. It's fascinating to watch her take traditional fabrics, like sheep's wool felt, and manipulate the fibres to make a giraffe's head. 'For me personally, the most significant part of staging a couture show is that a designer gets to demonstrate his/her craftsmanship. Like artists showing their craft.' The finished collection is as evocative and intricate as you might imagine.
Maison Margiela
It's always the most intriguing entry on the couture schedule - and Maison Margiela didn't disappoint with its virtual offering. Presented as a series of four videos, the first of which showed a model wearing a sharp-shouldered coat and walking to the sound of ripping fabric, the 'Artisanal Co-Ed Collection' will culminate in a final 'revelation' on 16 July. Stay tuned.
Tuesday 7th July
Chanel
Captured by Mikael Jansson, and featuring Adut Akech and Rianne Van Rompaey, Chanel's virtual couture 'show' let the clothes do the talking. From a funnel-necked and flaring dress that was encrusted with sequinned flowers to a hot pink three-piece tweed suit, Virginie Viard stuck to the house codes of classic elegance, throwing in white tights and tiaras to keep it looking new world instead of old.
Monday 6th July
Schiaparelli
Schiaparelli’s video showed its creative director, Daniel Roseberry, gathering his colouring pencils, donning a mask and walking through the boarded up streets of Manhattan to sit and sketch his ‘Collection Imaginaire’ on a park bench. With cyclists whizzing past, it’s a wonderful metaphor for how the rarefied world of couture has been somewhat democratised by coronavirus, not to mention a chance to look at beautiful drawings of one-sleeved blazers, surrealist tops and fantastical gowns created under a canopy of trees.
Dior
The imagination loomed large in Maria Grazia Chiuri’s sprawling, big budget film for Dior couture. Directed by Matteo Garrone, of Gomorrah fame, the film opens with the atelier’s les petit mains creating doll-sized couture dresses to fit tiny mannequins. The scene then changes to show an enchanted world of silver-haired mermaids, frolicking maidens, snail women, statues and tree nymphs as two bellboys carry a doll’s house up a hill. It contains, of course, the dresses, which attract the maidens like bees to a honeypot. It’s an impressive piece of escapism for the strange times we’re living in, but one that has also already drawn criticism for not reflecting, what Campbell referred to in her introduction as the ‘multitude of identities’ that make up our society, in its all-white cast. When asked about it in a press conference that followed, Chiuri, who has been a vocal supporter of inclusivity and feminism in previous collections, explained that ‘[diversity] is so present in all of my work,’ before adding that the film’s casting was due to the its historical Greek references.
Giambattista Valli
Giambattista Valli's video, 'an ode to Paris and the gestures of haute couture', opens with Joan Smalls wearing the most swoon-inducing gown (strapless, scarlet and sprouting bows at the hips) and goes on to show the model twirling and posing in an array of feathery, frothy and utterly fabulous creations.
Sunday 5th July
Balmain
Olivier Rousteing staged what you could call a floating museum exhibit for Balmain's contribution, dressing models in current and archive creations and sending them down the Seine. Spectators watched from the city's many bridges in a 'show' unlike the couture schedule has seen before.