Yesterday was bookended by two very different visions of Paris and its chicest locals. At Chanel, they strolled along a simulacrum of the Seine passing the bouquinistes in split-layered tweed suiting and layered statement dresses—not a single pair of pants but a strong focus on daywear. By early evening, Alexandre Vauthier had created a private club-type setting through which they strutted wearing thickly belted tailleurs, slinky crystal-studded dresses, and pheasant-feathered frocks. Think ’80s femme fatale via Victor Victoria cabaret, only the soundtrack was the latest Kanye West/Kid Cudi drop.
“These fashion codes are like absolute rules, much the same as Haussmann architecture—we know they function. A beautiful plissé will always be a beautiful plissé; a perfect black jacket will always be a perfect black jacket,” he said. “The modernity and the interest for me comes from re-transcribing them with new techniques.” The designer, incidentally, uses the ateliers owned by Chanel’s Paraffection subsidiary for his intricate pleating and embroideries—even the vamp boater hats, which were realized by Maison Michel; so there is legitimate overlap between the two collections via the talented petites mains.
But this comparison mainly serves to highlight how night-focused Vauthier’s direction has become. It wasn’t so long ago—the Spring ’17 collection, to be exact—that he was proposing embellished jeans, men’s shirting, and motorcycle pants amid his couture lineup. If this offering reaffirmed the rigor of his suiting and the sexiness of his strapless dresses, it was missing those ultra-elevated everyday pieces. In their place as investment pieces were ample black trousers—a look that French editors already seem to be adopting anew—any of the black dresses delicately inlaid with lace, and maybe also the close-cropped black jacket with its sharp white double collar and crystal-covered placket. On the spellbinding end of the spectrum were gowns fully covered in tiger embroideries, a tiered dress that took five days to trim with strass, and an impeccably pleated ball gown skirt in zesty yellow. The python putty-color cropped trench might have seemed like an outlier but actually played into the collection’s animalistic overtones. No doubt the price will be wild.
But one wonders about the interest for him in explicitly revisiting notions that trace back to Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Lacroix, and Claude Montana among others. “It is important for a new generation of clients to appreciate the iconic references,” he said. So this couture season, as Chanel does Chanel and Dior does Dior, Vauthier is ostensibly assuming the mantle of glamour’s leading defender. Which is why his pieces will continue to seduce Beyoncé, Brigitte Macron, and all the private clients in between. Now if he would just consider bringing back the jeans.
