“Birds,” cited Cédric Charlier as his point of takeoff for this season. “Because they are the symbol of heaven and the symbol of soul . . . but that is just my starting point, and after that it is about intuition.”
The first look was closed and contained, still grounded, a double-layered redesigned duffle coat with a split collar and scalloped hem in double-face wool that we saw later in coated check. Finely cut aerodynamic shirts and pants—menswear was another starting point here—were intersected by belts of bicolored marabou that flapped with the wind as they passed. A leather trenchcoat and bomber, plus some knits, came in dégradé shades of blue that looked like a bruised sky, selectively photographed and filtered by an artistic contemplator from above. Long menswear suits were folded in against the lower buttons at the hem like wings half furled in flight.
Dresses were printed with a design featuring doves, parakeets, and swallows wheeling over abstract mazes, as did the inner lining of trenches worn over those dresses: Thrown open, the coats gave a flash of plumage. That plumage was contained and frozen in dresses that pressed lines of marabou between an outer layer of sheer jersey and an inner body of satin.
Pointed, flat, chain-heaped winklepicker shoes worn with matching mid-thigh leather socks gave certain looks a fastidious, stork-like delicacy. A pink suit with that flapping hem, a long hammered silk dress with panels of pleating and two splits at the front, and piumino stoles with arching panels at the shoulder continued Charlier’s soaring yet precise creative migration through the ornithological.
