Zipping around his new building with the pent-up energy of a man who said he’s been in semipermanent lockdown since March, Alexandre Vauthier reported via Zoom that not so long ago the thinking of his clients had provoked premonitions of doom: “At the beginning everybody was scared. So instead of thinking about buying clothes on Net-a-Porter, they were buying things online to clean the microbes from their house. After that they were online to buy food—they wanted to cook—because it was difficult to have someone to cook for them with the virus. And after that, as things got better, they got on the digital again to buy makeup, and then after that pajamas. And then—because they were becoming annoyed about the situation—they started to buy dresses to have dinner in on Zoom. It’s crazy!”
Vauthier sounded rightly delighted about that development as he continued: “I’ve got two clients who ordered a couture dress for a Zoom dinner. So they set up the camera in the kitchen and had a cook and someone to serve the food, and they joined the dinner like this. We did not sell so much couture—because it was difficult for the fitting—but we sold a little bit, you know?”
This Vauthier prêt-à-porter was, as he usually does it, a level down the pyramid from his last couture collection, but molded in the shape of that apex. Very enjoyable was the extreme sportswear—huge-leg track pants and sweats—cut in black tulle. The black short shorts and ruffled top Rihanna had just worn at the launch of her lingerie collection were over-wear as oh-yeah as any underwear, while the tailored Le Smokings in black or white were, as he observed, “super perfect.”
There was a Halston factor in a collection featuring loose-leg sheer black jumpsuits and some sumptuous gold lamé pieces, including a miniskirt with a spaghetti-strap top—“oof, comme ça!”—as well as a wide-belted, big-skirted dress and another scene-stealing navel-neckline jumpsuit. Oversized animalia green-on-black velvet striping plus a metallic purple fabric shaped into exotic rivulets of ruffle both delivered extra extra-ness in a collection already emphatically rich in it.
