This week, Chloe sat down with Vogue France’s Claire Thompson-Jonville and Vogue Runway’s chief critic Sarah Mower after the Balenciaga show at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris to unpack the emotional highs of Couture Week’s opening days.
The trio’s main topic was Pierpaolo Piccioli’s first couture outing for the house—a collection they agreed felt unmistakably his own after two ready-to-wear seasons spent reconciling his sensibility with Demna’s. Under a blazing midday sun, with Cynthia Erivo, Naomi Watts, and Teyana Taylor among those fanning themselves in the front row, Piccioli sent out a richly colored and feather-heavy fantasia.
The conversation then backtracked to Monday’s opening acts, beginning with Daniel Roseberry’s Schiaparelli show, where a chrome runway and body-conscious, skin-like silicone pieces reflected an unusually experimental research process: instead of making his usual research trip, Roseberry said he’d spent time at a company that manufactures silicone baby dolls. From there, talk turned to Jonathan Anderson’s second couture collection for Dior, which the panel read as a loosening of the house’s codes, with knotted, sculptural details inspired by artist Lynda Benglis softening the rigor of the bar suit. And Matthieu Blazy’s fairy-tale-inspired second couture show for Chanel was characteristically whimsical, including jacket linings stitched with the models’ handwritten to-do lists (e.g. “Pizza in fridge”). The group also spotlighted Michael Stewart’s couture debut at Standing Ground, staged at the Irish Embassy, as a genuine word-of-mouth sensation.
Up next are Duran Lantink’s couture debut at Jean Paul Gaultier, Maria Grazia Chiuri’s first Fendi couture show in Rome, and this weekend’s Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda collection in Sicily. The group wrapped things up on a lighter note, talking through the realities of front-row life in a Paris heat wave, from designers rethinking fabrics for a warming climate to the season’s must-have accessory: a hand fan, tucked into every micro-bag that could fit one.
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