Spring 2014 Couture Report: Butterflies, lions and Dita Von Teese close out a week of surprises in Paris
See the Spring 2014 Couture images »
Photography by Peter Stigter
Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2014 Couture Dita Von Teese
Dita Von Teese closes Jean Paul Gaultier
Could the couture runways be any more bi-polar? Whereas yesterday’s recap brought forth a list of trends to watch in the coming months, today’s recap proves we’ll always be guessing.
The final day of Spring 2014 Couture Fashion Week in Paris started with everything in the junk drawer piled on one outfit at Maison Martin Margiela and ended with pale, barren latex at Viktor & Rolf.
The latter, worn by ballerinas drifting en pointe from one end of a square runway to the other, were sometimes printed with tattoo-like birds and ruffles. At the end of the performance, an ad for the duo’s new fragrance, Bonbon, revealed the scent housed in a pink bow bottle. The scent’s face, model Edita Vilkeviciute, wears nothing but painted-on pink bows.
Margiela, on the other hand, collected a treasure trove of vintage fabrics and worked them into cocoon coats and square shifts. The addition of gold foil boots or sleeves and those aforementioned gewgaws made for some riveting combinations.
In between these two extremes there were some plain, plain, plain long-sleeved gowns and compelling lion and tiger faces at Valentino, where designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli brought Italian operas to life in floor-length dresses.
And Jean Paul Gaultier gave butterflies a thorough couture workout, from winged shoulder-draping on suits to Dita Von Teese’s corseted iridescent wings---a dream come true for collectors of couture, and butterflies, alike.
Bernadette Morra is the former editor-in-chief of FASHION magazine. She has been covering the Canadian and international fashion scenes for more than 30 years, first at The Toronto Star, then at FASHION. Over her long career Bernadette has interviewed many fashion world legends including Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford and Gianni Versace.
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