There are many metaphors in haute couture; the most illuminating almost always take us back to the hands of the couturier. For architect or magician, craftsperson or clairvoyant, these are the agents that enact engrossed performances deep in the atelier, fashioning the artifacts that are to be borne, in handsome state, by bodies, and the public imagination. In the spring of 1947 there was exceptional endeavour in a novel workshop on Avenue Montaigne, where hands exerted accordingly; those of Dior, in particular, were pink with anxiety. Knocking away at a Stockman mannequin, in a knobbly but exalted task of reconfiguration, he worked with both an exhaustive finality and a virgin sense of departure. It was the material articulation of an ensemble he had developed for over eight years. I wanted my dresses to be "constructed", moulded on the curves of the female body whose contours they would stylize. I accentuated the waist, the volume of the hips; I emphasized the bust. The satin doll of nondescript proportions had become an indelible imprint -recognizable, effective, eloquent. The New Look of mid-century couture was finally ripe in life form.
This detail about the mannequin -fact of history, fine subtlety in the man's legend- is always tucked just beneath my sleeve whenever I read the developments at the House of Dior. Into this charming memory of Dior, it seems, I have resolved the totality of interest that its singular achievements have created for me. It is perhaps worth signalling, for instance, that a silhouette which fashion historian Farid Chenoune -making his remarks in the context of the post-war situation- described as a restoration of a "damaged ideal of French femininity" was cast on a stuffed mannequin. Or, interpreting this carver's posture as the couturier's principal stance -we can conceive of the Bar as an architectural solution, if solution it was, to the questions of dress après-guerre. Following from here, it also makes Raf Simons' approach to the archive logically satisfying. His bid at reinvention -a peplum form derived from the main coordinates of the Bar jacket, paired with long cigarette pants- was an ambitious and rigorous inquiry into ideas of construction. The basic premise of this transformation was, in Tim Blank's succinct expression, "the formal past, the streamlined future, meeting in the middle". And this splicing of temporal spheres is hardly fortuitous; the visual assemblage of Dior's iconic Bar jacket and Yves Saint Laurent's le smoking voices a strong conceptual relation of its own, giving weight to the sense that Simons had put forward the clock during Saint Laurent's term at Dior, merging the bolder suggestions of his later designs with the legacy he first helped extend.
Watercolor illustration by Mats Gustafson, commissioned by Dior.
Image credits go to the artist.
Looks from Dior Fall 2012 Couture, Simons' debut collection for the house.
Image credits go to style.com
If the rhetoric of the blueprint compels, it's up to its elaboration to convince. Simons executes this with the equipoise of a vigor that is at once scrupulous and expansive. His sophomore showing for the Spring 2013 RTW season opened with a tone that reinforced -a trio of tailored suits that, reiterating the proposals of the Couture collection, had the classic hourglass of the Bar tuned to a stylus. But where concepts were being restated, an evolving intention was also perceived. Simons' vision was revised in movement: ribboned chokers that cut neatly across the neck finished each tuxedo ensemble, the drift produced by its ample knot subtly spotlighted by the austerity of the linear scheme. Lending impetus to the incipient cadence set up by this dynamic embellishment, Simons shifts the frame of reference yet again -this time the trousers that had substituted for the full skirt of the original A-line are themselves displaced entirely, leaving just a mini jacket-dress worn with variations of the tiny theme or nothing at all. A reminder of the Bar's sculpted hip now hovers between the erogenous zones of a sharp V neckline and newly exposed legs, and the liberal step granted by the practical form is too registered in the pleated panels and godets slotted into the flaring hems of the jackets. Against the balletic rippling of the set's diaphanous curtaining, the collective effect of this gathering of momentum aspires to a visual euphony governed and intoned in metronomic meter.
Looks from Dior Spring 2013 RTW.
Image credits go to style.com
For Spring 2013 RTW, movement was an ancillary pursuit, a serif feature that rounded off the formal qualities of Simons' minimalistic diagrams. 4 seasons onward, and it is his prime preoccupation, amplified and made durable in a reassessment of the relationship between a silhouette and the body that moves beneath it. To see clearly the statement Simons makes, refer back to the Bar/le smoking amalgam that is his initial proposition: the addition of bell-sleeves and a baggier version of tailored trousers all point to a new character in the clothes. Then there was the fabric of the jackets -punctured through with disc-shaped perforations that have had their lower lips folded outwards, the latticework accomplished quite dramatically aerates (Susie Bubble's instructive word) the Bar torso. These patterned canvases constituted the more conservative of this season's showing. Elsewhere, the Bar had graduated to abstraction; sections of fabric with the same littered, absent motifs are positioned around the familiar junctures, posed in vague imitation of their parental bearings. But observing these pieces in their static context is only preliminary. In motion, these suggestive non-scapes yield fully the cues that prime the eye -as the dresses are walked in, their outlines dilate, fill out, approach the native template. Each is a sensitive rendering of the kinetic realm of an individual, asymmetric in its present-tense making.
Looks from Dior Spring 2014 Couture.
Image credits go to style.com
In his latest for the House, Simons returns to the thesis of the single detail. The program for Fall 2014 RTW ran radial to the roulette accessory, prominent rivulets of white and blue that were wilfully and radically strung through the flanks of jackets. Needless to say, this graphic asset is meaningfully stationed -its binary associations of corsetry and shoe string lacing provides for a highly productive juxtaposition in itself. Simons nevertheless makes sure that the implications of this alliance play out in practice. Holding together the panel seams in the new jointed form of the Bar emblem, the lacing assists in a deregulation of silhouette, a relaxed profile that is carried through the dominant ensembles of jacket coats and sportswear-inspired slipdresses. The mood was progressive, urban, and as Tim Blanks aptly put it, thoroughly sensational.
Looks from Dior Fall 2014 RTW.
Image credits go to style.com
II.
Modernity supplies new shapes, and a renewed autonomy of the second dimension. Hence we can speak of color as compensatory, as offsetting the references to the archive - cf. iridescent, euphoric organza; acidic and crystalline pastels, deep saturation of silks.
Image credits go to style.com
Other: Simons' idioms are dwelling places; the gaze finds rest as in a painting. Fall 2013 RTW presented handpainted dress screens of early Warhol, sketchy illustrations realized by fine embroidery and delicate beading. In Spring 2014 RTW, helices of slogan and print, and then the final setting, with the second plane and the third form in revelatory empathy -the Bar jacket with a whorl of imbibed pleats.
Looks from Dior Fall 2013 RTW.
Image credits go to style.com
Looks from Dior Spring 2014 RTW.
Image credits go to style.com
Acknowledgements: Thank you to the Dior website for supplying the historical narrative that provided the opening of this piece. My commentary is also indebted to the articles by Tim Blanks at style.com and Susie Bubble at Dazed Digital -I could not have arrived at the ideas collected here have their words not taught me to see. I am also grateful to The Cutting Class, which gave me invaluable insight into the technical aspects of the collections.
