The spring 2024 Paris haute couture season set up new volumes and architectural delights to become a prominent fashion trend. Call it the season of shape shifters.
Daniel Roseberry kicked off the season on a high note with his “outfits otherworldly shapes,” wrote WWD’s Joelle Diderich. Throughout his couture runway show, Roseberry touched on his Texan roots and Hollywood’s cinematic references while melding founder Elsa Schiaparelli’s “fondness for unlikely marriages that formed the basis of the collections,” Diderich wrote.
“He combined his pop culture references with his lifelong passion for haute couture, from the hourglass waistlines of Charles James, which informed a nude satin bustier gown with a jutting bow at the neckline, to the sculptural constructions of Cristóbal Balenciaga,” she added. Throughout the collection, his otherworldly shapes expanded from pouffed skirts and exaggerated proportions into architectural dresses that “dramatically screened the face.”
For instance: look 29’s top, which was mounted on a metal structure, the Strawberry volume long skirt in while silk faille, Swarovski crystal earrings with the maison’s signature keyhole, and cowboy-inspired mules in black leather, embellished with a metal toe cap and signature “S” shaped heels.
The trend of sculptural volumes à la puffball skirts continued at Miss Sohee and Giambattista Valli, whose collection was rich with floral inspirations and the “art of giving volumes through the cuts, through the art of draping and really pushing the boundaries in the atelier,” the designer told WWD’s Miles Socha. Elsewhere, Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli offered twists on traditional evening shapes by pairing them with modern daywear, like a colorful, voluminous skirt paired with a sleek menswear khaki cargo jacket.
Finally, architectural experimentation continued to thrive on the couture catwalks, with fashions ranging from the pleated protrusions on the skirts of Robert Wun’s horror-theme-tinged dresses, to 3D florals at Juana Martin and the futuristic pleated and lifted sculptural works of Gaurav Gupta.