Christian Dior Haute Couture F/W 2013.14 Paris

[fee de foret]

This looks like what would happen if the Rodarte girls jetted off to Paris and made a couture collection.

 

[Marc10]

Reviews:

Dior's Global Vision
By Suzy Menkes

PARIS — The models were laughing, the flowers were blooming and although Kanye West’s aggressive rap music with its mean lyrics was still pulsating, all seemed right with Christian Dior’s haute couture world.

But this version of the show Monday, at the start of the Paris autumn 2013 couture week, was a digitalized vision — enhanced reality from the catwalk created almost instantly by four iconic photographers: Patrick Demarchelier representing Europe; Willy Vanderperre for the Americas; Paolo Roversi for Asia and Terry Richardson for Africa.

They all had snapped the models off stage and posted the pictures on the surrounding walls, where the projections included a memory stick of floral images that the designer Raf Simons used in his first Dior couture show just a year ago.

The sense of place was crucial to the story: the United States, sporty; Asia, traditional purity; Africa: the freedom of the colorful Masai, and Paris, Christian Dior’s historic Parisienne.

It sounds like a lot to digest. And it was, as if the designer had attached various, swinging pieces of fabric — and there were plenty — to a global wheel. Here came Paris, a variation on tweed suits with sheer, shiny covers; there was Africa, all fiery red and deep blue, marked by tiny pebbles of embroidery; then the Zen of Asia: pallid dresses, with fluid shapes and drapes.

Throughout there was a sense of the undefined: waves of fabric, jackets looped loosely around the shoulders, and almost every outfit with three or four different materials — say a flowered bodice with drapes at the hips and light mesh material around the knees. Transparency was ever present, including a bare body seen through a sheer curtain of fabric.

Did this ambitious, artistically led collection work? Not always. There were complications right through the collection, mostly because of this chosen path of mixing and melding different fabrics. The one constant was the fabulous quality of workmanship from the Dior ateliers.

Perhaps the intensity and density was to reiterate what Mr. Simons said before the show: “I am not a minimalist.” Although there could have been much more of the few simple evening gowns that looked international and timeless, yet modern.

Yet Mr. Simons, even when he missed the beat, is right to push for something that moves beyond Dior’s Parisian heritage. He is picking up on the cultural and global changes that put Asian clients in key front-row positions in Dior’s show tent.

Old style couture is literally dying: Jean-Louis Scherrer and Gérard Pipart of Nina Ricci both passed away last month. And Dior needs a designer who will look not only at the storied history but also embrace the future — even if Mr. Simons has some way to go before he makes his vision as clear as those images projected on the walls.

Dior: Letting Loose
By Cathy Horyn

A year after Raf Simons showed his first couture collection for Dior, he continues to shake up the fashion world. His impact is felt not just in Paris, but everywhere: in the simplifying of clothes, in modernist beadwork, in the variety of peplum jackets or bustiers worn with cigarette pants, in vivid colors that touch on nature and contemporary art.

On Monday, Mr. Simons presented his most challenging collection to date. I can imagine that some people will think that he did not push things far enough, or that his approach was too conceptual or mild or ambiguous. As part of the show, he arranged to have four photographers — Patrick Demarchelier, Paolo Roversi, Willy Vanderperre and Terry Richardson — shoot the models in flower-lined rooms backstage. Mr. Simons’s aim was to show how photographers lend their interpretation to couture. The images were then projected on the high walls of the square venue, in an ever-changing panorama accompanying the actual models.

The music was from Kanye West’s new album, Yeezus, with additional instrumentals supplied by Mr. West.

On top of that idea (already complicated enough), Mr. Simons conceived the collection as four loosely aligned geographic groups: Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa. Each group expressed a central idea. Europe, for instance, was a kind of chic couture club reigned over by La Parisienne; the Americas was sporty, with an ice-cream colored hint of pop culture. But the ideas were suggestive rather than literal. The wide orange-and-navy stripes of the underskirt of a floaty evening gown could suggest a flag. Or not. The brightly colored circles arranged in neat formation on a navy silk trapeze gown, each circle embroidered with tiny feathers, could allude to a native American tradition. It’s anyone’s guess.

The designer began this journey by asking a key question: What is haute couture? It’s a question that was long overdue.

As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Simons pushed things far enough: back to the start of couture. Couture is about individual clothes made to perfection and often adapted by the client to suit her personal taste or pocketbook. That’s the way couture existed for decades, in the glory days of Chanel and Lanvin and Balenciaga, from the 1920s into the ’60s, and designers produced exceptionally innovative and wearable clothes. But at some point in the last 30 to 40 years, since the advent of designer ready-to-wear, couture became known as a laboratory, then a marketing tool, and more recently a very entertaining circus.

No one in recent years has really questioned couture’s roots and raison d’être, except Mr. Simons. Why can’t a couture dress have a greater sense of reality, while still being a thing of beauty, precision and one-of-a-kind sensibility? Why can’t couture reflect a more diverse world, not only in terms of cultural distinctions but also new attitudes about fashion? And must couture exist only on a pedestal or as an annex of Hollywood?

In questioning couture, of course, Mr. Simons is also questioning the fashion system, with its lock-step rules and apathy.

To my eye, this collection brilliantly evoked the panorama of life, with great feeling and intellectual rigor. There were references to Mr. Simons’s first collections for Dior: a sister pair of gorgeous full-skirted dresses, one in deep blue and the other in ivory silk with one sleeve in gray wool and button running up the arm. There were personal references, like a white silk draped gown with a many-hued cluster of beads that was a kind of ode to one of Mr. Simons’s favorite artists, Mike Kelley. There were unexpected examples of traditional craft, like a red column pleated in an old-fashioned Japanese technique that left the surface as prickly as a cactus. And there were some supremely gentle touches, like the feminine notion of print scarf embedded in a blouse, and a lush blanket-wrap coat in black mink with contrasting stripes of fur. The technical innovations were impressive in their own right, like a sheer gray gown that was a knit.

In a way, the collection was overwhelming — so many individual styles to contemplate, so many contrarian views of a world we think we know. I think the projected images, while an interesting concept, may have worked against him. We live in an era flooded with images. Still, I admired Mr. Simons for taking the chance.

He has already loosened up Dior, and with this collection, it moves swiftly toward the future.

nytimes

 

[Marc10]

By Tim Blanks

Raf Simons was always going to bring a new sensibility to couture, but just how new was made dazzlingly clear with his show for Christian Dior today. Freedom was the word he came back to again and again, just as he did the other night when he was talking about his own men's collection. Freedom is an idea that generates a lot of lip service, but in Simons' case, to see a genuinely free thinker applying himself to a métier as bound by tradition as couture was thrilling. "It's difficult for a designer to give up control, because you have a specific idea of what you want to do," he explained after the show. "But it's so much more satisfying to give freedom to people and see what happens." Simons must have been satisfied by the results of the freedom he gave lens legends Patrick Demarchelier, Terry Richardson, Paolo Roversi, and Willy Vanderperre to interpret his collection. They each photographed the models in the morning, and their efforts provided a massive backdrop to the show, runway and screens cross-pollinating in a constantly shifting digital tapestry.

The freedom Simons really meant was the freedom to choose clothes and to choose how to wear them. It works best if there is a lot to choose from in the first place. The variety was something that leapt off the catwalk today. Haute couture is so closely identified with Paris that Simons' focus on what Dior meant as part of a global fashion culture was a bold departure. That's exactly how the clothes appeared: a different kind of dynamic in couture. Europe shared catwalk space with the Americas, Asia, and Africa: A revamped Bar jacket was followed by a sporty navy blouson; a strapless dress in tiers of spacey shibori (the Japanese process that produces that peculiar spiky fabric) preceded another strapless number vibrantly banded in shiny tribal colors. Dior himself was something of an internationalist (each collection, Simons reproduces two dresses by the old master as an homage), so it would have made sense to him. It should be said that there were some today who saw chaos in need of an edit. They missed the point: The mix was everything.

But what is haute couture without a client? From the start of his stint at Dior, Simons has been fascinated by the clients. They were almost a new species to him. And it wasn't just contemporary clients he studied. He's also been engaged by legendary Dior dressers of the past, like Millicent Rogers. "She brought a strong American attitude, almost cowboylike." Millicent's kerchiefs were a recurrent motif in the collection. Actually, the throat action was one way to pin down exactly where you were in Raf's world: a Masai neckpiece, a Parisienne wrap, a Shinto scarf. Geography helped drive today's show. The show notes mentioned flags, colorful, optimistic emblems of national identity. The palette, the blocking, the banding and striping captured all that.

The most remarkable thing in the collection may have been Simons' insistence on the normality of it all. We've said it before, we'll say it again: He is a true outsider in this industry, infatuated with the secret codes but sufficiently detached that he can create new codes all his own. "If we don't adapt to what women in society are now about, couture might disappear," Simons noted with typical Belgian logic. So what do we say? All hail the new couture.

style

By Sarah Mower

“I think it’s time to free couture,” declared Raf Simons as he came up from hugging a delighted Jennifer Lawrence amid the backstage melee of congratulations after his third Christian Dior couture show. “It annoys me that couture is thought of as the circus clown of fashion,” he continued. “What interests me is to get down to a more psychological level. To think about individuality, and the cultures women live in.”

As a force relatively new to couture, it is fascinating to watch Simons apply his experimental intelligence to creating an immersive experience out of his shows, while simultaneously thinking through what it means to design for Christian Dior’s global clientele. This time, he treated his audience to a show conceptualized to investigate the influence of Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa on Dior. Huge digital projections of the girls wearing the clothes shot by Patrick Demarchelier, Terry Richardson, Willy Vanderperre, and Paolo Roversi appeared on the walls of a white box as the models walked past.

Although he divided the collections into sections—gray tweed tailoring symbolizing France, clean-cut coats and sporty scarves for America; spiky 3-D Japanese fabrics for Asia;and Masai-inspired drapes and tribal beading for Africa—it was far from being a show about regional stereotypes (which might have fallen into Simons’s idea of couture as “circus.”) Instead, it was more of a series of investigations of form, color, asymmetric draping, and degrees of transparency (semi-sheer skirts are trending all over Paris). The underlying sense is that Simons is pushing himself both to explore possibilities beyond the classic Fifties Dior templates he honored when he first stepped into the house last year, and to challenge his own innate minimalism.

Among the diversity of looks there were beautiful standouts: a series of the strapless dresses that are sure to be a Simons-for-Dior hit on every red carpet; a scarlet fur coat with cutout shoulders; an amazingly regal black-and-white-spotted full-skirted dress with a caped back and matching elbow-length gloves. What the whole might have lacked in total coherence was more than made up for in the believability of every piece. Simons is outward-looking, keen to learn, and to tune into the lives of modern women; it’s easy to imagine his reality-couture being snapped up and worn in the four corners of the wealthy world.

vogue

 

[Marc10]

By Lisa Armstrong

I arrived early for the Dior show while the rehearsal was in progress and big shot photographers Patrick Demarchelier and Terry Richardson were still photographing backstage. Not for Dior the common or garden catwalk snapper.

No one who's anyone arrives early at a fashion show. Still, it gave me the chance to perch on a wall in front of the show marquee, and observe those who do.

I watched paparazzi jostle for their places behind the barricades in anticipation of their money shot - Jennifer Lawrence. They were in for a long wait. I spotted the Dior press officers, with their head-mics and iPads, complimenting one another on their outfits - Dior, obviously, but black. Prs have it tricky, sartorially. They have to look the part without outshining the front row.

Not much chance of that here. Dior is one of those shows where it's always cocktail hour, as far as clothes are concerned.
Two sequinned Russians instructed their driver to circle the block, presumably until a bigger crowd had gathered to witness their disembarkation. I asked two twenty something Chinese women if I could take their photograph. They agreed, diffidently, but pointed out that they weren't wearing haute couture - "just" ready-to-wear from Raf Simons's debut Dior collection a year ago.

I couldn't find them afterwards in the 800-strong crowd to ask what they thought of Simons's interpretation of kimonos, obi belts and the shibori binding and drying techniques he used to produce a spiky fabric which looked like the surface of a rubber massage ball. Perhaps they preferred the European section - Parisian New Look dresses, with multi stranded pearl necklaces and laminated houndstooth suits, or the American element which fused sportswear and the stars and stripes (mainly the stripes) into pimped up pencil skirts composed of patent and sheer bands.

Simons said he was inspired by the personal style of "women from different continents and cultures who wear couture" - and there were moments when this came together in a pullulating whoop of colour, Masai beading and origami folding. Those architectural satin kimono-coats, some slashed at the back, all of them imposingly cocoon like, were stand-outs.

If the show sometimes seemed like an overload of ideas in search of a rigorous edit, Simons's way with colour - cobalts, cornflowers, crimson, mint - provided inspiration for the women on the street.

Black may be big next winter, but it still doesn't look that clever.

telegraph.co.uk

WWD

This was a complicated collection. Complicated in the most literal sense, with a whole lot going on, drawn as it was from Raf Simons’ sartorial studies of women from four reaches of the world: Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas (sorry, Australia).

It was complicated as well for reasons other than seasonal fashion whim. “The basic idea for me is that I like the idea of freeing up couture,” Simons said before his show.

Freeing couture. Making it less precious and more accessible to those fortunate women for whom accessibility is about lifestyle fit rather than fiscal constraint. Read: more modern. Though not its original condition, at some point, couture became “something that’s supposed to be restrictive and only for special occasions,” Simons said. “I don’t like that. I think that psychologically, emotionally, it can be approached the same way as ready-to-wear: out there for women to enjoy and to wear.…It’s a psychology of how clothes can look in relation to a modern woman and the way she is living her life and experiencing the culture.”

The way women live today is to dress as they please, without the hand of the designer, couturier or otherwise, imposing mandates. To telegraph that notion, Simons wanted to design and detach, so he enlisted four megawattage photographers — Patrick Demarchelier, Paolo Roversi, Terry Richardson and Willy Vanderperre — to photograph the models preshow in front of four different floral walls. (These referenced the setting of Simons’ Dior debut last year.) The pictures were projected during the show. “It’s about the mind-set and the reinterpretations of creations,” he said. “Today, I can do that with these photographers. But for me it’s the same with the women. I am fascinated to see how they will react and reinterpret [the looks].”

Phew! So much to take on, especially given that to make his point, Simons designed the collection in four capsules, focusing on Parisian savoir-faire, American sportiness, Asian architecture and tradition and African freedom of decoration, with a focus on Masai inspiration. On top of it all, Simons took the deliberate and essential step of blurring those formerly crisp lines of reference to the house founder.

As a statement of freedom and creative control of the house — wonderful! As a collection — interesting and provocative, yet disjointed and even dizzying at times, as Simons presented his various motifs not in distinct groups but all mixed in, and shown in a four-sided arrangement that left little time to linger on a given look, to take in its intricacies of design. That’s perhaps one reason why a red cold-shoulder mink stood out as one of the show’s stunners: Its lines and singular surface texture were easy to grasp in those few steps before the model moved from sight. Other looks included la Parisienne tailoring in embroidered men’s wear fabrics; colorful invocations of spiky shibori fabrics, and graphic dresses inspired by tribal paintings and body art. Some were simply beautiful, some complex and beautiful, some a bit overwrought. All pulsed with the fearless modernity with which Simons is leading Dior to its next reality.

wwd.com

 

[Marc10]

By Jessica Michault

Well its official, Raf Simons has fully absorbed the heritage of the Christian Dior house into his envelope pushing aesthetic. This fall/winter 2014 collection was uniquely his, and if there were hints of references to past classic Dior silhouettes, they were just top notes to the complex and heady fashion elixir that Simons is offering the house’s haute couture clientele.

These are women who, now more than ever, are world travelers that are both social media savvy and informed luxury consumers. In fact, the nature of haute couture, with its collections shown just before the season in which the garments are to be worn, is the form of dress that most closely fills the needs of women looking for the best the luxury world has to offer with the immediacy they now crave.

The new global consumer was on Simons’s mind when he started to imagine this collection. “I began by looking at women from different continents and cultures, who wear couture, their personal style,” read the quote from designer in the show program notes.

With the vision of his far flung customers leading him, Simons decided to break the collection up into four clear groupings, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. In doing so it allowed him a bit more room to experiment with both fabric treatments and aesthetic approaches. This made for a collection that went from dresses created by using a traditional Japanese technique called Shibori that gave the garments a spiky texture reminiscent of the Southeast Asian Durian fruit all the way to a show stopping, sporty black tank gown covered in colorful floral embroidered “badges”. A dress that looked just right for Hollywood starlet Jennifer Lawrence, who was sitting front and center at the show.

Simons also heightened the immediacy aspect of this collection by coming up with the ingenious idea of having the collection shot backstage by four of the top fashion photographers working today, just before the show. Simons tapped Terry Richardson, Paolo Roversi, Patrick Demarchelier and Willy Vanderpierre to each take on one of the four regions and had they shot the collection in a quartet of pop-up studios set up behind the scenes at the show.

The effect being that as the models wore say a Maasai warrior inspired graphic pink and black knit dress, or a sleeveless pleated print black and white dress that looked like it had been crafted from the skin of an exotic animal from the “Africa” section of the show walked the runway, a classic Terry Richardson pose of those same models giving a thumbs up would appear on the wall high video screen backdrop. The timing was seamless. And it added another layer of depth and dynamism to a Dior show already brimming with bright ideas.

nowfashion

By Thomas Adamson

PARIS — Christian Dior’s Raf Simons broke through the venerable walls of Avenue Montaigne to send off the Parisian fashion house’s couture out on an exciting journey across the four corners of the globe. From the purity of Asia to the bold Americas to the bright stripes and patterns of Africa’s Masai, this show had it all.

Images projected on the make-shift show walls inside Paris’ Invalides visually summed up the message of the show: A carpeted salon of Dior’s Right Bank headquarters fused into scenes of exotic red flowers and beautiful images of black and Asian models. In other words, with one full year as creative director under his belt, Simons has found the confidence to go beyond the weighty heritage of the 70-year-old house codes and explore his own outward visions.

“This collection evolved to be about Dior not just being about Paris and France, but about the rest of the world and how many fashion cultures impact on the house and on myself,” said Simons.

While the iconic bar jacket popped up in one belted gray wool outfit, its several peplum flaps mirrored the layers of a Japanese kimono.

Elsewhere, looks fully embracing the East were pulled off with panache, such as one off-white silk coat with stiff upturned collar, long front flaps and an incredible jutting back piece. All the looks were supremely feminine.

But while all of the globe-trotting turned this show into one of Simons’ most creative, the 53 looks were so diverse that it also was his hardest to make sense of.

The brightly-colored Masai looks, for example, were sometimes so bright they jarred, such as one black shiny column dress with vivid blue and red horizontal stripes and tribal neck band.

Still, there were plenty of great new explorations. Simons further elaborated his idea of the truncated and sectioned-off silhouette — something that featured last season. That spawned one of the best looks in the show, a bright red pleated silk bustier dress, which had two identical skirts, one above and one below.

Next season, a more focused vision might help sharpen these great fashion ideas.

washingtonpost

By Dean Mayo Davies

This season Raf Simons' travelling Dior box landed in the grounds of the Hôtel National des Invalides. Against the blue sky, it looked like a Magritte composition. Last season it sat in the Tuileries, mirrored, reflecting the trees around as if it wasn't there. Transplanting Christian Dior in public places, so the house intersects with people going about their daily life, says a lot about this designer's approach.

As we waited in the space, Simons piped the bassy throb of Plastikman across the PA. If you’re nerdy, there’s something satisfying about the no-compromise techno of Richie Hawtin, of whom Simons is a massive fan – the day before, at his menswear re-see, an iPod was playing a different cut from the producer – being seating music for fashion at its most haute. This is a world of society and now crucially red-carpet, not anything more. Its sole purpose being decoration and loveliness, not having to anchor to anything more – we wouldn’t want to terrify those who live life in velvet-lined jewellery boxes (metaphorically speaking).

Brilliantly, this show was anything but polite. It was a total revelation. With speakers hidden under the false ceiling, the volume was cranked up to danger level, Michel Gaubert mixing a series of tracks from Kanye West’s Yeezus, kicking off with the hard acid of On Sight, New Slaves and the Marilyn Manson-sampling Black Skinhead.

Look one: out came Sasha Luss in Mr Dior’s bar silhouette with polka dot longsleeves wrapped around the neck, fastened with a huge bow at the back. It was odd: giving the line of a raglan sleeve baseball t-shirt, the chic of a silk neckscarf and the old-school drama you’d expect of this metier. Imaging getting rid of the top and slashed-to-the-thigh skirt and putting it with jeans. That ease is exactly what Simons is interested in. His clients wear the clothes, and not the other way around.

The designer talked in his notes of looking at women from different continents, their cultures and how they wear couture – Europe, The Americas, Asia and Africa. It got more inventive as it went on, each piece a brilliantly multi-layered conflation of elements, without eradicating a sense grandeur. The lines were elegant throughout, the mind stimulated. Following gentle beginnings establishing his respect for the House, to put it bluntly this was Simons saying '**** it' to treading carefully and going full throttle. He even commissioned Patrick Demarchelier, Willy Vanderperre, Paolo Roversi and Terry Richardson to shoot the girls backstage, projecting their images on the video-screen walls as the girls walked. A Vanderperre image sliding into a Richardson melting into a Roversi was powerful in itself.

What did the clients, tribute dressing here in their finery think of it all? Well, the whooping, stomping applause at the end was like being at a gig or a football match. Simons has talked – and continues to – about modernising couture. He is doing it.

showstudio

 

[marcBarna]

 

[|PerfectTonight|]

Haters gonna hate. The first half of the show was stronger!

 

[dior_couture1245]

"Haters gonna hate" is seriously the most asinine defense invented. As if any of us that dislike it A, haven't expressed our opinions thoughtfully as to why we dislike it and B, as if we're disliking it simply to "hate." Honestly, most of us that are having a hard time with this and Raf's previous collections for the house have been pretty clear that we all adored what he did at Jil Sander.

 

[TianSoFine]

"Haters gonna hate" is seriously the most asinine defense invented. As if any of us that dislike it A, haven't expressed our opinions thoughtfully as to why we dislike it and B, as if we're disliking it simply to "hate." Honestly, most of us that are having a hard time with this and Raf's previous collections for the house have been pretty clear that we all adored what he did at Jil Sander.

THANK YOU. I hear this expression so much and I've never been able to express my aversion to it, so thank you for saying this. People aren't blindly hating the collection; those who dislike this collection dislike it because we see major flaws in it and have pointed them out.

 

[Fashion_Girl22]

 

[JacquelineJane]

lol except I don't think anyone actually uses the expression seriously?

 

[andrew]

dior_couture1245 Those flaws are actually no flaws, the clothes are made by hand and they'll have a "home-made" feel to them. They are not made with machines and therefore not "perfectly" executed.

I should have a great future in couture, then.

 

[models_vlada]

I've been really out of the tFS for the last year because of time, but this collection deserves to be commented.

To be honest i haven't been displeased with Raf's work at Dior (specially at RTW), he has maintained his style and has kept an innovative perspective on the brand, but this collection it looks like he has been totally put out of his style, i don't know if there was influence from the managers to return a little bit of Gallino's spirit for commercial purposes or maybe he pushed himself to do something different... But this change it's certainly bad, some of the looks are pretty good, but the collection in general it's not cohesive at all, and it all senses, even the cast of models look odd, it's like there was a lack of work... a lot of dresses were really beautiful, but did not look good on some models, and not to say horrible like e.g. Ming Xi's Look.
I understand a little bit more the theme after having read a little bit about it, but it looks to me like he couldn't achieve it.

This doesn't look wearable, but at the same time it doesn't look beautiful/couturish, probably the work is there, but this could easily be a RTW collection. I don't know if there was a lack of inspiration, because a lot of the looks ressemble to me things seen before as e.g. the last look looked very Mcqueen Fall 2009 to me ...

But i have to admit, Diana Moldovan's look was awesome ahaha (to say something good), there were good looks, but non cohesive as a collection.

 

[LagerfeldBoy]

"It sounds like a lot to digest. And it was, as if the designer had attached various, swinging pieces of fabric — and there were plenty — to a global wheel...Did this ambitious, artistically led collection work? Not always. There were complications right through the collection, mostly because of this chosen path of mixing and melding different fabrics."
-Suzy Menkes

I couldn't agree more. It was just too conceptual. While the idea of having 4 locations interpreted by 4 photographers sounds fantastic, it translated into a messy, gawky, unflattering collection that was too avant garde for me to process. I honestly kept questioning who in the world would combine certain fabrics together and who would find some of the looks appealing. After having a flawless tenure so far at Dior, this honestly has to be his weakest collection to date. There are just so many ideas presented together that ultimately create a collection that's all over the place. To make matters worse, a lot of it just wasn't edgy, but rather gawky and not appealing, imo. I seriously could pick more outfits I hate than outfits I love. It's sad because I absolutely adored his Resort 2014 collection.

 

[LagerfeldBoy]

"Haters gonna hate" is seriously the most asinine defense invented. As if any of us that dislike it A, haven't expressed our opinions thoughtfully as to why we dislike it and B, as if we're disliking it simply to "hate." Honestly, most of us that are having a hard time with this and Raf's previous collections for the house have been pretty clear that we all adored what he did at Jil Sander.

IKR. It's like "GTFO with that simpleton mindset"
I adore Raf, but when it's a horrible collection, it has to mentioned.

 

[disco54]

Its very sloppy and unappealing to me. Honestly raf's minimalism and Couture don't work and it shows. He needs to stop showing the same ugly shoes ever season. Really, the accessories at Dior really SUCK now, they were so much better when Galliano was there. The irony is though his collections are critically acclaimed, there is this constant boredom in his clothes.

 

[Marc10]

A lot of people are complaining the "lack of cohesion" of the collection, but cohesion wasn't Raf's intention at all here. Not only because of the different continents inspiration, but his goal was to propose different outfits for different women with different taste. It isn't a horizontal, beginning-middle-end collection, which made it wildly interesting for me. If you like the outfits or not it's another thing, but I don't he deserves this specific criticism.

 

[maxlinden]

I could not stop laughing this whole video....this need to be a series on Television.

I still think there were some amazing pieces in this collection. There is a new couture client out there and Raf knows who she is and what she wants. Couture isn't just about the construction its also about the raw expression of a designers creativity.

If you think about it this collection is the only one thus far worth talking about.

 

[dior_couture1245]

A lot of people are complaining the "lack of cohesion" of the collection, but cohesion wasn't Raf's intention at all here. Not only because of the different continents inspiration, but his goal was to propose different outfits for different women with different taste. It isn't a horizontal, beginning-middle-end collection, which made it wildly interesting for me. If you like the outfits or not it's another thing, but I don't he deserves this specific criticism.

While I certainly do understand his inspiration, I still feel like the lack of cohesion is really jarring and was not pulled off successfully enough to read as intentional. Instead it ends up looking like way too many ideas, way too many fabrics, way to many colors and way too many silhouettes. What does this collection mean? It doesn't tell me anything? The message is lost because of the frenzy.

I'm not saying it even has to be a literal beginning, middle and end kind of story with the same look evolved from day to night, but even books and movies that aren't composed in a continuous, lateral manner will still leave the viewer with a conclusive impact. This collection feels hopelessly scatterbrained, at best.

Ultimately, I really am so perplexed by the idea that this collection supposedly addresses the needs of a global clientele. I'm not sure any of these garments (accessories included) are particularly practical or, worse, even flattering on the models - let alone on a more averagely built woman. Raf seems to talk a lot about giving Couture new relevance by giving women what they'd actually want to wear, but this collection leaves me wondering if anyone would actually want to wear any of it.

 

[Marc10]

Not flattering on the models is quite pointless argument when it comes to Couture, since the garments are heavily edited and fitted to the client's wish.

Anyways, I think in the end it all comes down to personal taste. I got Raf's message loud and clear and enjoyed the collection very much. The ones who didn't.. welp, there's always next season.