I will be posting my complete thoughts about this collection later once I´ve got more time to post, to be honest, I just arrived from Paris and haven´t read through everybody´s comments so far. I missed TFS a lot!!
To sum it all up; I was more than glad about the general shift towards classicism, several buyers that I knew were getting sick and tired of the obvious rock star references of the last two years (and so was I, I agree with everybody else´s points about thrift shop buying and stylist tricks). The presentation was much more toned-down than usual Dior presentations, no fancy installations, lighting, stage design etc., just that burning "thing" in the back.
Many of the runway looks were very subtle in terms of detailing, the first cropped jacket that opened the show had to be my favourite, it had a slight peplum shape that was reinforced by some sort of handstitched "pillows" to give it additional shape and a slight volume in the front, while the waist was very slim-cut. It reminded me nicely of the original "New Look" jacket that Christian Dior did in the early 1950ies. Indeed, some of the fabrics were coming from Monsieur Dior´s own debut collection in the late 1940ies, one of the floral jacquards was a direct replica of a cloth that he used back than. I understand that this doesn´t sound very convincing, keeping in mind that we are talking about menswear, but I have to say, it worked well on a man with a small frame. I tryed it on in the showroom together with what I had on myself (black skinny jeans and just a tee-shirt underneath, together with converse) and it worked. So yeah, I definitely see some of these items as incomplicated in terms of wearability.
There were several pieces that I enjoyed a lot and that I see people wearing by next season, such as the elongated tweed trenchcoat with deep neckline or the very cropped peacoat that had been shown with a cummerbund underneath. The short "Chanel" jacket was a definite winner as well and would go nicely in a very casual context.
As far as the tailcoats are concerned, I thought that they were a little too literally black-tie, less inventive than what Hedi had proposed in the past. I definitely don´t care for the formal eveningwear influences, but these pieces only offered very little interpretation in terms of styling, I don´t see them with jeans for a daily occassion. Maybe the one in grey felt, but that´s about it. I also didn´t like the obvious trompe l´oeill effects on the tailcoats that were giving the idea of a cut, they seemed a little forced to me.
The epitome of bad taste for me were definitely those horrendous jeans, with the cut-off denim waistband. Pardon me, but that´s what I definitely think would belong to either DSquared or Dolce, not Dior - there were by far nicer denims in the showroom, such as a washed black cotton satin jeans that were almost the same as the ones that Mick Jagger wore in blue some months back, but in black (they were also offered in a beautiful but less easy to pull of pearl shade). They also introduced a new shape that had only 17cm leg openings (obviously a nod to the japanese market), but they were not really convincing as the look was practically that of a pair of black leggings (did I mention they were insanely stretchy?).
And to stir up the rumours; Dior is concidering to re-model the 44 sizes, they are probably making them more true to the runway, so obviously more skinny than before (as far as I hear, that was a request by the japanese clients that must be like 90% of the buyers of these sizes).
Please let me know.....
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