haute couture is a world i will definitely never inhabit, but a girl can surely dream. i love documentaries like signé chanel and the secret world of haute couture where you can watch artisans, seamstresses, set builders, and designers take a simple (or sometimes not so simple) idea and distill it into less than fifteen minutes of amazingness. couture is so high art that in many cases it’s not understood by the masses, for example keira knightley’s chanel haute couture gown from the golden globes, but it seems with the passing of time that couture houses and buyers are keen to add more street elements to their designs. olga touched on this in her post about things like beanies and 80s-esque madonna gloves popping up this season, but it’s also about taking pieces that have been around forever, like a pleated skirt, and reinventing them, making them more grand and romantic than you could ever dream.
dior’s raf simons said he was inspired by the mashup of the psychedelic 60s, liberation of the 70s (with a heavy influence of david bowie), and the traditional “ladies who lunch” of the 50s, and you can see it in the clothes and the set, which was made of crazy scaffolding and pepto pink carpet. refinery 29 has a great mini movie on the making of the dress in the first and last photos and you can watch the entire show on dior.com.
runway and detail shots via style.com; backstage and set images from t magazine
