When I think of an Haute Couture fashion show, I imagine an intricately handcrafted presentation of a concept that just happens to be worn.
At Xuan-Thu Nguyen’s Spring Summer 2009 Haute Couture show, I got all of this and even an embroidered snap bracelet.(Which just came in very handy when trying to spell her name.) In Haute Couture, obsession gets dressed up as decoration and flourishes of colour as materialisations of a risk taken on the part of the designer. The models float by like vessels for these art works. They come and go too fast for me to really care about the clothes. Instead I fixate on the details. An eyebrow drawn in a stunning way, an errant piece of hair or a spirally way of walking in a straight line.
After a few pieces a selection of models returns to the runway in what I originally thought were awkwardly clunky dresses and jackets. Standing completely still and looking out into the audience their motionlessness is interrupted by a young man who proceeds to un-do (via zippers, buttons and latches) each of the young woman’s clothes, revealing wonderful bursts of colorful flowers.
The staging was touchingly poignant. The young man seemed nervous as he slowly worked and the models ignored him like elegant trees. The color that sprung from the beneath the grays and the trembling fingers that released them transformed the clothes into malleable works of art,the models into performers and the runway into a stage. There is no reason to even wonder whether art and fashion have merged. At this show, they were indistinguishable.
January 30, 2009, 11:14pm
