Dior, Haute Couture, fall-winter 2016

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Lucie Meier and Serge Ruffieux’s Autumn-Winter 2016 haute couture collection for Dior is a return to the roots, to the very foundations of the House: the ateliers. Symbolically, the show takes place in the salons of 30, avenue Montaigne: an intimate setting for a collection dedicated to the exceptional skills of haute couture’s little hands, to the poetry of their work.

The Bar suit, the essence of the House of Dior, is the main inspiration for Lucie Meier and Serge Ruffieux. Like a beating heart, it punctuates the entire collection. But the reference is not limited to its shape – this signature silhouette made of an hourglass-curved jacket and long skirt – but more generally, it plays on all aspects of the Bar. And it’s its original palette, a brilliantly contrasting black and white, that colors the entire collection.

Black and white are of particular importance to Lucie Meier and Serge Ruffieux. The combination of the two symbolizes duality: masculine and feminine, historical and modern. The designers also see it as a metaphor for their own relationship: working together to achieve a harmonious balance between two perspectives; becoming one; forming, on the dynamics of differences, a whole greater than individualities.
Monsieur Dior himself loved the juxtaposition of the two. White,” he said, “is simple, pure and goes with everything. And elsewhere he declared, “I could write a whole book about black.” From these couture quotes comes a black-and-white palette that runs from materials to prints, as if a Horst or Penn photograph came to life. Like a Picasso painting, when he rejected color to focus on structure, the collection becomes a study in shapes and silhouettes.

Indeed, the structure of the Bar is reinterpreted. Lucie Meier and Serge Ruffieux begin with its skirt, which here gives rise to experiments with pleats, draped over evening gowns or long skirts. Its lining – the layers of organza that give it body – becomes a garment in its own right, as if the original model were viewed through an X-ray. The couture volumes of the New Look become lighter, more contemporary: it’s all the spirit of the atelier or expressed by the tailor’s workshop. The jacket itself is deconstructed, lengthened at the hem or tilted vertically, bringing animation and movement, a new look and a Dior spirit.

The only color, the only ornament, is a sculpturally embroidered gold, inspired by the work of César or Claude Lalanne, also a reference to art brut. Jean Cocteau said of Dior: “Ce génie léger, propre à notre temps, dont le nom magique comporte Dieu et or.” This gold accentuates the collection, giving it emphasis, and the embroidery is worn like jewelry. For the occasion, the Dior salons themselves become precious, partially covered in gold panels, while the jewelry in the collection echoes the sculptural shapes and asymmetrical placements of the embroidery.
Everything here celebrates the inimitable savoir-faire of the Dior ateliers, the source of all beauty.

Many celebrities were present.

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