A vision of innocence and experience, simplicity and luxury, beauty and decadence through the eyes of Flemish and French masters of both art and craft. In the Autumn/Winter 2015-16 Haute Couture collection, Raf Simons, Artistic Director of Christian Dior, looks to the old masters of Flemish painting and to the artisanal masters of haute couture to provide a synthesis of historical form, technique and artistic gesture. And so, stratification and amalgamation of history, both in art and in fashion, exists throughout the collection, highlighting how the architecture and inspiration of one era is based on another; from the late Gothic period, via the Renaissance and the Baroque to the more recent masters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, each is featured in this broad sweep of history.
Here, the Flemish and the French influences come together in the dramatic, almost ‘impasto’ gestures of drapery and the concentration on historical sleeves, to the Impressionist and Pointillist application of pattern – itself, frequently hand-painted on the materials of the collection itself or made from intricate, cut feathers. Intricate pleating systems of the flou in crepe de chine – usually reserved for dresses – become the expressive, inner linings of reversible capes and offer the choice of a public or a private pleasure for the wearer. The famous Dior manteaux show their similarities to the mantles of the late Middle Ages and to the gowns of the Belle Époque, with a vast and dramatic utilisation of silk taffeta in their construction.
