The Making Of Abby Choi

Posted by Style On The Dot

As more information emerges about the slain model/influencer, a web of intrigue is beginning to be apparent. Who was the mysterious, couture-wearing woman, really?

Abby Choi, wearing Georges Hobeika, for a L’Officiel shoot. Photo: xxabbyc/Instagram

With police investigating and Netizens digging deep concurrently, a rather different picture of the murdered and mutilated model has surfaced. Abby Choi Tin-fung (蔡天凤), whose violent death more than three weeks ago aroused the curiosity of the international fashion set, now appears to be a character shrouded in mystery and as layered as the tulle dresses she favoured. There are suggestions that she was somehow connected to the Hong Kong world of organised crime, in particular, money laundering, although how so, it is not immediately clear. This does not, however, say that her brutal and gruesome death is justifiable. But observers of this slaying are beginning to wonder who, in fact, is the real Abby Choi. Even the Hong Kong press are not able—or willing—to clearly delineate this “socialite” with considerable social media presence. It is the same with the people who allegedly know her. The very few who spoke gave conflicting accounts of her back story. More of those following the developments are, therefore, conceding that this case is increasingly “扑朔迷离 (pushuo mili)”, impossible to unravel.

Abby Choi was depicted as a social fixture, but that did not point to an actual job. When her murder was reported, she was mostly referred to as a celebrity. In mainland Chinese media, she is called a mingyuan (名媛) or a young lady of note, even the Chinese version of the debutante. As self-proclaimed to Vogue China last November, she’s a “高级定制收藏家” or collector of haute couture, although on her Instagram page, she did not don that many. The prevalent argument is that a mingyuan, especially one who buys high fashion, usually comes from an extremely wealthy family of stellar reputation. Not much is known about the Chois. Or, if they are indeed immensely rich. The central character in that family so far has been the matriarch Zhang Yanhua (张燕花), also known as 五姐 (wujie) or fifth sister in the mainland, where she reportedly spends part of her time, minding an unknown money-making business. Following the murder, she has spoken about her daughter, but little is revealed. Recently, another character related to that family has emerged. According to what has been circulating online, there was another person at the site where Ms Choi was dismembered: A masked man, whose identity is not confirmed; a lookout at the crime scene. It has been speculated that the person could be Ms Choi’s hitherto unseen brother, even step-brother. If that is true, there is more than meets the eye to this murder mystery. Strangely, the Hong Kong press has been rather silent this past week in their follow-up to the sensational homicide.

From left, Abby Choi, her mother Zhang Yanhua, and two step-sisters. Photo: Weibo

Abby Choi, as it’s currently known, was born in 1994, the child of Zhang Yanhua and another unidentified man from a previous marriage. A Hong Kong Netizen with the handle Poey Cheung shared online that Ms Choi was originally surnamed Wan (云 or Yun in Mandarin). No information is available about her father. Ms Zhang divorced her husband (some reports say because he gambles too much) and later re-married, in Hong Kong, to a local with the family name Choi. With this man, she gave birth to two daughters (and possibly a son?). Ms Cheung also shared that the murdered influencer grew up and lived with her grandparents in To Kwa Wan (土瓜湾), a neighbourhood on the eastern shore of the Kowloon Peninsula, not far from the old Kai Tak Airport. It is not an exceptional area, unlike, say, the swanky Kadoori Hill, where Ms Choi bought an apartment for her ex-husband and his family to live in. Ms Zhang has stated that her “precious daughter” went to an unnamed “international school”. But, according to Ms Cheung, Ms Choi attended the aided, co-ed Oblate Primarily School in To Kwa Wan. A Catholic institution founded in 1975, the school’s medium of instruction was Chinese. She later went to the private 60-year-old Kowloon Tong Secondary School, where teachers used Chinese in classes, too. It is not known if Ms Choi completed her secondary education or furthered her studies. Or, if early marriage, in fact, impeded her academic pursuits.

Initial reports claimed that Abby Choi met her first husband in the same secondary school. Her mother announced that her “daughter and son-in-law were [same-school] childhood sweethearts.” Poey Cheung said that the lovers were acquainted while both were schooling, but not in the same institution. Alex Kwong Kong-chi (邝港智) apparently attended Chan Shu Kui Memorial School. Formerly known by other names until 1974, the 50-year-old CSKMS was situated in Kowloon Tong before they moved to their present location in Sham Shui Po. As Ms Cheung described it, Kowloon Tong Secondary School, Abby Choi’s alma mater, was just opposite CSKMS, divided by a Kowloon-Canton Railway (KCR) track. Beneath this track, was a pedestrian underpass known among the students who used it as “桃花隧道 (taohua suidao)” or lovers’ tunnel. Those aware of this conduit knew that both schools were separated by a distance of a “two-minute walk”. Ms Choi reportedly knew her future first husband when she was 15. It is possible then that both met and fell in love here, beneath the passing of a KCR train. Yet, it is also said that both schools were not in such close proximity. How their romance blossomed to the point that it could lead to teenaged marriage is thus not clear, yet.

Although surrounded by books at a Chanel event last February, Abby Choi was not known to be academically inclined. It is not known if she completed her secondary education. Photo: Abby Choi/Facebook

It was also shared online by self-proclaimed former schoolmates that although Ms Choi was said to be “善良 (shanliang)” or kindhearted, as well as sweet and demure (as proclaimed online by those who had been in her recent clique), she was purportedly not nearly the good girl that she had projected herself to be, at least as seen on social media. The revealer claimed that Ms Choi was prone to “搬弄是非(bannong shifei)” or tell tales, sew discord, even creating mischief. She reportedly got herself into fights with schoolmates, too. With misdemeanors piled up, she eventually had to pulled out of school and register in another, which has not been identified. It was in secondary school that Ms Choi took her step-father’s surname. Concurrently, she began to morph into a wealthy daughter, and was sent to and picked up from school in a chauffeur-driven car. Her step-father initially opened a restaurant called Ying Heung Fan Dim (盈香饭店) in To Kwa Wan, but after undisclosed business dealings in China (reportedly in Hainan), became extremely wealthy. Despite rewarding her with material edge, Ms Choi’s parents apparently paid scant attention to her schooling. Even more inexplicable was how unaffected they were when Ms Choi announced that she wanted to marry Alex Kwong when both were merely 18 years of age.

The Chinese have a common saying: 门当户对 (mendang hudui) or a fitting marital match when both families are of similar social status. Popular understanding in Hong Kong suggests that the aided Kowloon Tong Secondary School that Abby Choi went to was, at that time, a better institution than Chan Shu Kui Memorial School that Alex Kwong attended. Additionally, the Kwongs, in comparison, were not even considered borderline affluent. Patriarch Kwong Kau (邝球) was a disgraced former policeman (an accusation of rape when he was with the force was never resolved). His elder son, Alex Kwong, was not known to be academically successful or gainfully employed (the other son, Anthony Kwong Kong-kit (邝港杰), later served as Ms Choi’s personal driver and, puzzlingly, event companion). Although the Choi family was not in the league of Hong Kong’s 名门望族 (mingmen wangzu) or prestigious families, they were, at least on the surface, economically better off than the Kwongs. Yet the coming together of two disparate families by marriage took place (exactly when is unknown although 2012 is thought to be the year). The unanswered question on so many lips: Why would any parent (the mother Zhang Yanhua, in particular) agree to a teenaged daughter marrying another teen who had no certain future? And not discouraging them from having children so soon after?

Screen shot of Abby Choi with her second husband Chris Tam in an undated video shared on Sina News

The adolescents’ marriage bore them two children, but the union did not last. The divorce came, as did the wedding, at an undisclosed date, but online speculation placed it at around 2015. If that is correct, Ms Choi remarried rather quickly—only a year later. The groom is a man thought to be of considerable wealth—the son of Tam Chuk-kwan (谭泽均), co-founder of the chain eatery TamJai Yunnan Mixian (rice noodles). Tam junior is known only as Chris Tam. He is not addressed by his Chinese name, even in the Chinese media. According to current knowledge and chatter, Chris Tam was acquainted with Abby Choi during their school days, just as Mr Kwong was. Ms Zhang claimed, in fact, that they knew each other when her daughter was ten. When they tied the knot, it was reported that both went through traditional Chinese nuptial rites that included betrothal gifts of immense gold jewellery (one photo showed boxes of chunky gold bangles, another of her wearing them as a necklace). Their wedding dinner was a lavish affair, held in what looked like a luxury hotel ballroom. The event was hosted by renowned TVB variety show host 林盛斌 (Lin Shengbin), popularly known as Bob, who reportedly earns a six-figure sum (HKD) for each appearance, including weddings.

A video of the nuptials, inexplicably shot in a studio in the Philippines, emerged (after the murder, the company removed it from their social media account, but not before it was downloaded by Netizens and shared online). In the video, Chris Tam claimed that he met Ms Choi on some street, where his future wife was with a friend. This contradicted Ms Zhang’s version of the matter. Even more peculiar, the marriage was never registered. There was no certificate to prove that they officially tied the knot, just that shot-in-the-Philipines video and testimonies of whoever attended the ceremony that was reportedly witnessed by“nearly 100 tables” of guests. Was this a more modern arrangement that was a tad better than straight-to-cohabitation? As with her first husband, Ms Choi had two children with her second, and, again this time, a boy and a girl. By most accounts, life with her new man was at least good, if not blissful. Ms Choi had expressed on IG more than once her gratefulness towards an unnamed fellow, presumed to be Chris Tam. In one photo shared online, he was seen with her in Paris last January during Couture Week. A month later, back in Hong Kong, the Tam family reported to the police that Abby Choi was missing.

Screen shot of Abby Choi’s betrothal gifts from the Tam family, shared on Sina News

As the weeks passed, a more vivid picture of Chris Tam emerged. He seems like an extremely understanding—some say outstanding—spouse; he’s on more than friendly terms with Ms Choi’s ex-husband, welcomed the two kids from his wife’s previous marriage to play with his own two, had no objections to the hiring of Ms Choi’s former brother-in-law Anthony Kwong as her personal driver and chaperone to fashion events, and has been extremely/unusually chummy with his mother-in-law, wujie Zhang Yanhua, arousing the curiosity as to what was the true nature of their relationship. Additionally, Chris Tam’s parents and the Kwongs are reported to enjoy mutually amicable rapport. Even Ms Zhang was full of praise of how the two families had been affectionate towards her daughter. At the same time, it isn’t clear why a man known as the 太子爷 (taiziye) or crown prince of his family’s relatively large business would take as a first wife a woman from not a particularly distinguished family and who was a divorcée, with two children in tow. Despite the all-over love fest, dispute and displeasure later surfaced. After the Kwongs were arrested, a family member supposedly contacted the Tams and asked, “你为什么报警不提前告诉我 (why did you not inform me in advance before contacting the police?)”. Kwong Kau, too, allegedly said to Chris Tam before the murder, “如果谭家食言，下场就是一起死 (if the Tam family will not keep to their word, the consequence is death to us all)”.

In several close looks at Ms Choi’s social media pages to better learn about her fashionable past with French luxury houses, what stood out was not the lack of influencer-worthy clothes, but posts of a more personal nature (other than shots of birthday celebrations). There is, for example, not a single photo on Instagram (her username was, as recorded, changed twice) that shows Ms Choi with either of her husbands. Stranger still are nil images of her when she was pregnant, pre-natal or post-natal, or with her children (even just one) as babies or toddlers. There are no photos of her with her immediate family. Or, in-laws, past or present, except—remarkably—those of her with her brother-in-law Anthony Kwong, who shared seven shots (excluding group pictures) on his IG page, with the somewhat careful hashtags, #family and #BroAndSisLove. She joined IG in 2012, which would be the year she married Alex Kwong, yet there are no photos of her wedding or even a bridal gown (perhaps the event was a very simple affair). Ditto her second wedding, which is curious for someone who was by 2017, after she married Chris Tam, lauded as a fashion star. What we did find was the Facebook page Abby and Paomes Charitable Org, which was supposed to be started by the murder victim and a mysterious friend, who goes by the handle 豹太 (baotai) or Madam Bao and had, in the early days of the investigation into the Abby Choi homicide, offered HK$1 million for information relating to the case. Her relationship with Madam Bao is unclear, unlike that with Aaron Kwok’s also-influencer wife Moka Fang (方媛), frequently described as a 闺蜜 (guimi) or bestie.

Abby Choi during a couture fitting at Dior. Screen shot: xxabbyc/Instagram

It is not clear when Ms Choi began enjoying fashion to the extent that she did. Most of her posts on IG (and repeated on Facebook, which she joined only in 2017) featured identifiable, ultra-feminine styles from the usual brands that influencers tend to be drawn to: Louis Vuitton, Valentino and Gucci, with extreme love for Chanel and, especially, Dior. Interestingly, her first show, according to her posts, was Dolce & Gabbana in February 2017, just two months after she married Alex Tam. It was during this time, according to media reports, that she really played the part of the rich fashionista. Was she, perhaps, finally able to be a wealthy daughter-in-law? She was active and traveled through the pandemic years. It is not certain when she became a couture customer. In the beginning, she appeared to be wearing RTW, but in February 2020, she was videotaped at a Dior couture fitting, in a grey-blue silk chiffon gown. It is not known how big a Dior customer she really was (or if that was the first and only couture purchase). A source at a luxury house confirmed that such information is never disclosed. It is not certain either if all those fashion week trips were out-of-pocket expenses or if she enjoyed a fully-paid invitation by the brands—they are known to request the presence of potential or existing couture customers, all on the house. According to a Forbes report in 2020, a Dior couture full-length dress would cost “US$100,000 upwards”. Perhaps, most baffling among the unknowns about Ms Choi was the source of her seemingly immense wealth.

The popular proposition now is that Ms Choi “是被包装出来的伪豪门女”; she was packaged as a rich and powerful woman. This usually indicates that such a person is groomed to be a diversion from a hidden malefaction. Ms Choi is reported to be 1.55m tall and weighed about 40 kg. She was not considered typical of the influencers—in size and stature—that dominate social media, such as “天王嫂 (tianwangsai)” or heavenly king’s wife Moka Fang or the eighth suspect in this case Irene Pun (潘巧贤, Pan Qiaoxian). Some who knew Ms Choi, former schoolmates among them, pointed out that she had had cosmetic enhancement at an unknown time, and before that, she looked “很一般 (henyiban)” or ordinary. Yet, she was able to work towards the status from which to launch herself in the world of not just fashion, but haute couture. Furthermore, Ms Choi had never held a job that could be considered regular employment (while financially supporting her former in-laws). Maintaining the high profile she did required a team, which she had acknowledged to exist. These individuals, from those in hair and makeup to videography, were unlikely to have volunteered their services. The pursuit of influencing is a cost-intensive enterprise. How was she able to finance it all? How did a To Kwa Wan lass of indeterminate means propel herself without apparent connections to the hallowed grounds of the couture salons of Paris? Was there something illegal/illicit involved? Were there more than the rapacious Kwongs behind her brutal downfall and grisly end?

In Chanel, in 2021. Occasion and location unknown. Photo: xxabbyc/Instagram

Interestingly, Vogue China had not put Ms Choi on their cover (nor Vogue Hong Kong) despite her ascent. In an IG post last November, Ms Choi shared that she had a “对话 (duihua)” or dialogue with the fashion bible. Vogue China revealed nothing much except how she appreciated couture. Last month, she did receive a magazine cover—for the digital edition of L’Officiel. Ms Choi shared it on IG, with the comment, “From Hong Kong to the cover of L’Officiel Monaco, my journey as a style icon continues.” Who calls herself a style icon? In the oddly banal editorial that accompanied the cover, the magazine described her as a ”fashion star” who “has taken the world by storm with her impeccable sense of style and her unbridled passion for fashion.” They marveled at her “keen eye for style and her ability to mix and match pieces in unexpected ways” although they showed not evidence of that. “I am a person who keeps absorbing inspiration and always tries new styles. Sometimes I also try to dress up more extravagant, by mixing and combining different looks,” she was quoted saying, and again that innate flair was not seen, even on her IG page. The question was, why L’Officiel Monaco? Who reads it? Why not L’Officiel China?

L’Officiel was first published in France in 1921. Now, it has more than two dozen international editions in the current line-up. Last year, the title was acquired by Hong Kong-based AMTD International, whose founder is Dr Calvin Choi Chi-kin (蔡志堅), dubbed by finews.asia as “Hong Kong’s Most Controversial Banker”. Dr Choi, with links to mainland Chinese banks, chairs AMTD Group whose AMTD Digital, according to Forbes, made a startling turn last August: “Less than a month after the 43-year-old listed his AMTD Digital on the New York Stock Exchange, his stake in the digital financial services firm has skyrocketed 14,000% for reasons his firm can’t explain.” That brief period made him “worth nearly US$37 billion, more than Li Ka-shing (李嘉诚).” Early this year, the “auditing pioneer” and whizz was banned by Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) “over conflicts of interest while he was a UBS banker in 2014 and 2015”, as finews.com informed. Dr Choi’s colourful history in auditing and banking is too long to be described here. While there is no immediately discernible link between the two unrelated Chois, it is interesting that the couture-loving influencer could somehow draw big names into her glittery orbit, whether directly or not. Was the L’Officiel cover of Ms Choi an independent editorial decision? And why did it happen only after AMTD International’s acquisition of the title?

Deeply curious journalists and individuals are playing online detectives and putting out different back stories and details to Ms Choy’s murder. Local names and those across the mainland—from Hong Kong’s “tianwangsao” to Macau’s jailed “Little Gambling King”—were dredged up to effect better brush strokes in creating the still incomplete picture. The speculations oftentimes point to something more nefarious than the familial dispute over a luxury apartment that was initially posited. Why would a whole family kill a girl whose first two kids are their children and grandchildren just over a flat? Was Ms Choi a victim from the start? The police have for weeks not shared with the public developments in their investigation. And things are increasingly not what them seem. A Chinese saying could be the best guide in following the truth behind the homicide of Abby Choi: “眼见不定为真，耳闻不定为是”. What the eyes see may not be real, what the ears hear may not be true.

Update (8 May 2023, 5pm): Six defendants charged with the murder of Abby Choi appeared in court today. The case was adjourned to 31 July as police require more time to look into 30 items related to the crime. Blood found in the vehicle believed to have transported Ms Choi to the site of her hacking is confirmed to be the murder victim’s

This is a developing story

Two Of A Kind: Cloud Over The Head

Posted by Style On The Dot

The recent Oscars presentation showed that there is a market for head covering that’s not a tudung

Left: Gaurav Gupta dress shown at Paris Couture Spring/Summer 2023. Photo: Gaurav Gupta. Right: Tems in Lever Couture. Photo: Getty Images

The red carpet, must trod-on walkway of award shows, has always been a fashion trap. The colour may make those standing on it appear important, but it is, in fact, insidious by nature, ready to ensnare the fashion-clueless star and underscore how foolish they look. In the past, screen idols—and they were—needn’t depend on fashion to the point that their popularity at the award ceremony depended on what they wore. These days, things are, of course, vastly different. So many individuals in the fashion ecosystem are involved. A star cannot simply go to their favourite store and pick what they like. They are expected to make this the opportunity to keep otherwise unoccupied couturiers busy. Or avail themselves as a walking billboard. An what is worn now must shout F.A.S.H.I.O.N. As much is at stake, red carpet newbies try harder, often unaware of what they are really wearing because powerful stylists have more say. As long as you stand out, even if to the detriment of others around you, you have made it. One of them who had us thinking (yes, still) is the singer-songwriter Tems.

Yes, we’re revisiting that dress. Tems, aka Temilade Openiyi, wore a white gown that provided shelter for her head. The partly ruched dress with a thigh-high slit was by the just-over-a-decade-old label, Lever Couture, whose designer is Ukrainian-German, Lessja Verlingieri, known for her over-the-top “hand-sculpted” gowns. What Ms Openiyi wore was part of the label’s spring/summer 2023, revealed last September at the Rakuten Fashion Week in Tokyo. It is similar to the dress—also by Lever Couture—that Cardi B wore on the cover of Essence’s May/June 2022 issue. Ms Verlingieri’s style is hard to define, but she seems to like to manipulate her fabrics by fashioning them directly onto the body’s form. She is partial to extravagant over-the-head extensions, such as the cumulous canopy seen on Tems. Extraneous and distended parts are very much a part of the couture language. But what framed Tems’s head was already seen elsewhere—a continent apart.

In India. But that’s not quite exact enough. To be more precise, Paris, during the couture spring/summer 2023 season. Designer Gaurav Gupta showed for the first time—as a guest member—during the official Haute Couture Week. The collection comprised his signature curvilinear swathes in Indian handloom tissue that swirled around the body and over the head. He, too, called his way with fabric “sculpting”. This dramatic aesthetic was best worn on Aishwarya Rai Bachchan at last year’s Cannes Film Festival in May. The back of that dress that soared skywards was taller than Tems’s head cover. It is not known if the former beauty queen wore the dress at any of the festival’s screening and if she did, if anyone’s view was blocked. Times of India described the Indian actress in the Gaurav Gupta dress as “a phenomenon” while the Delhi-based designer portrayed her as “new-concept Venus” after Botticelli’s famed mid-1480 painting, minus the shell. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s gown was mostly covered by the Indian media. Conversely, Tems’s look went viral. In the end, that’s all that matters.

The Shapes, The Drapes, The Chicness

Posted by Style On The Dot

Haider Ackerman brought back those and more to French couture

It can be said that this French haute couture spring 2023 season is a mixed bag. It borders on the mémère (dowdy) at Chanel, the dull at Dior, and heavy on the theatrics at Schiaparelli. Everything between is hard to write home about without sounding too critical. Then you have Haider Ackermann’s couture debut at Jean Paul Gaultier. And then couture made sense. Mr Ackerman was given free reign to interpret JPG as he saw fit, and the result was not short of astounding. The JPG codes were not immediately discernible amid the linearity and the sumptuousness, but you knew this was special in the way that it was to be surprising (Mr Gaultier told all his collaborators to “surprise” him). And strike a sense of wonder Mr Ackerman did, even if only by the sheer chicness of the clothes These were steep in the flair a masterful couturier would conjure. It is no wonder that Karl Lagerfeld once considered Mr Ackermann worthy of succeeding the former at Chanel. As the German told Numero in 2010, “I have a contract for life, so it depends on who I would like to hand it to. At the moment, I’d say Haider Ackermann.”

And now we saw why he deserves that appointment. Or, as Venessa Friedman excitedly Tweeted after the show, “Someone make this designer the head of a brand please.” Mr Ackermann not only exhibited the aptitude and a keen discernment for haute couture, but understood its spirit. He did not just throw himself to the house codes of JPG: no Breton stripes or tattoo prints. There were, to be expected, bras, but they were barely conical or that pointy. And there was no overt campiness, just good ’ol élégance. If this was not conceived under the banner of the house of Gaultier and through their own atelier, this could pass off as Mr Ackermann designing for his eponymous line. The fourth collaborator in JPG’s guest designer program, he did not succumb to the need to express Mr Gaultier’s maximalist irreverence; he stayed with his more minimalist aesthetics, but with adornments (a couture requisite?). Chitose Abe of Sacai was the first to be invited, and she turned out JPG through the lens of Sacai (making her complex designs, even more so), so did Y Project’s Glenn Martens (a lesson in assymetry), and Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing (ridiculously OTT, to the extent that the models were tottering in the too-high shoes; one even fell). For Mr Ackermann, capturing l’ esprit de couture was more crucial than augmenting the JPG canon.

Tailoring has always been the crux of Mr Ackermann’s oeuvre. It was, therefore, unsurprising that it was JPG’s tailoring he wanted to honour. The opening look of a trim redingote with pleated crisscrossed front had a neu-militaire fervour about it, so did the cropped lapel-less piece that followed—a sort of calvary jacket with hand-sewn running stitch in place of braiding and with unfinished oblong tabs along the front vertical hems. Standouts, too, were those looks destined for special occasions. One pink gown had for a bodice a plissé strip that turned and twisted around the torso and neck, another—in royal blue, worn by Raquel Zimmermann—was elliptical at the top and epitome of how couture can astound with shapes. To re-interpret a preponderance of bras-as-outerwear in the JPG body of work, Mr Ackermann had a one-sided version that miraculously emerged from the rear of a bat-winged, one-sleeve gown to cup a right breast, like a hand of a protective lover. The Colombian-born French designer has said, in response to designing for JPG, that, unlike Mr Gaultier, he has no sense of humour. But he did know quirky. Mariacarla Boscono wore a lean, straight-shouldered gown with a deep cut-out in the rear and a high collar with a tailpiece that extended to the left like a ‘wing’ of a zhanjiao futou (展角幞頭 or spread-horn head cover; think: bao zheng [包拯] or Justice Bao), worn by Chinese officials of the Song dynasty. But it was not all this unexpected. The collection would not be lacking if some pieces were omitted, such as the tracksuit-y two-piece or the pantsuit with a hood that was embroidered inside.

The show itself had a rather old-world vibe too. Staged at the JPG headquarters in Rue Saint-Martin, it was devoid of props (nothing mobile, in which models would emerge, for example). The sound track featured French actress Joana Preiss breathily reading a passage by former French Elle journalist Sophie Fontanel about the protests in Iran and the Iranian singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour singing Baraye (‘For the Sake of’ in Persian). Mr Ackermann is a known supporter of the Iranian cause, sharing on Instagram last September, “I stand with the women of Iran”. The recital and the singing were interspersed with pulsing sounds that could be the heartbeat of a foetus amplified. Just as yesteryear were the walk of the models: exaggerated, individualistic, expressive, they were unafraid to use their hands. Mr Gaultier, who sat at the end of the runway, sandwiched between Catherine Deneuve to his right and Edward Enninful to his left (Anna Wintour was not sighted, or perhaps the camera did not capture her?), seemed to be playing judge as the models stopped right before him to articulate their act. At the end of the show, when Mr Ackermann emerged, he went straight to Mr Gaultier (you could see Ms Deneuve mouth “bravo”), took his hand and walked down the runway to join the models at the other end. At this moment, one sensed that not only will the world now be better acquainted with Haider Ackermann, luxury houses, too, will take note of this bona-fide couturier.

Screen grab (top): Jean Paul Gaultier/YouTube. Photos: Gorunway.com

When The Lion’s Head is Larger Than The Model’s

Posted by Style On The Dot

Schiaparelli tames the beast to lay its head on the wearer’s shoulder

The big cat is not the one we see during Chinese New Year, when lion dance troupes visit mostly businesses to perform the ritual of caiqing (採青 or plucking the greens). Or at the Chingay parade. Rather, at the spring couture 2023 show of Schiaparelli, it appeared as what could easily be the head of Aslan, the slow-talking King of Beast in Narnia (particularly the 2005 film version). Or, something that could be a product of skillful taxidermy. Before even the start of the show, guest Kylie Jenner showed up with the same lion’s head on the same black gown. When the picture of her in said outfit made the expected social media rounds, Netizens were outraged, accusing Schiaparelli of “promoting trophy hunting”, only now the part of the (hunted) animal not displayed on walls, but on a body, worn like a brooch. The house was quick to say that no animal was used in the making of the head of the beast. It was, in fact, the result of embroidery. Realistic, as it turned out, is sometimes not quite a good thing. Ms Jenner did not say how the lion’s head made her feel or if she paid for the dress.

Apart from the majestic panthera leo’s head (on Irina Shayk), there were those of a leopard (on Sharlom Harlow) and a she-wolf (on the she-wolf herself, Naomi Campbell), too. Rather than saying something about the jungle or wildlife or animal welfare, these embroidered bodiless creatures spoke for Dante’s Inferno from the 14th century poem The Divine Comedy. They represented pride, lust, and avarice respectively. The story’s Dante was supposed to avoid these three beasts, according to Virgil, the Roman poet, who appeared before protagonist in the first canto of the poem. Conversely, Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry approached them head-on, showing off the technical ability of the house and their collaborators to create the animals’ heads that were nearly indistinguishable from real-life. We, not Dante, can now come face to face with the animals to see that the “faux” taxidermic output is hand-sculpted from foam and resin, and then embroidered with wool and silk faux fur. In couture, designers would go to all lengths.

Take away the fake heads, did the gowns say anything? Would the dress look good without the animal part? Can she sit at the dining table and eat? Can it be removed? And how does one put the outfit away in a home without a museum’s storage facility? Ms Jenner probably does not care about where she keeps the gown after she has worn it. It is about now, the very moment that she aroused the world’s attention. Why would she bother about the outfit’s fate thereafter? Couture does not concern itself with the inconveniences resulting from use and wear when what matter most are the difficulty of execution and the man hours (or, collectively, the “enormity of workmanship”, as Susie Menkes described Schiaparelli) that can be brought to he forefront, or on the red carpet. Mr Roseberry has taken surrealism quite close to his heart. Each collection must be surrealistic in terms of how hard it is and how long it takes to execute the ideas for a dress. In the past, the surrealism employed on the Schiaparelli garment articulated a sense of witticism too. We do not see that in Mr Roseberry’s work. If the dramatic flourishes are kept down, would Schiaparelli be still considered couture-spectacular?

But the business is dependent on those customers who do not come for heads of any kind, worn to complete with the wearer’s very own head. So Mr Roseberry sent out neat, wearable (couture has a different definition for that) outfits that played on proportion and exaggeration, both to varying degrees of success and appeal. That broad shoulders had to be included at a time when they should be retired perhaps suggested his limited repertoire when reimagining the shapes that can be imagined to clothe the body. He seemed to prefer top/front-heavy looks too, sending out a trio of bodices that were rigid and high and sight-of-wearer-obscuring and another other (he preferred ideas to come in threes?) with ridiculous pointed sides that aimed skywards like spires of church towers. And that finale mini-dress and accompanying oversized wrap: in duchess satin and puckered-hem glory. Was it included at the eleventh hour to yield a total of looks in even numbers—32? We wish we would could like the collection more.

Screen shot and photos: Schiaparelli

Anna’s Act

Posted by Style On The Dot

The next Met fashion exhibition has been themed. ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ might just be Anna Wintour’s personal tribute to her “brilliant friend”

Chanel has been Anna Wintour’s go-to label for the Met Gala. From top left, in 2010, in 2017, in 2018, and in 2019. Photos: Getty Images

In the biography Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Fashion, Anna Wintour stated that the ‘Kaiser’ “often said that when he died, he wanted to disappear”. She quickly added, “Well, that cannot happen”. With the next spring exhibition at the Anna Wintour Costume Center (AWCC, formerly the Costume Institute), the Vogue editor will keep to her word. Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty is the next theme of the Met’s annual show and opening-night fete. Although it sounds like the exhibition spin-off of the book, it would be, as it was in the past years, the work of Andrew Bolton, the head curator of the AWCC and its fashion exhibitions, and the life partner of the designer Thom Browne. Mr Bolton told the media at the press conference to announce next year’s theme, “I’m not sure Karl would approve of the exhibition”, echoing Ms Wintour’s own sentiment. In all likelihood, the monographic show was initiated pushed through by the woman whose name precedes the Costume Center.

It is no secret that Anna Wintour is Karl Lagerfeld’s ardent supporter in not only what the designer did for brands such as Chanel and Fendi, but also in her continual wearing to the Met Gala the Chanel haute couture gowns that Mr Lagerfeld designed, sometimes just for her. Both of them were thought to be close. In a tribute, titled ‘My Brilliant Friend’, published in Vogue in 2019, after Mr Lagerfeld’s death, Ms Wintour wrote: “We were often in touch” and “the hours I spent with him at the (dinner) table make me feel luckier than any stroke of fortune I’ve had at my editing desk”. Both did not see each other frequently, but they had “a standing dinner date in Paris on the first Sunday of every Fashion Week”. Despite the suggestion of deep friendship, Ms Wintour did not reveal why “it’s doubly painful to have lost him”, as she wrote, except that “he never fell out of love with his work or with the world, and his death marks the end of the era of craftspeople who could do it all”. What did their relationship really mean to her?

“the hours I spent with him at the (dinner) table make me feel luckier than any stroke of fortune I’ve had at my editing desk”
Anna Wintour

It is hard to know if she was that close to Mr Lagerfeld. In a sort of postscript to his book Karl: No Regrets, the author/artist Patrick Hourcade, who knew the designer well since 1976, drew up a list titled ‘Fellow Travelers’. Anna Wintour is not under the subhead ‘The Closest’ (another Anna is—Piaggi); her name does not appear beneath ‘In the Realm of Fashion’ (a familiar one, Ines de la Fressange, does). She is there in the final lineup ‘A Few Journalists’; her famous moniker at the end of the page, after Andre Leon Talley. It is not clear how Ms Wintour met the Chanel designer. Mr Talley, who knew Mr Lagerfeld and had met him much earlier than the Vogue supremo, in 1975, suggested that it was he who facilitated the acquaintanceship between the designer and the editor, even claiming in his second autobiography The Chiffon Trenches that his “role at Vogue was no doubt secured by my relationship with Karl Lagerfeld.” He was emphatic about their bond: “His importance in my life and career is without parallel.” Ms Wintour was never that forthcoming or sentimental.

Mr Talley even revealed that the Chanel dresses that she wore for her wedding to Dr David Shaffer—a psychiatrist—in 1984 were not acquired through her special friendship with Mr Lagerfeld then or connections with the couture house, but “through Joan Juliet Buck (the former editor of Vogue Paris, as it was known then) to gain access to the dresses”. Anna Wintour has loved Chanel from her early years in journalism, especially when she finally joined Condé Nast. Mr Talley shared that “she purchased her Chanel at Bergdorf Goodman”. But she would soon have an arrangement with Chanel when she became chummier with Mr Lagerfeld. In the 2005 biography of the EIC, Front Row, author Jerry Openheimer wrote that Ms Wintour was (likely between the mid to late ’80s) “wearing nothing but elegant, very discreet Chanel as her Condé Nast work uniform.”

He then went on to describe what was dubbed ‘The Chanel Affair’ (also the title of the chapter), quoting Cristina Zilkha, the wife of Michael Zilkha, a business partner in the New York music company ZE Records that represented US New Wave groups such as Kid Creole & the Coconuts. Mrs Zilkha, who did not think Ms Wintour liked her, recounted: “Michael said to me, ‘You know, you’ve never had a Chanel suit, so I told Anna that when she sees Lagerfeld to get you something… because she gets fifty percent off.” When the parcel arrived, “it was half a suit of a really nasty pale yellow with a puce undertone—a Mr-Livingston-I-presume double-breasted safari jacket with thick, huge gold metal buttons, each of which had a huge CC. It was vulgarity one couldn’t believe and something Anna would not have been caught dead in”.

Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld. Photo: Glamour

For herself, Ms Wintour was always immaculately fitted in the brand with the double Cs. At the Met Gala opening parties, Ms Wintour has almost always been in Chanel. There were, of course, regular attendees who wore the French brand, but none so routinely as Ms Wintour. In her Vogue tribute to Karl Lagerfeld, she readily admitted that his designs “expressed who I was and what I hoped to be”. Yet, in the recent video editorial Vogue’s 73 Questions, she commented that her style is “safe, verging on extremely boring”. Did she mean now, as opposed to then? How amaranthine the Chanel style is is reflected in her choosing of the brand. According to Amy Odell in Anna: The Biography, the editor “often wore Chanel couture” and when she attended the shows, it “was always opportunity for her to shop”. Ms Wintour admits to the frequency in which she picks Chanel : “I’ve worn Karl’s beautiful clothes during the most important, emotional moments of my life: at my wedding, at my children’s weddings, when I received a damehood from the queen, at Franca Sozzani’s memorial service”.

Karl Lagerfeld appeared to appreciate the friendship and was very generous to her (as he was to others he held in considerable esteem, until no more). Glamour reported that in 2015 after the British Fashion Award, when Ms Wintour presented Karl Lagerfeld the trophy for Outstanding Achievement, the honoree gave the presenter a gift—a tennis court built on his Biarritz compound, described as a “ploy to get her over as a houseguest”. A thrilled Miss Wintour said, “Karl was trying to give me somewhere I could feel at home, where I could be myself. This was the first and surely the last time anyone has constructed sporting turf in my honor.” The next fashion exhibition at the Met would be her opportunity to construct something in his honour, even when Andrew Bolton had asserted, “Karl never tired of telling me that fashion did not belong in a museum.” But the exhibition would not be devoted to just his work for Chanel since, in 2005, the Costume Institute had staged a Chanel exhibition that went by the brand’s mononym and featured Mr Lagerfeld’s work. It almost did not open, as he had initially withdrawn support for it.

Next year’s Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty would not be the first exhibition at the Met dedicated to a single designer. In 1983, the year Mr Lagerfeld joined Chanel, the Costume Institute opened the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition, organised by the late Diana Vreeland. It was touted as “the first retrospective of a living couturier’s work”. Before her loyalty to Chanel, Ms Wintour wore a lot of YSLs. In Front Row, a friend recalled her cupboard in the Upper East Side apartment where she was staying: “I opened her closet and it was extraordinary—there was one Saint Laurent suit from ready-to-wear after another that she’d bought from Paris, all perfectly hung with the shoes above them.” No one needs to open Anna Wintour’s closet today to be able to visualise the row of Chanel clothes in there. What would, perhaps, be more fascinating is to know how many of them would be on load or donated to the Costume Institute to make the Karl Lagerfeld exhibition her line of beauty, too.

Skimming The Surface

Posted by Style On The Dot

Reading a recent story on Chanel by CNA Luxury, we sensed we would be confronting something unsatisfying when, from the start, we had to be reminded that the 112-year-old maison has an “exclusive atelier in Paris”. We were not wrong. Superficial observation is one thing, trite description is another

Just like the ceaseless supply of Chanel tweed jackets, there have been never-ending media stories on Chanel’s haute couture. A report by CNA Luxury shared online last week is another, and it won’t be the last. More than a century after Gabrielle ’Coco’ Chanel founded her eponymous label and nearly 50 years after her death, there appears to be constant craving, not about her, but the couture studio that she left behind that is still generating what CNA imaginatively calls “lavish clothes”. Is there anything in their editorial that isn’t a pallid reminder of what haute couture is not?

We feel bad for Chanel. By their “invitation” (which could mean this was a junket), CNA Luxury was in Paris to show readers “inside Chanel’s world of haute couture”, perhaps with the noble aim of demystifying it. The 1,290-word editorial, in fact, accompanies the 2.44-minute documentary, ‘Inside Chanel’s Haute Couture Universe in Paris’, for the CNA Lifestyle 2022 series. From the first paragraph, it was a journey of textual cringe. To set the scene, they told readers that the Chanel epicentre at Rue Cambon—a narrow, one-way, 449-metre long street in the heart of the French capital—“is chockful of French dreams” and, later, that it is “one of the most well-stocked flagship boutiques… in the world”. We are not sure, but were they describing a 杂货店, provision store? Or, recalling the set for the RTW autumn/winter 2014 show, a supermarket?

And who was Chanel before she became a “full-fledged fashion designer dreaming (again?!) up sartorial hits(!)”? Wherever she is now, we doubt Chanel would be amused to be called, at the start of her career, a “mere milliner”. Chanel did begin as a hat maker and, by most accounts, a rather successful one. Biographer Edmond Charles-Roux wrote in Chanel, “The truth was she had a really impressive talent” (so much so that one of her boyfriends at the time eagerly financed her venture). This was the early 1900s, a time when, as Mr Charles-Roux noted, “family, children, love, jewels—none of these aroused as much concern as the question of hats”. Her headwear, in particular a boater, “was absurdly simple, and it was curious to see how some of her friends reacted to this sparseness as a new form of eccentricity”. Her clientele expanded and they included “customers of Worth, Redfern and Doucet”. Chanel’s first proper shop (before that, she operated out of another boyfriend’s “bachelor flat”), Chanel Modes, that opened in 1910 was in Rue Cambon, at number 21. The number 31 address—where, according to CNA, ”is chockful of French dreams”—did not materialise until 1918 when Chanel, the “mere milliner”, purchased the building.

Wherever she is now, we doubt Chanel would be amused to be called, at the start of her career, a “mere milliner”

Above the store, we were told, “Chanel had an apartment where she used to work, daydream and entertain a small circle of friends. Curiously, the couturier (sic) never actually lived there, preferring to call one of the suites at the Ritz Hotel… home”. Yet, the apartment is an “abode” and, to be certain, a “historical” one. Then we were introduced to the ateliers above. “Everything is made-to-measure and made entirely by hand,” one of the premieres was quoted saying. “Haute couture is really about excellence. It is all about handwork and craftsmanship,” she expanded helpfully. Enlightening. And to add to your growing knowledge, “each haute couture garment begins from a sketch.” For the complicated nature of the work they do, we were offered a glimpse: “See-through (!) Guipure lace layered with gossamer lace; coloured lace inlaid onto Guipure lace; lace patterns reworked entirely by hand with sequins; lace hand-painted in resin; and cashmere wool woven into lace-like patterns.” Following?

Whether anyone at CNA knows what Guipure lace is, we can’t say (if you ask, it is openwork, therefore, nearly always “see-through”, with motifs, such as flowers, joined by fine bars or plaits instead of webs of nets or mesh, as in other laces). But they seem to be educated on the fineness of couture finishing, explaining away that “not only are the seams on the outside hidden from view, even those on the inside of the garment are ingeniously tucked away”. The ingenuity is in how, in this, we can’t discern the making of “really expensive clothes”. To banish all doubts that Chanel could be capable of even a whisper shred of shoddiness, we were informed that “nothing is left unfinished, everything is finished to perfection”. A friend from Kuala Lumpur, who had read the article too, said to us, “I’m surprised there isn’t ‘laboratory of ideas’. Maybe they are not informed enough to use that!”

A report startlingly littered with clichés wasn’t enough, it had to include the “icons” that “continue to thrive” and bear listing: “the tweed jacket, the ‘little black dress’, two-tone slingbacks and, of course, the inimitable Chanel 2.55 purse”, much, we suspect, to the delight of the brand (one media professional said to us, “Chanel will love it, lah. They obviously paid for the trip and they expect the media to fawn over them”). The article is probably targeted at those who are not acquainted with the creative and practical business of “custom-made artisanal garments fashioned entirely by hand by dressmakers skilled in creating one-of-a-kind garb that are more than worthy of their price tags”. But could they not have toned down the trite and the banal? “Every single detail matters,” they concluded, ”After all, this is haute couture, where precision is the name of the game.” Take note, you “stylish set”!

Illustration: Just So

On The Spanish Steps

Posted by Style On The Dot

…was a show Dior didn’t like: It was one of Valentino’s most exuberant presentations

This month, seven years ago, Fendi staged its autumn/winter 2016 couture show at Rome’s Trevi Fountain. It was the Italian brand’s 90th anniversary. The show, featuring 46 looks of then designer Karl Lagerfeld, was staged on a see-through plexiglass runway that was stretched across Rome’s most famous fountain. The models sashaying down the stage looked like they were walking on water. The semi-circular area in front of the Trevi Fountain is not a wide expanse, so on this occasion, it was unsurprisingly packed with show-goers. Up in the terrace, there were almost no noticeable retail store that overlooked the fountain except one familiar name: United Colours of Benetton. The brand made no mention of the operating conditions that day. It is possible that the area was cordoned off, and shoppers had no or limited access to the store. Did Benetton demand payment from Fendi for loss of sales as the access to the former’s shop was “hampered”? Did they even dare consider it?

About 1.8 kilometres away from the Trevi Fountain (or roughly eight minutes by foot) is the Spanish Steps, another famous site of this ancient city. On the 135-step, 29-metre high, 297-year-old stairway that was last refurbished in 2015/16, Valentino unveiled their autumn/winter 2022 couture collection. While many watching the spectacular show, whether at the venue or online, was nervous that the models might fall (some tripped), having to descend from the very top in rather windy conditions, elsewhere, managers of competitor brand Dior were taking note of the disruption to the business of their store right across from the Spanish Steps, and a drop in footfall. On the very night of the show, the retail manager of Christian Dior Italia reportedly sent Valentino a letter—seen by the trade paper WWD—to demand €100,000 as compensation that was to be paid in 15 days. This move surprised many. When the news broke, many attendees were asked on social media if they thought the show did indeed hamper Dior’s retail business. No one could say for sure it was, or willing to. Dior’s reaction affirm, again, the rivalrous nature of the business of fashion.

The Valentino show went on without a hitch. The clothes, more wearable than usual, bore no aesthetical semblance to what was worn by the two people most associated with the stairway: Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in the ice cream scene of Roman Holiday (1953). On those Steps, a reported 102 models descended to the live music of the British singer Labrinth (aka Timothy Lee McKenzie), wearing colours that Pierpaolo Piccioli is partial to from the time he took over the sole creative reign of the house in 2016: Bright. With the church of the Santissima Trinità dei Monti in the background catching the recessing evening glow, the models looked like they have skipped mass to gingerly go down the steps for a party somewhere in the Piazza di Spagna. In fact, the runway did not end at the base of the stairway. It continued to the left, past the house where the English poet John Keats lived in the 19th century and, opposite, Dior stores (men’s and women’s), and the Valentino store in the corner of the block, and onto the label’s headquarters in the Palazzo Gabrielli Mignanelli, before turning left again to some holding area. A group of the models, in fact, went back up to the top of the hill to emerge again down the Stairs for the finale.

Gently fluttering in the wind, the clothes had almost none of the ‘structure’ or stilted formality often associated with couture. That couture could be infused with so much ease is a necessary nod to the modern. Many of the outers were so light and not structured that they seemed like throws. Even a garment as casual as a singlet for men was given the couture treatment. Mr Piccioli dubbed the collection The Beginning, where, according to the Valentino show notes, “everything starts anew where everything invariably begins: in Rome, in the Atelier, the place where creations and inventions come to life through the hands and stories of those who actually make the clothes, of those who imprint their character on cloth through manual work. The manner hasn’t changed. Not even the address has changed. And yet everything has changed.” Regrettably, petty rivalry has not.

Update (12 July 2022, 11pm), according to a follow-up WWD editorial, Dior withdrew their ultimatum. “Dior is asking Valentino to disregard a previous letter demanding financial compensation of 100,000 euros, citing “cordial relations” between the two luxury houses and “mutual respect”, as reported.

Screen shots (top): Valentino/YouTube. Photos: Valentino

Do They Go Anywhere?

Posted by Style On The Dot

Chanel continues to churn out “iconic” jackets that are “beautiful”. It that really this much Virginie Viard can produce?

She said it at last, although it did take a while. Suzy Menkes posted on Instagram after the Chanel autumn/winter 2022 couture show: “the word I felt while watching models lined-up on an upper gallery seemed just plain ‘dull’.” So useful and apt that word was that Ms Menkes applied it twice, both in a single post, in one paragraph. That was double the dullness. For a near-octogenarian to suggest that a constantly-lauded brand produced a collection that caused boredom was quite something (eye-opening?) when she had previously quite adored the label, even after Karl Lagerfeld was no more. But Ms Menkes is not saying something new. For many seasons now, Chanel has not reversed the feelings of those still unimpressed. Reacting to Ms Menkes’s comments, which included noting the “smell of horses” of the venue (equestrian school Étrier de Paris), one commentator wrote, “No magic spark, nothing to ignite the imagination. Expertly crafted, dull indeed.”

Virginie Viard, as we have observed, has taken the path well trodden, even trotted, since the demise of Mr Lagerfeld. Why trek new trail when the old and familiar is more level for walks, and hence safer? As with any way beaten by heavy foot traffic, the course is smooth and will not impede the continuing of an outing that was never creatively fraught to begin with. It is possible Ms Viard never sought excitement. She is not a risk taker. She is comfortable with merely continuing. Or, as we like to say, coasting. She has acquired her momentum. There is no need to change the gait. Why gallop when you can trot? She is happy with her rhythm, staying on the first level of the training scale. Or, from the horse’s mouth: “My approach to work has always been rather simple and pragmatic, but more than ever, I feel truthfulness and a realness will be leading me going forward (Vogue, April 2020)”. She is okay with dull. So are many Chanel customers.

But dull, as with ugly, is not necessarily a bad thing. There are—more and more, and more—no negatives in fashion. They are just clothes, to be worn, not hung on the wall to be admired. As long as it fits, it is good to go. Dull is immensely wearable. In all likelihood, Ms Viard is guided by the economics of fashion, to keep Chanel ahead of the quickly-catching-up Dior in the sales stake. For as long as they appeal to women with no fashion aspiration but wealth, or taste-weak and stylist-dependent actresses, auntie-becoming influencers, and editors who just swoon at the sight of tweed, they are on a safe path, and Ms Viard can continue to amble along, happily and unprovocatively. So she’ll continue with her modest styles of straight-shouldered jackets, frumpy blouses, mid-calf skirts, and the occasional va-va-voom gown (this season, in puke-green). At the show, you won’t be jolted out of your placid enjoyment if you are not going to be shocked.

But Ms Viard tries to astonish and her idea of surprise—in pairings, for example—is bringing together “tweed and flou with a boyish allure”, as Chanel later described on their Facebook page, possibly alluding to the moderately masculine style Coco Chanel herself adopted in the 1920s. Femininity is, however, the core of Chanel, and now under Ms Viard, extreme femininity: “Swathes of floating white tulle”, went the proud announcement. One dress, perhaps, sums up this couture season for them—the last outfit, a white (or off-white), ankle-gracing dress described by many on social media as a “wedding gown”. Chanel touts it as “embodying the intricate lightness” of their couture. The bustier number is in chiffon with a bodice of criss-crossed, pleated panels, left to hang over the skirt that was gathered at the waist. The dress is completed with a crepe shawl— embroidered (of course) with flowers and on its end trimmed with fringing. It is possibly “intricate”, but is the sum effect special? Does the bow atop the model’s head make it more so? There are those who insist that haute couture is “never how it looks; it’s about how it’s made”. The sad thing is, in some cases, despite the work—all done by hand and consisting of many, many hours, we are constantly reminded—the end result is just nothing—nothing to look at, nothing to shout about, and nothing to remember them by.

Screen shot (top) : Chanel/Facebook. Photos: Chanel

The Only One

Posted by Style On The Dot

Is Balenciaga’s Demna Gvasalia the sole modernist in the still-rarified world of haute couture?

Shortly after the Balenciaga couture presentation ended, the Twittersphere was abuzz with delight that walking the runway were Nicole Kidman, Dua Lipa, and, not admirably, Kim Kardashian and, even less so, Naomi Campbell. Like many watching the sole show of the season that was worth waiting for, we took it in in front of our PC monitor (smartphone screens are too small for couture!). We were enraptured up to the segment where full face-visors (the show opened with them) were not used, and models bared their foreheads to chins. Even that was fine, until Ms Lipa appeared, followed by Ms Kardashian, and Ms Kidman, and, almost towards the end, Ms Campbell. Before these women sauntered in, we were able to concentrate on the clothes and to marvel at the rigours of Mr Gvasalia’s sharp lines and silhouettes. Then the celebrity appearances interrupted our concentration. We were not expecting to see them and, as we wondered what they were doing on the show floor, we were distracted, in particular by the half-smiling but blank-faced Kim Kardashian, who looked like she should be seated viewing than ill at ease (cat)walking.

Dubbed the 51st, but only Demna Gvasalia’s second, Balenciaga’s single-season couture collection roused the imagination made torpid by other shows of the week that were contented with the tiresome duo of fantasy and romance. Mr Gvasalia returned couture to its place on the pedestal (and why should it not be there?), on which his stark artistry was augmented with cuts (precise and, sometimes, brutal), the outré (but, by now, not quite), and the drama (missing in couture, and much welcome). His is work so exact and exceptional that it is anomalous in the present desire among those who design with “practical considerations” for the “pragmatic needs” of their clients. In couture, you don’t know what you truly require until you see them. You don’t know the desirability of a sumptuous carapace-like cape until you witness it, in sensational form on the runway. Or the want of a T-shirt, crushed and with the hem rough-hewed upwards, even to wear to go buy milk, until you look at it in its typhoon-swept suspension. When the imagination is fed, the need is found.

The show started with some very stark looks—eight of them, all black—that second-skinned the body. The sculpted tailoring was almost extreme, made possible by a new form of neoprene (itself a very mouldable fabric), very smooth, based on limestone and created by the Japanese to be Mr Gvasalia’s own Gazar, the silk once exclusively made for Balenciaga in 1958. The shoulders of the pieces were beautifully rounded and the waist just nipped-in—effecting a silhouette that was almost traditional, but looked futuristic in its imperturbable sleekness, and especially when worn with those face-visors, developed with engineers of the Mercedes-Benz racing team that would not be out of place in the game Cyberpunk 2077. A suitable oddity (that, too, has been missing in couture) to pair with those face wear were the Bang & Olufsen X Balenciaga Couture “speaker bag”, petite boom box that plays music, we suspect, wirelessly from your smartphone, stashed away on the opposite side of the speaker that opened like a conventional handbag!

With Mr Gvasalia, couture was not just about techniques, embellishment, or man hours, it was about precision too. The exactness of form is compelling. One red dress, with a T-shaped dart in the centre to yield a beautifully fitted bodice (it was repeated for a few of the dresses), flared in the rear with cuneate extensions, like wings, but they barely budged, which made them appear more like vertical airplane flaps. Elsewhere, a hot pink gown, with a striking symmetry in the front, was fashioned with a top of the back that opened like a half-cone, but looked like a hoodie—the slanting dorsal line ending just above the hollow behind the knee. It was triangular-angular of immense mathematical flair. Even the outerwear were not the obligatory trench coats: mackintosh-looking with spread collars turned-up to frame the cyborg face. To align with the existent call for environmental-friendly dressmaking practices, upcycled denim were used to express Mr Gvasalia’s on-going preoccupation with the upsized silhouette, but within which, all the painful couture handwork could be circumscribed. And in case you were too delighted by the street leaning, he pulled you back with massive crinoline skirts, so huge that even one model nearly tripped navigating the by-then treacherous runway. Perhaps the beauty of Balenciaga couture is that you teeter in the clothes. And when you do need them, you, too, require a certain posture, a certain élégance, a way with carrying the veritable sculptures. Such is the joy, even from mere watching.

Screen shot (top): balenciagacouture.com. Photos: Balenciaga Couture

Two Of A Kind: Bouquet Dresses

Posted by Style On The Dot

How many women love to be arranged in a bunch of flowers? Enough, probably, to prompt designers to turn dresses into vases

Nosegay or bouquet? (Left) Schiaparelli couture autumn/winter 2022 by Daniel Roseberry. Photo: Schiaparelli. And (right) Moschino prêt-à–porter spring/summer 2018 by Jeremy Scott. Photo: Indigital.tv

We know which among the above two came first, but perhaps that does not matter. Flowers have always bloomed in the creations of fashion designers at both the haute couture and prêt-à–porter. They go back even before the first couturier. And this attests to their versatility, even if their use risks being hackneyed, even tawdry. But fashion and flowers are soul mates; both are seasonal and both are about appearances—outwardly too. At the recent Schiaparelli couture presentation, the flowers with their stalks that worked their way from the velvet bust upwards, into an asymmetric spray that partly flanked the face (among other floristic pieces) was also more surface than substance. Daniel Roseberry was inspired by the images from Carolyne Roehm’ book A Passion for Flowers. He told WWD that he hope’d to evoke “creative innocence” with the floral arrangement. It is not immediately discernible.

Some four years ago, Jeremy Scott put together a bouquet of a dress for Moschino. Gigi Hadid wore the beribboned, wrapped-up stalks on the runway, with her head placed among colourful mixed blooms as if it flowered among the bunch. In sum, she looked very much like the tall, dramatic bouquets beauty entrepreneur Kim Lim would like to receive—any day. There is a sense of humour in Ms Hadid attired as a giant hand-held arrangement, even if it was the incongruity that arouse the amusement. And therein, we sense, lies the creative point: irreverence. Mr Roseberry had hoped to effect “innocence”, but his floral formation was not quite absent of guile; it was rather studied. The wholesome side of high fashion to counter the exposed breasts he showed earlier? Sure, his flowers were all coutured-up: hand-painted, 3-D tulips, made brilliant with rhinestone, but were they sumptuous, let alone Shocking!—the name of the new Schiaparelli exhibition to open in Paris?

It is interesting that the two men who have worked floral arrangement into their designs hail from America. It seems that this could be American designers-in-Europe’s belated expression of floristic exuberance. But blooms for the body is not terribly new. There was the Yves Saint Laurent’s couture flowered bikini-as-bridal-wear from 1999 or Alexander McQueen’s gown from 2007, festooned with real fleurs. Even the guys could not escape being adorned, or garlanded. In the spring 2020 season, Virgil Abloh placed one wreath as sort of abbreviated vest atop a T-shirt for one of his last showings for Louis Vuitton, clearly an ornamental touch, as much as one to soften the masculine nothingness of the look. But these were not quite enough, and some designers are now allowing the dress to be a receptacle in which flowers can sprout forth. The Chinese have a saying: 花无百日红 or no flower blooms for a hundred days—good times, as well as the florid, do not last long. Pessimistic? Ask some flowers.

“A Better Tomorrow”. Or, Duller?

Posted by Style On The Dot

Dior’s couture this season hopes for an improved future. For the house or the world, it is not quite clear

Despite collections after collections for both the prêt-à–porter and haute couture that resist ‘spectacular’ and ‘groundbreaking’—forget ‘radical’—as descriptors, Maria Grazia Chiuri has been able to drive Dior to €18bn-revenue territory for the first quarter of this year, according to media reports, a not unimpressive 29% increase, compared to the same period last year. Do they need “to reimagined a better tomorrow”, the aim of the autumn/winter 2022 couture collection, according to Ms Chiuri to The Guardian? Dior sales across categories apparently have defied any (premature?) suspicion that the unceasing pandemic and the ongoing war in North-East Europe will dampen the brand’s outlook. This is in large part due to Ms Chiuri’s persistent push for the pragmatic, pleasantly prettified. She does not go where she fears to tread. Her clothes are well-loved because they are relatable. Women do not take to Dior with trepidation. So Ms Chiuri continually churns with confidence and delight the same delicate dresses, tempered with slogan tees and anoraks, and steadied with sensible hats and shoes.

The couture collections, too, are treated with similar aesthetical approachability, to the point that you cannot easily tell them apart from those of the pret. As we have noted before, Dior is increasingly moving away from the specialness that can inspire, among a range of emotions, awe. This isn’t naysaying. No extreme reactions are necessary to Ms Chiuri for as long as she is able to achieve the pleasantly humdrum with the obligatory see-through to mimic sexiness. Her couture presentations may have been walking theses of feminism and its attendant pride, as well as support for artists and artisans that can be aligned with Dior, but they are not designs that could provide look-back that would remind us, in the future, of revolutionary times or zeal, as The New Look still evokes. After the first prairie dress of this autumn/winter season appeared, we were ready to turn off the livestream when we received a WhatsApp message from a friend of SOTD. It said, “I don’t think Christian Dior himself had ever been to a prairie or even know what it is. Extremely sickening.”

Ms Chiuri may not have entirely abandoned the Dior house codes (she has pivoted the waist to its natural position, for example), but there has been no indication that she has forged new ones either. Or, perhaps she has: Dior is not associated with the alpine fave, dirndl skirts, or anything Cottagecore, but it now it is. She is happy to sashay in her own plodding rhythm, comforted by what we see as ennui that won’t change. Her designs are circumscribed by silhouettes that amount to five, or thereabouts, fashioned in fabrics that inevitably include the sheer. You know what will be shown; you can guess it. Predictability has never been capped. Yes, you can argue that there are those many, many stitches by the petite-mains and the details the eyes cannot see (especially not on a livestream). You can say there are those wonderful surface treatments—embroidery (on tartan: Charmed!) and floral motifs with an intricacy that screech couture or the folksy smocking on the bodice with the decorative stitches, or the frog fastening on vaguely Mao jackets. But take away all that? Are we going to be reminded of the hundreds of hours needed to make those clothes, again?

This season, Maria Grazia Chiuri pays tribute to another female creative, the Ukrainian artist Olesia Trofymenko, who is tasked to design the set. At Ms Trofymenko’s suggestion, the tree of life is used as a motif. Clichéd as the image might be, Ms Chiuri admitted to liking the symbolism a lot, with the house saying that “these traditional symmetrical structures symbolise femininity, the idea of continuity and a bright future”. The use of Ms Trofymenko’s work could appear to be a token gesture to support the war and resistance in Ukraine, but whether nominal visual value is applied or a true symbol of womanhood not expressed clearly enough already, we cannot really tell. Obvious is the return to looks that are more than retro, to a time of the pioneer women of the mid-19th century. Some of the frocks recall those of Valentino, where Ms Chiuri was a co-designer (alongside Pierpaolo Piccioli) and had loved rather medieval styles, such as the kirtle. Others, including a kirtle-looking spaghetti-strapped dress over a chemise, might look very much in place in the wardrobe of Maria Rainer of The Sound of Music. “I go to the hills when my heart is lonely,” Julie Andrews as Maria sang in the 1965 film, “I know I will hear what I’ve heard before. My heart will be blessed with the sound of music. And I’ll sing once more.” Dior’s Maria does, too.

Screen shot (top): Dior/YouTube. Photos: Dior

The Most Arresting Of The Season

Posted by Style On The Dot

During a blah couture week, Glenn Martens truly gave Jean Paul Gaultier the welcome haute so lacking elsewhere. From complex knits to swirling gowns, they’re heart-racingly rad

With couture (mostly) designed to look no different from prêt à porter these days, Jean Paul Gaultier Haute Couture by Glenn Martens is a master stroke of the extremes couture could afford. We’ve see the routine crowd-pleasers at Dior and Chanel (Vanessa Friedman’s shocking Tweet: “It was a very good Chanel #couture”!), and, disappointingly, even at Valentino, so Mr Martens’s high fashion debut is the proverbial breath of fresh air a sadly stodgy season needs. These are clothes that are born of an imagination in pumped-up mode. Mr Martens has a flair for the dramatic—a quality missing in couture for a while now (except, perhaps, at Viktor and Rolf)—and he expresses it in ways rather similar to Mr Gaultier. We always believe that couture should make us dream and Mr Martens has given us the tonic REM to go deep into that state.

To be sure, Mr Martens is not trying to be the enfant terrible who guided the conical-bra years of JPG in the ’80s. This isn’t “ready-to-wear on steroid”, one designer remarked to us, referring to Chitose Abe’s debut for the brand. JPG’s follow-up guest designer is more couture in his thinking, and creates shapes, other than details, that do not commensurate with the prêt. As he told the media during a preview of the show, “There’s only one time in my life when I can do a gown with a 15-meter train.” Mr Martens is clearly on a high, creating those expressive pieces in his first couture outing (although he has worked with Mr Gaultier previously and had referenced the former for his recent Y-Project collection), taking the tropes of the house and bending them to his will. Sure, there is Y-Project pinned to the pieces, but, unlike Chitose Ave, he does not let his deconstructing get too much in the way.

The Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts alum, in fact, approaches his task with a welcome classicism. Yes, there are the trains, but they are not trains that are synonymous with wedding dresses. They have more in common with court trains of the 19th century than anything you’d find in Tanjong Pagar bridal shops. Many of the costume components of French fashion that Mr Gaultier cheekily employed in the past—but sans the bra (let some other couturier pick that up!!!)—are there: corsets and stomachers, too! Sure, some of the designs border on the theatrical, but couture can afford that, and many of us, wearied by couture looking anything but, welcome the controlled exaggeration, the fantastic shapes, and sensations only couture could promise (and few houses deliver)—Mr Martens offered them, with emotional pull.

We like that he did not impose his own vision to totally obscure the JPG tropes (“Gaultierism”, some call it) we know so well. There are the ‘tattoo’ prints, now layered (but still body-hugging) to look indistinct, almost NFT-ed; 3-D metallic flowers that float over the body (metal is ethereal!); the suit with cut-outs, but not quite cold-anything; the tattered surface treatment of the more glamourous Gaultier textures (mummy strips!), and the lacing taken out of corsets to crisscross hips and trains. But the collection also targeted Gaultier diehards for whom the marinière (long-sleeved tee with horizontal blue and white stripes, typically worn by seamen or personnel of the French Navy) is emblematic of the house. But a T-shirt in a couture collection won’t hold up to scrutiny, so Glenn Martens made it into a suit-dress and embellished it with bits of cords that look like frayed raffia. Subversive may not quite be on his mind, and subversive is hardly an attention-grabber these days. But sensational, that modern rarity, is surely—and firmly—there.

Screen grab and photos: Jean Paul Gaultier