Business as usual at Paris haute couture shows as protests rage in France

Dior took over the Musée Rodin in Paris, building a pop-up art-gallery-meets-catwalk in the garden. The rapper Cardi B flew in to watch Schiaparelli, wearing a black velvet gown accessorised with gold earrings in the shape of a giant second pair of ears dangling to her shoulders.

In other words, all is business at usual at the haute couture shows in the French capital, despite a weekend of nationwide unrest caused by the death of 17-year-old Nahel M in a suburb of Paris last week.

The haute couture collections, where dresses are custom-made to fit individual clients for stratospheric sums, are the most elite branch of French fashion. That they are proceeding untroubled by turbulence in less affluent areas of the city is perhaps a reflection of the polarisation that underpins the situation in France.

The only brand to acknowledge events was Celine, where a menswear show scheduled for Sunday evening was cancelled the night before.

On Instagram, designer Hedi Slimane posted that “having a fashion show in Paris, while France and its capital are bereaved and bruised, from my point of view alone, seems inconsiderate and totally out of place.”

It is believed that the evening had been planned to include live music performances, and that Slimane felt a celebration of French youth culture was inappropriate at this time. The houses of Courrèges and Chloé also called off parties planned for the weekend.

By Sunday evening, a heightened police presence that had been evident in the city centre earlier in the weekend had been scaled back sufficiently that Maison Alaïa, where the designer Pieter Mulier is bringing the house founded by Azzedine Alaïa back into the industry spotlight, held a picturesque outdoor show on the Solferino footbridge, watched by tourists sailing past on pleasure cruisers as well as 200 guests seated on the bridge.

At Schiaparelli, business as usual was a surreal scene of its own. The visual jokes that long ago forged common ground between Elsa Schiaparelli and her friend Salvador Dalí – measuring-tape belts for her, lobster telephones for him – have been supersized for the social media age by the house’s current designer, the American Daniel Roseberry. Beneath the frescoed ceiling of the Petit Palais, a puffer coat was swollen to the size of a small bouncy castle, a keyhole sliced into a neat black cocktail dress to frame a belly button.

The Dior-backed exhibition of the illustrator Marta Roberti’s giant zoomorphic goddesses, 15ft tall and with feathers, beaks, claws and leopard spots, will be open to the public for five days.

Goddesses were the muses of the season for the designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, who recreated the draped marble robes of classical sculpture in chiffon and georgette for the lucky few who wear Dior haute couture. Pinned to her moodboard this season was a quote by Christian Dior, who said he shared with antiquity a love of “apparent simplicity.”

“Dior didn’t much like embroidery or pattern,” Chiuri said. “He was all about silhouette.” Grandeur came from capes, movement from pleats, romance from slim twisted ropes crisscrossing shoulders and back. There were no bright colours, no hardware or buckles to snag the eye, no shoulder pads or high heels to artificially alter the shape of the body.

“Couture worn by celebrities has become a kind of personal performance,” Chiuri noted, “but it can also be simple silhouettes, very comfortable clothes, flat shoes.”