What comes after logomania

Luxury fashion is going into stealth mode. On the catwalks of New York, London, Milan and now in Paris, black and grey have been dominant; daringness has given way to practicality; shouty logos and monograms have been hushed. Word of the challenging economic climate has finally penetrated the citadel.

In such an environment, how does a brand stand apart? The answer from Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri and Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello boils down to silhouette.

Both staked a claim on it at their shows in Paris on Tuesday. For Chiuri, it was the “H” silhouette that Christian Dior introduced in 1954, with its long lines and accentuated waist. For Vaccarello, it was a triangle — an exaggerated take on the Yves Saint Laurent shape of the early 1990s, with big-shouldered jackets that narrowed into slim belted pencil skirts and towering pointy-toe slingbacks.

The Saint Laurent collection was tremendously chic, accessorised with only aviator sunglasses, big gold earrings or cuffs and the occasional evening clutch. These gleamed under the soft electric candlelight of gilt chandeliers modelled after the ones in Paris’s Inter-Continental hotel where Yves Saint Laurent showed his haute couture collections from 1976 to 2001.

Pre-show, Vaccarello said he was grappling with the notion of elegance. “Maybe elegance is something we have no sense of today,” he said. “Maybe we don’t care about it. Maybe it has some other meaning, or maybe it has no meaning at all. But I really wanted to bring that idea of being dressed.” 

He brought it, with strong clothes that required little styling. “That’s what defines elegance to me, to be able to wear almost nothing, no tricks of styling,” he said.

The jackets, cut from velvet and traditional menswear fabrics such as pinstripe wool, were “very, very complicated to do”, he added — extending, as they did, past the point where there would be a shoulder to support them. He also brought back the tartan sashes of Yves Saint Laurent’s autumn/winter 1990 collection, enlarging their proportions and fastening them with large golden scarf rings.

Together, it managed to make a statement and (perhaps the jackets aside) be wholly sellable.

Chiuri achieved much the same thing at her show in the Tuileries, where a monumental sculpture in the form of a tentacled creature — decorated in sunflower embroidery, crochet circles, bright feathers and florals reprinted from the Dior archive — spanned the entire showspace. In keeping with Chiuri’s tradition of inviting a female artist to share her show venue, it was made by Paris-born Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos.

The creature provided a mythical backdrop for the show, which revisited not only Christian Dior’s “H” line of 1954 but also the “A” from that decade, made contemporary through light, modern fabrics and a relaxing of the stiff boning and tailoring of the originals. There were crumpled white button-ups rolled above the elbow and tucked into trim black pencil skirts, teamed with black leather gloves; Bar jackets reimagined in quilted nylon and a belted gilet; and cap-sleeve dresses and full pleated skirts in archival florals. They were accessorised with 1950s-style pocketbook bags with top handles, punkish flat boots with buckles running up to the knee, and Mary Janes paired with tall ribbed socks.

The Mary Janes and socks had a whiff of Prada about them, but the rest was unmistakably Dior — no logo required.

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