While your average ready-to-wear guest can be found attempting to cobble together an outfit of their best designer garb, the couture customer is an altogether different breed. Typically, a Full Look Policy is contained to the pages of a magazine, but for SS24’s Couture Week it spilled onto the streets of Paris, engulfing the attendees of this season’s shows. Just look at the Chanel guests. Never ones to miss out on signifying their allegiance to the French brand, attendees rocked up in logo-smashed twin sets, rows of vintage pearls and an embarrassment of tweed. Head-to-toe was the name of the game, and who better equipped than a Chanel customer with a bottomless wallet on chain?
Over at Jean Paul Gaultier, guests had the choice of picking between JPG and Simone Rocha – this season’s guest designer – and in the end it was pretty evenly split. Broadway empresario Jordan Roth came swaddled in a snowy quilt from Rocha’s AW22 collection, while model and artist Raya Martigny wore a sheer hooded creation from JPG Couture AW14. Also in attendance was fashion editor Lynn Yaeger, who wore a Simone Rocha prairie dress smattered in bows, and Aussie director Baz Luhrmann, who forwent the full look policy and opted for a comfy brown suit instead.
Attendees of Robert Wun’s offering also came similarly decked out, some in the designer’s signature peplum pleats, others in his scorched earth satin. Kardashian offshoot Jordyn Woods also showed up in an enormous violet ruff, while another spirited attendee twirled about in a blood-red ensemble. And while a lot of the street style looks were from recent seasons, it was nice to see attendees wear what they already had. At Viktor & Rolf, the model Coco Rocha was seen sporting a cotton-ball creation from its AW16 haute couture show, while a fuzzy red frock from AW14 was also seen in the fray. But although it’s good to see more and more people divest from new season supremacy, we know that an archive pull is less about any vague notion of “sustainability”, than it is about flexing how deep your wardrobe really goes.
