If the ready-to-wear shows are about selling product, Paris' haute couture shows, staged each year in January and July, are about selling the dream. During the Spring-Summer 2021 season, which took place from January 25 to 28, the few designers working in this rarefied space once again came together -- this time, virtually -- to parade their most fantastical designs.
While the theatrical collections typically include elaborate runway productions, world-building has become more challenging due to the restrictions of the coronavirus pandemic --- but not impossible. This season, a number of designers found ways to awe through the computer screen alone.
Below are this week's standout moments.
This week, he leapt into both when he unveiled his first collection for the Italian house, inspired by Virginia Woolf's novel "Orlando," about a male aristocrat who wakes up one day as a woman, and Charleston, the East Sussex home where Woolf and other members of the Bloomsbury Set would congregate. The show was stacked with gauzy, crystal-embellished gowns; flowing capes and sharp, androgynous suiting. In place of a traditional runway show, Jones took over Paris' Palais Brongniart, with models navigating a maze of interlocking glass "F" shapes in a pre-taped video.
