End of the week in Paris: nudity sets in

Low back, cutouts on the hips, dresses evoking negligees: the trend for ultrasexy and bare bodies is taking hold in haute couture.

On Thursday, the last day of the Parisian Haute Couture week, Fendi presented a collection all in light and transparency with many dresses designed around lingerie.

‘It’s the inner world that comes out – both figuratively and literally and underwear becomes evening wear,’ said Briton Kim Jones, artistic director of the house’s couture collections. Roman in the parade notes.

In front of the singers Courtney Love and Rita Ora, in the front row wearing almost identical total blue looks with wedge boots, paraded models in fluid dresses, light gray or flesh-colored with pumps with jewel heels.

The winged sleeves are detachable and the lingerie is designed as an integral part of the dress, often in the same heavily embroidered fabric.

The Spanish designer Juana Martin has also bet on glamor and nudity for her second collection presented in Paris as part of haute couture week.

A little black dress or sheer white mini ensemble with voluminous fan-shaped sleeves, her trademark, are worn with silver stiletto sandals.

‘Want to show off’

Tie-dye denim is the star material of this collection lightened by cut-outs and openings: here, a bodysuit with bare legs is worn with an Andalusian hat.

There, a long dress with ruffled shoulders is split to the waist. The cutouts on the hips of the skirts and pants feminize the silhouettes made in this raw material.

The jeans represent ‘the introduction of high fashion that people can wear’, explained Juana Martín.

‘There is a lot of nudity in the garment. It’s always in waves, we’re coming out of a pandemic, people want to go out, show themselves, celebrate together. It goes with it,’ Christian Louboutin, who designed red-soled shoes for Juana Martin’s show, told AFP. ‘Shoes had to have small lines, just shine’.

The veil, to cover and discover

For the French couturier Julien Fournié, it is a question of “reclaiming the body bruised by the Covid”.

Its collection inspired by the 30s is fluid and light and the silhouettes are designed to be worn without a bra if it is not an embroidered swimsuit which is in itself an evening outfit.

“The idea is to wear it with a lot of freedom and a lot of … nudity,” he explains to AFP.

Alexis Mabille designed long red and green dresses with huge cutouts on the sides, while a few strips of fabric barely draped the chest of a pink evening dress by Haider Ackermann for Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Moroccan dressmaker Sara Chraïbi, who made her debut in Paris on Thursday, defended ‘freedom of adornment and movement’.

Her architectural and opulent collection played on lengths lightened by necklines and fringes. An embroidered bra is worn as a top of a trouser suit with a veil cape.

‘There was a certain veil-like look and for me that was important. I wanted to have two points of view: a point of view on the freedom to cover up or uncover,’ she told AFP, backstage at the parade.

/ATS