The spring 2024 Paris haute couture season has brought a transformational and stunning wave into the world of high fashion as designers set up new volumes and architectural designs to become a major fashion trend. The collections showcase garments that are more than just attire, as the runway becomes a stage for art. This season, various trends and popular styles have emerged, including asymmetry and high necklines, an abundance of capes, cloaks, gloves, and mantels, along with feather and floral themes.
Daniel Roseberry has started off this season with his abstractly shaped outfits. As stated by Schiaparelli, their collection is said to be homage to the obsession of otherworldly creatures. They have combined old-world techniques such as over-embroidered guipure laces, velvet and lace appliqués, and hand-cut and embroidered chenille fringe with new-world shapes, patterns, designs, and references, such as a motherboard-and-strapless microchip dress encrusted with pre-2007 technological artifacts, showcasing founder Elsa Schiaparelli fondness for unlikely marriages. Daniel has combined pop cultural references with high fashion, which is visible throughout his collection, where his otherworldly shapes expanded from pouffed skirts and exaggerated other worldly proportions into architectural dresses that dramatically screened the face.
The trend of shapes and volume was visible in Valentino’s spring/summer 2024 haute couture. Pierpaolo Piccioli offered twists on the traditional evening shapes by pairing them up with modern day wear, which can be seen through his pairing of a colorful voluminous skirt with a sleek menswear khaki cargo jacket. His lineup included exquisite red carpet pieces along with quirky pieces with unusual volumes and colors. Piccioli stated that each piece that comes out of his workshop is unique since no two people execute his sketches the same way, just how he likes it. Another shapeshifter was seen at Miss Sohee and Giambattista Valli, whose collection contained floral inspiration and sculptural volumes. She said that the art of giving volumes through the cuts, through the art of draping and pushing boundaries, was showcased in their collection.
Architectural experimentation continued to thrive at Robert Wun’s spring/summer 2024 couture collection titled For Love, inspired by Wun’s favorite horror films, where voluminous pleated skirts were showcased. Indian designers like Rahul Mishra, whose runway collection also showcased structural pieces with an inspiration of insects like butterflies and dragonflies encased in circular structures, and Gaurav Gupta’s futuristic pleated and lifted sculptural works, where he experimented with bold colors and architectural shapes, also hinted at the trend. Spanish designer Juana Martín’s collection, La Rosee, inspired by an Andalusian spring morning, contained sculptural 3D floral designs. She states that she recalled dewy, flower-filled mornings typical of the Andalusian region.
This spring/summer collection deserves to be called the season of shapes and volumes as various designers continued to exhibit structural shapes and volume in their designs, captivating the audience as they shed the rigidity of traditional designs with flowing gowns, puffball skirts, and asymmetrical cuts. Spring 2024 weaves a design of structural elegance and beauty, turning the runway into a canvas for designers to explore limitless possibilities in fashion, giving birth to various trends similar to this season’s trend of shape shifters.
