Couture is where all the gossip is at, lately. First, we brought you the news that Jean Paul Gaultier will stop doing ready-to-wear collections altogether to focus on the artistry of his couture work – and now Valentino are upping their couture game, too.
But the venerable Italian house isn’t abandoning their everyday line. They’re just, oh, adding another couture show entirely. Easy.
And the announcement is making a few fashion insiders question whether this spells the beginning of the end for the traditional ‘fashion cycle’ of shows in Paris, Milan, New York and London, which normally rules the runways.
Normally, couture is exclusively Europe-only. But Valentino’s designers, with a blithe disregard for tradition, are adding a new couture runway show to their list: in December this year, they’ll show a couture collection in NYC to celebrate the opening of their Fifth Avenue store.
And, barely a month later, they’ll return to a normal state of affairs, with couture, menswear and pre-collections debuting as part of the traditional runway schedule. The New York Times called this “mind-boggling” on its own.
But it doesn’t end there. Valentino is abandoning Paris Couture Week entirely in 2015 for a couture runway show in Rome, ostensibly to celebrate another flagship store opening. They swear they’ll come back to the fold, but we think this is a massive rebellion in the making.
The Fashion Week rounds are punishing – for editors, for models, for onlookers and particularly for designers. The rapid pace and demands of multiple collections in very short spaces of time create huge logistical nightmares, and the high pressure has been behind some very high-profile blow-ups in the past few years.
(How is John Galliano going to cope as head director of Maison Martin Margiela, when it was the notoriously hardcore lifestyle as head of Dior that lead him to addiction and self-destruction? Watch that space.)
The only option for escape thus far has been public protest, or, like Karl Lagerfeld, focussing on shows in exotic locations (Dubai, Scotland, Austria) away from the grind of the Fashion Week schedule. Dolce & Gabbana, fabulously, shipped everybody away to Sicily for its couture show this year. Envious? Us?
But with this flourish, Valentino is starting to show the cracks in the tradition. It’s had problems before: back in 2012, Milan and London’s Fashion Weeks clashed, leading to a months-long wrangle between the British Fashion Council, the Camera Nazionale della Moda and the Chambre Syndicale, who manage London, Milan and Paris respectively. It all got very messy indeed.
The whole system is arranged around retail orders and deliveries. You might enjoy the pretty pictures of models on the runway, but the shows are really designed for international buyers who want to snap up the clothes, from department stores to collectors.
So other couture houses are likely to be very angry indeed that Valentino is taking attention away from the couture week in January by jumping the gun. Couture is a huge investment, both in time and in money, and it’s likely that designers aren’t going to appreciate their traditional spotlight being stolen – or their profits.
Clearly, however, Valentino is prepared for it – and for the potentially frosty reception they might get in the couture world when they re-enter it. The important thing, however, is the buyers – and we don’t think any of the people who buy couture will object to flying to New York for some early Valentino Christmas presents.
The most interesting thing will be whether the big organisations behind Fashion Weeks – the Council of Fashion Designers in America, the Camera Nazionale della Moda – permit this act of rebellion, or whether they do a little bit of punishing behind the scenes…
Will you be watching Valentino’s ground-breaking New York couture show this December?
Image: Valentino Couture.
