Decoding Paris Haute Couture: Wonder, Restraint and the Call of the Void

**Imran Amed** (0:05)
Hi, this is Imran Amed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BoF Podcast. It's Friday, July 10th. I missed couture season for the first time in years, but that made it even more valuable for me to catch up with Tim Blanks on everything that happened this week in Paris amidst a record-breaking heatwave.
At Chanel, Mathieu Blazy built his sophomore couture collection around a fairy tale he found in Gabrielle Chanel's own library. Dior's Jonathan Anderson tore down the walls of the usual tent in the gardens of Musée Rodin, staging an open-air show inspired by the sculptor Linda Benglis. And Michael Stewart, an independent London designer, debuted his very first couture offering, working obsessively to achieve his vision of craft through his signature beading technique.

**Tim Blanks** (0:59)
Couture stepped up to the plate to be couture and provide that sense of wonder that, you know, couture was always the pinnacle of fashion, where you really saw what designers and makers and the télés were capable of doing, at a pinnacle where they were untroubled by commercial considerations. And I thought that this season definitely felt like one of those seasons.

**Imran Amed** (1:24)
This week on the BoF Podcast, Tim Blanks joins me from Paris to break down the haute couture season that was. Here's Tim Blanks on the BoF Podcast.
Hi, Tim.

**Tim Blanks** (1:38)
Hi, Imran.

**Imran Amed** (1:40)
Welcome back. Well, you're still in Paris, actually, aren't you?

**Tim Blanks** (1:43)
I am. I came back to Paris to do this podcast.

**Imran Amed** (1:48)
Funny, funny, funny. Well, I'm glad to connect with you. This was the first couture season I've missed in a very long time. So it's a bit of a role reversal, Tim. A few seasons ago, you missed couture and we did this. And I'd been there and you watched it on a screen.
And this season, it's going to be the other way around. So I'm going to really look to you to guide me through what it was like. I watched it all on my phone last night, actually. And as opposed to stretching it out and watching it as the shows came through, I kind of watched it all together in about 30 minutes last night.
So a very efficient way to experience Couture Week, I must say.

**Tim Blanks** (2:40)
But all those months setting up to years of work for all those designers, my goodness.

**Imran Amed** (2:46)
I did not feel jealous about missing the heat. I was watching the footage from the Balenciaga show, and there were all these aerial shots. And you could see everyone violently fanning themselves with whatever fans they provided at the show. It looked very, very warm. So, but before we dive into specific shows, were there any general takeaways you had about this season?

**Tim Blanks** (3:17)
Well, a little like you, Imran, I was only in Paris Monday and Tuesday. So I missed Wednesday, which was Balenciaga and Gautier and Robert One. But so, you know, I was looking at photos and reading commentary, and I was very taken by something that Robert One said to Tiziana Cardini from Vogue. He said to her that Couture may not offer solutions, but it can keep wonder alive, precious resource when reality seems determined to extinguish it. Now, I always like sweeping statements like that. But I think that that kind of applied to apply. It seemed to apply to just about everything I saw or saw pictures of. I generally don't like talking about things that I wasn't at. But in this case, you know, there was this sort of prevailing, I thought, this prevailing feeling of of extravagance in a way. That Couture stepped up to the plate to be Couture and provide that sense of wonder.
That Couture was always a pinnacle of fashion, where you really saw what designers and makers and ateliers were capable of doing, a pinnacle where they were untroubled by commercial considerations. I thought that this season definitely felt like one of those seasons.

**Imran Amed** (4:58)
Yeah, I get the feeling that actually it may have gone to an extreme now in some cases, where I was looking at some of the collections from some of the Indian designers as well last night.
It's almost like in some cases, there's a race to create the most elaborate, the most extreme, the most embellished, embroidered silhouettes so that people can trot out these statistics and say, you know, this took 17,000 hours or this took, you know, this many beads or whatever. You know, like you just, it's almost like, yeah, I certainly gathered that sense of wonder and that, you know, that organic theme of nature that we saw come through last season seemed to come through again this season. But in some, in some cases, people are just taking it to an extreme that, I don't know, strips the beauty away a bit.