For Dior's autumn/winter 2015-16 haute couture show, Raf Simons created a garden of earthly delights: a vision of innocence and adventure, simplicity and luxury, beauty and decadence, all seen through the eyes of Flemish and French masters of both art and craft. The prints are soft, recalling the work of the Impressionist painters.
"I was intrigued by the idea of purity and innocence versus luxury and decadence," says Simons, "and how that is encapsulated by the idea of Dior's garden, no longer a flower garden but a sexual one."
The collection offers a fresh take on chainmail. The historical style of enmeshment is revisited in a cannage pattern made up of silver rings and coloured rhinestones. Riffing on transparency, the mail is layered over dresses as an integral part of the complete look.
Elsewhere, dress surfaces resemble a flock of bird feathers as the ateliers of the Tailleur and the Flou unite to find both fluid and constructed forms. Intricate pleating and draping in crêpe de chine become the expressive inner linings of reversible capes and the surface treatment of puffed-out skirts, giving the wearer the choice of a public or a private pleasure.
