Evolution Comes in Waves at Courrèges
Review of Courrèges Spring 2025 Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Waves, infinity movement, slow evolution
The show-space’s of Courrèges have been known to take on a life of their own. In the way that Nicolas Di Felice uses kinetic energy in some form or another to create a world within a world.
In tune with the needs of his audience, today’s installation, called the “Ocean Drum” (imagined by Di Felice and scenography director Rémy Brière in collaboration with Finnish artist duo Grönlund-Nisunen, and co-designed with Erwan Sene, according to todays show notes) was a giant version of a sound bath, with a circular centre-piece hypnotically rotating thousands of metal beads, working to create a mood of serenity prior to the shows start. Backstage the designer explained to The Impression – while holding a miniature version of todays sound bath – “In French we have a saying ‘It comes by waves’, it was when I remembered that I did a sound healing session and the object used created this white noise by using the sound of the sea. So I created an XL version to calm us all down and relax us all together.” There was also a performance by Lygia Clark featured on the designers mood board, along with the Möbius band which was an inspiration for the invitation of today’s show, remade in metal. In the piece the artist is “cutting a ribbon for hours and hours until there is nothing” said De Felice. Another way that the themes of linking and infinity were intertwined through all touch-points of today’s collection.
The sound bath installation also served another purpose outside of the sensory. As the collection being about waves was an apt metaphor for the creative directors design process, preferring to take last season as his starting point for spring 2025 and evolving each look, saying “This season I was interested in the notions of cycles, so things that are coming back over and over, through history and time”. From the first look until the last, the designer applied simple tweaks – shortening, lengthening, cutting away, skewing. This is ‘infinitely’ a better way of working, understanding that not everything has to be a completely novel idea. It works particularly well at Courrèges as the creative director has established a commitment to honouring that through-line of the brands DNA. As identifiable as it is already, maintaining the status quo will only be of benefit in the future.
Within the collection the slick, straight Courrèges silhouette became like shifting puzzle pieces with panels inserted into jackets and skirts overlaid with asymmetric panels. Then there was the interconnected aspect that came from the idea of the waves, here trousers became skirts and vice versa as legs were tethered by breezy lengths of fabric – so from the back a skirt, from the front? An entirely new category, the trous-irt? There were also more wearable versions in the form of straps attached at the knee.
In taking a 1962 image of a haute couture cape from the archives as another reference point, there was a sense of evolution by reintroducing silhouettes of the house which may have been lost to time. However, here as they were revisited they become a symbol of the designers need for continuous movement, for waves of renewal, from past to present.
THE DIRECTION
THE QUOTE
I created ‘Infinity’ dresses, from one roll. The bra becomes the collar, the collar comes down into the dress, and so on, and during the collection it continues like that so you have all this movement, which is then like waves between your legs, going up and down and around your body.”
Nicolas De Felice, creative director, Courrèges
THE WRAP UP
A design house with such a deeply ingrained visual identity doesn’t require drastic changes each season, that is something which has been understood by De Felice, who this season demonstrated that evolution can – and sometimes should – happen in gentle waves.
