Offering what can sometimes be a radically different perspective on the face of fashion than what we see during ready-to-wear weeks, haute couture embraces as its focus the highest levels of fashion craft. Many of the Spring 2024’s strongest runway presentations saw the designers at big houses grapple with heritage and history as they explored ways to find vital new meaning in the long-established craft traditions of the atelier.
Jean Paul Gaultier’s guest couture designer series continues to be one of the most productive of fashion’s ongoing experiments. This season, Simone Rocha investigated the core theme of powerful women in Gaultier’s work through her own handwriting that reconsiders familiar and delicate motifs of young womanhood.
Fendi, Valentino, and Schiaparelli all convincingly extended the concept of what haute couture can be, whether it’s an artful expansion of eyewear and accessories, a colorful look beyond dressmaking, or a sculptural cyber baby that put the mother in motherboard.
Dior earned the #1 spot thanks to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s endless devotion to celebrating the women who make couture happen. This season she went even deeper, centering the creation process of fabric itself and exploring the art of weaving as the basis for sculpturally elegant dresses.
Here are The Impression’s Top 10 couture fashion shows of the Spring 2024 season as selected by our Editor-in-Chief, Kenneth Richard.
10 Stéphane Rolland
9 – Jean Paul Gaultier
8 – Viktor & Rolf
7 – Chanel
6 – Maison Margiela
5 – Fendi
4 – Schiaparelli
3 – Alaïa
2 – Valentino
1 – Christian Dior
