Adjusting to haute couture after a couple of weeks of photographing menswear shows always proves to be an interesting mental exercise. I am still in Paris, I wake up in the same bed and follow my daily routine, but everything feels different.
Men’s shows are spread all over the city. On an average day, I get to shoot at a desolated post-industrial facility, an art gallery in the Marais, a majestic piece of brutalist architecture, and occasionally at a majestic palace. When it comes to the clothes, once my eyes get over the initial shock, most of what I see and photograph is somewhat realistic. Even the most avant-garde and impractical pieces that I see on attendees of Comme des Garçons or Rick Owens shows can be imagined worn in a real-life situation (on particular people and in particular circumstances).
Haute couture is a different story. It does not sit well with brutalist architecture, so the setting becomes all about Parisian grandeur — Art Deco, marble and gold. The fashion crowd does not venture out of the chic 1st, 8th and 16th arrondissements. The shows are big, but somehow intimate. Most of the houses are very efficient at keeping the couture experience separated from the “real life” of Paris.
The action mostly takes place in closed courtyards and gardens. There are no cars, no accidental tourists and passersby. These spaces feel like a theater stage or a movie set. Looks become costumes; showgoers become characters. I meet and photograph a lot of “mysterious” people that I never see at other fashion weeks. I have no idea if they are clients, collectors, princesses, famous opera singers, high jewelry designers or characters that jumped out of a Federico Fellini movie. I will never learn, and so I let my imagination run wild.
It does not happen often, but I enjoy it the most when couture dreams softly collide with reality. After a Schiaparelli show at the Petit Palais, a model and maison’s muse Maggie J. Maurer changed into her civilian Dallas Mavericks jacket but left golden paint from the show on her face. This was my favorite couture moment. Go Mavs!
Some Like It Haute
Haute couture hits different than other fashion weeks.