Under a ceiling of 'electric flowering' designed to echo urban lights, artistic director Raf Simons opened his show, devoted to 'city silhouettes', with a procession of masculine tailoring and power-wielding coats, cropped at the elbow as though pushed up and ready for business. This season even Simons' heels were on the go, morphing a training shoe into an ankle-strapped platform, complete with a fluorescent sports stripe. Ushering in the new workforce were sleek, peaked lapel pantsuits in maroon, bottle green and black, with each Dior employee carrying a hyper-hued coat over her forearm. Although it was soon time to dial in the flou: originating from men's business shirts, dresses came fluted, rather than ruffled, with swinging asymmetrical hemlines. Moving into cocktail hour, electric-hued, scoop front evening looks used 1990s-style side splits to dramatic effect when paired with floral embroidery. Then came the designer's brogue lacings that stitched up form-fitting dresses and coats in the place of corsetry, followed by elegant quilted duvet dresses for the work-weary, seductively cropped in the front. Dior's dream sequence, described by the tour de force designer as 'an idea of the romantic and the real, a world of possibilities', restfully finished with sheer embroidered columns, worn over homely tees.
Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans
