Runway review: the S/S 2016 womenswear season’s most sensational sets
Dior: Raf Simons and Bureau Betak joined forces once again to create one of the most ambitious sets of the season at Dior. Inside a blue Delphinium-covered hill erected in the centre of the Louvre’s Cour Carrée, a pristine white space was lit by a set of four robotic arms equipped with multiple spotlights. Built over the course of three weeks by a team of 100 florists, carpenters and riggers who worked day and night to bring Simons’ vision to life, the bloom-covered mountain was composed of 15 semi-trucks worth of scaffolding, 2,000 square metres of oasis foam, 4km of sawed lawn and a staggering 40 tons of blue Delphiniums. Photography: Adrien Dirand
Writer: Ali Morris
3.1 Phillip Lim: Recalling the enormous mounds of purple sand that lined Prada’s S/S 2015 runway, models at Phillip Lim’s S/S 2016 show in New York’s Pier 92 navigated their way around huge pointy piles of toxin-free compost. The spectacle, orchestrated by architectural artist Maya Lin, took just three days to install. While the earth mounds echoed the simple lines of Lim’s collection, they also tie in with the show’s garden-themed title, ’Stop and Smell the Flowers’
Chanel: This season, Lagerfeld conceived another blockbuster set, theatrically transforming the lofty interiors of the Grand Palais into an airport terminal complete with 40 different Chanel-branded check-in desks, luggage trolleys and a huge departure board listing the house’s recent show locations. Photography: Olivier Saillant
Jonathan Saunders: Sunglasses were a necessity for guests at Jonathan Saunders show, which took place in a light-filled glasshouse behind London’s Central Saint Martins college. Seating took the form of chunky blue benches, while a series of angled mirrors amplified the bright autumn sunshine and the brilliant patterned layers of the designer’s new collection. ’This one in particular looked up to the sky,’ said Saunders comparing of his set design, which echoed the mood of the collection itself, ’it was about lightness, which is so important when you think about clothing and dressing women – that she feels like she is not burdened. There’s an effortlessness to it’
Agnona: There was a fairytale feeling at Agnona this season with a set that revolved around an enchanted tree, installed within Milan’s 18th century Palazzo Clerici. Intended as a tribute to the house’s heritage and its works for the likes of Balmain, Dior, Chanel, Cardin and Saint Laurent, the tree’s butterfly-filled, leafy branches were hung with a series of 18 glowing cashmere voile silhouettes - eleven from its archive and five taken from the new collection
Givenchy: Riccardo Tisci crossed the pond for his spring Givenchy presentation teaming up with artist Marina Abramović to create an open air New York show spectacle scheduled for the evening of the 14th anniversary of September 11. Located at Pier 26 by the Hudson River with jaw dropping views of Lower Manhattan and One World Trade Center, the set was constructed from recycled materials and featured performers utilising props including water and tree branches (symbols of cleansing and rebirth) in keeping with the night’s overall theme of love, peace and humility
Philipp Plein: The catwalk was transformed into a moving conveyor belt at Philip Plein’s surreal Milan show thanks to Thierry Dreyfus’ production company Eyesight. Surrounded with spotlit robotic machines, the models were sent down the catwalk like cars on a production line, handed accessories by robot arms as they went, while in the background drones hovered in the air as a robot rock band provided the soundtrack
Céline: A colour blocked tent installation and rhythmic soundtrack conceived by Danish artist FOS set the stage for Phoebe Philo’s latest show for Céline. FOS, otherwise known as Thomas Poulsen, has previously worked with Philo to create a series of furnishings for Céline’s stores. At the French house’s S/S 2016 show, his billowing swathes of orange, blue and yellow fabric hung from the ceiling, while below the models walked across a sand-covered catwalk
Coach: Creative director Stuart Vevers commandeered New York’s Highline for his first womenswear runway show for the brand since he took the helm in 2013. Housed inside a huge, specially constructed glass box above Hudson Yard, Coach’s meandering glass runway was lined with wild flowers and grasses that echoed the prairie prints of Vevers’ dresses. Photography: Mitchell Sams
Antonio Marras: Artist Mahmoud Saleh Mohammadi’s installation ’Touch With Eyes’ provided the backdrop for Antonio Marras’s runway in Milan this season. Models donning the intricately detailed pieces – inspired by the work of state-imprisoned Soviet-era Armenian artist and director Sergej Iosifovič Paradžanov – emerged from a curtain of overlapping Kilim rugs and made their way down a runway strewn with giant styrofoam boulders connected up to a network of ropes
Carven: Design duo Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud were inspired by early female scuba divers for S/S 2016 and their showspace also reinforced this sporty spirit for adventure as each model made their way through a clear plastic ’pressure’ chamber
Gucci: Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele presented his second collection for the label at Scalo Farini, a former train station, where a carpeted catwalk stretched along one of the old platforms. To add to the swirling oppulence of his pink snake print carpet – a motif that also featured on an embossed mule – Michele seated guests with studded black bamboo chairs upholstered in turquoise fabric and headed his catwalk with a series of antique room dividers featuring prints from the collection
Marni: The Roy Lichtenstein-esque colours of Marni’s collection positively shone against the subdued concrete backdrop of the Viale Umbria venue. Made up of intersecting geometric shapes in chalky hues of pink, brown and grey, the graphic layering of the set echoed the shapes found in the collection itself
MSGM: At MSGM Massimo Giorgetti took the lighting rig off the ceiling and installed it vertically on the wall of his spring show to create a showstopping backdrop for his skate culture-inspired collection. The mash-up of strobe, tube, and spot lights flashed throughout the show highlighting the collection’s many dangling chains, hoops and metallic tassels
Miu Miu: A monolithic gold and silver foil-covered installation designed by AMO dominated the runway at Miu Miu. The audience, seated on wooden chairs around the edge of the room looked on as Miuccia Prada’s psychedelic, blue-lipped housewives clad in ruffled pinafores and 1970s print house dresses wove in and out of the structure’s multiple angled archways
Opening Ceremony: Creative directors Humberto Leon and Carol Lim paid tribute to architect Frank Lloyd Wright with their latest architecture-inspired collection and accompanying show set which took the form of an indoor garden with carved concrete pillars. The set’s growing garden – which featured lemon and fig trees, rosemary bushes, white and purple cabbage patches, eggplant, and squash – was arranged into circles based upon drawings of Cloverleaf, an unbuilt 1942 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, housing development conceived by Wright. The distinctive carved concrete pillars were based upon the intersecting horizontal and vertical lines that can be found within many of Wright’s designs, including Cloverleaf
Public School: Oversized white building blocks punctuated the all-black set at Public School. Scattered haphazardly across seating and along the runway, the rectangular white blocks were conceived by New York-based practice Snarkitecture
Prada: For its September womenswear outing, Prada chose to recycle the impressive set from its S/S 2016 menswear show that made its debut back in June. Designed by long-time collaborators AMO, a maze of low-hanging, steel-framed, curved and rectilinear sheets of corrugated plastic glass that reflected and refracted the light hung at varying heights above a series of elliptical concrete benches
Iris Van Herpen: 3D printed couture connoisseur Iris Van Herpen used a robot to live 3D print a dress over Game of Thrones actress Gwendoline Christie during her Paris Fashion Week Show. Lying on a circular stone plinth, Christie was surrounded by a trio of robotic arms clad in a spiky material made from iron filings mixed into resin, who printed an ’architectural mesh’ directly onto her body
Emilio Pucci: For his runway debut at Pucci, Massimo Giorgetti conjured an under the sea theme with shimmering sequins and ocean-themed prints. Models paraded his new Pucci directive along a dimly-lit runway flanked by suitably atmospheric glowing pink curtains that allowed the sequins to sparkle
Valentino: The Italian label’s stellar S/S 2016 collection called for an equally impressive set, and Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccoli did not disappoint. The tribal-inspired collection was showcased to a thumping beating drum soundtrack within a dark timber-lined auditorium assembled in an oval-esque arrangement
Rodarte: Flickering, multicoloured tube lights were hung vertically from the ceiling at Rodarte, where Bureau Betak used dried foliage, branches, chicken wire and loose strands of coloured knitwear to create a dazzling light show. Photography: Daniel Salemi
Sportmax: Young Amsterdam-based Italian designers Formafantasma took charge of Sportmax’s show set this season with a design inspired by Gio Ponti’s midcentury Villa Planchart in Caracas. Stretching down from the ceiling and across the floor to form the catwalk, sunshine-hued lengths of translucent PVC film helped to define the space and brought a little warmth to the otherwise grey interior of Milan’s Palazzo delle Poste – an early 20th century post office building designed by Luigi Broggi
Roksanda: Set designer Gary Card, who created Wallpaper’s Awards show set earlier this year, was inspired by storage units and stacked parcels when designing the set for Roksanda’s runway show. Held at the Seymour Leisure Centre in Marylebone, London, Card used curved MDF blocks lit by pink and yellow lighting to create an architectural landscape for Roksanda Ilincic’s models who were decked out in the designer’s signature colour-blocked shapes
Suno: Casting angular patterns down the runway, the bright blue geodesic dome structures created by set designer Andrew Ondrejcak at Suno continued the central geometric theme running through Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty’s S/S 2016 collection
Bonpoint: The Parisian childrenswear brand continued spring’s vegetative theme for their catwalk show, which was surrounded with leafy green shrubbery and low lying grasses. Photography: Dominique Maitre
Thom Browne: One by one, the models at Thom Brown’s New York show took their place within an open, timber-frame school house built in the centre of the set. Filled with rows of chairs, and a black composition notebook neatly placed at each one, the framework was lit by multicoloured lights, providing the perfect backdrop for Browne’s school uniform-inspired show
Hermès: Villa Eugénie set the scene for Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski’s second Hermès show with a total palette clense of the house’s Paris show venue whereby the runway was blurred in with the guest’s elevated seating. Photography: Camilla Alibrandi
Tommy Hilfiger: The American designer’s no-expense-spared set transported his New York audience to the turquoise waters of Mustique this season. Designed by Randall Peacock, Hilfiger’s slice of the Caribbean came complete with a beach, boardwalk runway, palm trees, a giant swimming pool and a palm topped beach hut