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Sensuality has been on the tip of fashion’s tongue from the moment provocation usurped protective ware as the collective mood du jour. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Paris—a city where electrifying seduction techniques take the shape of scantily clad and sheer designs. Less than 48 hours into Paris Fashion Week, the art of showcasing skin became an apparent theme that would underscore new season collections from France’s favourites. Yet, during one of the week’s highly-anticipated presentations, Courrèges, the concept of revved-up, sultry garments was approached with a more tender touch.
Fashion is an inherently intimate medium. While clothing serves a function, the art form of how the body should be shrouded and with what intention became the key talking point for the collection. The presentation began in a barren white room. A thumping heartbeat reverberated around the room before the claustrophobic sounds of an intense inhale and exhale joined the chorus.
It was an enveloping soundscape that added to the exhilaration and anticipation for the collection—a titling move that conjured the opening of Pink Floyd’s 1973 seminal stoner album The Dark Side Of The Moon. This repetitive respiration took a sensual turn, like Jocelyn’s (Lily-Rose Depp) exasperated pants that scored most of The Idol’s soundtrack.
But where you thought this would climax into a bigger melody, it was ultimately the floor—an act of showmanship akin to Nicolas de Felice’s work—that moved the collection forward. The centrepiece (literally) began to open and close like lungs as models paraded around the spherical organ.
Watch the Courrèges Fall/Winter 2024 collection below:
The collection itself felt like espionage in seduction—a covert operation to conceal or reveal the body. The search for a thrill, pushing the boundaries and stages of undress. Where does the body end and the garment begin? For de Felice, these lines were not blurred but subverted. As began in the Pre-Fall 2024 collection, garments featured slits at hip-length, serving as pockets for models to thrust their hands into in a rebellious act of redirecting attention to the crotch.
A series of military-style coat dresses featured necklines so high they extended above the mouth and rested at the bridge of the nose. These were styled with hoods underneath in a homage back to André Courrèges’ innovative bridging of past and future. (If Florence Pugh or Zendaya needed a last-minute pull for the Dune 2 press tour, these cloaked pieces would be our choice.)
The collection inspired a dialogue between the body and the clothes that adorn it. The art of dress-making was at this collection’s core, with pieces emulating the patterns pinned and sewn together to make a garment. Here, this mode of competition was toyed with as some tops appeared to be a singular square cut of fabric stitched directly to the model’s skin (in reality they were “suspended on sheer body stockings” as WWD reported) or skirts that fringed like an unfinished stitch and styled upside down thanks to the presence of shirting buttons. Vinyl dresses featured stirrup-like hoops at the hem to conjure a sensation of the pieces being mirrored and could be worn upside down.
These concepts, along with the overwhelming bellowing of a distorted breath, left the show with a fantastical Alice in Wonderland quality. Down the rabbit hole and into Nicolas Di Felice’s fantasy we go.
This wasn’t just a series of ideas presented in tandem, however, but rather a comprehensive overview of what emphasis Di Felice believes clothes possess. This was evident in the back half of the collection, especially through the procession of bias-cut transparent garments that clung to the models. (A dress made from a mesh body stocking adorned with feathers and asymmetrically wrapped around the neck and down into a glove-like sleeve typified this approach.)
In fashion, there is innovation for modernity’s sake, but there is also creation for the sake of craft and beauty. Courrèges’ Fall/Winter 2024 range was the latter.
