Living on the Edge With Courrèges (EXCLUSIVE)
The clothing of Courrèges isn't minimalist so much as it is purposeful. Impossibly busy artistic director Nicolas Di Felice — who not only shaped the direction of Courrèges Fall/Winter 2025 but also helped compose its scenography and remixed techno soundtrack — knows that the lines you don't shape are as important as the ones you do.
Equally informed by Dan Colen's confetti-like paintings and the eternal optimism of house founder André Courrèges, Di Felice's FW25 collection gently twists Courrèges classics.
Here, there are enough angles to make the Dutch jealous (random: check out what happens to your browser when you Google "Dutch angle").
Courrèges' signature figure-baring dresses wrap the wearer's obliques at an oblique angle, an effect intended to recall a blown-up piece of confetti on the wind according to the show notes.
Shoulders, arms, necks, and navals jut from clinging fabric like Colen's eager paint flecking from a canvas, above next-to-skin tights so stark that they recall the naked legs of an easel.
The off-kilter tilt reshapes Courrèges' signature moto jackets and generous blazers but they're still recognizable as such. This is not a reinvention so much as a fresh perspective, and couldn't we all use a little bit of that?
It's tempting to deem Di Felice's work a throwback to more classic forms of minimalism, what with his restrained palettes and geometric cuts.
Indeed, aside from its lively confetti-packed set, the FW25 presentation was so pared-back that its relatively modest askew hemlines and panels of exposed flesh read like exclamation points. The garments' calculated drape — and intentional blank space — was thus laid bare.
Di Felice's approach is so ascetic that an armless white gown — an homage to a line used to describe Courrèges 60 years ago: "a message wrapped in gleaming white vinyl" — just makes sense. It is pure fashion.
So is a set of archival Courrèges sunglasses reborn as absurdly cool goggle-likes, looking like the Apple Vision Pro if it had style. Apple and Courrèges, you know, their approaches aren't different. But Di Felice definitely makes much better eyewear.
