Too often, people forget what haute couture really is.
Couture isn’t designed to be worn on the daily, nor is it suitable for many occasions, it’s instead a more detailed and considered approach to the world of fashion that not only elevates the unattainable, but blurs the lines between reality and fiction.
Simply put (by Haider Ackermann in a recent interview with Highsnobiety): it makes people dream.
On January 25, 2023, the lines were certainly blurred during Viktor & Rolf’s Paris Haute Couture Week presentation when it turned fashion upside-down. Literally.
The avant-garde fashion label — which is renowned for its tongue-in-cheek approach to fashion — demonstrated a myriad of ways a ball gown can be worn, presenting various styles worn upside-down, to-the-side, and, well, normally (if there is such a thing in couture).
Watched on by a mustache-wearing Doja Cat (fresh from her red-studded look at Schiaparelli earlier in the week), Viktor & Rolf’s lesson in diagonal dressing has since garnered a myriad of online attention, and rightly so.
Couture needs to be viewed more as art, and less as fashion. Because, as you can imagine, rocking up to meet the in-laws with an upside-down dress might not be the most functional, but it would certainly be iconic. Slay, sister.
