Courrèges. Spring 2025 - Paris Fashion Week.

 

(Images: Courrèges 2024)  

André Courrèges was the eternal optimist, a futurist who believed like many did at the time, that the technological  prowess of the 1950s, into the next decade would offer even more Utopian possibilities.  And he designed clothing to reflect this, Courrèges was by definition a modernist, he was no Avant-grade rebellious designer, nor a bohemian inspired idealist.   He represented, in classic French Utopism, what could have been an alternative take on societal progression, that technocrats hoped for, but seldom delivered, be it that mythical modernism in all of its aesthetical representation.  Yet, that hope of a modernist, futurist society was the dream, where human progression under the humanist banner would prevail, and technology would set us free.  When Courrèges passed away in 2016 at the age of 92, he left his partially owned brand, which had already gone through Four decades of private equity and holding company buyouts and restructuring.  And the finale of Courrèges, occurred Five years before the French designer's death in 2011, when he and his wife Coqueline, sold the label to advertising executives connected to the giant branding company Young & Rubicam, which Courrèges was later absorbed into the mega holding company Groupe Artemis.

Courrèges, like so many fashion brands of the 20th Century are in name only.  And his legacy as a innovative fashion designer of the last Five decades to this day appears to be understated and mostly forgotten, yet the brand Courrèges was reinvented by its conglomerative interests in 2015, which has churned through creative directors like no tomorrow, until the young Belgium designer Nicolas Di Felice took charge, with what could be considered a sacrilege to the André Courrèges's modernist obsession, by inserting a postmodernist and Avant-garde touch to those iconic 1960s Futurist stylisations.  And for the most part, it has paid off, since Di Felice took the reins of Courrèges in 2021. 

Having written many reviews of  Di Felice's take on Courrèges I have been impressed with his fusing of Avant-garde with the modernist imprint, while incorporating his interests in science fiction.  Mostly allowing the practicality of the looks to be a source of inspiration, rather than a spectacle.  And Di Felice Spring 2025 collection, held, once again, at the Carreau Du Temple in Paris for Fashion Week clearly represents Di Felice's skills.  Aligning the mathematical with the imagination, science with its fiction, all within Di Felice post Utopian world, that has merged with the Dystopian.  Or, as I have coined in 2021 in an article I wrote, titled "Omnitopia", that embraces both a societal progress and decline, an acceptance of the collapse of society and an attempt to rebuild.  Which didn't occur after the 2020 pandemic, instead prefabrication and overconfidence went into overdrive.

And there is no doubt, as I have noted in other fashion reviews, that the counterculture, which is long overdue, still remains elusive while the world politically begins to move closer to the Far Right.  But, the amorous styles of 2019 are still one of the main trends on the runway, whether or not they are reflecting the desire to offer a renewed sexual revolution, beyond the tabooed commercialisation and isolation on social media feeds, it is hard to say.  

For now, Di Felice's eros charged Omnitopia styles for Spring 2025 maybe a glimpse of stylizations of the future, that is of the now.  Immersed both within darkness and light, as an overture of a new tomorrow.  And in the end, something new and alluring emerges.

A stunning collection.

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(A.Glass 2024)