Show framed designer’s new fragrance with clothes offering flashes of skin through sharp tailoring.
While for many people the question of being dressed boils down to whether or not a pair of trousers is on the right way round or a matching pair of socks has been mustered from the laundry, for Victoria Beckham, the notion of being in a state of dress, or undress, is much less quotidian. She proved as much with her latest collection, a musing on the act of dressing, which she showed in a decidedly autumnal Paris on Friday night.
The collection made for a neat framing for the launch of her new scent. “I think that using this as an opportunity to launch our fourth fragrance, it was about our relationship with our skin, about how we dress ourselves, in our wardrobes,” she said to a small scrum of gathered press backstage. “This time it was about taking the clothes off.”
But that is not to say the clothes weren’t worth wearing. Tailoring took centre stage. But even in tailored trousers, skin was left bare via slashes that ran from upper sartorius muscle to mid-shin.
Waistbands were folded over “in the manner one would spontaneously shorten a trouser”, according to the press release. Tailored jackets appeared with an arm of fabric missing, as if someone had taken a pair of scissors to one side of them, albeit someone with tailoring clout. Nudity was hinted at, via slinky bias-cut dresses, such as an Atonement-green one worn by the model Gigi Hadid, and sheer designs. Bustier dresses and tops in pretty floral print were given strength, crafted from resin and jutting gently from models’ bodies like rigid second skins.
