This Season, Couture Feels More Human Than Ever

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Three of the photographs in our November cover shoot feature model Leanne de Haan wearing couture from Chanel, Fendi, and Christian Dior—and no shoes. The barefoot images, part of a series shot by Amy Troost and styled by Caroline Newell, suggest something about what makes couture special. The beauty of a garment made by human hands can offer a sense of grounding in our chaotic, digitally-obsessed world.

Grounding might be a surprising choice of words, given that this is couture we’re talking about. In truth, couture is, for the majority of people, unattainable. It’s expensive, it’s (mostly) not made for everyday wear, and it can be wildly over-the-top. But at its core, couture comes stitched with an humanness that most mass-produced clothing doesn’t. Crafted by skilled and passionate artisans in quiet ateliers, these one-off garments can act as connectors between maker and wearer, between designer and artisan, and between fantasy and reality.

In today’s over-merchandised, heavily-logoed fashion industry, where brands are spending as much on influencer posts as they are on the materials to make their luxury bags and shoes, couture can be a respite. Sure, the shows can be a grand exercise in digital marketing. Many a meme has been born from these fantastical runways. But the clothes offer heritage houses, and the designers who helm them, a chance to communicate directly with their most devoted clients.

Couture also provides a livelihood for a community of artisans trained in the storied techniques of each luxury house. In recent years, mindful that many of these workers are aging towards retirement, some of the big houses have begun empowering a new generation to make sure their crafts don’t get lost. Bottega Veneta, for example, opened Italy’s Accademia Labor et Ingenium, a school in which five Bottega Veneta master artisans will train 50 students per year. All will be guaranteed employment with the brand after completing the program.

LVMH, too, is planning to expand upon its artisan-led programs. At the end of 2025, it will open a new space to house its vocational training program for craftspeople, funneling them back into the company’s roster of labels. The new flagship location for the Institut des Métiers d’Excellence, which was founded in 2014, will be located in Paris’s Eighth Arrondissement and open to the public, so that visitors can interact directly with the apprentices and makers. This kind of connection has great power, highlighting the work of the human hand as it’s carried from one generation to the next.

Indeed, the latest couture season was filled with variations on the theme of craft as it creates human connection. At Schiaparelli, this was manifested in shattered-glass embroidery covering a loose-fit crop top and pencil skirt, given the look of a shimmering, stretched-out, broken-through body cast. Easy but intricate draping and beadwork were also found on the couture runways at Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, and Fendi, with transparent gowns that moved with effortless fluidity.

At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri’s goddesses found power in pleating and pearl embroideries, while at Fendi, Kim Jones looked to jewel tones and glittering transparent knit fabrics for a kind of boundless sensuality. Even Dolce & Gabbana, known for their hot, amped-up Alta Moda collections, went softer this season and opted for feminine silhouettes that look right at home (or at least, a super dressed-up version of at home) in Puglia. This is where the designers showed the collection, smack in the middle of a small village with local craftspeople and shop owners seated in the audience.

“Authentic” was a word used often in the fall 2023 couture designer descriptions, as it was during the spring 2024 ready-to-wear season—more evidence of a shift this year from over-merchandised, oft-gimmicky runways to something more pure and, perhaps, with more heart. The best of the collections were still full of innovation, but put forth in a way that didn’t scramble the brain so much as inspire and focus the eye.

On the more sculptural end of the craft realm this season, silhouettes were strong but not cumbersome. Giorgio Armani’s 3-D roses bloomed from the bodices of delicately beaded gowns. At Balenciaga, Demna molded anatomical curves from a simple overcoat and cut off the shoulders, opening up the neckline to train a viewer’s gaze to the face. (Cristóbal Balenciaga believed in designing clothes that could highlight a woman’s beauty literally from head-to-toe.)

And at Chanel, Virginie Viard used details like boucle and 3-D flower and crackled paint embroideries to elevate, ever so slightly, everyday separates like maxi skirts and tank tops. As she wrote of the collection, “Playing with opposites and contrasts, with nonchalance and elegance, is like standing on a line between strength and delicacy.” There’s something very French about that kind of “je ne sais quoi” dressing, which Viard highlighted by showing the collection outdoorson the cobblestoned streets of Paris, on the Quai de la Seine.

Maybe it’s trite to reference a “certain something” when talking about a season of couture, but it is fitting to speak about sartorial ease in the same sentence as the fall 2023 high fashion offering. There was certainly no lack of playfulness or humor in the collections, especially when it came to Jean Paul Gaultier. The famously irreverent house has been inviting outside designers to create couture collections for several seasons now. Julien Dossena was the fifth guest designer in the program, and what he and the atelier proposed was an homage of sorts to the rebellious spirit first cultivated by Gaultier himself back in the 1980s and 1990s. Corseted jackets, giant hats, and winks to the famous cone bra were all on display, as was perhaps the cheekiest trick of the entire season: a set of transparent dresses worn over bodystockings embroidered with sequins and trompe-l'œil pubic hair.

Part of the fun of couture is the whimsy: just ask Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren of Viktor & Rolf. Their take on toned-down made-to-measure wasn’t all that subtle, but there was a coolness to the very grown-up, confident looks made from pretty bows that were rendered from small to large and crept up and around the body. Again, it felt grounded in something real, something wearable by someone who leans more avant-garde even in their day-to-day lives.

Pierpaolo Piccioli always aims to find a footing between the high and the low, between the pragmatic and the imaginative. At Valentino, fall 2023 couture was a study in that measured mindset, especially when it came to the opening look worn by Kaia Gerber, which centered on a billowy oversized white button-down paired with what appeared to be slouchy jeans but were really silk gazar trousers embroidered with beads that were dyed with some 80 shades of blue to mimic the hue of denim. The statement crystal chandelier earrings and flat shoes decorated with a giant bow even looked easy to wear, like a dream outfit ever more delightful and enhanced by the work that went into it.

The real pull of fashion is its ability to make us question and wonder. When it does that through the purity of craft and the freedom of form like it did during the fall couture season, it can be even more of a thrilling proposition than an Instagrammable Look with a capital “L”. Daniel Roseberry put it best in his show notes when he wrote: “Going into the unknown, when creative expression and fame feels available to any and all, at least for a moment, we wonder: What can break through?” For him and the Schiaparelli maison, he says, “It is the power of design, the power of our artisans, and the power of the human hand at work.”

This article originally appeared in the November 2023 issue of Harper's Bazaar.

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Model: Leanne de Haan; hair: James Pecis for Blu & Green; makeup: Kanako Takase for Addiction Tokyo; manicure: Michina Koide for Dior Vernis; casting: Anita Bitton at the Establishment

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