Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/86796
Beaton were alive today, how would he describe Dior's new creative director, Raf Simons, and the way he hacked off the bottom of a ball gown and showed it over black pants in his first collection for the storied couture house? What would Beaton think of newly installed YSL designer Hedi Slimane and his plans to work out of his Los Angeles studio, far from the elite confines of Paris' Avenue Montaigne couture ateliers? Before passing judgment on either designer, Beaton would have to take into account the changing times and turbulent world in which we live. Women's roles are dramatically different today than they were back in 1947 when Dior burst onto the Paris haute couture scene with his revolutionary New Look collection. For one thing, women no longer sit around idly sipping tea at The Ritz, waiting for their fifth or sixth round of couture fittings. Even Yves Saint Laurent's original clients, those he empowered in the 1960s and '70s with menswear-style pantsuits, might not choose such formal attire for today's workplace. In fact, they might not even go to a traditional workplace; they might log on remotely from their home—and that home might be in Dubai or Shanghai. The fashion business is no longer a local cottage industry, but rather, it is a global industrial complex, thanks in no small part to Dior himself, who invented the idea of licensing his name to a multitude of luxury products. Fashion is about change, not just in the looks we see on the runway, but in the cultural evolution they reflect. Every couturier and designer brings something new—an aesthetic, a technical skill or a point of view—to the collective fashion "moment." Designers, in turn, are shaped by the moment; they are both a reflection and a reaction to the times. Today, Raf Simons and Slimane are shaping a new sensibility that will undoubtedly influence New Minimalism T Two of fashion's most storied houses have new designers at their helms, and with them comes a fresh attitude and approach to streamlined luxury. BY KATE BETTS he English society photographer Cecil Beaton once described Christian Dior as the "Watteau of couturiers," most likely because of his extraordinary color sense, love of romance and curiosity about nature. If Raf Simons presented his first haute couture collection for Christian Dior in a room whose walls were adorned in a solid tapestry of fresh flowers. 80 BAL HARBOUR