Philosophical couture: Iris van Herpen and Rahul Mishra

Two great couture originals staged subtly dramatic shows on Monday in Paris; Iris van Herpen with her latest techno Sturm und chic, and Rahul Mishra with 21st-century Sufism style. 

Iris van Herpen: Urban ornithology

Iris van Herpen is an artist who used clothes to make unexpected and often very beautiful visual statements. Wearability is not a word that exists in her lexicon. Though words like wonderful, wicked and wow-factor certainly do.

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Add breathtaking and phantasmagorical this season, where in the show in the funky Elysée Montmartre theatre she conjured up a full aviary of van Herpen creatures.
 
Beginning the action with a performance – a dancer in gigantic synthetic tulle wings, gyrating on a column, as a back-lit pyramidal lazar column flickered on the faux feathers.

The first proper model then appeared in a pale blue woollen lattice cocktail dress, finished with Aegean blue veil.  Like most looks, anchored by remarkable pumps, built at a 35-degree angle, the better to fit into a Masai-worthy metal wire frame.

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Giant crinolines or cocoon dresses followed made in honeycomb tech-y nylons, sheer fantasy garments, where the models did so much wear the clothes, as inhabit them. Before the look went into full abstraction, John Chamberlin-car-crash-style, with huge scrunched-up clouds of tulle. 
 
Leading to Iris’ grandiose finale and intensely applauded bow, most enthusiastically in the front row by Jean-Paul Gaultier.
 
The latest rarefied statement of fine art made of fabrics, and the latest reminder of why Iris van Herpen had her very own retrospective in the Louvre. Not bad going for a 41-year-old.
 

Rahul Mishra: Seven stages of love

India’s greatest couturier Rahul Mishra entitled his latest collection “Becoming Love”, and the clothes became artful visual expression of seven stages of love in an outstanding show.

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Beginning with the first moment of attraction, symbolized by golden veined metallic gold cloud dresses that opening the show. Before becoming infatuation, seen in some superb columns and cocktails, done with puckered and embroidered exotic flowers and petals. Altogether a powerful reminder that Rahul remains a creator very much in control of his atelier.
 
And including devotion, an entirely apt feeling, considering the show location. It was staged amid the honey-stoned 13th-century medieval Collège des Bernardins, whose founder St. Benedict of Nursia postulated a doctrine of balance, moderation and reasonableness.
 
Instead, in Rahul’s hands, devotion was expressed in a beautiful sculptural white cocktail, bedecked with pearl epaulettes or in a degradé sequinned dress that morphed into tulle embroidered in carnations and lotuses.
 

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Though, his boldest looks were a quintet of Gustav Klimt-style patchwork golden gowns and suits. They represented obsession. 
 
All told a powerful statement, even if a little editing of a quartet of outfits from which protruded nine-inch-wide fabrics at the end of metal prods would not have gone amiss. One of these even made into the show’s final section, the final stage in Sufism’s concept of love as a seven-stage adventure that inevitably ends in death.
 
Interpreted by Mishra as in part “a quiet culmination.” Death-inspired swirling black jacquard gowns embroidered with the face of one’s true love, to a last look in the shape of a black heart. A somber denouement to a courageous show.