Got Denim? So does everyone else, including Haute Couture.
Are jeans the oldest trick in the book or the newest innovation?
This image of Kate Moss returning to the runway for Bottega Venetta’s Spring 23 show drew ire for being “boring”. But the commentary was premature. The ready-to-wear world was only prefacing what would become a new wave of denim devotion.
This July, Autumn/Winter 23 saw the catwalks of haute couture fashion week lit up with the sueded blue tones of indigo denim. But not all was as it seemed. Haute couture shined a new light on already luminous indigo denim, creating a new way to worship the humble denim jean.
A New Era for Haute Couture
There was one garment defining conversations at this year’s Autumn/Winter Haute Couture week in Europe. Creative Director of Valentino, Pierpaolo Piccioli, sent Kaia Gerber down the runway in a pair of “jeans” which Vanessa Friedman explained were made of “silk gazar entirely embroidered in micro beads dyed 80 different shades of indigo to resemble denim.” Piccioli went on to explain that the single pair of jeans were beaded on digital 3D scans of real denim and took four weeks to make by hand.
Usually dominated by sculptural forms and extravagant gowns, modern haute couture is crafted with the intention of living a life restricted mostly to runways and museum displays, with only an estimated 4000 couture clients worldwide. However, a viral moment by Valentino is bringing the humble denim jean into the conversation.
Following the show, it was suggested that haute couture is reaching a turning point and starting to lend a more active and serious ear to ready-to-wear fashion. The most alienated that it has been in recent history – after all, why should we care about art that caters to the wealthiest audience while the rest of the population struggles to afford heating – haute couture is trying to win over new fans by pulling the thread of “normal” fashion and following it as it unspools.
Whether haute couture will carve out a new space for itself and become considered “cool" again remains to be seen. With recent fashion design graduates opting to pursue careers in ready-to-wear rather than haute couture, it is increasingly becoming an ageing pursuit.
Without a youth element, haute couture can forget about finding new fans. As an artform reserved for the wealthy and often ageing elites, garments are usually made for clients that prefer to remain anonymous. In contrast, the trends which make it off the runway in the luxury space are championed by young celebrities - people with large social media followings who aren’t afraid to put their wealth on display. And without public expressions like this, haute couture remains in the liminal space between a strong opinion and the tumbleweeds of desolate galleries. But even tumbleweeds are something. Haute couture is a rare form of art that is beautiful but says very little about the world we live in. In order to elevate itself to having an opinion, or expressing a thought™, it will need to start co-opting ideas from normal fashion.
Whether or not it achieves this, a move to more normal and wearable fashion would spell a dramatic change for the haute couture world.
The Denim Uniform
What’s more egalitarian than denim jeans?
Everyone’s got a pair. Living many lives as a durable pair of pants for miners during the gold rush, the go-to garment for cowboys, punks, hippies, rappers, and Y2K It-girls, jeans are maybe the only garment with bragging rights, yet they remain humble and unassuming, blending into the rest of your wardrobe, resorted to equally for your polished Hot Girl Summer looks and also on your most slovenly survivalist-core days.
"I feel most comfortable in an old pair of jeans, Converse, and a man's jersey. My best friend cuts my hair with kitchen scissors."
- Jane Birkin
Ok Jane, we get it, you’re not like other girls.
The late actress and singer, Jane Birkin, was actually exactly like other girls. She was humble, provincial, and importantly, her wardrobe was simple. Any quirkiness or uniqueness attributed to her was paradoxically achieved through her simple sense of style. The iconic nature of her wardrobe could be attributed mostly to jeans. High waisted & straight-legged, Birkin defined what French girls were perceived to be wearing by international audiences.
This 1960s obsession with the liberated woman centred jeans as the thing everyone needed to have. More importantly, you had to find your pair of jeans, the perfect pair, for you to wash once every couple of years and wear to death. By virtue of the influence her name came to hold, Hermès named their highly coveted and highly priced bag, “The Birkin”, in 1984, proving the quiet power of denim to influence the wider fashion world.
Living Large in Quiet Luxury
Haute couture jeans are the ultimate Quiet Luxury piece. If a leather label on the back of the waistband, or an overt monogram doesn’t give it away, then really only the wearer or collector knows what they are wearing.
Adopting denim into haute couture challenges our loyalty to the garment. Do you really love jeans, or have you been peer pressured into liking them? Would you own a designer pair? A haute couture pair? In the same way we have to pretend not to be able to control ourselves around chocolate, many people pretend to have an affinity for jeans. But the fact that we can be on the bandwagon at all represents a certain level of accessibility that high fashion is looking to get in on.
"Jeans represent democracy in fashion."
– Giorgio Armani
Armani summed it up perfectly with this quote. And with the wealth of styles and cuts on offer today, jeans are one of the few garments that are for everyone, because they are as diverse as the people who wear them.
