#fall / winter 2023-204 fashion

[bitter69uk]

For some reason, Pal and I watched Balenciaga’s Fall/Winter 2023-2024 haute couture collection (from 5 July) on YouTube recently. Recommended! Top tip: massive, jaggedly pointed shoulders and Wicked Witch of the West-style shoes are going to be big! Against a soundtrack of full blast, soaring opera music, haunted-looking and severely etched models (including veteran 1990s supermodels Eva Herzigova and Amber Valletta) stalked the runway with perfectly judged dour, miserable expressions. Utterly inscrutable and blasé behind her signature dark shades, from the front row Anna Wintour occasionally deigned to glance up as they passed.  I gasped with delight when - as Vogue put it - “Isabelle Huppert came out in a heavily-pailletted full-skirted black dress like some gothic Infanta.” French art cinema’s queen of perversion truly understood the assignment, looking vaguely traumatized and benumbed as if she’d just stepped out of a particularly harrowing scene from The Piano Teacher or Elle. Austere fashion porn at its best!