The staging of the runway show outside, albeit underneath a semi-enclosed runway replete with a veritable jungle canopy of hanging flora, in late September in Paris demonstrates real chutzpah on the part of the house. As impressive as the flowers were, and they were, your Instagram feed was not lying Friday morning, that was not the truly impressive feat — the weather contingencies were! The plans B, C, D, and so on that must have been in place in the not unlikely scenario of rain during the notoriously fickle Parisian weather in late September are simply too staggering to even countenance. What if Friday afternoon brought showers? No doubt the house of Dior would have had scenarios in place to address such an outcome, but mercifully for Raf and co, this was unnecessary. Fortune shined down favorably on Dior and all those claiming a spot marked on the sprawling seating chart with a green sticker.
The collection was equally marvelous. The shoe is always an aspect of any Raf Simons collection to admire and his Spring 2014 collection was no exception (below). My command of English let alone fashion English is insufficient to do the shoe any justice. Suffice it to say that few other designers on the planet know better how to embrace a woman’s foot with strips of leather, cloth, any other fine materials than Raf Simons. Beauty, speed, grace, all were present in his shoe for spring.
The beauty looks for the show were extraordinary. Pat McGrath created a couple different variations on the golden eye for the collection. Manon and Carolina sported bleached eyebrows covered in gold flakes. Sung Hee was given bleached eyebrows (below), but no gold flakes. Instead, gold eye shadow was applied to give the face its precious metallic highlight.
Details like this are difficult to fully appreciate when reviewing runway photos online, which makes encountering them in person all the more extraordinary. I took close up shots of Manon’s golden eye (below) that at least attempt to do justice to Pat McGrath’s fine work.
Following the Dior show I waited a bit backstage with Carolina while her eyebrows were dyed back to a shade more closely resembling their natural state. This took a bit of time, but eventually returned the desired outcome — eyebrows!
Backstage at Christian Dior:
