Adventures in the land of Otilee

Bloom’in Winter

Written by Otilee on July 24, 2010 – 2:34 am -

Oh, Mr Galliano. Firstly, Love. Love, love. Love, love, love.

In these here odd times we find ourselves in – what, with snap frozen fruit and vegetables of varying varieties available to us (albeit at varying prices) pretty much all year round… gone are the days of ’seasonal’ menus. We can pretty much have what we want, when we want. No need to wait until next spring to devour your next delicious strawberry for example – you can get one now! Yes, it is frozen in a bag with bits of ice encrusted onto it (it is also probably mooshed into the neighboring raspberry too), BUT! you can still get one…

Seasonal schmeasonal… and the lines are getting increasingly blurred, even with fashion. I’ve had the misfortune of witnessing slinky summer dresses worn (generally without coats) in the dead of winter (admittedly, this was in North Yorkshire so perhaps we can strike that example from the record), and in general, it seems a non-traditional winter palette creeping into Winter collections. Global warming? The dawning of the age of Aquarius? (those damn hippies and their astrological predictions of shifts in global consciousness!) What ever is going on, you can bet that of all the members included in the ‘Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture’ - Dior is going to bust out with it first.

Enter Couture Fall / Winter 2010/11 stage…. erm, right. And continue down that runway in front of a wall that looks suspiciously like the walls in one of those wholesale florists cold rooms with a spectacular giant tangerine floral sculptural piece in front of it. This collection is nothing short of petals on parade and its blooming spectacular!!

What we’ve got is Winter fabrics, fashioned with all the fabulous flavor of spring. Makeup is a mix of tangerine, electric blue and teal swishes and blocks of eye shadow pared with a bold deep aubergine lip. Hair is styled in what reminds me of sleek ceramic vases as well as cellophane cone wraps in what can only be described as an upside down model flower arrangement. A perfect conceptual compliment to an upside down seasonal collection. Bravo Dior, bravo.

I hate to have to draw these parallels also but I’ve also got a sneaking suspicion that we should perhaps be asking Mr. Galliano the question: “Just what species or, shall we say, genus *cough* genius are you? Lets face it – even those of us that didn’t rush out and see Burton’s version earlier this year, I’ll bet you pretty much everyone revisited the 50’s Disney animation.

Since there doesn’t appear to be many runway images available on the net from the Paris show at the beginning of this month – I’ve screen shot all the below images from a video I found on you tube of the show… quality images will no doubt surface in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I’ve got shit quality images to compare with some lovely pictures of flowers I grabbed off a google image search (if any of these flower images are yours please contact me and I’ll credit appropriately) but, you get the idea….

Lets take a look at a couple and compare, shall we!