Haute happenings: Tales from the Paris Couture Spring/Summer 2014 season

The Spring/Summer season is always a test for designers of haute couture. They must direct their talent, research and craftsmanship towards the ultimate lightness (or legereté) in their hand-crafted, bespoke creations, while losing none of the luxuries of exquisite fabrics and embroideries for which haute couture is revered. Last week in Paris, the Spring 2014 shows saw designers take this challenge and run with it, with couturiers like Raf Simons at Christian Dior and Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel (pictured) breaking the institutional expectations of couture to deliver collections injected with ideas of youth and speed (even sneakers!), with embellishments both hidden and technical as opposed to ostentatious and overtly-handmade. That said, there are two sides to today's couture story and new designers like Ulyana Sergeenko and Giambattista Valli (having now shown his sixth collection) are still making a case for a return to opulence.

Chanel 

Karl Lagerfeld called his Spring 2014 haute couture show 'Cambon Club', transforming the Grand Palais into a pearly holographic amphitheatre, replete with dove grey banquettes and a revolving stage set-up, which revealed French musician Sébastien Tellier, an orchestra and a live opera singer

Chanel 

For the first look Cara Delevigne bounced down the stairs in tweedy lace-up sneakers and closed the show (as the bride) in the same - surely a bold statement of modernity for the house and one which manifested further in the athletic shapes that the Paris ateliers cut in metal tweeds, lace and diaphanous sheer fabrics, embellished in grids of crystal beading, sequins and tinsel

Christian Dior 

Raf Simons had an amorphous white labyrinth built in the gardens of the Musée Rodin for the Spring 2014 Christian Dior haute couture show, its trapezoidal skylights all hand-carved and streaming false daylight into the space he described as 'womb-like'. The motif of a circle was woven throughout his fourth couture outing for the house, appearing as polka dots, laser cuts, graphic motifs or elliptical pockets of floral beading on mini-dresses, jumpsuits and the signature 'Bar' jacket pantsuit

Christian Dior 

Like at Chanel, footwear took an avant-garde turn - silvery garters snaked up the calf attached to Glomesh pumps, and rosebuds sprouted from neoprene reef slip-ons, furthering Simons' calculated subversion of couture codes with an urban edge

Valentino 

Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri have had the history books open at Valentino lately, with their Spring haute couture show a decidedly daring breakout into graphic and mythological territories. Opera was a starting point, and the opening dress arrived in tucked, transparent tulle emblazoned with the musical notes of La Traviata dancing along a silvery stave

Valentino 

Later the musical tale expanded into appliqué animalia and ethnic tassels, cashmere sheaths and masterful featherwork, as each dress channelled a different opera in cloth

Maison Martin Margiela 

The anonymous team at Maison Martin Margiela call their 'haute couture' line the Artisanal collection, treating it as an experimental study rather than a purpose-built luxury wardrobe. That's why its collection remains the most curious and progressive of the week, even though the anchor of their Spring 2014 offering (as always, to some extent) was archival fabrics and homewares, like pleating by Mariano Fortuny and 1950s Frank Lloyd Wright designs transformed as coats and corsets

Maison Martin Margiela 

If the references sound retro - domestic, even - the effect was anything but. We witnessed an eclectic, embellished display of simple shapes resplendent in crinkled textures and jingly, jangly embroidery of found objects

Giambattista Valli 

Now three years into his haute couture journey, the self-made Roman couturier Giambattista Valli has amassed a formidable front-row following and a reputation for 'neo-classical' eveningwear, mixing blooms and leafy metalwork in two silhouettes - mini and maxi

Giambattista Valli 

Spring 2014 saw him discover a new muse, an insouciant, imaginary Parisian party girl found at the bottom of his garden. In swathes of emerald, mint and cobalt, she came wrapped in satin bows and draped asymmetry, with embroidery like armour: shiny beaded-tanks were layered on taffeta and clusters of tiny flowers were cut from holographic foil

Vionnet 

The latest coup in creative director Goga Ashkenazi's Vionnet takeover was the recent announcement that Turkish-Cypriot designer Hussein Chalayan would lend his hand to the demi-couture collection, the first of which was shown in a garage space strewn with gilded frames and roadwork signs

Vionnet 

Both technology and industrial design informed Chalayan's work (nothing new for the conceptualist), which manifested in the sinuous yet sterile way he incorporated electrical cords as jewellery, belts and halternecks on multi-pleated maxi-dresses, and the quiet symmetry of laser cut circles on pastel gazar gowns. A finale of tabard dresses were scored all over with tiny crosses and outlined like a paper patronage, in an ode to the atelier and proof that Chalayan's sense of metafiction is alive and kicking

Ulyana Sergeenko 

Haute Couture is an international playground, and the Russian designer Ulyana Sergeenko is quickly catching on - broadening her distinctly Soviet horizons for a train journey across the East for Spring 2014

Ulyana Sergeenko 

Sergeenko made up the Pavillion Cambon like a powder blue steam train carriage and employed milliner Stephen Jones to top her bustled satin gowns and boned corsets with scrunched headbands and bugle-beaded, pillbox hats

Armani Privé 

Mr Armani continued his global tour de force with an Armani Privé show entitled 'Nomade' for Spring 2014, before inviting guests to preview 'Eccentrico' at the Palais de Tokyo, now the sixth destination of his travelling exhibition

Armani Privé 

The Privé collection channelled the eclectic spirit of Armani's archival showcase, with cloudy blue silk wrapped as headscarves, cut in micro-dot jacquard blouses or sweeping the floor in fluid plissé skirts