French designer and The Queen of Berlin Fashion Week LOU DE BÈTOLY presented the label’s F/W23 collection at the Queen Palace ballroom in Kreuzberg, Berlin. Drawing on signature handcrafting techniques such as knitting, crochet and embroidery, the label’s runway collection recasts waste material as luxury garments, toying with the concept of “excess” in all its forms.
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Inspired by the fairytale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, the collection questions the place expensive clothes have in our society, and confronts the rich’s and famous’s ever-changing beauty standards.
From second-skin dresses to voluminous drapery, silhouettes oscillated between fragile and pompous, giving a self-conscious nod to old-established design houses. Discerning references to a bygone era of couture were echoed by a colour palette of florid pastels broken up by oily blacks and the choice of location: a grandiose ballroom in all-white, usually reserved for wedding celebrations.
A defining element of the collection was its choice of materials. From reworked silk, wool and denim to yarn spun from vintage handkerchiefs, garments were crafted exclusively from second-hand textiles and transformed into contemporary Haute Couture through sophisticated handiwork.
Spiked with calculated visual hyperbole and a touch of the macabre, these textile collages coalesced in a runway show that might just herald a new era of post-luxury high fashion.
