Paris couture: David Downton reflects on 20 years on the front row with exclusive sketches

Next year it will be two decades since I was first sent to cover the couture shows in Paris, on the whim of an art director friend. I had never seen a fashion show before, let alone a couture show, and it was like entering Narnia. I was instantly and irrevocably hooked. Since then, every January and July, I have taken my place on a gilt chair (did they get smaller?) and recorded the passing parade. My timing was impeccable.

I saw the flowering of the excess-all-areas Galliano regime at Dior, and its almost equally extravagant counterpoint — Alexander McQueen at Givenchy in the late 1990s. I witnessed Yves Saint Laurent’s magisterial final bow in 2002, and those of Valentino Garavani in 2007 and Christian Lacroix in 2009 (not a dry eye anywhere). I was at Gianni Versace’s last collection before his murder, and watched the rise of Margiela, Viktor & Rolf and, most recently, the return to the fold of the house of Schiaparelli.

Economies have ebbed and flowed in those two decades and couture, ever a barometer of how the rich are feeling, has waxed and waned accordingly. Like fashion illustration, couture has, at times, been written off as irrelevant, archaic and on its last legs. And, like fashion illustration, it refuses to listen to the prognosis. Right now things look peachy, at least to an observer.

In Paris a couple of weeks ago the critics were unanimous on the importance and precision of Dior, thrilled by Chanel’s Rousseau-inspired garden, applauded Donatella Versace’s va-va-voom, swooned at the romance of Giambattista Valli, marvelled at the perfection of Valentino and fell in love with Schiaparelli all over again. Paris is always Paris, but during couture she wears her Sunday best. Restaurants and bars are full, gossip pervades the air like night jasmine. Reputations are made and broken. Celebrities (real and quasi) walk among us. This is the World Cup of fashion, a carnival of unearthly delights. This is couture, baby!

Putting the snap in 'Schiap'

As an illustrator, how could I not be thrilled by Elsa Schiaparelli’s collaborations with Dalí and Cocteau, or by the joyful and sometimes subversive drawings she commissioned from Christian Bérard and Marcel Vertès? The label has art and artistry in its DNA and on current form there is still plenty of snap in ‘Schiap’. Although the original house of Schiaparelli closed its doors in 1954, after 27 years, its key notes — Surrealism, visual wit and a ravishing, clash-and-clang colour palette — still resonate. Since Diego Della Valle of Tod’s Group acquired the label in 2007, there have been four couture collections: the first, a one-off designed to awaken the sleeping beauty, was by Christian Lacroix (a gentleman and a genius), the next two were by Marco Zanini and the latest was an in-house affair, with no single designer to take a bow and the credit. I’ve loved them all.

Not every hour is cocktail hour

Since taking over the reins at Valentino in 2008, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli (who for ten years designed accessories for the label) have grown in confidence and stature. In their drive to modernise, they have not abandoned the house codes: there is red, but it’s several shades off the fire-engine hue favoured by the label’s legendary founder Valentino Garavani (who is front and centre at every show); there is lace, but not every hour is cocktail hour. The designers have discovered a rigour and an aesthetic that the critics and, crucially, the clients love. When they sat for this drawing they were in effervescent mood. They may look cool (Chiuri doesn’t own a pair of socks) but the banter is upbeat and the laughter frequent and unforced. As scions of fashion’s first famiglia italiana, right now they are flying high.

Ladies who lunch

Glam-o-meter code red as burlesque legend Dita Von Teese, and muse and style maven Catherine Baba enjoy lunch at Hôtel Costes. They are fast friends. Pourquoi pas? Not only are they the most stylish women in Paris, they are also the writers, directors and stars of their own narrative. From childhood, both dreamed big (and in Technicolor) and their journeys from Rochester, Michigan (Dita), and Sydney, Australia (Catherine) to the epicentre of high fashion have been epic. Lucky us who have been along for the ride.

Blondes after dark

Once, on the snowy and exclusive high-altitude slopes of haute couture, movie stars and plutocrats’ wives sat in silence (doubtless they were smoking) as mannequins drifted past and each ensemble was called out by its name and number (for easy ordering). No paparazzi, no scrum. In today’s three-ring circus, alas, social media celebs or similar have taken root on the front row like knotweed. Thank heaven that at Versace they still understand genuine star power. Here, mother and daughter turbo-blondes Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson add a special lustre to Donatella Versace’s after-party at L’Arc club.

Pure couture

Chanel and couture. As intertwined as the famous double C logo. And no one, these days, does spectacle like Karl Lagerfeld. This season, his vision unfolded in a garden dreamed up by a futuristic Rousseau or a mad Matisse, bursting into mechanical bloom and transforming the Grand Palais into Kew Gardens sur Seine. The male model gardeners (Mellors with manners) opened the show and set the tempo. Frisky, a little hippie, a little chic, with beekeeper hats for an Edwardian summer. So Cara.

You needed to be up close to appreciate the exhilarating workmanship in these clothes, their subtlety, the sheer precision of the execution — but from any vantage point, this was pure couture.

David Downton is Claridge’s fashion artist in residence