Haute Couture F/W '14 Trend Report: Sculpted whites

A Christian Dior gown from the F/W '14
Haute Couture collection illustrated by me

As per, the Haute Couture fashion week that took place in Paris this fall/winter season brought very few surpri-ses but a lot of memorable looks. Versace Atelier went rock-glam, Raf Simons mixed eight different eras into one show and Uncle Karl traded his luxurious sets for something more intimate.

The question is, 'What did most collections have in co-mmon?' Well, they all played around with voluminous white silhouettes.

Probably the most successful attempt at this trend was Lagerfeld's vision for Chanel. After a few stale seasons, the legendary designer found a new way to impress cli-ents by creating "molded" dresses that barely had any seams. Mostly adorned with exquisite gold embroidery, these garments seem to have already found their way into fashion history - along with those concrete beaded ones, of course.

Others had slightly different interpretations of the 'scul-pted whites' trend but still stayed on point. Simons pre-sented a modern fairy-tale that included Marie Antoi-nette-inspired dresses in shades varying from off to snow white; Donatella Versace decided to dig in the 50s for inspiration and pulled out big deconstructed ballgowns for her namesake brand; Giambattista Valli went with his forte and embroidered the white garments with three-dimensional flowers, while Maria and Pierpaolo insisted on a simplified version of the 'little white dress' for Valentino.

From left: Models from Chanel, Versace Atelier, Giambattista Valli & Valentino's F/W '14 Haute Couture collections