Raf Simons's kinky boots for Dior autumn/winter 2015
Theresa May's over-the-knee boots looked frankly tame compared with the crotch-high boots in the Dior show. Where did they end? How long did it take to put them on? How many calories might you sweat off in an average day while going about your normal activities in the swirly patterned pair? (Scientifically there is no reason you'd perspire more in swirly patterned patent, it just looks as though you should).
These are distracting questions, but they are distracting boots. However, if Raf Simons, creative director at Dior, can find a way to modify them for real life - or real life as it is lead by Dior's customers - then he could be onto something.
He can and he did. In their ankle-high versions these stretchy patent, block toed, Perspex-heeled boots - which he first experimented with in Dior's Haute Couture show in January - looked relatively wearable. Moreover they made sense of the three-quarter length tweed trouser suits in the collection and brought a sense of daring to the mini dresses. What would be impossible with a normal ankle boot, and chilly with a shoe, became viable.
This will matter to Dior's bottom line. Accessories account for as much as 90 per cent of revenue at many fashion labels. This creates a wearisome cycle for designers, who tend to see their clothes as a far more expressive medium for their thoughts, and emotions than bags. To clothe someone is an intimate process. To design a bag in 15 colours, is business. However Simons fully integrated those boots into the looks. The results were part Barbarella, part tweedy game-keeper.
There was too, a new sense of purpose to the (mainly small, envelope-shaped shoulder) bags, including a reworked, streamlined saddle bag in exotic skins.
Yet while the accessories were eye-catching, in common with many big houses, Dior seems determined to swivel at least some of the spotlight back on to the clothes.
Dior's bold geometric patterns and multi-slashed kilts will be all over the fashion magazines next season, but the real stars were the coats. Long and swishy or long and narrow, they came in deluxe, primary coloured tweeds, plain wools or a stretchy laminated fishnet weave. There was even a pale pink 1950s style duster coat, similar to one Simons designed when he was at Jil Sander. It was the coat that made observers believe he was interested in the Dior job, since it seemed to play so strongly on Dior's early heritage. Revisiting it here showed how confident Simons has become after two years at Dior. He's not afraid to reference himself or Dior's past, but seems equally keen to push it to new places.
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