Would you pay upwards of $100,000 for a dress that did not lay straight? What if the fit was just a little off? What if I told you that was the point?

Couture collections are not meant to be attainable but to spark intrigue and inspire upcoming trends for the following fashion season. While some ateliers design couture collections that the top 1% of wealth avidly clamor over, such as Giorgio Armani Prive, Ellie Saab, or Dior, there are others with the mantra of “look, but don’t touch.” These are the kinds of collections that make any average Joe ask, “Who would ever wear that?” The answer, Joe, is no one - that is the point. It is a collection of unattainability, prestige, and excess - something so beautiful that if anyone were to touch it, its beauty could be compromised.

These collections do not aim to sell garments; they sell art.

These are the pieces you will see in museums, the looks that will make you question, “How could a human ever hand sew all of that?” The designs will make people rethink everything they thought they knew about the fashion industry. These perspective-bending brands include Guo Pei, who famously dressed Rhinna in a yellow-feathered cape for the 2015 Met Gala; Schiaparelli, noted for its recent pop-culture revival, the brand dressed Kylie Jenner in a dress with a life-sized, sculpted lion head on the bust of the dress, and of course Viktor and Rolf, who’s recent collections have flipped couture standards on its head, literally.

The Viktor and Rolf Spring/Summer 2023 Couture Collection featured models wearing ball gowns right ways, left ways, sideways, down ways, and horizontal ways. The gowns maintained their voluminous shape while flipped in every direction. If you have not seen the renowned collection, allow me to confirm the visual you see in your head. Imagine a paper doll and imagine a cutout of a dress. Now, put the dress on top of the doll as a person normally would wear a dress, then tilt the dress, and only the dress, 45 degrees to either side. Now, tilt the dress to a complete 90 degrees. Now, tilt the dress 180 degrees. Yes, you are picturing that correctly - the dress should be upside down over the doll’s head. Now, tilt the dress towards you along the imaginary third plane. I think I have painted the picture.

The collection illustrated the modern disconnection between women’s bodies (the model) and the outdated “perfect silhouette,” the tiny-waisted ball gown. Just as the dress was further distanced from its original form on the model’s body, women’s fashion is growing further and further from the old-fashioned romantic way of dressing, which only serviced a handful of body types. The collection’s overall message, while very literal and should be seen as evident, went over many people’s heads. Elsa Hosk, a model, wore one of the infamous tilted dresses to the Cannes Film Festival, an event with a notoriously eye-catching red carpet. Comments on her Instagram post documenting the event were nothing short of blatant distaste, with remarks such as, “How is this fashion?” and, “This is why I don’t understand the fashion industry,” and a straight-to-the-point, “This is ugly.”

Fashion, just like any other form of art, is subjective. And Hosk’s comment section proved that. But the comments almost went as far as to suggest that not many people acknowledge fashion as a form of art. That there is a message to be absorbed through collections; that designers express a point of view just as much as a musician or painter - you just have to be looking for it. Viktor and Rolf started a conversation that awakened a section of the population to a pocket of cultural influence they never even knew existed. Ultimately, the designers caught the world’s judgemental eye, and is that not what fashion is all about?

Written by Parker Elkins, Design: Maitri Modi, Social Media: Bella Hanson