Sneakers and Sportswear at Couture? Yes, It's Happening

Photo: Marcus Tondo/Indigitalimages.com; Yannis Vlamos/Indigitalimages.com (2)

Couture’s rarefied catwalks may seem an unlikely place for sportswear. More often, it’s a stage for wild opulence and stop-you-in-your-tracks realizations, like, say, Riccardo Tisci’s hyper-detailed neon tribal-origami dresses for spring 2011 at Givenchy. Yet what many may not know is that a hoodie or even a plain white T-shirt can, actually, be couture, so long as the workmanship is present and it required a certain amount of time to make. And for spring 2014, thanks to fashion’s reigning fascination with luxe athleticism, its highest bracket is looking more toward the gym than ever.
 
At Atelier Versace on Sunday, Donatella Versace hybridized Grace Jones’s prowess withLady Gaga’s pop (the singer is currently starring in the house’s ad campaigns—she also provided the show’s sound track). Think: loads of hoods draped just so, and subtler muscly details like fitted sleeves on blazers and pants aplenty. One look saw model Tilda Lindstamin an arctic-white covering–evoking thoughts of, perhaps, the chicest boxer ever warming up before her big fight.
 
The following day, Raf Simons presented his fourth couture collection for Christian Dior. Virtually since the get-go, he’s been pushing for a more streamlined silhouette, and that sensibility, which inevitably lends itself to a more athletic vibe by nature, was most evident for spring 2014 with the introduction of sneaker-meets-water-shoe hybrids. Though from afar they looked relatively simple, up close their mesh was embellished with hundreds of brightly colored florets—live, 3-D proof that techno-fabric can (and should) have its place in couture. 
 
Then came Chanel; where Simons is an abstractionist, Karl Lagerfeld is a more literal sort of dreamer. There, in Paris’ sportively inclined Grand Palais (Hermès stages its annual Saut Hermès equestrian show-jumping event here), he sent forth running shoes in, you guessed it, trademark tweeds. Yet, per usual, he took things a step further, this time via elbow- and knee-pads in signature quilted leather—a fantastic and futuristic Roller Derby, if ever one should manifest. While we’ve all seen Chanel’s surfboards and skis, this much inclusion of athleticism at such a top-end threshold broke new ground. And we’d bet those kicks are going to sell extremely well—they might even open up a whole new market for couture, which is an exciting prospect in and of itself.

by Nick Remsen