Fall 2024 Haute Couture : Franck Sorbier's Clouds
Since Antiquity, and certainly well before, clouds have aroused the interest of men, particularly from philosophers such as Aristotle to artists like Joseph Mallord William Turner, and Monet and poets such as Charles Baudelaire.
For Franck Sorbier, clouds are at the same time, “abstract and baroque, captivating and delicate, ephemeral and furious, greedy and heroic, imperial and jubilant, Kafkaesque and lascivious, mystical and noble, oily and psychedelic, quarrelsome and romantic, sensitive and theatrical, utopian and victorious, Wagnerian and xenophile, yinyang and Zen.”
“This season, I sought the lightness of the creations both literally and figuratively. A new stage, a new direction in my life. Creation is my life, my innocence, my cocoon, my reverie, my melancholy, my spiritual dimension, my food. So, let’s raise our heads, contemplate the clouds and discover the fascinating immensity of this universe in perpetual renewal,” he wrote in the show notes.
Inspired by the timeless allure of these natural wonders, Sorbier’s Fall 2024 collection, titled Clouds, weaves a narrative of lightness and fabric manipulations as the couturier explore clouds’ ever-shifting forms.
To create his “clouds” the designer manipulated different types of tulles (plumetis tulle, point d’esprit tulle), Chantilly lace and silk organza, and each creation was named after a cloud type. The Flocus strapless dress was crafted from compressed ribbons and the short vest in jacquard taffeta has been hand-painted, while the Cumulus suit features an ecru point d’esprit tulle jacket adorned with ball points that evoke the playful essence of cloud formations.
Of note, the Nebulosus jacket crafted from hand-painted silk velvet that has been crushed to create scrolled pattern reminiscent of clouds.
