Fashion Frenzy and Fuzzy

Fashion Wire Daily - We got grand style and hyper opulent chic at Christian Dior Couture Monday, Jan. 24, in Paris, when the house's couturier John Galliano sought inspiration from Monsieur Dior's most fruitful collaborator, illustrator Rene Gruau.
Staged over a massively elongated runway in the garden of Paris' Rodin Museum, the show opened with a voluminous blood orange red silk coat wrapped over a half dozen layers of tulle, an ensemble that floated by on model Karlie Kloss, on whose head sprouted a stiff Stephen Jones hat, mimicking the signature flourish of one of Gruau's sketches.
Gruau was born Renato Zavagli Ricciardelli in Rome. He adopted his divorced mother's maiden name, moved to Paris and lived to be 95, going on to become the most influential illustrator in fashion history.
Much of this spring 2011 collection riffed on the extended volumes of Dior's epoch-making New Look show, which Gruau himself played a key role in making so famous through his brilliant sketches.
"Rene Gruau's crayons, his pencil marks and his paint strokes, all inspired us. I hope something of the results looked effortlessly chic," Galliano said backstage.


Gruau's squiggles and brush strokes were reproduced in three dimensions on a series of remarkable looks, pencil lines imitated by strips of sequins, paint strokes by dashes of stiff chiffon.
"And the play of light and darkness and the chiaroscuro was evident in Karlie's first look," said Galliano, adding that the only question was why he had taken so long to base a collection on Gruau, given his fundamental role in the house's history.
Throughout, elements of chiaroscuro were used artfully, eliciting a huge roar of applause from the understanding audience.

It was as if Gruau's images had come alive on the 200-foot-long catwalk via embroidered and degrade fauve silk coats, asymmetrical tulle fantasy dresses and a dramatic series of marvelously decayed crinolines that ended this show.