What is a luxury fashion house to do when its head designer left five months ago, and it has yet to appoint a successor? In the case of Christian Dior, which showed its autumn/winter collection in Paris yesterday, the house plays to its strengths.
This meant a reinvention of that signature 1947 bar jacket, sprinklings of flowers over dresses and skirts and more of the great coats for which the brand has long been known.
With the possible identity of the next Monsieur — or Madame — Dior the subject of fevered speculation, it was pretty much business as usual on the catwalk. Recognisable shapes were tweaked just so. Those jackets had their usual waspish waists but the shoulders were rather more sumo wrestler than normal. Added interest came in the shape of button placement, belt detailing and fabric folding. A high-necked under-layer gave a further modern edge, sometimes a kind of collared polo neck, at others an asymmetric ruffled affair.
Elsewhere, shoulders were revealed by big fold-down collars which made the clothes appear to be barely hanging on to the body. The feeling of looseness, of potential undoneness, combined with origami folds, gave a sense of fabric as a living entity. It endowed the collection with a vibrancy, not to mention a laid-back sense of comfort, that kept the house of Dior safely wrapped in cotton wool, ready for when its next prince — or princess — finally comes.