Fashion trends: Christian Dior spring/summer 2013

"The austere elegance that was a hallmark of Raf Simons’s haute couture debut at the house of Dior, shown in Paris this July, could be sensed even before the first outfit from his first ready-to-wear for the house made its appearance. The audience was contained in a set clearly of Simons’s devising, with white-walled “rooms” with window openings that were veiled by drifts of very pale pastel organza curtaining. It was clean, refreshing, and had a certain modern poetry to it." - said Hamish Bowles.

It was fascinating to see Simons’s continued evolution at the House, this time around with more time to study and refine the codes established by Dior himself, and he rose quietly and elegantly to the challenge of reinterpreting Dior’s bravura signatures, such as those dramatic seasonal changes of “line,” the refinement and sophistication of technique (some of them Victorian revivals), and the lavish fabrications and embellishments—in a way that remains potent and enticing for a twenty-first-century woman.