One may not love fashion, like it, feel inclined to follow it at all, and yet one may still feel the influence of fashion in their everyday life. Cue the cerulean sweater speech from The Devil Wears Prada.

While we are quick to point out the fickle nature of fashion and style, the sheer improbability of it: both acquiring it or assimilating it into our daily lives, we fail to notice the fickle nature of, well, nature, events beyond human control, politics beyond civilian control, movements that have a life of their own.

These are the things that will inform fashion, time and again. Hemlines will grow longer and shorter, silhouettes will be diaphanous or streamlined, colours will brighten or darken. But somehow, high fashion still feels like a dream, you can see it, maybe smell it, but can’t touch it.

This year’s edition of Paris Haute Couture Week (PHCW) is a pebble skipping on the pond of our collective consciousness. As the world becomes more inclusive, turns inward to seek satisfying answers, and increases its ability to empathize, we see the patterns, literally and figuratively, appear on haute couture.

Here are the collections that speak to us, on a soul level:

Valentino SS22: Anatomy of Couture

To paraphrase Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli slightly, the collection is geared towards an audience and clientele that is more “cohesive”.

The cohesion of the collection is expressed through the diversity of form and shape. It is designed for all kinds of bodies, all ages, and was showcased by models who represented various demographics. If fashion is to influence everyday style in some manner, then we hope that this will be our ‘cerulean sweater’ moment.

Fendi looks beyond

Kim Jones drew inspiration from the religious/spiritual symbology of Fendi’s hometown, Rome. The motifs and styles employed seemed to look for something – answers from the great beyond, if we may. Where Valentino grounded its collection in ‘real’ people, and the ‘real’ now, Fendi solved for what could be, but isn’t yet.

Earth to Schiaparelli

What dreams did come with Schiaparelli’s showcase! The intricacy of gold-on-black, the opulence of every stitch, the sheer fantasy of the collection as a whole, and every piece apart; if this is to influence retail fashion or life in any way at all, we hope it is us allowing ourselves to indulge just a bit in the ways that feel decadent to us, after the very grueling, gloomy years that have come to pass.