Franck Sorbier Haute Couture Fall 2007: Moments in Time
By: Jean Paul Cauvin
Photo: Franck Sorbier on the runway Haute Couture Spring 2007 show.

PARIS, Jan 26, 2007/ FW/ --- PARIS, Jul 4, 2007/ FW/ --- The courtyard among the modern office buildings at Cité du Rétiro in the heart of Paris, set up a wonderful nave in the open air for the celebration of a renewed conception of Haute Couture.

Franck Sorbier, who has been a full member among the very few Paris designers elected on the Board of Haute Couture for more than two years now, is showing much consistency in his approach of this only Parisian art, looking for new ways to interpret it for our era.

Strangely enough, although his collection was presented in a series of small tableaux vivants recalling each one moment in time, there was no obsolete creation whatsoever in this collection. On the contrary, the nostalgia of the couturier’s personal memories was interpreted here with a resolutely contemporary angle, echoing in the spectators’ own visions of their life journey through time and space.

An undoubtedly poetic quality pervaded fashion writers, photographers, tv crews and customers alike, as they strolled leisurely past the 25 models, each one of them placed inside a painting-like cubicle delicately framed with white to present a modern vision of a past memory.

Technically, Franck Sorbier is faithful to his original work of compressed materials, but season after season, as his techniques become lighter and his style purer, Franck Sorbier’s design statements are revealing something more floatingly dreamlike, evanescently elegant, romantically Parisian.

After the first look consisting in a high-collar 19th century-like black dress displaying all kinds of clocks on the front of its bustier, which can be considered as a gimmick piece to reveal time as the backbone of the collection, the following proposals were of a higher interest.

Number three, for instance, was entitled “The time of Megève”, the French most glamorous skiing resort is interpreted in a setting of old wooden skis and slit, to reveal a simply beautiful ensemble of black wool consisting of a high-collar jumper and an impeccable couture version of the fifties ski-pants. The surprise lies in the long trapezoid cardigan in white lirette lace and frayed chiffon executed in a close to volatile manner to recall the snowflake atmosphere.

The leather cream jacket worn in “The Time of the Orient Express” might be embroidered with wools of various colours in patterns of Slavonic flowers; the black skirt, shirt and tie in black radzimir certainly give it a serious innocence not deprived of a certain ingenuous fragility.

In the house’s tradition of appliqués and hand-painted pieces, “The Time of Peace” outfit is another achievement. Above a denim skirt with embroidered clock-like “favourite pieces” of old jeans, a wonderful blouse in crochet and lace was painted the colour of denim for a couture reinterpretation of the hippie top.

Many pieces in the collection did show an evolution towards an airy design like this coat in black and white ribbons of organza sewn in convolutions to create a textile fur-like effect.

Others invariably evoked extremely Parisian images like “The Time of a Kiss”, a fashion rendering of a famous photograph by Robert Doisneau. In Franck Sorbier’s eyes, the ball dress comes in a compression of white organza and is worn with an embroidered shawl of black tulle. The same applies to the “outlaws” elegantly depicted here in a seated creature endlessly smoking “a la French” cigarette after cigarette, clad in black wool and silk combination pants worn under a fabulous tuxedo coat-jacket made of only ribbons looping around the neck like volutes then descending to the ground in independent stripes of black.

Why did Franck Sorbier chose time as the theme for his collection? The answer comes from the couturier himself: “Because haute couture has a specific relationship to time. It is Haute couture’s specific luxury to capture time in its very own way, as these handmade pieces all require hours of work.” An eternal statement for the Parisian craftsmanship, which has certainly found with Franck Sorbier’s collection for fall 2007 a consistent expression, on a renewed track.

Haute Couture Spring 2007 (Photo by FW)

Haute Couture Fall 2007 (Photo by P. Baril Courtesy of Franck Sorbier Haute Couture)

Address:
FRANCK SORBIER
60, rue de Richelieu
75002 Paris
FRANCE

Press contact for
FRANCK SORBIER:
Pascal DUPIN
6 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud
75011 Paris
France
Tel: +33 (1) 43 38 52 00
Fax: +33 (1) 43 38 24 02