The Spring 2016 Haute Couture shows might have just begun in Paris, but talk around the Grand Palais has already moved on to next season’s presentations. It’s then when British designer Giles Deacon will be showing his first proper haute couture collection as part of haute couture Fashion Week, having been working closely with couture’s official body, the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, on the affair for some time. “I’ve always wanted to do couture, and it seems like a really interesting place to take the company to. It’s something that I think we do very well,” said Deacon over the phone from London. “I really enjoy the workmanship and the one-offsmanship of it all—it really appeals.”
Since launching his womenswear label in 2004 after time at Bottega Veneta and Tom Ford–era Gucci, Deacon has become renowned for his irreverent and innovative takes on pop culture and glamour. On his runways, there have been Ms. Pac-Man helmets (Spring 2009), Glen Luchford photographs printed on gowns (Spring 2014), and body scans of Queen Elizabeth I morphed into patterns on jumpsuits and minidresses (Spring 2016)—all worn by a cast of the industry’s most famous models, like Linda Evangelista, Eva Herzigova, and Karen Elson. That sense of play and drama promises to follow Deacon to couture. Speaking of what can be expected of his debut showing, he said, “It’s most definitely going to be very ethereal. I think there’s going to be some elements of dark romance fizzing within it, and some really—I hope!—intriguing work within the manipulation of fabric, the embellishments that we’re really well known for, and the print work. [The goal is] to really engineer and to really get those aspects all working together.” At the moment, Deacon estimates his team produces around 100 couture pieces a year for private clients and red carpets. “We now want to expand it to 250 pieces a year, and so that obviously means increasing the atelier team here in London, which we’re in the process of doing, but we’ve already got some super-super-skilled people who work here and who have worked for me for five or six years.”
The choice to focus on couture might seem strange in a moment when fast—and faster—fashion are becoming buzzwords in the luxury world, but it’s in couture where Deacon has seen his business rapidly growing. “Over the last four or five years, we’ve been increasing quite dramatically the amount of private clients and couture pieces that we’ve done in-house for shows and on the red carpet as well,” he said. “It’s a definite growth area for us. It’s interesting that there are long conversations going on within the retail world about people being able to buy in season, and that’s essentially what couture has been doing all along,” the designer added, noting that couture is actually one of the faster fashion cycles, delivering bespoke garments to customers within two to three months of an in season runway show, as opposed to the six-month cycles of ready-to-wear. “With couture, you’re going right to the consumer, and that’s something we learned from doing trunk shows. You’re meeting the client, you’re finding out what they like and what they don’t like. You’ve really got your customer there in front of you, so you know what works and what doesn’t.”
In addition to building up a repertoire of private clients through trunk shows, Deacon has been growing his number of red carpet supporters, too. 2015 saw Cate Blanchett, Kate Hudson, and Kerry Washington all select Giles gowns for events, an impressive get when you consider that Giles is a small brand without the sway of heritage houses. (Deacon’s partner, Gwendoline Christie, has also worn many Giles pieces in public, including to this year’s Emmys and to several press events for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.) “For an independent label, we get some really top names and really major events, which is fantastic because it means that the reason that they’re wearing them is because they want to wear them,” the designer said.
As for the rumor that Giles Deacon had shut down his ready-to-wear business, the designer was quick to hush up that chatter, noting that the brand is simply taking off the Fall 2016 season. “The ready-to-wear hasn’t been shut down at all,” he said. “We’ve brought the license back in-house, and we’re in the process of reorganizing all of how the ready-to-wear is dealt with in-house. We’ll be ready to get ready-to-wear back out by autumn. I wanted to take the time to take stock and to work out how we wanted to do that, and not do it through conventional methods anymore, so we’re just really going through all the motions to work out how that fits in with everything. But it’s most definitely not been shut!”
The post Giles Deacon on Why Couture Still Matters and What We Can Expect From His Debut Show in Paris appeared first on Vogue.