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October 2, 2026

Storytellers, Magicians, Enchanters

In every generation, in the mix of methods designers use to communicate their work in each collection, there are a variety of approaches. Perfect wardrobe balance, glorious evening wear, sporty and relaxed day, and street wear. Even the moods can encompass edgy, romantic, classic, or simply confused. So, telling a story is one of a range of overall labels one might apply to creating a collection.

Storytelling, collection inspirations, and a theme behind a collection is a surprisingly modern phenomenon. Throughout the nineteenth century of course designers were “inspired “but it was a low-key affair and from India in Regency times to Japan in the 1890s it is not important in the overall collections’ final appearance.

As with everything he did, and touched Paul Poiret changed all that with inspirations plucked from museums, travel, and nature. It might be an autumn leaf reimagined by Studio Martine or a turban glimpsed in an archive. His inspirations might be taken from the clothes worn by workers glimpsed during his wanderings, or simply how might women wear trousers.

Words by Tony Glenville

The next designer to then seize the themes collection idea was an admirer of Poiret; Elsa Schiaparelli. From Surrealism to Turkish robes and from Victorian bustles to menswear she plundered them collection after collection throughout her career. The one designer she admired and thought of as her successor was Yves Saint Laurent. He totally embraced the idea of stories and influences. However, where Christian Dior thought of flowers or the alphabet Saint Laurent thought of the women of Le Rive Gauche in the early 1960s or Africa. Each season the press waited expectantly to see what the theme was, from Mondrian to Pop Art and from Russia to Marrakesh.

Designers as storytellers became especially important during the 1970s and for the high street the “interpretation” of the seasonal story became an easy hook to use for their clothes.

By the 1970s Space Age at Thierry Mugler, Viennese Secession or Chinoiserie at Valentino, and Fellini at Popy Moreni, were just a few of the stories we saw as fashion shifted firmly away from couture to prêt à porter. Kenzo seduced Paris audiences in 1971 with divine themed shows with glamour and screaming crowds, white horses and princesses, Walter Albini offered Art Deco glamour in Milan and by the 1980s Vivienne Westwood’s pirates were divine but not a shock.

Perhaps it’s their art college beginnings but British designers set the standard for storytelling with John Galliano and his Merveilleuses graduation collection 1984 and Alexander McQueen seducing the audience with everything from Banshee to The Birds 1994.

The reliance on trends from the early 1970s was also when buyers and high street businesses were confused by the variety of stories being shown. Globally across the fashion weeks and through street fashion the breaking down of the old system of couture dictating a slow evolution by the ready to wear was eroded. Back then the slow and gradual adoption of a Dior or a Balenciaga innovation had been the rule. Cheaper clothes, younger customers, new communications, and a world fully recovered from post-war austerities meant multiple options, seasonal trend stories, and fashion forecasting companies proliferating to decode the lot!

Today we have educated so many people to understand what suits them. We’ve fashion customers from the age of five or six, so trends and simply buying something because it is “on trend “no longer hold weight. ASOS discovered 84% of its customers are not interested in trends. So, overelaborate storytelling is not the only possibility for designers, much as we might miss 1990s extravaganzas.

The dreams and nostalgia of those who missed the heyday day of Galliano and McQueen is fine, but realistically it wasn’t ever about sales figures. Today LVMH and Kering are fighting to survive so money is more important than an amazing story. Witness Demna at Gucci actually setting the latest catwalk show in a boutique setting.

American designers especially, as a generalisation, look at commerciality and wearability. They love what London, Milan and Paris do but, with a vast continent to dress their collections, are always underpinned by wanting to sell. We will look at this in depth in the next story.

What is fascinating about storytelling is that during the peak years of Diana Vreeland at American Vogue she was using a huge mix of American and European designers to tell her lavish stories Babs Simpson and Polly Mellon. Indeed, one might lay a good claim that as far back as 1966 Vreeland was encouraging storytelling in fashion. Later of course stylists like Grace Coddington and Tonne Goodman continued this balance between the actual physical clothes which might appear in the shops and the escapist demands of an aspirational glossy magazine.

It is particularly important to recognise that every fashion city and culture has some storytellers, all highly individual and innovative.

Paris couture is especially a place where, however fashion is twisting and turning, strong narrative sits perfectly. Made to measure and to order clothes for special clients, couture vendeuses who know all about the life each client leads, fitters who, just as in Savile Row with a tailored suit, know exactly to disguise the unwanted features and accentuate the assets. So eventually Thierry Mugler launched couture, whilst for one brief shining hour Claude Montana took over at Lanvin couture. Viktor and Rolf launched at couture and have continued to dazzle us with their brilliance. The ideas they’ve offered from paintings in a gallery, collections only made from fabrics already in their atelier, from ends of rolls to scraps and samples, a model used as a human kite, Van Gogh fields, bells of every type and size, and distorted silhouettes to name just a few. Each season even during Covid with their film, they certainly astonish us as no ready to wear collection could.

Franck Sorbier this season took us on a traveller’s journey, but he always does, be it goddesses, voyageurs, equestrian Amazones or simply a walk in the countryside of a tropical island. He creates the great jackets, beautiful dresses, romantic corsets, and embroidered pieces and then enchants us with the event. It might feature models descending a staircase, warriors jumping, or a tango smouldering across a salon, or ballet dancers suddenly twirling into action or simply the designer himself appearing with a smile, modestly receiving our applause. This season a floor length patchwork coat took my breath away, but it also caught the attention of a private client who told me they could not stop thinking about it. That is the magical seduction of great couture, desire.

There have been superb storytellers like Aganovich whose shows were magical and supremely beautiful. The narrative winding through each season not to dominate the clothes but to enchant, to bewitch and to offer opportunities to create pieces using techniques and skills, with in depth knowledge and understanding of how clothes can be made. In their own distinct way, and still showing at intervals, are On Aura Tout Vu, whose élan and joie de vivre explodes onto the catwalk. Using both imagination and craftsmanship honed over many seasons the collection might include vibrant prints, glittering nightclub fantasies, and dramatic long diva gowns. Their last show was a party, a happening, a celebration, and a festival of fun. The raining reality of Paris outside the doors vanished as we applauded, danced in our seats, and gazed at the couture fantasies offered to us.

From the moment he appeared on the couture Calendrier Robert Wun set out to engage our imagination, to make us marvel and wonder and to applaud his audacity. From the very first season, as I sat there watching, I was transported by his visions of a series of characters, and that has continued. Menacing, romantic, spellbound, divaesque, malevolent or charming, as each model appears they conjure up an entire scenario top to toe. Chapeaux fly, skirts billow, draperies unfurl and sway, and intense colour splashes into view.

I would mention a few other storytellers; firstly, Matières Fécales who have a decidedly oblique view of everything. Brilliantly odd casting, amazing silhouettes from laser tailoring to Miss Haversham ball gowns and through to robe sirène. It is fascinating to watch how they use decaying romanticism or uptight couture conventions, how they can switch the emotion up or cool it down. Walter van Bierendonck is a genius whose world certainly involves us either jumping down a rabbit hole or taking a rocket to another planet. Indeed, I would simply say he is a storyteller and an alchemist since no words can convey how he has shifted, jolted, and surprised us across the seasons. I invite you to Google his work if you are not familiar with this fashion wizard. Rahul Mishra, Gauruv Gupta and Manish Malhotra all favour a story and have across the season offered us brilliant culturally inspired narratives. Right from the beginning even with Prêt à porter Rahul Mishra balanced a series of ideas through a linking thread which influenced his mood boards, and the story he told backstage after the show. He balances the culture and history of India with crafts that encompass the simplicity of a weave to the intense mille fleurs of the countryside, the seasons and nature imbued throughout his work. He balances dark, black, and urban with this and shifts between tradition and modernity. It is an amazing trick to juggle skyscrapers and flowers, a lehenga or a disco minidress, a temple sculpture and a bouquet of blossoms. Each season we await that moment when the lights dim and he reveals the new seasons mélange of elements, and we are surprised as he weaves his spell anew and skilfully walks the tightrope as he yet remains true to his signatures.

Finally, Stephane Rolland. Haute Couture and the narrative at its pinnacle but also beautiful clothes, great fashion, and desirable creations for the twenty first century. Each season the story wraps around the show and the collection like a magician’s spell, each season he offers us a story but tilts it, rewinds it, and places it an angle. Josephine Baker of Dalida or the wilds of the desert where Cleopatra might live, or the high priestess of the Atlas Mountains might be celebrating a festival. The narrative is like a mist across the collection because still at the heart are the clothes. The long fluid lines, the remarkable, bold embroideries, the floating panel and unfolding ruffles, there are huge Infanta skirts or robes and caftans from Shangri-La or there are seductive mermaid dresses spiralling around the body but immaculately neither too tight nor too loose, just perfect. There are across the seasons every shade of white, ivory, ecru, cream, and chalk, then theirs is dense inky black and finally a red so intense and deep it is beyond lacquer. It is like a flower petal on a rose, a tulip, or a carnation.

So, fashion storytellers wish to enfold the collection in an escape from reality whilst offering real clothes at the heart of the tale. It is not for everyone, and the stories can be subtle and barely hinted at, bold and strong or simply a few whispered words evoking a legend, a story, or a memory. The wonderful thing is there is an immense variety to the approach, and it is not tethered to trend; it is personal and of the moment.

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