From the cold rays of a telephone screen to the radiance of the heart, Courrèges’ Fall-Winter 2023 collection is staged as a ceremony of light and enlightenment which unveils the inner workings of its ever-evolving wardrobe. An exercise in holistic realism, it conjures a space where rites meet routines in a reflective journey to unleash one’s inner light.
n the twilight of la Sorbonne’s boxed-out library, the familiar voice of an AI bot breaks the rumor of a busy street. ‘Is the sky blue?’ it riddles, as a cube of smoke slithers behind back-lit figures. This dreamy runway space was designed by artist Rémy Brière in collaboration with Matière Noire - a collective known for its ability to craft the immaterial into interactive objects of technical wonder. This season again, a taming of natural forces - of light, fog, air - perpetuates a surreal, almost dystopian, vision of nature which mirrors the spiritual evolutions of Di Felice’s visual narrative.
The collection and its theatrical setting compel our gaze to move upwards, to open its perspective to our presence in the world. In its motion, the body is free to gradually undress, to assert, to expand. In the stillness of that moment, the procession of mirrors on beating hearts becomes a beacon of self-realization, an eclipse glowing in the gloom, lighting the way to the Other within ourselves - ‘Through the dark, through the smoke and mirrors, I see you’.
