Hosted in the elegant buildings of the Université Diderot in Paris, Yiqing Yin’s spring/summer haute couture collection added a note of wildness to the sober neoclassical interior. Yin’s recent signature snakeskin motifs reappeared in the variously exfoliating fabrics that moulted from opacity and translucency to skin-revealing chinks in the dresses and sashes.
Yin’s criss-crossing technique worked wonders again, evolving into intricately knotted and layered outfits, which blurred the boundaries between top and bottom. Some outfits possessed an interlocking slate-like quality that managed to make garments look tight-fitting and comfortably loose at the same time.
Yiqing Yin Haute Couture, spring/summer 2016
With their bands and flowing drapery, some dresses would not have looked out of place in a Tolkien-like saga or some retro-futuristic film set. One heart-stoppingly ethereal dress recalled the flowing attire worn by Lady Fortuna in The Wheel of Fortune, the Pre-Raphaelite painting by Edward Burne-Jones.
The warmer-looking garments sported fur that was equally layered around tighter-fitting, finely interwoven leather bands. One ostentatious outsized boa seemed like an endless hybrid tail snaking its way down to double-textured leather pants.
Yiqing Yin Haute Couture, spring/summer 2016
A few dresses had intriguing patchwork fur stitched into fascinatingly subtle designs. Yin is also supremely good at concocting latticed leather lace that makes whole outfits look like outdoor head-to-foot lingerie.
Another style that Yin is particularly adept at is the gift-wrapped look: woman as supreme visual present. Yin is always careful to offset too much ribboning in these outfits with fine tonal and textural contrasts, providing sleek high-heeled shoe-wear to sharpen naivety into sexiness.
Yiqing Yin Haute Couture, spring/summer 2016
The parade ended with some breast-revealing wiry meshing that added an almost Gothic finale, a slightly eerie atmosphere that turned into delightful suspense as the last dress was revealed in near-total darkness. It was confected out of dozens of miniscule lights attached to interlaced wires.
