For her turn as an AZ Factory couture “amigo,” guest designer Lora Sonney went back into her graduate collection and proclivity for the outdoors, which she sought to hybridize with the elegant vocabulary left behind by Alber Elbaz.
Her 10-look lineup was shown in the gardens of the Fondation Cartier and furthered the impression of an eccentric gardener wearing their finest among the greenery, running from a practical looking minidress with a wide ruffle and pockets placed like a utility vest on the bust to a statuesque pleated red gown.
Elsewhere, flowing lines of sequins on pleated trousers and the inside of a coat collar hit that spot between Elbaz’s playbook and Sonney’s ideas.
Outerwear took pride of place, be it an opulently fuzzy emerald green mohair greatcoat with many pockets or a striking hat-cape-coat combination, cut from paper and lined in wool. It came with a pair of wide trousers that showed how that material would evolve over time.
Up close, the contribution of HEAD graduate Sonney, who was a finalist at the 2022 Hyères fashion festival and now works at Swiss textile manufacturer Jakob Schlaepfer, came through even stronger.
She revisited that sturdy paper with scatterings of sequins in delicate gradients in another coat-driven look, to great effect, and continued with other straightforward ideas, like silicone applications on a crisp oversize shirtdress meant as a nod to water.
What looked like animal motifs at first glance turned out to be prints lifted from her 2021 graduate collection, in which she had explored upcycling elements like garden hoses — those material research pieces appeared as accessories taken from her own work.