The Iranian-Swedish designer Bahareh Ardakani is still a newcomer to Haute Couture, but a casual scan of the front row spoke to the quiet force of her project. Here were some of the industry’s most-watched executives: the ones who make headlines and the ones who see to it that headlines are made, a stylist to music icons, and an influential jewelry designer with a client friend in tow. Suzi de Givenchy, dressed in an ethereal pleated jersey dress from the ready-to-wear collection commented, “people stop me on the street over this, and yet it’s the most comfortable thing I’ve ever worn.”
Backstage, Ardakani said that for this fifth couture outing she wanted to pay homage to her roots, which she did through the Persian poem “The Nightingale’s Rose.” The story’s paradisiacal gardens were woven into the carpets in the designer's childhood home in Gothenburg, and its attendant symbolism—of love, longing, beauty, seduction, sacrifice—formed the throughline for the collection.
Being a part of making “every seam in a couture collection” had long been her dream. With this collection—the first produced almost entirely in-house, in the Ardazaei atelier on the Rue Saint-Florentin—that vision became a reality.
“For me, the theme is really about spreading light, love, and the passion we put into couture, because it is so much about the making, the laboratory that comes to life when we test things,” she said.
Take, for example, the considerable challenge she gave herself of recounting her life story through couture—an unconventional coupling of a highly ornate, flamboyant artistic tradition and Scandinavian modernism. “As I find my design language, it’s becoming clear that I like structure on the inside and poetry on the outside,” the designer explained.
On the runway, a beige satin evening jacket based on the geometry of roses proved a compelling example, its petals folded like origami to striking effect. A swingy, short bustier dress with giant swirls of roses looked both pretty and edgy. The songbird appeared in a tapestry-like brocade, in burnished hues of copper, ochre, and green on a high-necked column gown with a periwinkle train, and interpretations of feathers in frayed organza on black and red prints.
An engineer by training, Ardakani is reliably obsessed with symmetry, executed through intricate pleating, smocking, and folding techniques. This season, she added to that multiple layers of different laces, Persian embroideries, and, on one periwinkle dress, hand-painted silk thread and floral appliqués by Lesage worked like outcroppings. Hourglass shapes consistently placed attention squarely on the hips, often with clamshell-like pleating, as on a gold-toned bustier dress and a fiery orange gown.
The designer said that, over time, she has come to a new understanding of the nightingale as a metaphor for persistence. To a piece, this lineup showed her commitment to craft at the highest level. From a practical standpoint, however, it might have benefited from slightly looser lines. Since Ardazaei is in it for the long haul, it has plenty of time yet to bloom.
