See every look from Olivier Theysken's spring 2023 collection:
On a day with three of the biggest guns of Paris on the schedule, each one boasting, if that’s the right word, its own unique mix of celebrities and traffic jams, Olivier Theyskens offered something different.
The corporate Goliaths should be taking a closer look at this designer David. Theyskens has toiled in the ateliers of this city’s maisons in the past, he held creative director titles at Rochas and Nina Ricci, where he made some of the most romantic and transportive collections of the 2000s. He seemed poised to make the leap to a larger house—one of those Paris big guns—but it never happened.
Then the pandemic happened; it was an especially cruel time for emerging businesses like his, but a creative spark came. Theyskens started piecing together fabric scraps accumulated over two decades, cooking them up—literally—into some of the most heavenly frocks this side of the couture. Bias-cut puzzles of silk, lace, and velvet leftovers, each a one-of-a-kind gem, they’re so labor-intensive to make they can’t be retailed in stores, but that doesn’t mean he’s not selling them.
This collection is the third in a series. It’s grown beyond willowy patch-worked dresses to include a knit all-in-one featuring roughly 10,000 jet beads, a duster coat assembled from leather off-cuts embroidered one-by-one on tulle, and the sort of long, lean, just shy of severe tailoring Theyskens favors. The willowy patch-worked dresses have evolved too.