Patrick Pham FW 19/20 Couture

by Abdon FLORES

With “Pearl of Far East” French-Vietnamese designer Patrick Pham pays homage to his roots and to a tradition that is fighting to survive: silk weaving. For the Fall/Winter 19/20 couture season Mr. Pham presents 29 dresses from handmade textile materials of Vietnam’s most famous weaving villages, along with handmade accessories made by artisans from Hue – the Imperial city of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam. “Vien Dong”, has been for a while in the mind of French people. Either Indochina or Marguerite Dura’s L’amant, both are strong sources of a forever lasting love.

It is known that silk is a material that used to be cherished as gold; and it is also known that in haute couture fabrics are a key factor. Vietnam wasn’t exactly on the Silk Road, but the country has a solid reputation as a silk producer. “Lanh My A” is a silk weaving product dyed from Diospyros Mollis fruit, locally known as “mặc nưa”. It has been used for costume of the royal families of Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, or as a luxury gift for only rich families, landlords, and Indo-Chinese wealthy class. In the hands of Patrick Pham, Lanh My A seems to have been a classy material for luxury suits and soirée dresses.

 

 

Another treasure of the Far East is brocade, a unique product that ethnic minorities in Vietnam pass down from generation to generation in such a way to reflect the characteristics of their culture. It is made of cotton, linen or hemp yarn, all handwork, and dyed from wild plants. It’s a rustic, but generous and wild material. Erasing the cultural boundaries of brocade, Mr. Pham mixed it with other materials such as horse skin and cattle fur with an extraordinary result. In fact, all this materials were wisely combined in order to give vivid, smart and trendy gowns, trousers and jackets with another touch from the Far East: peacock feathers.

A vibrant, vitalized, elegant collection by Patrick Pham, that puts him as a rising star in the always movable sky of haute couture.