In 1955 the concept of the grey flannel go well with because the image of the soul-deadened company drone entered the American lexicon because of Sloan Wilson’s novel, making it just about inconceivable to have a look at that specific merchandise of clothes in a impartial approach ever once more. It turned the stand-in for our skewed work-life steadiness, the triumph of enterprise over creativeness. It acquired, it’s truthful to say, a foul rep.

For the final twenty years the New York designer Thom Browne has been making an attempt to vary all that: first, by shrinking the proportions of his males’s fits to demand a reassessment; subsequent, by erasing gender boundaries, after which by creating so many variations on the theme, he successfully remodeled the little grey go well with right into a Rorschach take a look at that contained multitudes.

On Monday in Paris, nonetheless, he took it to a brand new stage: the couture. Successfully proposing that the grey go well with deserved the identical mythic standing because the Chanel bouclé go well with or the YSL Smoking or the Dior Bar. And that American style (not style by an American, however style with its roots overtly in American tradition) deserves its place on the couture stage.

It was a fairly radical proposition.

The exhibits started in Paris within the shadow of nationwide unrest over the police killing of a teen of Algerian and Moroccan descent that has sparked costs of racism and discrimination. For awhile, there was a query about whether or not the collections would — or ought to — occur in any respect. There are few occasions, in any case, as symbolically tied to the nation’s historical past of privilege and insularity than couture: made by hand, to order, kinds for the .001 %. Hedi Slimane canceled his Celine males’s put on present, initially scheduled for the night time earlier than the couture formally was to start. Bulgari canceled a cocktail social gathering.

The remainder stood quick, monitoring the state of affairs and noting, when requested, that there have been few industries as consultant, globally, of France’s financial and creative power as style. And that the couture is a celebration of that craft on the highest stage. However it was jarring to stroll previous protests in entrance of 1 set of historic buildings (the Assemblée Nationale, the Palais de Justice) on the way in which to see terribly elaborate frocks in one other (the Petit Palais, the Musée Rodin).

That stress is likely to be the present human situation, however it additionally raised the bar for the exhibits that went on. Sure, they provide escapism and wonder — and, because of social media, escapism and wonder for everybody to have a look at, slightly than merely the elite few to purchase. At their greatest, nonetheless, they need to additionally supply one thing extra. And never simply the flat ballet footwear that Giambattista Valli paired together with his taffeta and lace ball robes. Although that was a welcome addition.

At Schiaparelli, for instance, Daniel Roseberry supplied an exegesis on the advantage of dialogue: between artwork and style, previous and current.

The gathering was purported to have been Half 2 of a present trilogy impressed by the Divine Comedy — Half 1, which befell in January, was primarily based on “The Inferno,” so this might have been “Purgatorio.” However on the final minute Mr. Roseberry modified the title to “… And the Artists” to keep away from any misinterpretations in gentle of present occasions. Quite, he mentioned backstage earlier than the present, he was “the earthly realm, which is the human experience, which is the act of creation, and the desire to decorate yourself and to express yourself, which is fashion.”

Which led him to ideas of washed silk, draped cloudlike across the shoulders, in addition to Elsa Schiaparelli’s penchant for artists, which led him to his personal creative pantheon: Yves Klein and Lucian Freud and James Whitten. Which, in flip, led him to one in every of his most relaxed, thought-about collections in seasons: black collars swirling across the shoulders of completely lower white coats; picket equipment piled on bronzed physique elements draped on a jewel-toned base; plush opera puffers and fits coated in mirrored mosaics.

Mr. Roseberry’s work has gotten more and more exaggerated as he has leaned into the Surrealist historical past of the home. Final season that resulted in a social media meltdown after a trio of life-size faux wild kingdom heads-on-dresses sparked an animal rights outcry. This time, the costumery and clichés have been toned down, and the creativeness turned up. The outcome was a step nearer to divine.

As was Maria Grazia Chiuri’s meditation on Greek and Roman antiquity at Dior. The goddess in each lady is one in every of her favourite topics, hackneyed although it may be, however this time there was a fierce rigor to its expression that evoked armored excessive priestess slightly than new age claptrap. In a palette of neutrals — ivory, sand and black — she layered capelets lower brief at the back and front however extending to the ground on the sides atop peplos-like robes; wove metallic mesh that appeared like macramé from afar; and peppered micropaillettes with tiny seed pearls, like very glamorous miniature ball bearings.

And although Iris Van Herpen could have proven what appeared just like the wardrobe of the royal courtroom on some far-off moon, full with bionic minidresses and iridescent chiffon that floated across the physique like cleaning soap bubbles (why Marvel hasn’t but employed her as a inventive director is a thriller), it turned out to be primarily based on actuality: Oceanix, the floating metropolis being deliberate for South Korea.

The thought of a waterborne metropolis was as soon as a utopian imaginative and prescient that now, given local weather change, could grow to be a necessity. That would simply have led to ideas of dystopia, however Ms. Van Herpen’s genius is her means to think about her approach by to a unprecedented future, all the way in which all the way down to the shards of abalone coated in silicon and embedded on the bodice of a sea-green robe. That makes her work a gesture of religion.

Nonetheless she was not, because it turned out, the one one fascinated by the life aquatic. In his couture debut, Mr. Browne was, too — or not less than fascinated by drowning one’s sorrows. He’s one in every of style’s best impresarios, and each assortment tells a narrative.

This time it unfolded on the stage of the Palais Garnier, now dwelling of the Paris Opéra Ballet, in entrance of an viewers of two,000 cardboard gents in grey fits starting from the orchestra to the Chagall ceiling (the IRL viewers sat within the wings). As fake pigeons roosted right here and there, a story started primarily based on the 1980 music “Fade to Grey” by the British new wave band Visage, of a person (truly the mannequin Alek Wek) alone at a prepare station, watching his life go by in 58 iterations of grey and prepster suiting, every another intricate and referential than the final.

They got here in patchworks etched in gold bullion that painted footage straight from Cape Cod: of jellyfish and sea gulls, clams and dolphins; in stripes and plaids picked out in beads or shimmering, clear micropaillettes; in Irish knit woven from strips of tulle. They got here in largely the identical easy silhouettes — small shoulders, rectangular, lean — plus some exaggerated molded bell shapes and two cream-puffy robes. On the finish, there was a bride in a easy white chiffon shirtdress with a really lengthy prepare. Effectively, there needed to be a prepare in there someplace.

Mr. Browne can get overly enchanted together with his personal talent set; therefore his continued penchant for placing his fashions in unwalkable footwear during which they inch painfully, and tediously, alongside. His dramas can veer very near excessive camp charades. However there’s no denying his achievement in taking a garment as soon as synonymous with anonymity and reinventing it as an expression of individuality. Couture could be the vestigial tail of style, however that’s a wholly up to date concept.