Flounces are just great to make any kind of garment feminine and pretty. As we’ve launched our Short Draping Course on Flounces, we became obsessive with the idea of a perfect flounce. Tops for strolling on the beach or drinking coffee with your friends, dresses for  saying « yes » to your cheri, and even pants for going to work, flounces are very useful in garment construction, because they create this romantic and graceful allure and clients just LOVE them.

As Haute Couture Week is one of the main places to search for trends are born, let’s check what kind of flounces will be in for the next seasons through the Spring Summer Haute Couture 2018 Paris shows.

Basically we’re now into many different sizes of flounces, big, small, short, long, asymmetrical flounces and ruffles.  Sometimes they can be from lace or pleated fabric.

Here is the perfect example of the asymmetrical flounce on the circle skirt in godets from Givenchy Haute Couture,  cut from wonderful heavy pale pink satin. Definitely this kind of aristocratic pink is always a good idea…

Here at Stephane Rolland the neckline flounce “grows” on the back to became an extraordinary asymmetrical cape.

Another great example is this “cloud’ dress from Giambattista Valli, we see a lot of lilac for the next seasons, what can be better than this ruffles everywhere around you and your dress?

Here the flounces are the very idea of the whole dress, they are basically everywhere: around the neck, around the chest, on the waist…To counterbalance this “cloud’ which is of course light as it’s created from the very light fabric, but still has a lot of volume, the waist doesn’t have flounces on one side. Is you look attentively on this garment, you will see that there is a kind of zigzag line on the dress which was certainly the idea of the designer behind the dress, in order to give structure to all this “mist”.

Another way of using the flounces is to add a flounce at the bottom of the fitted dress to create a sophisticated and elegant look like here at Alexis Mabille. It’s also a perfect way to make the body look more slender and to accentuate a beautiful waist.

Another Giambattista Valli dress (you see we adore Giambattista and his creations), a multi-layers bustier dress with circle skirt, much more structured, but still very feminine as all his creations. There are several rows of short flounces cut from the same fabric as the dress.

On this Givenchy dress with godet skirt, the flounces are….fake. There are no flounces, the dress is made with several rows of godets cut in biais, very asymmetrical and wide at the end. To add more character, the model is wearing a structured coat.

Flounces are attached here to the bustier of the dress to create a romantic look, and they can be attached literally everywhere.

On the top like here at Stephane Rolland:

Or Alexis Mabille:

As a collar like at Alexandre Vauthier:

Or even on the pants like Stephane Rolland:

Now you see that you can use flounces in a lot of ways, and each time it will be very different.  You can learn more about how to make a Haute Couture flounce with our  Short Haute Couture Draping Flounces Course with the Professor who teaches draping at Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne and who have worked 10 years as a highest skilled master at Christian Dior Haute Couture.

*photos from Vogue France