Couture’s Season of Monumentalism

PARIS — “Nobody needs couture,” said Balenciaga’s Demma at the end of his show on Wednesday. The statement might have summarised the brief couture week (absent were Valentino, Margiela and Fendi) that just ended in Paris, where a sense of creative fatigue permeated the proceedings and what we saw was often monumental yet forgettable. But of course, Demna’s words were a part of a backstage voiceover on his own collection, and not a…