The grand old names Dior, Chanel and Armani have very different ideas about dressing the most demanding clients in fashion, as we’ve seen so far.Maria Grazia Chiuri’s celebrations of women for Christian Dior have most often been spun around the work of a female artist where the inspiration is necessarily more abstract, but the couture collection she showed on Monday was rooted in a real life, that of entertainer, activist and Black icon Josephine Baker.Virginie Viard’s inclusion of contemporary art at the Chanel show on Tuesday morning was in the form of sculptural animals created from cardboard, wood and paper. As much as it embodied haute couture in the extraordinary techniques that made the clothes, it also ensured that those clothes had a sparkly, frothy fairytale naivete.Giorgio Armani’s new Privé show featured a harlequin diamond pattern, which sparked thoughts of what harlequins meant to Picasso and DeChirico and their peers. Armani never takes on a theme by halves. If he’s in on harlequins, he’s all in on harlequins. So what did that mean?Who are your haute couture favourites so far?Read Tim Blanks’ coverage of Dior, Chanel and Armani. [Link in bio]📷 Dior, Chanel and Armani