When Haute Couture Becomes Music: A Tribute to Maurice Ravel and Ida Rubinstein
“LE BOLÉRO,” STEPHANE ROLLAND HAUTE COUTURE FALL/WINTER 2025
On 8 July 2025, Paris held its breath in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Amidst the reflections of gold and scarlet velvet in this sacred temple of French art, haute couture found music in rare harmony for a show paying tribute to one of France’s greatest composers: Maurice Ravel, and his extravagant muse, Ida Rubinstein.
A profound silence filled the theatre. Against the ticking of clocks and the hum of machines, the first models emerged.
Each silhouette, each drape, each movement seemed choreographed to Ravel’s slow, obsessive rhythm. Haute couture became a score. The runway transformed into a lyrical stage. The models, silent instruments in a wordless masterpiece.
This collection is born of the meeting between two formidable imaginations: Ravel, the architect of mechanical, abstract rhythm, and Rubinstein, the embodiment of a dream both Iberian and baroque, incandescent in its intensity.
Photos by Fatti Arantes
From this fertile tension between modernist rigour and Oriental reverie arises a wardrobe with a symphonic breath, where Spain becomes at once mythical, sensual, futuristic and sacred.
Behind a sheer curtain, the DIVERTIMENTO orchestra, conducted by Zahia Ziouani, emerges to the strains of Ravel’s Boléro.
Photos by Victor Telles
GARMENTS AS LIVING SCORES
Each silhouette is conceived as a musical note: structure reigns, volumes articulated with the precision of an engine, yet every fabric breathes with the warm sigh of a dream.
Black dominates — dramatic and noble — in crepe, satin, chiffon and gazar. It shapes architectural gowns with cubic collars, solemn tuxedos and matador coats embroidered with near-liturgical meticulousness.
Then red appears, an emotional syncopation: Iberian fire, a passionate homage to the Boléro. It sets ablaze long dresses embroidered with coral and crystal, samurai-inspired capes and rippling waves of sheer silk, smouldering slowly like restrained desire.
Photo by Victor Telles
Photo by Victor Telles
Photo by Fatti Arantes
A SACRED, CONTRASTING UNIVERSE
Gold and crystal crown this textile mise-en-scène with mystical brilliance: whip-like brooches, chest-covering necklaces, gala waistcoats, medallions suspended like talismans. The collection oscillates between tension and ornament, opulence and restraint, ballet and machine, grace and geometry.
THE FINAL NOTE: THE SYMPHONIC BRIDE
In the end, the bride appears as a white icon, crowned with a dome embroidered in gold — the final note of a sumptuous score where haute couture becomes a symphony. Like Maurice Ravel and Ida Rubinstein, this collection pays tribute to the opposites that attract and sublimate one another: rigour giving way to fantasy, silence yielding to music, haute couture breathing with the dream of Spain.
Photo by Fatti Arantes
