Roland Nivelais

Design and Art

Matter and Light

Lace and Petals

Undulations

Inside and Outside

Stillness and Pulsation

Improvisation in Purple

Efflorescent Sensations

Nonstop Innovation

Homage to “Une barque sur l'océan” of Maurice Ravel

Musicality in Nivelais

Debussy and Nivelais: Breathing Arabesques

Versailles, Bauhaus and Nivelais

Ethereality

A Sartorial Duet

Concealing, Revealing, Framing

On the Rocks with a Twist

Multiple Viewpoints

About the Designer

Design and Art

The lace-embroidered top of this tiered evening gown may transport the observer to the Rococo era, evoking for instance the decorative cuff and cravat within the Portrait of François Boucher (1741) by Gustaf Lundberg, currently in the Sully II at the Louvre. With its jewel neckline, open shoulders and cap sleeves, historicism and convention seem to be the primary denotations of this garment. And yet, that narrative is fluently reversed through the layered and ruched gray silk of the bodice and trumpet-silhouetted skirt. Recalling the petals within the photograph titled Roses, Mexico (1924) by Tina Modotti of the Museum of Modern Art, the irregular, capricious layering of the textile indicates the designer’s unequivocal, formal commitment to modernity’s existential quests within what may be unstructured, layered, shallow, folded, lapped, accidental or petalled. The illusive dichotomy within this evening gown of Roland Nivelais translates as a discourse on the interdependent social functions of fashion and art within the framework of history.

Concave and convex forms alternate in the ground and upper levels of the façade of the groundbreaking architecture of Francesco Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane on Via del Quirinale in Rome, a Trinitarian monastery that was consecrated in 1646 and continues to be echoed, in one way or another, within the sculpture of Richard Serra and architecture of Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid. Borromini’s plasticity of Italian Baroque architecture is realized through successively concave, convex and concave bays at the ground level of this church, along with three corresponding concave bays on the upper level, except that the convex niche and balustrade of the middle bay usurp orderliness within Borromini’s handling of space. It is an analogous and arresting undulation of form with its curly, wavy and sinuous characteristics that is echoed in the ruffled silk front of the velvet gown by Roland Nivelais. With its strapless neckline, the fitted bodice of this black dress employs the silhouette of the female torso as an integral undulation of form, only to abstract, reiterate, multiply and liberate that motif within the frontal zone of the figure. This anterior simulation of the undulating silhouette, we can say, tactfully inverts the cultural definition of the garment from a concealment of the human form into its exposure, as cunningly attested by the gray lining that is visible frontally, a cultivated courier of interiority, a refined envoy of the female body and autonomous feminine selfhood. The ingenious undulation of form has been one recurring motif within the trajectory of the remarkable designs of Nivelais throughout the past three decades. Within the sensuality, grace, elegance and sophistication of the garments of Nivelais, the unquestionable suggestiveness of femininity is paired with cerebral nuances that momentarily transcend the definitions of body and mind, of temporality and style, of architecture and costume. Architecture is a gesture, claimed Wittgenstein. Fashion is a gesture, claims this austere velvet gown of Roland Nivelais.

In this metallic purple, off-the-shoulder evening gown, Roland Nivelais orchestrates fluid tiers of textile in a manner that accords the surface of the duchess satin to improvise optical rhythms of chiaroscuro upon an infrastructure that is rigidly fitted above the waistline. In turn, a purely abstract interchange of form is presented in front of the beholder, where light seems to take on the role of a herald that replicates the anterior muscles of the neck and clavicles of the model upon the surface of the bust, from its loosely defined neckline downward to the waist. Thus the garment manifests itself as a beguiling, optical exchange between the bare and concealed physiognomic features of the wearer. Though this formalist narrative of the tiered bodice is mainly reversed in the fully gathered skirt marked by its own improvisational twists that dissolve the boundaries of utility and grace, the duchess satin endures its task to inscribe ephemeral outlines, angles and curves across the liberated and free-flowing province of the gown. For a moment, the exceptional design of this garment, along with its handling of light, may conjure up not only the costumes represented in Antoine Watteau’s Gathering in a Park (1717–18) of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, but the brushstrokes, texture and paint of this pioneer of Rococo painting as well. 

The prominent floral pattern of this newly designed gown expands the signature style of Roland Nivelais from the gravity of its primarily solid fabrics to dialectical exchanges between the formalistic elements of figure and ground within the aesthetic arena of the dress. The underlying monochromatic, opaque, beige textile acting as a visual ground is thoroughly overlaid by the figures of a floral-embroidered lace that tactfully extends its black, ornamental motif above the chest line. In turn, this efflorescent pattern vanishes thoroughly in order to give way to a form of uninterrupted transparency that manifests the corporeal characteristics of the individual featuring this captivating, stately clothing. Accordingly, the function of the overlaying fabric swiftly reciprocates its role from an outer surface to an autonomous screen, from the presence of figuration to a form of absence, from illusion to abstraction. Along with the floral motifs that appear to predominate the visual vocabulary of this dress, the layering of black lace upon beige textile uncannily lends itself as an extension of the layering of skin upon flesh upon bone of the sensuous female physique, as culminated within the territory framed by the crew neckline and the borderline of the prevailing graphic representations of leaves, buds and blossomed flowers whose illusionistic petals seem to contain glimmers of anthers, filaments and stamens. Apart from such a narrative of this cleverly designed apparel of Roland Nivelais, another sensory implication seems to run parallel to the visual arc of the garment: if the floral motifs here call forth the aromatic materials and scents humanity derives from nature, fabricates and utilizes for olfactory delights, the ensuing absence of floral representation upon the gauze of the upper chest invokes the pleasures of the primal scents of the palpable body.

The structure of this riveting dress testifies to the ongoing innovations that the garments of Roland Nivelais demonstrate and hence contribute to the language of clothing that praises the female body. As varying tiers of navy blue satin delineate this strapless garment’s silhouette from the bust to the floor, streaks of sky blue appear and disappear rhythmically through a manner that suggests the theme of horizontality, only to cancel such a visual account since the entirety of the assembly of the tiered silk is quite capricious. As if this design of Nivelais were a compendium of a series of implicit stylistic approaches that have appeared in his collections of the past few seasons, this two-tone gown liberally reveals the aesthetic pleasures of rendering textile so as it invites vision to reflect upon rigidity versus looseness, order versus disarray, definition versus chance, change versus constancy and perhaps most notably the phenomenon of gravity. While above the belted waist the irregular tiers seem to effortlessly triumph gravity, a mirror image of that recurs below the waist; yet now it is the force of gravity that seems to attempt to declare its partial victory. These attributes of the shimmering tiers of satin are paired with an absorbing interchange between navy blue and sky blue colors that formulate the chromatic scene of the gown. Through interchanges between colors and lines, this intriguing evening gown of Nivelais concurrently presents line as a physical form, line as shadow and line as color within its beautiful visual realm.

Homage to “Une barque sur l'océan” of Maurice Ravel

Methodically formulated and mathematically distanced, nine equal bands of ultramarine blue silk originate symmetrically from each side of a vertical axis and ripple quietly, as they simultaneously assert and undo horizontality upon the physiognomic structure of the entrancing female figure’s upper back torso. As if it were a painterly allegory of “Une barque sur l'océan,” the third movement of the suite for solo piano of Maurice Ravel’s exquisite Miroirs, the systematic arrangement of the back of this garment by Roland Nivlais becomes reversed, syncopated, broken and transformed into sonorous ocean waves as we encounter the woman wearing this dress frontally. Spanning from off-the-shoulder neckline down to the waistline of the riveting feminine figure, the undulating ripples of silk crepe recall the fluid, arpeggiated melodies of Ravel, where the organic appeal of rhythm and melody of his early twentieth-century composition nonetheless remains framed within the clean lines, architectural clarity, crystalline texture and elegance of the music of the eighteenth century. It is such a duality of controlled measurement and sweeping bellows of fabric that we find integrated in this seafaring design of Nivelais, resonating as a tribute to Ravel.

Out of an orderly definition of a pair of overlapping and horizontally flowing Oxford Blue satin folds that emerge symmetrically from the central back of a gown, an off-the-shoulder portrait neckline becomes formulated in this alluring design of Roland Nivelais. Generously exposing the neck, shoulders and vast locale of the upper bust, the orderly delineation of the neckline seems to perform the inherent task of a stole as well, as its commensurate parts flow smoothly, courteously enfolding the figure of a famous socialite, a celebrity, a movie star, a prima donna, a starlet or a mysterious lady donning this graceful garment within her private residence—in company or pure solitude. Yet beneath this perfectly arranged visual dyad of the frontal view of the lady, the organization of harmony is abruptly liquidated, signaling aesthetic anguish, cries of dissonance and ambiguity, albeit not fully. For even within the relative rupture that dominates the rest of the bodice, the appealing rhythm of the uppermost flow does not entirely disappear. As a haptic dissonance following the harmonious configuration of the portrait neckline, the agitated textile comes across as a sculptural rendition of abstracted foliage with primary, secondary and even tertiary veins of leaves. Such leitmotifs appear to wipe out the thresholds of harmony and dissonance in a manner that is solely characteristic of the art of tailoring. Nevertheless, the contrasting means of handling of fabric in this work of Nivelais recalls one of the indispensable thoughts of Adorno on the music of the likes of Wagner and Schoenberg: “It is only in dissonance, which destroys the faith of those who believe in harmony, that the power of seduction of the rousing character of music survives.”[2] Like the acoustic collisions within Wagner’s Ring that render his music as a means of probing mankind’s trail in an open-ended manner, the interweaving of oppositional forms within this garment of Nivelais comes forth as a symbol of exposed, multiplied, composite and complex discernment, inhabiting the terrain above the isolated, simplistic site of the floor-length, A-line skirt.

A free-flowing, serpentine motif projects the V-shaped neckline outward upon this gown formulated by Roland Nivelais. The flowery design of the raised, ruffled neckline is shaped through a dark shade of navy blue silk, whose terminal edge is highlighted with the optical vibrancy of magenta. Protruding from the chest and neck of the beguiling female, the wavy ruffle almost fully caresses the neck, rendering it invisible. Yet this amorous narrative of fabric flying around the neckline is supported through a highly structured and tightly fitting, sleeveless bodice. Albeit curvaceous and undeniably arresting, the bodice acts as a minimalist stage set for an abstracted, tactile drama unfolding upon the subject featuring the garment and facing the viewer who experiences it optically. The taut design of the bodice continues its sartorial scenography below the waist, only to progressively reverse its course from embracing the torso into a departure toward a flaring silhouette, as it graciously flows toward the floor. In turn, upon the frontal, vertical central axis of the skirt, the organically defined and curvilinear motif recurs, develops, expands and progresses rhythmically, as if it were a material, tangible counterpart of “Arabesque No. 2” of Debussy, faster in tempo than the first arabesque of a pair that emphasizes irregular, breathing rhythms and dissonant meters. The pulsating, sinuous forms that bisect this garment’s frontal scene, cascading centrally through the lyricism of fluid linearity, enchantingly reverse their function from outer ornament to the reality of anteriority and an allegory of interiority. Despite the autonomy of the realms of music and clothing, the arabesques of Debussy occur over a duration of time and become mirrored here upon the breathing female body, whose performance through this gown of Nivelais sets its own temporal flow: somewhere between the structural and expressive characteristics of modern music and dance, somewhere upon the palpable body of the entrancing postmodern persona—recalling, imaginably, Patricia Kaas performing the “Hymne à l’amour” of Édith Piaf.

Having layered a sequined organza over satin, like an alchemist, Roland Nivelais renders the silhouette of the skirt ethereal, as if freeing it from the solidity of tangible matter, transforming the underlying lavender silk into a galaxy of tin, pewter, lead, steel, slate, ash, ice, silver, platinum, diamond. Above the lavish skirt of this strapless evening gown, the chromatic spectacle continues, yet now the free, graceful flow of loose textiles has been reversed through a dense, ruched bodice, where tight folds below the exposed chest offer the beholder palpable sensualities of silk upon skin, of artifice upon flesh, of cover upon essence, of façade upon corporeality. The silvery reflections of the sequined organza generate a shimmering effect, seemingly dematerializing the textile through the agency of light, ascending the garment into an aesthetic realm where apparel comes across as a mirage of the cosmic and ethereal. The stellar, diaphanous layer upon this gown alters the chromatic solidity of the principal lavender textile, harboring light, shadow and spatiality in between extrinsic and intrinsic shells. This space generated by Nivelais, framed by means of see-through and opaque materials, manifests itself as one of contemplation—not merely of the socially furnished female body, of sensuality and elegance, of historicity, of time, place and context, of taste and artfulness, but also as an epiphanic chimera of the macrocosm that culture continues observing and representing. Through the medium of fabrics, this design of Nivelais echoes Untitled (Falling Star), a phenomenal painting by Vija Celmins that depicts a star-clad sky. In Untitled (Starfield #4), Robert Longo articulates the vastness of the celestial through the medium of charcoal on paper that measures 94 by 48 inches, facing the spectator vertically as an apparition of the incomprehensible and infinite. In Andromeda, Damian Loeb masterfully portrays the nearest galaxy to our Milky Way. Through their own avenues, Celmins, Longo, Loeb and Nivelais mirror culture’s bewilderment and fascination while confronting the boundless cosmos.

If imagery can evoke music, would the duality of this cocktail dress formulated by Roland Nivelais, with its lofty sequined top and demure organza skirt, come across as a visual counterpart of the iconic duet “Under Pressure” of Queen and David Bowie or that of the epochal piano duet Fantasia in F Minor of Franz Schubert? Perhaps both or neither, based upon the extent to which an exegesis adheres to the boundaries of a particular logical method or otherwise intends to generously wander across the borderlines of sensations, transforming them into cultural tissues of correlations that exceed reasoning and lexical categorizations. “The great aesthetic figures of thought and the novel but also of painting, sculpture, and music produce affects that surpass ordinary affections and perceptions,” muse Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.[4] As Nivelais pairs the glittering, long-sleeve, boat-neck, fitted top with an understated, tiered organza, flaring skirt in dark navy that glimmers light metaphorically transmitted through the galactic radiance of the bodice, the sartorial duet that emanates runs parallel to Schubert’s Fantasia. Such visual and sonic interchanges consist not only of the two players at one piano of Schubert’s Fantasia, but perhaps more outstandingly of the nearly Hungarian, lyrical melody of the first movement, ‘Allegro molto moderato,’ that would be followed by the turbulent fortissimo of the second movement, ‘Largo.’ While the subdued, crisply pressed, overlapping layers of organza and silk that articulate the skirt of Nivelais connote the earnest theme within Schubert’s opening movement, it is the dazzling, sparkly radiance of the sleeves and bodice of this dress that registers as a counterpart of the explosive fortissimo of Schubert. The uplifting harmonies and commanding crescendos of the duet of “Under Pressure” of Queen and Bowie—even when solely instrumental—respectively appear as materialized abstractions within the austere skirt and extravagant bodice of this sartorial improvisation of Nivelais, one that freely exposes the enticing female body through a plunging back neckline.

To conceal and reveal at once: such is the double purpose of this captivating evening gown, whereupon the leopard-embellished tulle opulently veils and reveals the sensuality of skin and the textile that conceals the female body. Appearing as a sheath embellished with crystals resting upon a solid sheath in beige and upon flesh, this design of Roland Nivelais presents rhetorical interchanges between the natural and cultural, zoomorphic and ornamental, adventurous and understated, glittery and reserved, striking and simplistic, recalling a passage from Marcel Proust’s Time Regained: “Mme Verdurin invited to such parties some rather recent ladies, known for their charitable works, who at first came strikingly dressed, with great pearl necklaces. Odette possessed one as fine as any and formerly had rather overdone exhibiting it but now she was in war dress, and imitating the ladies of the Faubourg, she eyed them severely. But women know how to adapt themselves. After wearing them three or four times, these ladies observed that the dresses they considered chic were for that very reason proscribed by the people who were chic and they laid aside their golden gowns and resigned themselves to simplicity.” Here, Nivelais materially overlaps “excess” and “simplicity,” generating a discourse that formulates the notion of glamour as a frame of the subdued. With its abstracted leopard motif, the tulle frames the formal neutrality of the underlying satin that in turn frames the feminine torso. Hence the ornamented, lavish tulle of Nivelais renders the primary garment as an allegory of one abstract, blank canvas contained within a lush frame located underneath an identical, second frame hanging directly upon flesh that renders itself as an allegory of architectural support. Here the support of both frames is in essence the entrancing feminine torso and female selfhood that intuitively engages within the realms of thought, form, material, historicism, aesthetics and pleasure. “The parergon [frame, garment, column] can augment the pleasure of taste,” states Jacques Derrida momentarily in his discourse of aesthetics.[5] Hence frame, garment, column, architecture and by extension all forms of design come across as embodiment of cultural models of selfhood—at once conceptually, aesthetically and materially.

27–29 SEPTEMBER 2019

Cité de la musique—Philharmonie de Paris.

“Created in 1979, the beloved duo would have turned 40 this year. Catherine Ringer, an exuberant singer and performer who fully embraces scenic fantasy, revives the highly tonic and eminently garish music of Les Rita Mitsouko, the iconic duo from the French music scene.”

The electrifying royal blue of this evening gown enraptures the viewer’s sense of sight, manifesting lustrous reflections of light upon the skirt, only to shift its luminous and palpable properties upon the bodice, where the embellished tulle top elegantly reveals the upper chest of the riveting lady exhibiting this recent design of Roland Nivelais. As the observer examines the properties of the tiered pleats of the skirt frontally, it is the randomness of form that gives rise to the aesthetic pleasure of the skirt, for within the beholder’s field of vision that is delineated by the trumpet silhouette, the playfully rendered pleats come across as curvilinear forms that are not governed by a particular geometric order. Randomness, chance and approximation, one assumes, predicate the syntax of the skirt’s design. Yet as the viewpoint of the beholder shifts to the back of the garment, the skirt manifests a uniformly ordered, geometricized and countable set of pleats, rendering the overall design of the dress illusive. Within the inventions of Nivelais, inasmuch as a garment articulates the female figure through such parameters as distinctive color, well-appointed textile, suitable fit and admirable silhouette that culminate in formality, the spatiotemporal and visual experiences of the beholder remain indispensable for the garment’s interpretation. As confronting Untitled (1991) by Donald Judd at the Museum of Modern Art necessitates the viewer’s physical movement around the object to gain visual access to the color of a given cubic compartment, it is the changing perspective of the viewer in relation to the evening gown of Nivelais that unravels its form. Maurice Merleau-Ponty states, “It is of the essence of my vision to refer not only to an alleged visible entity, but also to a being actually seen.”[6] Alongside the ornamental motifs and glittering beads employed by Roland Nivelais as paradoxical forms of nostalgic recentness, it is the spectator’s perception from multiple viewpoints that exemplifies the essence of his couture.

—New York, February 2019

The outstanding collections of women's formal wear of this French-American designer embody a set of notable benchmarks: refined femininity, classicism, timeless aesthetics through contemporary materials, luxurious fabrics, superb craftsmanship and implicit inventiveness.

An evening gown or a cocktail dress by Roland Nivelais steadily follows the sensual lines of the female body and has the efficacy to transfigure the image of a woman to that of a ravishing lady. While the cowl neckline of a long-sleeved silk gown in midnight blue seems to affirm conformity, for instance, the V neckline on the back and the split sleeves of the same garment subtly transgress conformity.

Since the early eighties, the designs of Roland Nivelais have continued to convey touches of the paradoxical: understated extravagance and restrained exuberance. Always engineered to flatter the body and femininity, the seemingly classical architecture of an evening gown by Roland Nivelais can deftly implode order through the transient play of light and shadow upon its monochromatic fabric, unexpected drapery and formlessness within its controlled structure. Classicism and contemporaneity are eloquently intertwined within the designs of Roland Nivelais.

The elegant, sophisticated and lavish garments of this atelier are designed in New York and produced in the United States, Italy or France. They are available through Bergdorf Goodman and other luxury retailers across the United States.

Notes

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1962), trans. Colin Smith (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), p. 407.

2. Theodor Adorno, Dissonanzen (Gotingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1963). Alain Badiou, Cinq leçons sur le cas Wagner (Paris: Nous, 2010); or Alain Badiou, Five Lessons on Wagner, trans. Susan Spitzer with an afterword by Slavoj Žižek (London and New York: Verso, 2010).

3. For a highly revealing essay on Mies, see Fritz Neumeyer, “Mies’s First Project: Revisiting the Atmosphere at Klösterli,” in Mies in Berlin, ed. Terence Riley and Barry Bergdoll (New York: The Museum of Modern Art and Harry N. Abrams, 2001), pp. 309–17.

4. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? (1991) trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 65.

5. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting (1978), trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 64.

6. Merleau-Ponty, p. 375.