Christopher Esber Spring 2024 Ready-to-Wear

Australian designer Christopher Esber has been presenting collections in Paris for years now, but this season marked his first official, on-calendar runway show. And given that his particular brand of bodycon dressing has already been over-copied in recent years, he seized this occasion to throw a few new ideas into the mix. Taking inspiration from nature is a recurring motif, and here he used an elliptic stone to anchor a draped, ruched swath of a white bodice that pushed his taste for negative space into bold new terrain. (Yes, it stays in place, he insisted.) Other dresses pushed the envelope in similar ways, baring a breastbone here, a navel there, or perhaps a hip bone. When it came to naked dressing, however, a pair of handmade latticed-crystal tops stole the show.