Construction. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt AW24

Belgian designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is working her way through the building blocks of a woman’s wardrobe, and her third runway collection proves she has a capacity to do that. The show she put for autumn-winter 2024 is devoted to the skirt. Her idea was to test the skirt’s versatility and to explore its possibilities. There were a couple of midi skirts that she also showed as trapeze dresses, the waistband slipping asymmetrically off a bare shoulder; coats with collars that looked more like waistbands; and bags of all sizes designed with horizontal zips – remove the middle sections and guess what they look like? “Skirt skirt, dress skirt, coat skirt, bag skirt,” is how she put it on her press notes. Even the wedding dress finale was constructed simply, like a skirt with hoops that gave it its tenting volume. Adam-Leenaerdt used to work at Demna’s Balenciaga, and the designer is very assertive in making the codes she formed at the brand now her own. So no, these volumes, saturated color palettes, and cape-coats aren’t Balenciaga knock-offs. They originally were 100% Marie Adam-Leenaerdt.