Design & Culture by Ed

One of the most intriguing runway debuts of the season belonged to Vautrait, the Paris-based brand established in 2021 by Yonathan Carmel. Every label today tries to join the conversation around tailoring, but most of these efforts end up looking pretty much the same. Vautrait however is different. For a young brand, it’s astounding how mature its designs are – just take a look at Carmel’s autumn-winter 2024 show to get what I mean. Take the statuesque wool jacket with a nonchalantly notched label. Or the oversized trench coat with cognac leather, vest-like insert with big, utilitarian pockets. Or the black coat with broad shoulders and faux-fur-trimmed collar and cuffs (from afar it looks like crow feathers). These pieces say: we’re classics. Carmel champions traditional crafts as the key to sustainable creations that shape and accompany the body over the course of its life. According to the designer, the evolution of the body echoes the passage of time, developing and revealing new qualities and properties, just like vintage wine transcends the grapes its contains. Embracing the signs of age thus emboldens Vautrait’s designs that shun a system and its unattainable standards, so focused on establishing temporary and disposable stuff. Yonathan is one of this year’s LVMH Prize semi-finalists. The competition in this edition is especially tough, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Niccolò Pasqualetti‘s work is like olfactory memory: it can be both elusive and evocative, you nearly think you’ve caught it, but then it fleets like a butterfly and you want to catch it once again. For autumn-winter 2024, the Italian designer and LVMH Prize semi-finalist, muses about ways of dressing formed by gestures, some re-imagined from Etruscan ruins and Renaissance frescoes, some observed in our contemporary times. In fact, an extension of fabric, thrown over the shoulder, makes a garment appear out of nothing but instinct: that’s the case with this line-up’s stunning tailoring and cape-like coats. Solid shapes, cut from cloth, are draped so that their solidity gives way to something more fluid. The latest collection orbits around the idea of riffling through the wardrobe, stuffed with old, but cherished clothes, and how the textures you encounter sweep you away from the present: denim from pairs of jeans in all different washes, scraps from a faux fur coat, a classic tweed blazer starting to fray. Pasqualetti also has an incredible sense of clashing textures and fabrications, which might origin from the fact he started out as a jewelry designer. Sheets of rigid metal collapse into themselves like sheets of paper. Worn as jewellery – a brooch to secure a scarf, a pair of earrings, a cuff over the sleeve – or even as clothing, the shiny warped surface reflects and distorts its surroundings. In the distorted reflection, you see wooden pearls assembled into a kind of “armor”, and leather which looks like crocodile skin forming a variation on the archaic silhouette: the pannier.

Styling: Samuel Drira Photography: Cécile Bortoletti Art direction: Sybille Walter Hair: Mayu Morimoto Makeup: Asami Kawai Casting: Chouaïb Arif Assistance: Eva Rapti Press release: Rhys Evans