WEAPON-WEAR 🔥 #DACBE: “Before, I would cut myself off from expressing in certain ways because I thought I shouldn’t do that,” #MowalolaOgunlesi said before her Paris debut. But the designer learned that “whatever feeds me, I should just do it.” What was feeding #Mowalola this season was thievery and evolving her aesthetic beyond the trenches, tees, and accessories she is known for. She titled her collection “Burglarwear,” inspired by all types of criminals, from kidnappers to stockbrokers to the priesthood. More on the JOURNAL 💥 #ParisFashionWeek #PFW #Paris #ArnoldBöcklin #DACBECOLLECTIONS ☄️ #collage by me.
FULL BLOOM 🌷 #DACBE: At #Dior, #KimJones does what he does best: combining contemporary elegance with art references, creating menswear that’s profound and desirable. #SS23 is about two houses, joined by a garden in full bloom: Christian Dior’s Granville in Normandy and Charleston in Sussex, where 20th century bohemian #BloomsburyGroup created and thrived. Owned by the artists #VanessaBell and #DuncanGrant, who pursued their free-love gender non-conforming lifestyle with guests in the isolated countryside away from London, it’s a place that became Jones’ favourite point of reference in the last years. More on the JOURNAL 🌾 #ParisFashionWeek #PFW #Paris #CharlestonFarmhouse #Menswear #DACBECOLLECTIONS 🌸 #collage by me.
PARIS 🥐 #DACBE: For #SS23, #Ami went for the timeless, effortless and somewhat cliché, but always très cool theme: the Parisian chic. For the fashion show, the guests were at the top of #Paris, in the grounds of La basilique du Sacré-Cœur with the city laid out below, gleaming in the sunny dusk. Catherine Deneuve and Carla Bruni were in the audience alongside Naomi Campbell and Jonathan Bailey. Extraordinarily, #AudreyTautou – Sacré-Cœur’s Amelie herself – was lured out of her long public retreat to open the show. More on the JOURNAL 👄 #ParisianChic #AlexandreMattiussi #PFW #ParisFashionWeek #DACBECOLLECTIONS 🥖 #collage by me.
VIBE SHIFT 🍇 #DACBE: For #DriesVanNoten, the #SS23 menswear collection wasn’t just a bold return to the Parisian runway, but also an aesthetics shift. “The Zazous in Paris in the 1940s, and Buffalo in London in the 1980s. Both were in periods which were a bit similar. Hard times. So we wanted to make our own version of that.” In these, our disturbingly Right-swinging times, you could catch the significance of the timing behind Van Noten’s wanting to work a queer anti-authoritarian reference. More on the JOURNAL 🍷 #Paris #PFW #ParisFashionWeek #Menswear #Dandy #Burgundy #DACBECOLLECTIONS 🥀 #collage by me.
FIRE 🌋 #DACBE: The #RickOwens #SS23 show gave armageddon vibes. Or at least that is what the massive fire orbs, lifted by crane high above the guests, and then dropped to a sizzling impact in the Palais de Tokyo fountain were there to represent. Ruminating during the line-out pre-show, Owens said: “the fireballs are flaming suns, arcing across the sky, and crashing to the ground. But I did it on repeat because it happens over and over.” He was referring to human fear of our extinction – whether through war, pestilence, or other generationally specific worst case scenario. “’I’m always trying to reassure myself that whatever is happening in the world right now – whatever conflict or crisis or discomfort – it’s happened before. And somehow goodness has always triumphed over evil, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here now.” Those words bring glimpse of hope especially in 2022, with war happening in Ukraine and Supreme Court’s outrageous overturning of Roe v. Wade. More on the JOURNAL ☄️ #Paris #ParisFashionWeek #PFW #WorldOnFire #Menswear #DACBECOLLECTIONS 🔥 #collage by me.
HARMONIOUS SUBLIMITY 🧡 #DACBE: #HedMayner‘s menswear collections are Paris Fashion Weeks’ moments of harmonious sublimity. In his notes, Mayner made it clear that he doesn’t do “overwrought statements of seasonal quirk.” Rather, season after season he revisits scaled-up proportions, honing them as a sculptor might. “I started by trying to build a silhouette that has a strong contact between front and back, and just being this two-dimensional look with a contrast,” the designer offered backstage of his #SS23 line-up. More on the JOURNAL ⏳ #PFW #Paris #ParisFashionWeek #Menswear #ManFashion #DACBECOLLECTIONS 🧺 #collage by me.
WHAT’S MODERN? 🧤 #DACBE: #JonathanAnderson is nailing it again, being in his cheeky, surreal element. For men’s #JWAnderson #SS23, the said he’d been moved by “the shock of theater” to shape a collection that tested our perceptions of clothing and modernity. The BMX handlebars, shattered skate decks and CDs were there to remind us of the ephemerality of modernity, and its inevitable descent into anachronism. The wearable assemblages were a witty commentary regarding overconsumption. “Fashion is a very modern device,” he said. “But it is not a modern act.” More on the JOURNAL 👖 #Milan #MilanFashionWeek #MFW #Denim #Resort2023 #DACBECOLLECTIONS 👔 #collage by me.
SURFBOARD 🏄🏼♂️ #DACBE: For #SS23, #DsQuared2 went surf-boy-mode. Dean and Dan Caten’s layering extravaganza inspired by surf culture and 1970s Jamaica is just what a stinking-hot summer wardrobe needs and wants. The Catens worked with the Bob Marley Foundation, which granted them permission to reproduce a portrait of the reggae genius on T-shirts, beach totes, and bags. “We liked the vibe of that time, and the freedom and rebellion he represented,” they said backstage. “Peace and love, and the joy of music.” More on the JOURNAL 🌺 #MilanFashion #Milan #MFW #SurfBoard #SurfBoy #SurfLife #VanessaReid #DACBECOLLECTIONS 🐚 #collage by me.
ARRIVAL ✨ #DACBE: For her brilliant #SS23 collection, #GraceWalesBonner mentioned “Sankofa”. This bird-looking-backwards symbol of Ghana’s Akan people, she said: “means’ ‘going back to go forward.’ It is not about being nostalgic or historical. It’s about taking something from the past in order to pass it forward and make it useful for the future. And that’s the spirit of this collection.” #WalesBonner was speaking in the central courtyard of #Florence’s #PalazzoMediciRiccardi, the key space of #PittiUomo event. The Palazzo had been waiting 485 years – the time since it was once home to the first Black head of state in modern Europe – to become the outbound runway for Grace’s Sankofa flightpath. Its starting cipher was #AlessandroDeMedici, who until his assassination in 1537 at the hand of a cousin ruled here as the first hereditary monarch of the Florentine Republic. His mother was named #SimonettaDaCollevecchio – aka “Soenara” – and was Black. She became mother to Alessandro after an encounter with either Duke Lorenzo (the official father) or Pope Clement VII. “I wanted to acknowledge that presence but also think about the idea of arrival,” said Wales Bonner. More on the JOURNAL ❤️🔥 #Menswar #ManFashion #KerryJamesMarshall #LiyaKebede #DACBECOLLECTIONS ❣️ #collage by me.
IT’S HOT, HOT 👄 #DACBE: “I never gave up on being dressed, even when the trend was about sportswear,” says #SaintLaurent’s #AnthonyVaccarello of his #PreFall2022 collection, the until-now-unseen curtain raiser to his sublime and epic winter show, presented earlier this year. “I am glad that people want to dress up again, because for me nothing has changed.” More on the JOURNAL 💄 #SoChic #ItsHot #FauxFur #YSL #Sublime #DACBECOLLECTIONS 💋 #collage by me, music: “Heroin” by #LanaDelRey.
Design & Culture by Ed 