Women. Victoria Beckham Resort 2024

June 2, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Victoria Beckham – and her design team – seem to enjoy a newly found freedom in their creative process. The brand’s aesthetic can’t be as easily categorized as in the past: Beckham’s fashion is no longer about minimalism, that’s for sure. Rather, it’s about contemporary femininity that needs no labels. As she puts it: “There really is a strong reality in the garments. Everything looks really quite simple, but it’s all about the consideration, the execution, and the subtle details.” Somewhere along the line, her collections have assumed a non-uptight flow that strikes a good balance between usefulness and sophistication. Her confident assemblages of tailoring and mostly ankle-grazing fluid dresses have been garnering critical approval since she started showing in Paris a couple of seasons back. Still, it always takes a little while for a look to sink in, and then it’s another thing to follow up with tangible product that follows through on a good runway impression. Her spring pre-collection makes it clear that she’s got that covered as well. Asymmetry plays another role in her dressmaking. It’s not always easy to understand dresses that fly off madly in all sorts of directions, but here Beckham is using the possibilities of bias cutting, ruching, and collaging to great effect. Some of her eveningwear has the air of 1930s dance dresses, minus the vintage-y feel. There are day dresses that are somehow patchworked from pattern pieces that run in diagonals and seem to spiral around the body. You notice the dynamic lines because of the white piping edging each component. All that plays into hanger appeal, provoking the kind of curiosity liable to make a woman want to try something on rather than pass (as we do so often) because it looks too difficult. “I think it’s just about finding a point of difference,” Beckham observed. That doesn’t sound like much, but in a world overloaded with competing product from high street to haute level, such considerations count for a lot.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Ecclesiastical. Balenciaga Resort 2024

May 30, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Ever since Demna‘s beginnings in fashion, honest and straightforward observation of how people dress on the street and for various occupations has always been a dynamic behind his design. The scenario playing out in his new Balenciaga resort 2024 video is very much that way, except that this time the street is the Avenue Georges V. The time-lapse slice-of-life captures people busily going in and out of the Balenciaga maison at number 10, or passing by. Whether they’re denim-clad teens, a motorcycle delivery person, a bourgeois dog walker, a skateboarder, or the retinues of black-clad hoodie-up fashion people going about their business – this is how the whole world would look if everyone dressed in Balenciaga. Underlining the fact that Demna is steering the brand narrative back to Paris, and to the house, he punningly named the collection Capital B. His second take on the collection is by way of a lookbook, apparently shot in grand rooms that variously overlook the Place Vendome and the Arc de Triomphe. Here, his perma-silhouettes are clearly in view: the oversized suiting, enveloping trapezoid coats and puffed-up trenches, the hoodies, and the bug-eyed shades with almost everything. As a pre-collection it encompasses every Balenciaga category, womenswear and menswear, formal black tailoring to denim, motorcycle leathers and sweatpants. Interspersed are also pieces from the high-luxe “Garde-Robe” collection, which are an annual release, such as the silver-fringed embroidered dress at the end. And of course the Cristobal Balenciaga-inspired ecclesiastical gowns and chasuble coats: the ultimate highlights of this very well-executed collection, which is about good dose of drama (in the clothes, not in anything around it!).

Indulgences. Bottega Veneta Pre-Fall 2023

May 27, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

“At the end of the day, we had a lot of pleasure just making clothes that we want to wear ourselves,” Matthieu Blazy summed up the creative process behind his Bottega Veneta‘s pre-fall 2023 collection. “But it’s not just me. It’s the studio, and it’s the woman who works on fabric.” As it has been from his start at Bottega Veneta, material is a major preoccupation. The boxy t-shirt and denim pencil skirt pictured in the first photo are actually leather, but additionally the leather button-downs that have fast become brand icons have also been made in silk so they’re wearable year-round. Blazy said the development of the collection was a reaction to what he sees as a preponderance of heavy fabrics in the market. “To build up volume, it’s easy to take a heavy fabric and sculpt; we did the opposite, we tried to lighten everything in order for people to move and not be constrained at all.” That came across most clearly in a pair of special dresses, one with volume at the hips created by exposed fabric knots, and another with slits cut into puffy sleeves that draped from high shoulders. That quest for lightness doesn’t mean the clothes lacked indulgences. A bronze sequin coat is bound to feel as good to the touch as it is attractive to gaze upon. Same for a lilac crushed velvet dress with a cool zippered neckline. The ultimate indulgence may be the leather jeans woven in the house intreccio style; this season they come in a silver chrome. They’re trophies of a kind. Other Bottega Veneta customers might be tempted by the cozy hand knits, one of which features Blazy’s dog John John. I need it in my life!

Isola Bella. Louis Vuitton Resort 2024

May 25, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

As a vivid nay-sayer of Nicolas Ghesquière‘s recent work at Louis Vuitton, I will admit it: the resort 2024 collection is BRILLIANT. It’s Ghesquière fashion – intelligent, quirky, high-and-low, time-proof, self-referential – that I love and truly missed for the last couple of years. His resort show yesterday (nearly) happened at the terraced gardens of Isola Bella, a tiny private island in Lake Maggiore that has belonged to Italy’s Borromeo clan for 500 years. Ferrying the likes of Catherine Deneuve, Oprah Winfrey, and Cate Blanchett, plus 1,000 or so other guests to the spectacular venue was quite the feat, but not even the powerhouse that is Louis Vuitton can change the weather. The rain was coming down in sheets, and plans for a sunset show and after-party en plein air had to be scrapped, though an earlier show was staged to create these images. The lake produces its own climate and Ghesquière was much inspired by the watery surroundings. “We started with the idea that the girls were coming from the water, like mermaids of the lake, and they’re transforming to something else,” he said. The explanation tied together a collection of many distinct proposals. Ghesquière tends to think freer and looser when he’s untethered from Paris, but this sci-fi fantasy had the dreaminess of a fairytale. It started with scuba gear featuring fin-like collars and water droplet embellishments. A pair of diving jackets were elaborately printed in a way that conjured both Hokusai waves and the creatures that might be living underneath them. He mixed neoprene tank suits with lavish courtly robes, and paired mermaid-scale sequin skirts with naval jackets. The baroque headgear was custom-made for the show by an atelier in Rome that works for the opera and movies. This was the French house’s first-ever show in Italy (a timely choice given its new CEO Pietro Beccari is Italian) and Ghesquière wanted to pay tribute to the country’s patrimony of craft. Then the mermaids found their sea legs. His everyday pieces included brushed cashmere sweaters in soft pastels that he described as Italian colors, button-downs and “jeans” in embroidered lace and sumptuous brocades, and classically cut coats that topped sequined floral dresses inspired by the island’s plantings.

“By the end the mermaid becomes a flower, but maybe not a flower that exists,” Ghesquière said. That notion produced a group of long dresses in more of those pastel shades that qualified as real news for the designer, who has typically shied away from gowns on the runway at LV. They were delicate and bold simultaneously, a mix of silk, georgette, organza, and lace from their softly draped bodices and pouf sleeves to their sculptural, swingy hems. Who needs mysterious lakes when you have the power of imagination? Who wants quiet luxury when you can have a couture-level cape with water droplet beading or a quilted damask jacket featuring wyvern, unicorn, and other legendary creatures? A captivating, transportive show.

In The Alps. Rier AW23

May 23, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

After watching the very brilliant film The Eight Mountains by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, my mind instantly returned to Rier – the fashion brand that has its roots in the Alps. The label was established in 2018, based on a long research of different craftsmen, artisans, small family-run businesses and various fabric suppliers throughout Austria, Italy and France. The focus of Rier is on natural materials, timeless quality, handcrafted items and a completely unisex wardrobe (take the wool fleece hoodies or velvet jackets embroidered with alpine flowers). Andreas Steiner is the owner and founder, and his label’s aesthetic is deeply personal, as the designer himself was raised in the South Tyrolean Alps. At Rier, timelessness takes a central role. In respect of nature and a more conscious consumer behavior, all designs have to respect longevity, aesthetically and quality wise. Rier finds inspiration in the South Tyrolean countryside lifestyle and the contemporary urban environment. The appreciation for nature, heritage and savoir-faire take a central role in the working process of the brand, while pushing gender boundaries and the disruption of traditional codes. Rier’s aim is to safeguard the incredible know-how and technical skills that are locally available – and often underrated. As the designer sums it up, “I love the freedom of disrupting traditions and conferring a new and free spirited mindset to this historical items, shifting them in time and location between city and countryside.” Ultimate must-haves from the 2023 collection? The boots made in collaboration with historical Viennese shoe manufacturer Ludwig Reiter and all the accessories crafted by a local South Tyrolean artist according to century-old leather working techniques.