Rejuvenating. Valentino Pre-Fall 2022

May 11, 2022May 13, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Keeping a consistent narrative is crucial for a brand’s credibility today; Gen Z customers, the demographic coveted by every luxury house, are drawn to designers whose work is creative and value-driven in equal measure. That dynamic isn’t lost on Pierpaolo Piccioli, who has rebooted Valentino for a new audience, amping up the brand’s cultural ethos to resonate with the zeitgeist. Pivoting on the label’s extraordinary couture heritage, Piccioli’s focus is to translate the codes of Italian savoir faire into an aesthetic that, while staying true to its high-style fundamentals, speaks to the attitudes of fashion’s younger consumers. This ongoing exercise somehow peaked, both visually and conceptually, in Piccioli’s spring collection last October, paraded in the streets of Paris with fashion students filling many of the seats. Models sported individual looks styled to suit their personality, further highlighting the intent to relate to the world of today. Picking up where that show left off, the words ‘real’ and ‘reality’ came up quite often in a conversation with the designer about pre-fall. Piccioli believes that the aesthetic codes of the maison can be given a different meaning by shifting the way they’re interpreted by the wearer. To that end, for pre-fall he worked on pieces quintessentially Valentino (so much so that some templates came directly from couture collections), but “shuffled the attitude,” as he said, and tweaked the styling to create a sort of dissonance and vitality.

Shot in the streets of London on young models, the lookbook images were conceived as a “portrait of a generation that wears clothes not necessarily different from those of 10, 20 years ago, but which are adapted to today’s lifestyle and our real social context,” said Piccioli. Case in point was the little black dress, a staple for cocktail receptions in a bourgeois milieu that Piccioli believes can be twisted into a sort of clubbing uniform. On the same note, an immaculate short white cape with matching pleated shirt that would’ve looked apropos on Marisa Berenson in the ‘70s if paired with high heels and a silk blouse, was given a cooler spin styled with a cropped marinière and chunky loafers. A sumptuous purple robe coat, lavishly embroidered with the Valentino atelier’s handcrafted couture techniques was turned into a citycoat and worn over a pair of distressed denim pants. The challenge Piccioli faces is to immerse into today’s complex reality a label whose imagery is rarefied and rooted in a world of privilege, twisting the references and techniques of couture to suit a modern way of dressing that favors personality instead of status. “I want to breathe life into Valentino,” he reiterated. “I want its idea of perfect beauty to be somehow stained, so to speak, by the reality of today’s life, and to make it alive and relevant for a community of people with no reverence towards fashion, but who inhabit fashion with sentiment and an attitude of personal creativity.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Take Her To Monte Carlo. Chanel Resort 2023

May 6, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

The day before presenting her Chanel resort collection on a sandy runway slicing through the pebbles of the Hotel Monte-Carlo Beach, the brand’s artistic director Virginie Viard was in a nostalgic mood. As she garlanded her models in jewelry dripping with gilded dolphins and sea shells in the cavernous space of the hotel’s poolside Art Deco ballroom, Viard recalled many happy moments spent with Karl Lagerfeld in the monied, minuscule principality where he maintained an apartment and leased the extraordinary Belle Epoque villa La Vigie. It was on the terraces of this villa that Viard remembered Lagerfeld shooting Linda and Christy in the iconic sequin scuba jackets from his spring 1991 collection. “That was very funny,” she recalled, “I adore La Vigie. At the end I was here every year: for the Bal de la Rose, with Karl, Caroline, Charlotte, for shootings… We would always go to Rampoldi, Karl’s favorite restaurant.” It was those memories of Princess Caroline and her equally beauteous daughter Princess Charlotte that infused the spirit of the collection, as well as a playful take on what else Monte Carlo means to the designer – “the casino, Helmut Newton’s girls, the car races… we like to play with all the cliches!” As Viard added, the inspiration drew on collective memories. Sofia Coppola, for instance, who filmed the resort collection with her brother Roman this season, remembered a family trip to watch Ayrton Senna race in the 1992 Monaco Grand Prix – “noisy, glamorous, exciting!” said Coppola – when they were all invited to stay at La Vigie.

Thinking of those races by way of Charlie’s Angels, Viard dressed her girls in a racing driver’s all-in-ones and mechanic’s overalls, although these were sequined and, perhaps, designed as trompe l’oeil jacket and pant combinations. There were silk prints of waving starter flags fashioned into drifting chiffon skirts to graze the ankles, and tweeds woven from images of massed cars on the tracks, abstracted on the loom into a shimmer of asphalt gray and brilliant primaries. And for purses, how about an adorable mini full-face driver’s helmet? Sure to be high on the Chanel addict’s must-have list. There are also wrestling shorts, biker jackets, cricket sweaters, and tennis rackets if you are so inclined. The Helmut Newton inspiration, meanwhile, meant some sexy attitude in the shirt dresses slouched off a shoulder and a plethora of short shorts and minis that brought with them the promise of summer. The wonders of the 19M ateliers of craftspeople were reflected in touches like the bouquets of beautifully crafted silk flowers, an evening slink bristling with feather fronds (both supplied by Lemarié), and witty t-shirts sequined to suggest racing driver’s tops (sleeves branded with linking Cs), or scattered with pretty floreate embroideries by the storied houses of Lesage and Montex. “It’s very inspiring to be here,” said Viard, looking across to the pool and the Mediterranean waters to the high rise metropolis rising up the hills beyond, “It’s easy.” Just like Viard’s breezy collection and her uncomplicated vision for dressing today’s Chanel woman.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Island Of Misfits. Thom Browne AW22

May 2, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Thom Browne‘s jaw-dropping autumn-winter 2022 show added up to the pre-Met-Gala, statement-fashion buzz that’s going on all over New York right now. But Browne’s collection had little to do with Gilded Glamour (the theme of today’s gala), and more with another Metropolitan Museum Of Art’s fashion subject from a couple of years ago: Comme Des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo. Of course, Thom’s collections are always extraordinary, but this season, the signature gray wool suits went Comme – meaning conceptual, statuesque, big. And this is a major compliment for any contemporary designer. Giant yarns made up knits, some looks were pleated to resemble a slinky, and one preppy sweater was molded into a literal ball. It was all densely layered and piled up on precarious heels composed of schoolhouse blocks spelling out T-H-O-M-B-R-O-W-N-E. Then came the toys, where you could only giggle at the ballooning proportions of a lobster look and at the mania of Browne’s craft. The loveliest dolls in the dollhouse were a teal diagonally striped prom dress and a similar gown-ish green column layered atop an oversize white button down. It wasn’t messy – Browne’s patterns always meet, his hems are always tailored to immaculate precision – but it looked like it had lived a little. According to the designer, this collection is about New York as “an island of misfit toys” and the way people come to the city “to find themselves and to create themselves,” he said. The line-up was presented as a Ted Talk – cue the pun – led by model Rocky Harwell dressed as a Thom Browne teddy bear to an audience of stuffed teddies in little Thom Browne suits. Well, this is definitely one of my favourite TB collections in a while!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

La Grotta Azzura. Emilio Pucci AW22

April 30, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Emilio Pucci is one of these Italian luxury brands that have a rich, idiosyncratic legacy and a full package of well-known style codes, but somehow a number of contemporary designers that took it under their wings in the last couple of years never could put their finger on it. Maybe expect for Peter Dundas, whose ultra-sexy, jet-set nomad vision put Pucci on a very specific shelf of glossy Real-Housewives-kind-of clients. And then, suddenly, Camille Miceli arrived to this kaleidoscope-printed world in 2021. Her debut collection, entitled La Grotta Azzurra, is an optimistic start of the new Pucci chapter.

The designer touched down in Capri – Marchese Emilio Pucci’s beloved holiday destination – this week with her launch collection, making a splash in the late-April waters with an intense “experience” enjoyed by 160 guests flown in from Paris, Milan, and London. The US contingent was represented by the rapper Gunna, whose performance capped off three Pucci-fied days of activations and dolce vita – decadent dinners and hours-long lunches at Bagni di Tiberio; morning yoga classes for stylish Pucci yoginis; and “how-to-style-a-scarf” lessons in the label’s store on Via Camerelle. The see-now, buy-now collection was presented live in various tableaux vivants throughout the island, with Pucci-clad models looking very Slim Aarons in the surroundings. “Pucci isn’t a conceptual brand, it’s a lifestyle brand, so its message has to be direct,” she said. For Miceli it means energizing it further, amping up the joie de vivre factor already embedded in its codes. Energy is an attractive trans-generational attitude, and permeating the label with a positive, slightly trippy vibe will help engage for a wider, younger audience. Miceli also highlighted what she called Pucci’s “humanity and peculiar sensibility,” which she enhanced, for example, by creating hand-drawn iterations of the famous prints. “I think that digitized patterns strip Pucci’s motifs of the imperfections that are part of their unique charm,” she explained. In the new collection, which is full of simple (and at points simply plain, like all the active-wear), casual separates, the patterns’ pyrotechnics are offset by the use of few solid colors. Being a skilled accessories designer, Miceli has cleverly expanded the offer, working around the shape of two interlocked little fishes, playfully replicating the P in Pucci. The designer had it tranlated into enameled bracelets and metallic necklaces; into the outlined rubber soles of funny flip flops; into buckles decorating wooden clogs and high-shine platforms; and into a cute bag shaped like a fish. The Pucci reboot will proceed along a non-seasonal cadence. “The idea of season is démodée,” Miceli said, so jumping on the fashion show merry-go-round isn’t on the agenda yet. “It’s easy to have models walking a catwalk, but this see-now, buy-now formula with monthly new drops keeps you on your toes, creatively speaking, as you have to constantly find new ideas to engage the customers.” Rarely this strategy worked for other brands, but for Pucci – which largely is a “resort” label – that might the right path.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Beauty In Danger. KNWLS AW22

April 25, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

It’s quite impossinle to move past the cat hats in KNWLS autumn-winter 2022 collection. The result of many years of perfecting, the hats nod to Harajuku and raver aesthetics, pulled right from the pages of Fruits magazine, and Charlotte Knowles and Alexandre Arsenault‘s own club kid lifestyle. Once you get past the immediate and delicious pang of the foxy little toppers, you’ll find an expanded KNWLS multiverse. As a brand beloved by Dua Lipa, Emma Corrin and Julia Fox, KNWLS has become synonymous with stringy sexy corsets and attenuated shoes and bags. Knowles and Arsenault can deliver that in spades – see their well-engineered ice blue bodysuit and platform shoes this season – but rather than just do what they do, they want to do more. Newness abounds in textural, chunky knits, with clubby fringe fraying off and cropped space-dyed wrap cardigans. Leg warmers are belted just below the knee and flare out in shearlings and knits. The proportion play is almost cartoonish – like a video game vixen, the KNWLS silhouette knows exactly where to exaggerate and where to cinch, contrasting gigantic fluff-coats with slender flared leggings, and maniacally slender waxed leather corsets with the lowest of low-rise pants. Each piece is tailored precisely – these aren’t just fun sexy clothes without craft – adding to the sharpness and the spunk of the look. The real story, though, is about movement. Flutter hems would seem like anathema to the KNWLS look, but here, Knowles and Arsenault have built a minidress with dozens of inset panels so the fabric dances around the model’s legs in a video by Jordan Hemingway. It’s sexy and innocent in an almost terrifying way. But that’s the KNWLS look – as per their press release, this season, it’s equal parts Suspiria and Nine Inch Nails, riffing on that tension of beautiful, scary, corporeal horror. Don’t get the wrong impression, though. Knowles and Arsenault are lovers, not fighters. “We just wanted to make things that are precious to us,” she says. The beauty in danger is their sweet spot – and the cat hats just top it all off nicely.