Britishness. Burberry AW22

March 14, 2022March 14, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

In 1856, young Thomas Burberry set out to equip local sportsmen from a small outfitter’s shop in Basingstoke, England. He made his name by inventing gabardine, a waterproof, tightly woven cotton inspired by the loose linen smocks worn by English shepherds and farmers. And by the early 1900s, business was booming in the Burberry emporium on London’s Haymarket street. The firm gained prestige by outfitting high-profile Antarctic explorers, aviators, and mountaineers. And, in addition to kitting out more humble seekers of adventure – golfers, skiers, horsemen – it soon got into the business of fine everyday outerwear, too. It’s an unmistakably British brand, and in 2022, it’s really worth digging into a brand’s heritage and redefining its codes. After seven full seasons, Riccardo Tisci is finally on (what seems to be) the right path. For the autumn-winter 2022 fashion show, presented a few days after fashion month’s finale in London’s Central Hall Westminster, guests stood massed together in the dark, shuffling back to give way to Tisci’s supermodels, friends, and artist-celebrities as they descended from somewhere high up in the wood-paneled auditorium. Clad in the spectrum of Tisci’s ideas about global, generational, and gender non-conforming realities, British tradition and, of course, Burberry checks and trenches, they climbed up to pose on tables which were set with silver and crystal, as if for a country-house dinner. “It’s a reconstructed collection of what I find in Burberry, and what I’ve been living as human in this moment in Britain too,” Tisci said before the show. “It’s a different perspective – you know, the way you feel things was a very deep different journey.” That stood as an explanation for the leveling, everyone-together breaking of catwalk convention, except that the event simultaneously managed to be a bombastic reclaiming of Burberry’s corporate position, a landmark of the British fashion business with global reach. So two collections came out – a menswear one and the women’s. For women, he ran the gamut of trench-and-check daywear through to grand ballgowns, segueing though deconstructed evening trenchcoats. He said he’d pulled it together by focusing on country waxed and quilted coats, and pulling out the symbol of the Burberry Prorsum knight on horseback. There were blanket-skirts and tartan capes, as well as old-school, fleecy twinsets. The designer reflected on how he was initially daunted by paying tribute to Britishness, but now feels much freer about applying his own instincts. “I was scared,” he admitted. “You know, as an Italian, Britain is important – it’s a such an historical country, with so much to say. So at the beginning, it was like the first kiss. It takes time, you know. And now I find my own way.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Sunny People. Jacquemus SS22

March 13, 2022March 13, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Jacquemus‘ spring-summer 2022 fashion show, presented on a cobalt catwalk cut across the sand of the Moli’i Gardens’s beach on the northern side of Oahu, was a beautiful outing that celebrated Hawaiian culture, community and nature. One said that the rainstorm, which postponed Jacquemus’s Hawaiian debut by about an hour and a half, could be interpreted as a blessing. When the rain cleared and the show started, an actual Hawaiian blessing was performed, giving thanks to the land, people, and history of this place. The sun faded into the Pacific; the waves lapped the shore. It was peaceful and without a cell phone in sight. Then came the fashion. Linen sets the color of sand opened the show, exploding into Hockney blue, shocking pink, and inky black swimwear by the end. Simon Porte Jacquemus’ proportions are intentionally abnormal – one part ruched, another cutaway. For spring 2022, he played with the shapes of scuba gear, cutting and winding unitards and bodysuits into tailoring. Some of the best dresses and trousers unfolded around one hip like a sarong, sexy and uncomplicated in their appeal. Backless blazers furthered the idea, though Jacquemus’s cargo trousers and board shorts might have a longer shelf life. Elsewhere, he played with short-over-long styling, garments worn in an illogical order for optimal optical appeal. He also introduced a new beadwork collaboration with the artist Tanya Lyons designed to look like water droplets.

The decision to take his runway show on the long road from France to Hawaii was a big step for Jacquemus and his brand. For some fashion followers, the choice to hold a destination show in a place connected with colonialism and tourism was a misstep – easily, the event could go “White Lotus“. But to many of the local guests in the audience, seeing a European designer arrive islandside was affirming. Along Waikiki’s main drag, luxury stores abound, and yet none of those designers have ever held a show on the island or maybe even set foot here. With the help of Hawaiian-born-and-raised stylist Ben Perreira and creative director Taylor Okata, Jacquemus worked to create a show that honored the local community. Only a handful of Jacquemus’s European staff traveled to the island, and only guests from the Pacific region and mainland United States were invited. Every model was local to the region, and for most, it was their first runway. The entire production crew was local. “Working in fashion, nothing has felt as fulfilling as this,” said Perreira preshow. “It’s time to speak about something else,” said Jacquemus of his choice to present his collection outside France. “I think the Jacquemus woman is not French – she is a sunny person. That’s what the brand is about: sharing, sun, love, and family.” The Jacquemus woman and man is also ironic, using a scuba snorkel as a handbag handle or wearing a leather floatie as an accessory. What’s next for the designer? “This is my last Pop collection,” he said. “Next season I am coming back to something super womanly, a new part of the Jacquemus identity.” It will be exciting to see where Jacquemus and his community of friends and collaborators go next.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

They Are ON Fire. Miu Miu AW22

March 12, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Miu Miu girls (and boys) are on fire! It was only fitting that Miu Miu would have the final say this season – thanks to a change in the traditional schedule, the show rang out a month of collections, for which its last proposal set the tone in a big way. Other than Balenciaga, no brand has been as impactful as Miu Miu on the silhouette we’ve encountered on daily runways over the last four weeks: an oversized blazer or coat worn over a lingerie element and a mini- or evening skirt. This season, Miuccia Prada reiterated that influence in a collection that continued where the last one left off, reminding the industry who got the idea in the first place. The winter embodiment of the Miu Miu muse was less of a workaholic and more of a sports freak. After disrupting archaic office dress codes last season, she set her sights on the tennis court, giving Wimbledon officials more than they bargained for in super-short, low-riding Y2K skirts and tops with cheekily placed see-through lace panels. She didn’t care if it was winter because she’s too hot to get cold. Memories from her junior ballet phase (she outgrew it) manifested in ballerinas and knitted socks before her inner rebel really took over and things went hell for leather. As the same theme appeared in new variations – shearling, snakeskin-printed or stained leather, with faux-fur lapels – a more gender-diverse expression of the Miu Miu person took shape, demonstrating how the skimpy silhouette also works on nonbinary and traditionally masculine physiques. Along with every fashion girl and their mother this month, men have been wearing last season’s cropped Miu Miu cable knits and little jackets to the shows. This time, there was new material for them to obsess over: lace-up leather trousers, big buckle boots, and some prettily encrusted sheer crystal dresses, if there’s time for a drink after tennis. Miu Miu closed its menswear line in early 2000s, and 2022 feels like the year to revive it.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

River Tweed. Chanel AW22

March 11, 2022March 11, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

With Virginie Viard, you can always predict what the Chanel collection will be like: quintessentially Chanel. For autumn-winter 2022, the designer celebrated the brand’s historical love for tweed, the signature fabric of Chanel and a timeless part of its heritage. “Devoting the entire collection to tweed is a tribute,” Virginie Viard said in a statement. “We followed the footsteps of Gabrielle Chanel along the River Tweed, to imagine tweeds in the colours of this landscape.” Her invitation arrived in a large box covered in tweed with matching press material inside. Inside her venue – the Grand Palais Éphémère on Place Joffre – Viard followed suit, swathing walls and chairs in the founder’s trademark material. Viard flexed her tweedy muscle in every garment and accessory type under the Scottish sun, imagining a runway version of what Gabrielle Chanel might have worn on “her walks through the Scottish countryside where she would gather ferns and bouquets of flowers to inspire the local artisans for the tones of tweed she wanted.” With all those fabric fibres covering every inch of the Chanel surroundings, you’d be tempted to call it a woolly affair, but there was no doubting Viard’s intentions. Oversized coats, magnified shooting jackets, and voluminous tailored trousers evoked a borrowed men’s wardrobe she attributed to Gabrielle Chanel’s relationship with the Duke of Westminster. “There’s nothing sexier than wearing the clothes of the person you love,” Viard said. Eventually, the collection relocated from the Scottish Highlands in the 1920s to London in the 1960s, and the Great British youth culture’s appropriation of those heritage codes. Viard interpreted that moment in a wardrobe fairly true to the decade’s codes and styling, generating a strong sense of retro seen through a contemporary lens. It materialised in little skirt suits in tweed, figure-hugging ladylike jackets and knee-length coats styled with thick hosiery and wool-on-wool knitted accessories. Linking to her Beatles soundtrack, Viard said she was thinking of “very colourful record covers” from the period. Often, the collection seemed to have a tweed-covered foot in the 1980s as well, where voluminous blousons, harem-cut track pants, and knee-length skirt suits felt at home. Some looks were better, some worse (especially the eveningwear), but in overall, this was a proper and very timeless Chanel collection.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Make It Make Sense. Louis Vuitton AW22

March 10, 2022March 11, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

The latest Louis Vuitton collection makes no sense. But not in a surreal way like at Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe, where the absurd was both hilarious and intriguing, and conveyed through jaw-dropping craftsmanship. In general, Nicolas Ghesquière‘s recent runway offerings look peculiar and overworked, but his autumn-winter 2022 collection wins with its randomness and chaos. Of course, there’s a reason behind that madness. Time has been a subtext for Ghesquière since the beginning of his tenure at Louis Vuitton. He’s made a practice of mashing up references and collapsing centuries in the process, most famously when he combined Louis XVI frock coats with running shorts and sneakers on a sub-floor of the Louvre that was once a medieval moat. This show wasn’t hooked to a particular era as much as it was to a time frame: young adulthood. In prepared notes, Ghesquière called the collection “an excursion into a perceptible, fleeting, and decisive moment when everything comes to the fore, in all its innocence and insight. The impermanence and beautiful volatility of adolescence.” He conjured that state of being most straightforwardly with a trove of photographs by David Sims. The photographer came of age in the 1990s – like Ghesquière himself – and shook up the status quo the generation before him established by shooting his peers and other young people with a vérité grit that eventually became the look of that period. By applying and embroidering Sims’ images onto floral jacquard polos, some of that edgy spirit seeped in here. Channeling the sense of youthful experimentation he remembers, Ghesquière topped evening dresses with sporty rugby shirts or chunky sweaters wrapped around waists. He also played with androgynous tailoring, often in oversized shapes, styled with tacky-looking men’s ties. Other silhouettes looked delineated from Ghesquière’s more extravagant collection for spring, only here the pannier and bustle shapes were remixed in softer embroidered knit and tweed, which made them look more everyday. The location – Musée D’Orsay’s main hall – had nothing to do with the collection’s forced spontainety. “Freedom is all,” the designer, “without directive or impediment.” But why should that freedom look so haphazard? I miss the times when Ghesquière’s work was more streamlined and focused – both at Balenciaga, and in his first seasons for Louis Vuitton.