Collections

Men’s – New Surrealism. Loewe AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

When Jonathan Anderson referenced “metaverse” in his J.W. Anderson collection last week, he said, “I was using it more in an ironic way. The idea that it doesn’t really do anything.” For all its brilliant and hilarious techy surrealism, his Loewe collection was not a wardrobe for the metaverse. In fact, it felt a lot like it was trolling the very idea of our digital lives lived on phones, and the hoopla whipped up around trendy concepts like the metaverse. If our attraction to VR and AR and whatnot is founded in the idea of possibility, Anderson’s collection was a twisted take on how these imaginings translate into real life. He illustrated it in decidedly normal things made abnormal. Shorts were embellished with sparkles that looked like raindrops, as if it had rained crystals. A wool coat had a gilded stain on its lower back “as if you sat on a park bench and it was gold.” Coats and tops were punched with big bathroom eyelets like you’d digitally dragged your most mundane morning surroundings into your wardrobe. Shoes looked like bags, and transparent coats were actually made of leather. Meanwhile, a series of garments satirized our relationship with technology. The sleeves and lapels of a furry coat had fiber optic lights inside them creating the illusion of wetness, the illuminated waistband of trousers made them seem like they were floating, and the entire frame of a coat was lit up. “It’s the idea that you become backlit because everything on a phone is backlit,” Anderson said, referring to the way we see things on our phones and the way our screens light up our faces. Balaclavas with heart-shaped peepholes played on the idea of digital frames. Similarly, the orbital hem of a shirt and the waistband of shorts were bent in separate directions so it looked like you’d skewed them in FaceTune. It evoked the DIY editing accidents you sometimes spot in people’s selfies where the person looks like a supermodel while the retouching process has turned the background into an abstract painting. We all follow someone like that. And those t-shirts and jumpsuits with faces and bodies printed on them like optical illusions? They were worn by the models who posed for them, distorting and reshaping their physiques the way we do it on those beautifying apps.

Anderson’s collection was an exercise in the surreal, but a post-digital era take on the genre, which he said was more “psychotic” in an existential way. “Who are we? Where are we going? Is it real, is it not real? Are we in that moment? Do we believe what we say?” In a world where we’re more fascinated with creating a metaverse than improving the real one, those were good questions.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Men’s – Sensual Masculinity. Jil Sander AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

There’s always been a puritanical quality to the work of Lucie and Luke Meier, but in this Jil Sander collection, it transitioned into a more articulated kumbaya. That sensibility was carried by crochet wrapped around necks and heads and spliced with oversized blazers and tuxedo jackets that couldn’t have made for a bigger contrast. “We liked this really elegant, masculine silhouette, but with a sensual side to it, as well,” Lucie Meier said after the show. “We start a lot with tailoring, just to see what we really want to do and say and what we care about. But this time, we worked it into typically feminine techniques as well,” Luke Meier added. The meeting between crochet and strong tailoring made for expressions that were more focused on trend and statement pieces than previous proposals from the Meiers, whose collections usually feel more centered around the idea of a wardrobe. Backstage, Lucie pointed as to why: “You kind of miss people who really dress up and have a kind of eccentricity,” she said, referring to the way the pandemic has cramped our collective style, or at least our opportunity to show off said style. As a symbol of “personality and individuality,” Luke said, the designers scattered astrology prints and zodiac embroideries around the collection, intensifying the hippie energy of it all, only to contrast it with the rigidity of sharp lapels poking out from layers under jackets, and suit trousers tucked into hard, pointy Santiago boots with metal heel caps. It was a bold proposition for post-pandemic self-expression, but one the aspiring street style stars of fashion week will no doubt embrace.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Men’s – Extraterrestrial. GmbH AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

If Prada started the topic of statement outerwear for men this season, then GmbH joins the conversation with a major tailoring moment. Serhat Isik and Benjamin Huseby are perfecting the cuts of coats and blazers to a couture-level dimension. Take away the wonderful and brand-identifying regal strapping and fur and we are left with a soft 1.5 breasted jacket with a high lapel that fell loosely and beautifully down the body. When worn against the thigh-highs, these jackets’ skirting generated kink, but worn against pants they were differently but no less potently seductive. Let’s not forget about the extraterrestrial elements of the offering, like the disturbing alien shoulders and this sort of out-of-this-world drama conveyed by the garments (very “The Fifth Element“!). But the collection as well covers something much more personal to the Berlin-based designers. As Isik explained, it was the experienced tension between power and constraint in the atmosphere of their religious schooling as queer teenagers that prompted this season’s examination of wearable Islam-specific pieces such as the taqiya. The calligraphic Arabic was adapted from the talismanic exhortations, notes seeking protection that Ottoman soldiers would wear under their armor: Isik’s grandfather would write these out for the men of his village. “I think it’s all the codes we’ve been playing with since the start, just amplified. So you have the club kid, the flasher, the man who looks specifically Muslim. It’s the most formal collection we’ve ever done, but I feel it’s also the kinkiest and sleaziest in a strange way.” This collection definitely proves that Isik and Huseby’s first collection for Trussardi, which will be presented at Milan Fashion Week next month, is one to look forward to.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Men’s – Strange Beauty. Dries Van Noten AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

While many designers have now returned to live shows, Dries Van Noten doesn’t want to do a show until the pandemic ends (or at least, it’s finally under control). He spent the season thinking about how the restrictive conditions are affecting his team. “A lot of young people don’t go out anymore, they don’t see a lot of people. Touching each other, making love to each other… it’s changed. I think it’s a collection where you really feel what state we’re in, and what we’re longing for. That is the desire we wanted to explain: the frustration,” he said on a video call from Antwerp. Shot by Casper Sejersen, Van Noten’s autumn-winter 2022 film featured a bunch of models getting tactile in a big mansion in Paris. There were close-ups of three real-life couples kissing: two men, two women, and a man and a woman, who all embodied the designer’s genderless objective. “I wanted to make it even more than gender-fluid, so you don’t even think about what’s menswear and what’s womenswear. In this collection, there are as many women’s elements as men’s elements,” he said of the wardrobe, an unrestricted mix of sequins, glitter, embroidery, and transparency with traditional wools and sportswear elements. “There’s a little bit of sex, maybe, in the whole thing. It’s a surreal beauty, a raucous beauty – not a normal beauty. A very strange beauty. Just beauty-beauty is pretty, and I don’t like pretty. I think that’s boring,” Van Noten stressed, explaining the gender-bending quality of the collection had a lot to do with his investigations into truly genderless cutting. The raucous beauty Van Noten wanted to convey was there in the sort of tattered glamour he’s been practicing for a while now: wardrobe constellations that look a little bit like something you’d find in a thrift shop in a clubbing district in the 1970s; a helter-skelter of patterns, textures and partywear that feels somewhat psychedelic. “It’s not like, oh, let’s surprise people, let’s put a feminine thing on a guy. No, we don’t think like that anymore. There’s a freedom, which I’m happy with,” he reflected. “We combine everything in a very spontaneous way.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Men’s – Sublime Gardener. Dior AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

I really loved Kim Jones‘ autumn-winter 2022 menswear collection for Dior. It might come as a surprise that Jones, who has devoted most of his Dior collections to collaborations (which sometimes feels to predictable) with artists and writers, approached his 75th anniversary homage to the house as a one-man show. “We’ve done a Birkenstock, but only because we didn’t want to do a Christian Dior gardening shoe and copy it,” the designer told Vogue. In true grande maison style, Jones erected a life-size copy of Pont Alexandre III in a tent on Place de la Concorde, just a stone’s throw from the real one (not a very sustainable approach…). The nasal might of Christian Dior spoke on the soundtrack with godlike authority as Jones’s interpretations of the couturier’s signature silhouettes bathed in his favorite “Dior gray” strolled along the bridge’s banister. It was a straight-forward exercise: from the Bar jacket to the wrap coat and the cannage, Jones worked each of the Dior icons into something that would resonate with a contemporary male customer. “It’s really complicated pattern-cutting but it looks so simple. That’s the beauty of it,” he said, pointing at one of the jackets on his board of looks. A series of Bar jackets and coats constructed like men’s blazers with white stitching that looked almost frayed had a deconstructed character to them we don’t often see at his Dior. It suited him. But mainly, it was nice to see a Dior collection that was purely Jones, somewhat similar to his debut from a couple of years ago. A collection like this may not receive the hype of last season’s Travis Scott collaboration (the release of which has been indefinitely postponed due to controversy surrounding the rapper), but in its Dior-core it will serve to enlighten new audiences in what the house historically represents. “I think young people want to learn about things,” Jones said. “The thing about Dior is it still looks modern when you see pieces from the archive. That’s probably why it’s still here, and so big.” He took his bow with milliner Stephen Jones, who is celebrating 25 years at Dior, and reworked the founder’s beret for the heads of Jones’s models.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.