Collections

Men’s – Strobe. Rick Owens AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

“I’m not the kind of designer that says, ‘I just went to China and this is my inspiration‘. But I just went to Egypt, and they have those shapes, those beautiful shapes, and I thought if I did that as a Dan Flavin helmet, that would be so cool.” This is how Rick Owens summed up his out-of-this-world, ethereal autumn-winter 2022 menswear collection. By combining the headwear profiles of Ancient Egypt with some adroitly applied Philips light bulbs, Owens created headpieces that doubled as lamps – “they’re all free-standing.” The on-and-off-again lighting meant that much of the detail was suppressed from the eye: what was left were silhouettes. These were masculine, wonderfully unconventional and diverse, and ranged from Owen’s originally parodic mega shoulder to whorled arthropod curlings rendered in piumino. He compared the Land Art of the 1970s to the emerging meta-stuff, but remained refreshingly detached. Much more passionately he dug deep into the Made In Italy provenance of his pieces, dishing detail on the family companies that fashion his progressive fashion with artisanal techniques. The great upside of this, he hinted, is that it advertises traceability. “That’s information that’s important. And I like being in a company that is talking about that, but which is also saying ‘We’re not that good at it, but we’re trying.’”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Men’s – Virgil’s Dreamhouse. Louis Vuitton AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

During his eight collection residency, Virgil Abloh, who passed away in November 2021, turned the house of Louis Vuitton upside down and inside out. He made the exclusive inclusive. Autumn-winter 2022 collection apparently marked the final segment of that arc, and in the set at least it appeared to come full circle. The collection was named “Louis Dreamhouse“, and around the runway were scattered the upended elements of a house that had been hit by some enormous force of energy now spent. In one corner was a staircase, from which opening dancers bounced up and down on hidden trampolines. An empty bed rested alongside the roof and chimney, from which a homey puff of steam emerged. On the other side of the roof was a long dining table, down which sat the Chineke! Orchestra musicians whose performance of a Tyler the Creator-composed piece contributed swooningly to making the show so moving. On the wall above them a stopped clock read the time as eight, on the dot.

The collection unfolded on 20 dancers and 67 models. Abloh’s great gift as both designer and lightning rod – masterfully to navigate an elusive commonality of commodity and community in order to service the former and uplift the latter – was posthumously still very much alive, even when referencing death. The inclusion of a Jim Phillips-esque Grim Reaper graphic was a breathtaking detail from a man designing his own legacy while gazing upon his own mortality. Bags came shaped as bouquets. The closing four all-white looks, some featuring Leonardo-esque wings, required no interpretation. Then there were the two tapestried looks, one on a topcoat, the other on an acutely waisted parka, upon which were reproduced De Chirico’s The Melancholia of Departure, a piece the artist created multiple versions of. These, said the notes, were illustrative of the 2020 Abloh-termed concept named “Maintainamorphosis,” defined as “the principle that ‘old’ ideas should be invigorated with value and presented alongside the ‘new,’ because both are equal in worth.” Returning then to the “old,” it was back in June 2018 for collection 1, his very first for Louis Vuitton, that Abloh transmitted multiple references to The Wizard Of Oz, all of them specific to Dorothy’s dream. As members of Abloh’s design studio came out en masse to a standing ovation after his very last collection for Louis Vuitton, they stood within the inside-out of Abloh’s cyclone-scattered dreamhouse.

What an irreplaceable force he was. Gone too soon.

Virgil Abloh / 30.09.1980 – 28.11.2021

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Men’s – Body. Y/project AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

There was a lot to unpack in this men’s autumn-winter and women’s pre-fall 2022 Y/Project show. This must be why it was held in a spaceship-sized logistics artery on the northern edge of Paris that every day, all day, connects freight trains and trucks bringing goods into the city with 23 loading bays’ worth of courier vehicles. The epic venue offered beyond-enough room for social distancing. And it made for a runway so long that by my watch it took a full four minutes for the models to transit from one end to the other. Amongst the models were two fashion insiders that are close to Glenn Martens: Camille Bidault-Waddington and Olivier Theyskens. Theyskens said just before the show started: “Glenn proposed it to me. I know him and I love him. We work in the same neighborhood and we both come from Belgium.” The next highlight of the collection: the creative presence of Jean Paul Gaultier. Next week during the haute couture presentations, Martens will moonlight as a one-season only creative director for Jean Paul Gaultier. At this ready-to-wear show, Martens presented first hints of the dialogue: “We took one of his most iconic prints and we interpreted it in a Y/Project way. It’s very layered – you have men’s prints and women’s prints and they go on top of each other.” The trompe l’oeil body prints and penis pants that Martens was referring to, and which will be part of Y/Project’s Gaultier-facing ready-to-wear capsule, were certainly striking and worked well with the Belgian designer’s signature garment distortion.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Travel Somewhere. Lemaire AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

I have such a sweet spot for Lemaire. I’ve said it plenty of times, and I will say it again: this is the brand that utterly satisfies me in the context of my personal, day-to-day style. Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran just never disappoint me. For autumn-winter 2022, the designers-slash-life-partners turned to the idea of “traveling somewhere” – something we all fantasize about in our harsh, pandemic reality. The destination was purely imaginary, an Impressionistic landscape painted on a 30-meter backdrop by the playwright, scenographer, and theater director Philippe Quesne. It proved a strong foil for what Lemaire described backstage as a nomadic tribe, and the show notes called “an urban horde of modern-day hunter-gatherers.” “Dressing up is a little bit like traveling,” Christopher mused. “You get dressed up, you go to someone, or you have a destination in mind.” Hence a collection composed of thoughtfully layered pieces that neatly spliced ease, movement, and a sophisticated take on functionality. Softly tailored outerwear in the form of a tobacco trench, a coat that can be worn like a blouson or a gilet, a black overcoat with a white lapel and lining, and an elevated take on the denim jacket looked like they could walk straight off the runway and into the streets of Paris to take on a life of their own. A blouse with a red marbled print – the result of a collaboration with theartisan Frédérique Pelletier – brought a bit of psychedelia to a lineup focused on elevated effortlessness. Discreet luxury is, after all, Lemaire’s home turf. Presenting men’s, women’s, and unisex looks on a diverse cast further underscored the designers’ interest in fashions as worn out in the real world, as opposed to on glossy paper, Lemaire allowed. “We can only do half of the job,” he observed. “The rest is the way people move, how they embody that style, and personality.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Parisian Crowd. Ami AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

This was one, big, star-studded Ami collection. “We have done two digital shows and now we’re back. It’s a kind of resistance,” said Alexandre Mattiussi backstage at his autumn-winter 2022 fashion show. “We wanted to stay brave – because it feels like [in Paris] we can still go to the restaurants, we can still go to the cinemas and theaters, why would you want to cancel a show?” He chose as his venue Palais Brongniart, the old stock exchange building at Place de la Bourse. Mattiussi had the Métro on his mind. “It’s the only place today in a city where everybody is on top of each other. There’s an old lady, a guy coming out from a party, a guy who is on the way to work, kids, grandmothers, different vibes, different cultures. This is the only place where you don’t have the choice of who you will be seated with,” he observed. “It’s a democratic thing. And Ami is about dressing everyone.” So, in the Ami world, Isabelle Adjani commutes with metro, just like Emily Ratajkowski, and wear clothes that draw heavily on the French wardrobe tropes. Trench coats, shearling aviator jackets, slip dresses, black blazers, and tweedy skirt suits – all the timeless essentials, mainly kept in elegant black (and from time-to-time contrasted with neon colours, which wasn’t that necessary). Meanwhile, the big casting shots continued to ring out: Sage and Paloma Elsesser, Ben Attal (son of Charlotte Gainsbourg), and the most gorgeous Laetitia Casta, all brought charisma to the outing. Isabelle Huppert sat front row, chatting to Catherine Deneuve. That’s a very Parisian collection with a very Parisian crowd.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.