Fashion

Beauty In Danger. KNWLS AW22

| 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.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Ballet-Core. Rodarte AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Going for an all-pastel colour palette might be lethal. But the Rodarte sisters manage to keep the saccharine sweetness not that naive in their autumn-winter 2022 collection. The ultra-feminine line-up is heavily inspired by ballet and ballerinas’ ensembles, and it makes so much sense: Kate and Laura Mulleavy created Natalie Portman’s costumes for Darren Aronofsky’s terrific Black Swan back in 2010. But right now, there’s nothing evil about the Rodarte Swan Queens. Over 2020 and 2021, their innate sense of woman-ness has led the Los Angeles-based designers to swing their pendulum into collections about optimism, comfort, sweetness, sparkle, and motion. What they’ve landed on here is equilibrium. In pastel imagery by Daria Kobayashi Rich, with set design by Tina Pappas and Adam Siegel and floral design by Joseph Free, the Mulleavys have found the happiest, tenderest of marriages between the tiered cascades of blush tulle worn by Lili Reinhart, the crisp pink suiting donned by Janicza Bravo, the patterned tea dress on Natasha Lyonne, and the jeans and legwarmers on Laura Love. “The fantasy of what we want to do and create is the number one driving force,” demurs Kate, but when the Rodarte fantasy intersects so potently with reality as it does here, the designers’ honestness can feel more relevant than ever. In between, they make pit stops in bright fuchsia and teal, resurrecting their famous grunge-y spiderweb knits from autumn-winter 2008. “They are practical in a sense that they mold to your body and impractical in the most amazing way,” says Kate of the signature knits. The original versions – mini tube dresses and long cardigans – are back to the sure joy of many fans, but the sisters aren’t just playing to archive-mania. They’ve also made bustiers and capes in the knit, the latter worn by Lana Condor in a blue look trimmed in feathers. “The cape,” Kate says, “is practical and whimsical.” And sometimes you need fashion to be just that, equal parts a slip dress and a fantasia. It’s that kind magic that makes so many celebrities show up for a Rodarte photoshoot: the girls who get it, get it.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

NET-A-PORTER Limited