Shock Effect. Schiaparelli AW25 Haute Couture

July 8, 2025 | Design & Culture by Ed

Sparking a shock effect is obvious as day for Daniel Roseberry and his vision of Schiaparelli; ultimately, it was Elsa who coined Shocking Pink. Yet there was nothing pink about the autumn-winter 2025 haute couture show. Roseberry continues to examine radical restraint – of the woman’s body, rather than the discipline of dress-making or tailoring – and this collection felt darker than usual. It referred to Schiaparelli’s late 1930s collections, which were peak surrealist – but also carried a sense of growing melancholy and unrest, as if they foresaw the upcoming tragedies of Second World War. There are many indicators that the world we know today is off to a burning, unstoppable crisis, so it’s no wonder why Roseberry is in a gloomier mood. But then there’s the shocker that lets the mind escape for moment: amidst the corseted matador suits, body-morphing padding, hourglass shapes and heavily embellished gowns, a red corseted satin dress constructed with a fake torso and breasts in the back, with a pulsating (as in for real, not trompe l’oeil) red rhinestone heart necklace hanging just below the nape of the model’s neck. The sight was both sinister and highly body horror, somewhere between “The Substance“, “Death Becomes Her” and “Suspiria“. But it also screamed: madame couture has arrived.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!

Hey, did you know about my newsletter – Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!

Costume. Valentino SS25 Couture

January 31, 2025 | Design & Culture by Ed

Let’s be honest: this haute couture season was brief and left you feeling hungry. Maybe it wasn’t a famine for beauty, as Andre Leon Talley liked to say. There was way too much beauty – of the conventional kind. Hundreds of metres of tulles, thousands of hours of handwork, millions of digital impressions. But to me, this couture signalled one thing: it’s a growingly archaic commodity. Gone are the days when Raf Simons at Dior presented absolutely contemporary-looking vision of eveningwear. Or Karl Lagerfeld showing couture sneakers at Chanel. This season painfully missed true fashion moments. There was absolutely nothing close to a spectacle like THAT last John Galliano collection for Maison Margiela. Demna shows couture for Balenciaga only once a year, in July, but I really wished he saved this season. In the meantime he wore a T-shirt while being awarded with the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. And a plastic bag to Alessandro Michele’s debut Valentino couture show. I feel him.

Speaking of that debut, it was a brief moment of high this season, but as Angelo Flaccavento very rightly observed, this was a parade of great, convincing costumes, but not that great clothes. In the end, haute couture is a form of very precious, very costly applied art that’s being worn – at least once in its lifetime.

Michele really showcased all the possibilities of the Valentino artisan savoir-faire. To such extremes it felt dizzying (as the show’s title, “Vertigineux”, suggests), even nauseous. Huge ball-dresses dipped in embroideries and embellishments, meaty lace, massive crinolines, sumptuous excess all over: this certainly could be a separate costume department for a Fellini film. Unfortunately, as it’s the case with costumes, they wear the wearer. This isn’t very couture.

So, if Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s Bronwyn Newport ever wears anything straight from that runway, Britani Bateman has full right to question it as costume.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!

Hey, did you know about my newsletter – Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!

Haute Sharpness. Jean Paul Gaultier AW24 Couture

June 27, 2024June 27, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

The rather mild haute couture week in Paris suddenly heated up near its end, all thanks to Nicolas Di Felice‘s guest collection for Jean Paul Gaultier. It was absolutely refreshing to see the designer outside the context of Courrèges, and with the tools of couture in his hands. The French enfant terrible of fashion made a strong impression on the Belgian designer when he was a teen: “for me and for so many queer, different people from the countryside – from everywhere in the world – he represented Paris, a city where everything is possible. He was really the first one to celebrate different people. Everybody remembers this about him and it’s a good thing, because he actually did it.” The collection told a story about a Paris arriviste, who wears covered up clothes: jackets and dresses with long sleeves, long skirts, and necklines that climb up the face. Slowly, as the show progressed, the head emerged, then the shoulders, and by the end, dresses were peeling off the hips and hands were tucked into the gaps in the fabric in an erotic gesture. The motif of adaptability-to-the-body returned throughout the collection, and it was masterfully applied in a gorgeous slip dress that was worn undone to the waist, exposing a sleeveless shell underneath on which hooks-and-eyes were applied like studs. Di Felice chose to reference Gaultier’s subtler moments, especially his precise technique of cut and sharp, yet feminine tailoring. Everything synced so well. Now imagine Di Felice do haute couture at Courrèges!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!

Hey, did you know about my newsletter – Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!

Reject The Rules. Balenciaga AW24 Couture

June 26, 2024June 27, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

This was Demna‘s fourth haute couture collection for Balenciaga, and his most subversive in its rejection of the formality of this exclusive, highly-elite discipline. The designer is also returning to his Vetements roots via his shaping years at Margiela, which as a result gives a collection that riffs on subcultures and plays with garment (de)construction. “I wanted to create a fusion or a tribute to my personal vocabulary as a designer, which is subcultures… but I needed to bring in that kind of equilibrium with Cristóbal, obviously, because this is couture,” he said. The first mashup combined a sculpted oversize gray tee and slouchy faded jeans engineered to look like a jacket was tied around the waist, with a saucer hat of the kind he introduced in his memorable couture debut. As the show progressed, it moved from haute lumberjack shirts and hand-painted faux merch t-shirts styled with hysterical butterfly-wings masks (an IYKYK reference to Janine Janet’s 1950s and 60s window display installations for Cristobal Balenciaga’s Avenue George V salon – which today happens to be the brand’s couture boutique and show venue) into the fancy evening silhouettes associated with couture, only they were patchworked together from denim and colorful parkas that looked like they could’ve been repurposed from Demna’s earlier collections for the house. Or he constructed them with new fabrics and techniques; one column dress was made from melted plastic shopping bags molded onto the body and a strapless number was constructed with golden aluminum foil. It seems that the designer questions couture’s preciousness and the certain, imposed obligation of using the finest materials and the most fragile decoration – a stereotypical trap that literally engulfs couture work of such designers as Thom Browne. The final look was a swirling mass of black nylon, chosen because it best evoked Cristóbal’s precious gazar. It was constructed just prior to the show, a one-off piece of “ephemeral couture” that will come with three Balenciaga staffers for its assembly for the client who buys it. Love it or hate it, Demna still has it.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!

Hey, did you know about my newsletter – Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!

Opera. Chanel AW24 Couture

June 26, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Chanel joins the ranks of designer-less brands in Paris like Givenchy and Lanvin. I can’t remember a time when the Parisian roster of houses was in such trembles of undecidedness and uncertainty. Although Chanel’s autumn-winter 2024 haute couture collection is the first after Virginie Viard’s departure, it still feels like a Virginie Viard collection, just presented not in Grand Palais, but Palais Garnier. That change of scenery is a plus. The clothes looked really fitting in these a bit more intimate corridors of the Parisian opera. The team took the show’s setting as a design cue. Vittoria Ceretti’s opening look was a sweeping opera cape in black taffeta, its ruff neckline framing her face and her hair pulled back by a grosgrain bow. At the end, Angelina Kendall played the bride in white taffeta cut along the voluminous lines of Princess Diana’s wedding dress. These pieces had whimsy and drama in equal measure. In between, the classic Chanel skirt suit was renewed in salt and pepper tweeds with tassel embroideries or fringing at the cuffs and hems, or else it was cut in vibrant jewel tones and embellished with colorful cabochon stones. A double-breasted duster coat was a fine canvas for showcasing a variegated tufted tweed with a touchable texture. Bows were a recurring motif, turning up on a bronze lace skirt and a black coatdress. It all looked pretty. But Chanel can’t just lurk with pretty clothes without a distinct creative director behind them. Maybe Hedi Slimane isn’t that bad idea after all?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!

Hey, did you know about my newsletter – Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!