Artist At Home. S.S. Daley SS24

July 11, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The theme of artist at home has sprung dozens of stories where a visionary creates a vividly alive environment that becomes not only their studio, but a “total artwork” (Germans have a term for it: Gesamtkunstwerk). History of art – especially the British one – has plenty of examples of such romances between creatives and their surroundings. Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill. Sir John Soane’s home-turned-museum. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s Charleston, which became a bucolic residency spot for the Bloomsbury Group. For his spring-summer 2024 collection, Steven Stokey-Daley centres around the duality of ceremony and practice, following the life and home of an artist. Harry Styles’ favourite designer began his research by studying the lives of British painters Lucien Freud and David Hockney in their working environments, taking a look back at British public school dress while examining the shifts in sexual identity in the early 1900s. All that sounds distinctly S.S. Daley. The new season offering is a neat continuation of Steven’s style vocabulary: clean-cut suiting is paired with pleated shorts, blooming hydrangea embroideries decorate striped workwear sets, oversized wool knits are canvases for charming dachshund puppies (Hockney’s favorite breed, as well as mine!) and ducks. Some of the shirts come in still life fruit bowl print, which reminisces the ever-evolving European artistic tradition. Multi-pocketed, waterproof coats are nonchalantly splashed with paint (you just always splatter your favorite clothes while painting!), echoing the collection’s idea of merging the domestic intimacy with the sacred act of creating and expressing your own, untamed, highly-personal thing.

And here’s a bunch of my favourite S.S. Daley items you can shop right now:

S.S.Daley Navy ‘Bunny Boy’ Long Sleeve T-Shirt

S.S.Daley Off-White Tabard Vest

S.S.Daley Off-White Striped Shirt

S.S.Daley Red Tabard Vest

S.S.Daley Beige Large Tote

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – Substance. Loewe SS24

June 25, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

“Substance” seemed to be keyword for Jonathan Anderson‘s spring-summer 2024 menswear collection for Loewe. The three Lynda Benglis fountains that the designer’s curatorial enthusiasm had brought together for the first time were the first clues. One was tall and looming, another an apparently kinetically charged wave mid-break, and the last low and spreading like an unpruned shrub. Splashes of water erupting from Beglis’ structures inhabited the runway space, making the Loewe show an art experience, not just a parade of clothes. But the clothes were equally transfixing as the liquid-like installations. The garments hewn by Anderson and his team for this collection defined the shape and aspect of the moving human substance within them. By pulling the waistband of his pants up so very high, Anderson said afterwards, he wanted to create a way of seeing this collection that was akin to viewing it from ground level with a fish-eye lens. Coating some looks with crystals that glinted in the skylight sunshine invited you to see another watery parallel with Anderson’s installed artworks. When not obscured by long coats, or three hypersized swatches (complete with hypersized pins) of what looked like chintzy vintage wall upholstery fabric, that looming silhouette was generally undisturbed yet variously expressed. Sparkly polo shirts, chunky knits, argyle sweaters, trench coat shirts, and bonded gray rib knits with rounded shoulders or two dimensional side-tabs were all cropped around the southern reaches of the wearer’s ribcage. Three leather jumpsuits near the end, one pastel pink, latter scarlet, the last black, combined the trouser shape with the upholstery facade into a hybridized silhouette. “It’s always about trying to find contradictions in men and women: like how do you blur all of that? I feel like something in this is very precise in that message, it’s very reduced, very luxe”, Anderson said.

Men’s – Higher Than The Sun. Dior SS24

June 24, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Kim Jones‘ first collection for Dior seems like yesterday, but believe it or not, 5 years have passed since his big debut. I wasn’t always a fan of his work at the Parisian brand, but his recent collection – and especially spring-summer 2024 – make me change my mind. For this anniversary collection, Jones turned towards a canonical trio of Dior designers who preceded him. He referenced Yves Saint Laurent, Gianfranco Ferré, and Marc Bohan, enmeshing motifs from their times here with propositions of his own. The membrane the connected them all was Christian Dior’s cannage, the pattern the house founder based on the woven rattan chairs in which guests sat at his first salon show in 1947. The show opened with a coup de théâtre: the wide runway was composed of polished metal gray tiles. As the first Andrew Weatherall–conjured wheezing whalesong of Primal Scream’s “Higher Than the Sun” began to roll, the entire cast of models was raised from beneath the runway in a three-wide, 17-long grid of looks.

Jones’s design credentials are undisputed. He is also an extremely accomplished visual editor. He studded polished jewels on cardigans draped over the collection’s straight-legged, high-hemmed, high skirted tailoring, and then that over piqué polo shirts set with yet more jewels. Can we talk about the knitted beanies with velvet flower brooches?! Obsessed. Tweed loafers had buckles derived from a Lady Dior fragrance motif. Marled jacquard cannage knits in punchy colors were worn shoulder robed over more of the tailoring. Some jackets, semi-safarienne, were set with a bow at the breast pocket. Long tweed coats, high notch-collared and double breasted, featured the faded rattan shape within their muesli flecks and appeared to be bonded dresses worn from the shoulder. Dior’s Mitzah Bricard–inspired leopard print was reproduced on Saddle bags and vests. These were worn with sporty tweed shorts, which were later placed against tweed and piqué twinsets. The punches of fluoro green and orange added a psychedelic touch. As the designer put it himself: “It’s a collage of different designers in the archive expressed in shape, color, form and mood.”

Men’s – Study of Elegance. Dries Van Noten SS24

June 23, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

“We wanted to make it a study of elegance. To make it very masculine. So we asked what is masculinity now? And how we can make elegance also young, and interesting to the young?… I think streetwear is one thing, and it’s fantastic, but I also think people want more ways to dress to express who they are, and to enjoy,” said Dries Van Noten of his powerful spring-summer 2024 menswear offering. The herringbone wool in a gorgeous belted raglan shoulder coat contained zig-zags of camel and black, the two shades that set the tone for the opening phase of this collection. A stately orchestral start segued slowly then less so towards sweet repetitive beats by Soulwax. Gabardine pants fronted with trench coat skirts were foils against deep-V knits with matching wrapped skirts: modern twinsets. Slubby shantung silks, net linen knits, coated linen outerwear, knit velvets and muted optically enveloping prints provided textures both visual and tactile. The palette became dyed, sun-drenched, or even sun-burnt. To mix a bronze shirt and coat with gold sequin shorts (!), or play aubergine shorts against a mustard bomber was simultaneously unlikely and self-evidently effective. Some tops in mousseline were sheer, some sandals were strapped with fur, some hems on shorts and combat pants were frayed and raw, and the knit velvet sweater featured a grid of plucked perforations across the chest: layers of patina, wear, and form. This was a collection crying out to be moved into.

Something’s In The Air. Hed Mayner SS24

June 22, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Hed Mayner, the designer from Tel Aviv who keeps on charming the Parisian crowd for a couple of seasons now, loves a big, big silhouette. He is known for blowing up conventional, “normal” clothes to capacious, XXXL volumes, creating garments that are both timeless and absolutely poetic. Those that fall under the roomy category for spring-summer 2024 are the beautifully tailored suits, eternal chinos, (crinkled) cotton poplin shirts and minimal jumpers. Mayner chooses to see the beauty of normalcy and simplicity by giving it a dramatic makeover. The way that the pieces fall on and fit the body, and how these garments with vintage-y soul have characters of their own, is a combination of Mayner’s well-considered design and Samuel Drira’s masterful styling.