Sprezzatura. Bottega Veneta AW24

February 26, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

At Bottega Veneta, Matthieu Blazy delivered his best collection to date. The reason the autumn-winter 2024 show felt this good was not only because Blazy found a way to make his love for artisan detail finally look light and spontaneous, sprezzatura-way. The Bottega Veneta line-up delivered a sense of authentic style, a true rarity to observe during fashion month. That might have come to Blazy with a change in his creative mindset. “The initial idea was to reduce the collection to almost the function of clothes – only reduce not to the minimum, but to a maximum. I was interested in making a monument out of the everyday.” It started with the first look, a couture-ish black cocoon coat whose rounded, three-dimensional silhouette was the result of the folding in of its sides and sleeves, which were secured with big brass buttons. Unfasten them and the coat becomes more or less flat. The nonchalant, unstudied result is stunning. This season’s clothes are refreshingly stripped back: gone were the embroideries and embellishments that defined last season’s collection, but there was no shortage of impressive workmanship. Blazy said, “I wanted the technique to be in the fabric itself.” A fine example of that was the “memory” prints made from layer upon layer of passport stamps that he used for a trio of willowy looks with swooping tiers on their skirts. As we see 2024 fashion unveil, there’s a strong flux of “everyday” clothes; amid all the crises, the understandable tendency among design houses and their executives is to play it safe. As we’ve seen so far this season, that can lead to same-y fashion, indistinguishable from one runway to the next. Blazy is immune to that risk.

A couple of my favorite artisan masterworks coming from Blazy’s Bottega…

ED’s DISPATCH:

Strapless Paneled Leather Midi Dress

Rocket Leather Wedge Mules

Woven Leather & Cashmere Gloves

Small Intrecciato Leather Bucket Bag

Oversize Stretch Wool Coat

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Zurich Cool. Bally AW24

February 26, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Simone Bellotti‘s sophomore collection for Bally was Milan Fashion Week’s quiet star. This is the line-up where actually something cool happened. The designer found that sense of “cool” in a place that doesn’t necessarily affiliate with “coolness“: Zurich. Its street style and ambience inspired Bellotti and the autumn-winter 2024 runway; simultaneously drawing upon the pastoral symbolism of Swiss folklore and Alpine mysticism, the designer has managed to create a truly distinct vocabulary for Bally within a year of his tenure. Steering clear of literal translations, he combined severity and grace, austere poetry and functional Swiss precision. On a neat double-breasted swing loden coat, the skirt flared into the shape of a treichein bell; a masculine crisp poplin shirt, tucked into high-waisted jeans, was worn under a knitted gilet revealing a furry back, hinting at a wilder, less disciplined side. Like the soft pelt of an untamed creature, a fur insert peeked out from under a strict, asymmetrical knee-length felted wool dress, held on one side by a silver safety pin. Black leather was made into protective yet supple blousons, car coats, and capes. Introducing a cautious note of disorder, a knee-length pencil skirt as well as a masculine waistcoat in black leather were studded with traditional Appenzeller motifs of hearts, cows, and edelweiss interspersed with punkish metallic grommets, hinting at the photographic work of Swiss queer artist Karlheinz Weinberger, whose late-1950s homoerotic portraits were published in the book Rebel Youth. It was a subtle nod to a discourse rooted in the now that makes Bellotti’s work at Bally all the more contemporary and utterly desirable.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Crude. Marni AW24

February 26, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Primal. Animalistic. Rough. Those are just couple of words that seem to describe Francesco Risso‘s latest Marni collection, but not entirely. Crude. Instinctual. Dada. Presented in a cavernous space located in one of the tunnels sneaking under Milan’s Stazione Centrale, entirely plastered in white paper, the collection itself started with the idea of tabula rasa. To prep for this collection, Risso and his team gave the same white-paper treatment to their studio at Marni headquarters, lining every surface as to make them disappear, in a radical attempt to keep out visual distractions, banning images, moodboards, or any excess of conceptual stimuli. Working without visual references brought to the surface an equally radical design practice. Shapes and volumes were stripped of everything superfluous, and returned to a state of purity, taking away all unneeded information, noise. Pockets, buttons, darts, and any detail that wasn’t necessary to glorify “the soul of the shape” were hidden or “reduced to shadows.” In an extreme attempt to dematerialize the shape itself, surfaces of capes, bell-shaped dresses and ball-coats were almost concealed under thick glazed layers of curly gestural paint. The textures of furry blousons were gelled and then hand painted to achieve a spiky, feathery finish; the surface of an egg-shaped parka in black flocked velvet was covered in printed scribbles as if to erase it with frantic urge, “Erased De Kooning Drawing” by Robert Rauschenberg kind of way. This collection was one of the most intense moments of Milan Fashion Week. But one question prevails: why was Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) in the audience? An unnecessary stimulus that made you question the provocative undertone of this Marni show.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Dimmed Glamour. Ferragamo AW24

February 26, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Now on his fourth collection for Ferragamo, Maximilian Davis‘ vision of the brand is coded with some distinct signifiers. Once again, Davis found inspiration in the brand’s founding decade, saying “the 1920s used clothing as a way to celebrate freedom. And that expression of freedom is something that resonates with me, my heritage, and with Ferragamo.” Visual references to the 1920s – raised hems, fluid fabrics, touches of fringe, relaxed cuts and dropped waists – reflected the “era of emancipation,” modernized with masculine cuts, utilitarian elements, and Lotta Volkova’s styling. As a result, this particular expression of freedom through clothing was one anchored in shape, with a strong focus on sleek eveningwear, drapery and structured tailoring. There were two lovely shimmering flapper dresses that appeared to be adorned with thick fish scale-style sequins, which were meticulously constructed from leather covered in a special metallic finish. Throughout, these hyperfeminine sensibilities – like sensual, sheer touches – were juxtaposed with masculine shoulders, thick knit jumpers and fisherman wader-style boots. Davis is intrigued by Old Hollywood, given Salvatore Ferragamo’s history with actresses; autumn-winter 2024 is a singular homage to ’20s icons like Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Punk Hot. Versace AW24

February 25, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

At Versace things got hot. Punk hot. For autumn-winter 2024, Donatella Versace was thinking about all kinds of rebels. Siouxsie Sioux, who was on the soundtrack, was a stand-in muse, but for Donatella, the spirit of punk is as well expressed by defiant individuals: Prince, whose Versace-made jackets, fitted through the waist with wide shoulders and designed to make him look taller than his 5’2” frame, were a template for this season’s tailoring, and of course, her brother, Gianni, whose charismatic style codes like the Barocco print and chainmail echoed throughout the entire collection. While the models’ spiked hair and heavy eyeliner said “punk” straightforwardly, this was as polished as you expect from Versace, even more so because Donatella said she used Atelier Versace fabrics, first shredding them and then weaving them into tweeds dotted with crystals, which she cut into miniskirt suits or jackets that she paired with stirrup leggings and ballet flats for both genders. The virginal white swallow tail collars that decorated little black dresses and long ones were lifted from a 1993 Atelier Versace show staged at The Ritz in Paris. But the show’s most striking number – an hourglass column with a sheer bodice and sleeves and a neckline encrusted with crystals that only partially obscured the shoulder pads – mixed demurral and provocation. Donatella was certainly inspired this season, and it shows.