Paris

Hints of Boldness. Jil Sander AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

This was a classic Jil Sander collection by the Luke and Lucie Meiers. Even too predictable. The life-and-work partners’ collection proposed clothes as tools for giving a purpose to people’s step in the wake of the pandemic. “It’s a time of change for everybody. To be able to achieve change you need to feel empowered to do so. The way you dress changes the way you feel about yourself,” said Lucie. Luke added: “You want people to feel better, to feel good, strong, powerful; that this is our future. This is our medium to do so.” Within the purist frames of their expression, they conveyed that message in hints of boldness, from the decisive sculpting of coats and skirts to hand-spun dresses with fringing cascading from the bias, and lingerie dresses with glamorous lashings of lace (very Old Céline). Big, ornate crystals made princely appearances. Still, it’s the slightly ‘wrong’ elements that make their Jil Sander offering interesting – think operatic gloves in pastel colours or the top-slash-necklace made of strings of pearls that opened the look-book. The designers have proven they can master a wardrobe that quietly but solidly evolves around the idea of ‘soft minimalism’ every season. I kind of wish they went a bit further and did something more surprising in the near future – maybe the brand’s new owner, Only the Brave’s Renzo Rosso, will let them champion that riskier side?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Timeless Design. Maison Rabih Kayrouz AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Rabih Kayrouz delivered a beautiful, beautiful collection for autumn-winter 2021. It’s a fine edit of timeless designs, that are both elegant and comfortable. “I’ve always wanted to make my work like uniforms,” he explained to Vogue. “I look at my work less as a fashion object than a design object. What’s good about design is that it lasts over time despite trends. It’s not just a spur-of-the-moment fashion impulse.” A graceful yet statuesque jacket structured shoulders comes in versatile, universally flattering iterations like black velvet  or tennis stripes. Likewise, the designer’s best-selling straight coat – which typically is worn open – is now engineered so that the wearer can button in a panel for more protection from the elements. In the same spirit, Kayrouz revisited his idea archive for “gesture” pieces, spanning a gold lamé bustier dress that coaxes glamour out of a single square of fabric, a poncho-like trench anchored simply by its cuffs, and a skirt that evokes a sarong with a couture touch. Fluid numbers include dresses in an ink-blot print that resembles the season’s omnipresent leopard print without going literal; lavaliere blouses with tails trailing behind; and haute takes on the shirtdress. The collection reflects Maison Rabih Kayrouz’s stance that it’s the wearer who “makes” the clothes.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Mayfair Lady. Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

 For Andreas Kronthaler and Vivienne Westwood, one unintended consequence of lockdown was a passionate rediscovery of My Fair Lady. Combined with a timely refurbishment of their 1980s vintage couture store on London’s Davies Street, the result was a collection and video titled Mayfair Lady. “It’s an incredible place,” said Kronthaler of the area. “It’s full of history, and you can feel that it was once the center of the world’s most powerful country.” In the autumn-winter 2021 collection’s film, the couple and their talented cast (headed by Caroline Polachek!) showcase Kronthaler’s collection in and around the store, strolling giddily past the London streets. The collection is a joyfully haphazard collage of references (flower girl headpiece, professor’s robe, and so on) sprinkled within a typically anarchic Kronthaler context. Many of the pieces were upcycled, and the designer said his shapes were sometimes dictated by the scraps of fabric available. “We express ourselves in clothes when we dress up,” said Kronthaler in his press notes. Timeless truth.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Sharper & Bolder. Nina Ricci AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

“We want to give a sharp and curated vision, not just in the end result but in the development as well,” one part of Nina Ricci‘s creative duo, Lisi Herrebrugh, told Vogue. “From the beginning, we now work from a limited amount of sketches. It puts a certain pressure on the garments, but in the end, they get a lot of attention too.” Her words could have captioned the post-lockdown “wardrobe reset” many are now talking about in the fashion landscape. “It’s about not having endless amounts of choices, but instead being really focused,” said Rushemy Botter, driving home the idea.Tasked with preserving Nina Ricci’s haute couture legacy for the present and future, the designers understand that a certain adaptability is necessary to create a relevant product. They want to “ground couture memories in everyday ways,” as Herrebrugh said. Their collection conveyed – through construction and illusion – couture shapes in garments devoid of the trussed-up constriction those structures would traditionally entail. “An outspoken shape that keeps its functionality,” Herrebrugh said, demonstrating the easiness of a lime green suit jacket that casually zipped into a couture volume. In another take on the same effect, an easy sheathlike dress was emblazoned with a print of a jacket collaged from archive pictures, creating a kind of trompe l’oeil. If you stripped away the furry shoes and Insta-perfect bucket hats that fancified their expression, it was a pretty realistic proposal for a post-confinement look.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Fabulously Eccentric. Loewe AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Last season, Jonathan Anderson went for a small collection of ‘un-commercial’, couture-esque dresses and full skirts. For autumn-winter 2021, his Loewe has more of the ‘ready-to-wear’ aspect, yet it still has that signature, fabulously-eccentric-lady style. It’s all about bold colours and mood-changing zigzaggy prints here; the curiosity of avant-garde shapes; perfectly placed, succulently colorful accessories; and what Danielle Steel is feeling about fashion. Say what? Go to Loewe’s website, and there, to be sure, you’ll hear the world’s best-selling novelist in a podcast with Anderson. This is “the ‘why not?’ era,” she remarks. “I’m much more into fun things now…. I like silly stuff. I guess I get more eccentric as I get older…. Life is serious enough!” The collaboration with Steel came about through Anderson’s connection with her daughter Vanessa Traina. In a continuation of his printed-matter lockdown show alternatives, he came up with a Loewe newspaper, within which is a trail of the first chapter of Steel’s new novel, The Affair. Neatly enough, it’s a tale about a New York fashion editor in chief. The paper, with all the pictures of the Loewe collection, is “being distributed to a million readers” including readers of The New York Times, Le Monde, and Le Figaro. In other words, it’s time to embrace the fun and euphoria of fashion again – or at least to be able to imagine ourselves into the time when we can. “As much as people always see the cynical in luxury fashion, there’s something in it that releases endorphins that make you feel good,” Anderson said in a Zoom call with Vogue. For the shoot, he rolled out the yellow carpet in Paris at the Le Train Bleu restaurant, his own office at Loewe, and a private members’ club off the Champs-Élysées. Elaborate settings for Anderson’s skilled composition of bold silhouettes, his subtly wearable pieces and a gamut of bags and shoes that deliver quirk to the adventurous and classicism to the conservative. “I don’t see this as a collection about fantasy. I think it’s about this idea of projecting what a new reality will hopefully be,” he said. “I think fashion is going to be important in the next while, in making people gain the confidence of going back out and dressing up again. The whole point of this collection is: believe it, and it will happen.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.