Revisited Classics. Givenchy Pre-Fall 2021

December 17, 2020 | Design & Culture by Ed

You might be on fence with Matthew M. Williams‘ style and aesthetic, but you’ve got to admit one thing: this guy knows how to shake up a brand and make present it all over the place (even if that revamp isn’t overly ground-breaking). Talking about his first pre-collection for Givenchy, he evaded questions of the specific visual references that may have inspired it, choosing instead to focus on nerdy things like cuts and fabrication. No mood-boards here. “I don’t really work like that, actually. I’m more on the body, touching materials. Sometimes there’ll be imagery that inspires things, but it’s very instinctual,” he told Vogue. Williams is emblematic of a new wave of designers for whom fashion is often less about producing the flashy statement piece than about perfecting the unassuming wardrobe staple – of course, with an endlessly-studied twist. “What I find exciting is often things I would wear myself,” as Williams said. “As somebody who shops, if I’m buying a suit and I want to wear a t-shirt with the suit instead of a button-up, I want that brand to have a nice t-shirt for me to wear.” His new collection for Givenchy proposes a series of wardrobe staples subverted through his soft-versus-aggressive lens. A classic letterman jacket chopped into a bolero and realized in a super luxe, tonal red knitwear; a rather normal long-sleeved black day dress hacked up at the waist like a little piece of architecture; business-ready blazers with complex lapel and collar structures seemingly morphing in and out the fabric. “For me, it’s really finding that tension between my real world – how I wear clothes on a daily basis – with this magical dream world of the maison,” he said. The knitted, slightly figure-hugging dresses continued to outline his womenswear silhouette for Givenchy, which debuted in his first line-up, while silk leggings and EVA-soled suede sliders represented the elevated sportswear element of the collection. Interestingly, Williams’s take on Givenchy isn’t too sporty. “I do wear suits,” he reiterated. “It feels more like me.” Of course, that’s not to say that a generous amount of logos – another pillar of the social media generation – didn’t find their way into the collection. This kind of makes Williams’ vision feel like Riccardo Tisci’s logo-heavy Givenchy off-spring. Williams latticed a lace dress in Givenchy’s archival four-G logo, embossed them on bags and forged them in bag chains. Well. While every fashion magazine has a new Givenchy special in it, 500 million people were reached in October with the brand’s social media campaign featuring everyone from Kim Kardashian to Julianne Moore, and first designs designed by Matthew are hitting the stores, time will show if that “perfect” recipe actually works.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Revived Chic. Saint Laurent SS21

December 16, 2020December 16, 2020 | Design & Culture by Ed

I loved Anthony Vaccarello‘s spring-summer 2021 collection for Saint Laurent. It was an exercise in ultimate chic, an escape from lockdown dressing as we know it. And the guest-less fashion show itself was a visual feast. The hypnotic film by longtime creative accomplice Nathalie Canguilhem of models walking in a snaking single file across striated sandbanks in… well, who knows where, exactly? On a call with Vaccarello a few days ago, he wasn’t letting on. It’s worth noting that the panoramic vista as far as the eye can see performed a similar trick here as it did in February: an uninterrupted backdrop the better to showcase his new streamlined silhouette. The line-up was surprisingly soft, hard edges rounded off, save for the punk-ish haircuts of the models. There’s a general air of relaxing, sometimes even playfulness – but nothing too loose. The months of life in and out of lockdown with the attendant desire for clothes with ease and softness didn’t leave Vaccarello untouched. “With everything that was going on in the world, I wanted something softer, warmer,” he said during that phone call from Paris. “I’ve never really done ‘comfortable’ before.” He found his answer to how to approach it by delving into the YSL archives, alighting in his usual resolutely left-field and non-historicist way on the fluid, pliable jersey dressing that Saint Laurent did in 1968. But the ultimate, refined loungewear was my my favourite here: sheer kaftan gowns and flou dresses, all of them denuded of any details, save for the accessories that accompany them: a hothouse bloom tied close to the throat via a leather thong, razor-sharp slingback heels and reissued versions of Claude Lalanne’s jewellery. Vaccarello’s success here is in answering the more intimate mood of the moment; being able to connect a house whose foundations rest on a particular brand of high-octane cool glamour – a very external expression of self – with our current deep inner need for ease and solace. Even his nods to the ’60s -they also include some very Valley of the Dolls florals and marabou negligee dressing, glorious exercises in kitsch, but just enough; and those geometric updates of the classic Vidal Sassoon five-point cut – aren’t nostalgic rehashes. Instead, it’s a wish to connect that decade’s optimism with his own sense of positivity; a sense that one can start looking again to the future. And who can blame him? By the time this collection is available to buy, Vaccarello will be celebrating the milestone of his fifth anniversary at the house. “I’m not the guy I was when I first came here,” he said. “I am more sure of myself.” So too it seems is the woman he has in his mind’s eye. “She was maybe more seductive when she started,” he said, “but now she has grown up. She has much less to prove.” It’s getting better and better!

Collages by Edward Kanarecki.

Trippy Elegance. Dior Men Pre-Fall 2021

December 10, 2020 | Design & Culture by Ed

This time last year, Kim Jones’ many fans across the fashion and art worlds were gathered in Miami Beach. His Dior Men show was a Basel-adjacent affair, complete with a walk-through of the new Rubell Museum. Last moments of old reality. The pandemic scuttled plans to stage a show in Beijing for Jones’s latest outing, and this way sole focus was directed at the clothes. Last year, Jones revealed a colorful collaboration with Shawn Stussy, the streetwear OG. This season, he tapped Kenny Scharf, an American artist who emerged from the 1980s East Village scene, making street art alongside his friends Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. “The fun and the energy of that time – you see young kids being excited by Kenny Scharf’s work. It’s speaking across generations,” Jones told Vogue via Zoom. Scharf’s canvases can now fetch up to six figures, but he still has street cred: via “Karbombz,” a public art project, he’s tagged upwards of 300 cars with his imaginary creatures – all for free. Scharf, whose first show was at New York’s Fiorucci boutique in 1979 and earliest fashion hookup was with Stephen Sprouse, is the perfect Jones collaborator. His work gleefully obliterates boundaries too. “I’m one of the inventors of all that,” Scharf said on a call from his L.A. studio. He raved about Jones: “He’s a listener, he’s a learner, and that shows. He went really deep into what I’m doing.” Together, the designer and the artist selected contemporary pieces and older ones to reproduce, including When the Worlds Collide, a 1984 canvas in the Whitney’s permanent collection. Scharf also designed 12 Chinese zodiac signs for the show’s knits and underpinnings, and, of course, he had free rein to reinterpret the Dior logo. “I just wanted it to be a very full-on version, using specific techniques to recreate his work in really beautiful ways, to make it even more Pop,” Jones said. In some cases, the Dior ateliers were joined by Chinese artisans who rendered Scharf paintings in delicate seed embroideries. Silhouette-wise, Jones’s instinct was to soften his distinctive tailoring and give it a more lounge-y attitude. Jackets are belted like robes and pants are easy; some of the models wear Oblique-patterned slippers. We are still locked in, after all – lets keep it stylish.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Stimulating. Balenciaga AW21

December 8, 2020 | Design & Culture by Ed

The global pandemic pushed the fashion industry into abrupt reflection of how to show clothes, but most brands decide on a safe look-book or a film (and even episodes directed by renowned artists). And then, we’ve got Balenciaga‘s autumn-winter 2021 collection. I can’t recall a more stimulating fashion show presentation in a while. It’s not even a presentation, but a game. Yes, that’s what fashion can be in contemporary times. And Demna Gvasalia is a genius for acknowledging and embracing that. Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow is an allegorical adventure, simultaneously a collection, and a break into the lived world of millions of players. “I hate the idea of fashion film. I find it very dated,” the designer tells Vogue. “We started working on this in April, since we knew that fashion shows would be out of the question.” There are levels and levels to explore in what Gvasalia is engaging with now, and only one of them is the fact that on the tech side he teamed up with Unreal Engine, the games engine of Epic Games. He says it took a hundred people to pull off what is boasted of as a record-breaking “volumetric” video project escapade—meaning the hours of expertise and advanced technology that it took to digitally scan the Balenciaga models and their movements in a studio in Paris, and then transform them into avatars. “I asked them to imitate couture poses, which actually turned out to look like how gaming characters stand at the beginning of a game.” So that’s the start – and how the basic look book content was shot IRL. The “hero’s journey” narrative should be experienced first hand. I played the game, and I must say it’s brilliant. Maybe you’re not really doing anything, but the whole thing is immersing. Pandemic-wise, with everyone locked up in their homes, it’s a realm of escape; and connecting with others – that’s only mushroomed in emotional significance. Which is where Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow comes in, constructed as Gvasalia’s projection into 2031 – 10 years hence, a gamified future where people will have battled through the anxieties of our present dark age to reach a better place, armored with some Balenciaga medieval boots as they go. “It’s about the comeback of youth – where nature and youth coexist,” he says. “Kind of hallucinogenic. It starts in a Balenciaga store in a city center, which could be anywhere. People go to meet in different suburbs, an arty underground area. Then you go to a black forest, led by a white rabbit to an illegal rave. Like you see people have been having this year.” The future of clothing aesthetics, Gvasalia imagines, is the logical extension of what’s already happening among the climate-emergency-aware generation. “People will keep wearing clothes they love until they fall apart. I do myself. So things look quite destroyed, worn in, pre-crinkled.” For outdoor dancing in the cold, there’s the signature Balenciaga red puffer (a look he made his name with in his first season), adapted to skew off one shoulder. Or the option of a shaggy gray padded coat. “It’s made of shredded deadstock. We cannot do fur today – and thank God. This gives that drama, instead. And it’s really light and warm.” It’s down into a cave next. Gvasalia swears this is not the same place of apocalyptic darkness he immersively evoked at his last Balenciaga show in March, where sinister black-clad people walked on black water under a burning sky. It was days before the world went into pandemic lockdown. “Some people called me prophetic after that. But fashion is a reflection of life,” he reasons. “We have been through dark times, but I don’t feel this darkness anymore. I feel hope. More positivity than despair.” There’s a hoodie, printed varsity-style with the word free on it. “People want to get to the other side of this.” In the gloom of the Afterworld cave, fashion-gamers will meet artist Eliza Douglas, Gvasalia’s emblematic Balenciaga model, dressed in armor as a modern-day Joan of Arc. “She takes a sword out of a stone, like in the myth of King Arthur. But she’s a modern-day pacifist warrior.” The high-heel armored boots she wears are the opposite of virtual. Gvasalia had them made by a man in the South of France who forges medieval armor. “It reminded me of how they make robots today,” he adds. “We’ve made some of them in softer leather. They’re going to be expensive. Limited.” Finally, the tribe of Balenciaga avatars – some dressed in old-style NASA space jackets, others in T-shirts printed with game-convention logos – will reach a mountaintop and see the sun rising. “The game ends with breathing in, and exhaling. It leads to a breathing app. A horizon where you can breathe,” says Gvasalia. “It’s making a reconnection, a balance with nature.” It’s drawing those parallels between ancient, mystical powers and modern consciousness that he’s really interested in. “I believe in a future that is spiritual. Loading a forgotten past.” He’s divined that right. Living through these times is absolute hell, but talk to many young people now, and spirituality, magic, and beliefs centered on the search for something greater soon rises through conversation. End of day, it’s an alternative to the “experiential” destination travel the insider fashion world got so extravagantly involved with in the past few years—just going to a far more democratically open-to-all realm, minus the mass expenditure of flight carbon emissions. Is there a future in more Balenciaga video games – maybe a shoppable one? “I would like to further explore it. I see a lot of potential in merging fashion with games, and in-game shopping is certainly the tool to be considered in the near future.” For now, though, he’s also spending his time reveling in the novelty of designing at completely the opposite end of the spectrum – the first haute couture Balenciaga collection that he’ll be presenting, when the time is right, in a physical show next summer. I can’t wait for this to finally happen. As Demna concluded, “I love it so much. We have time to do it, and with the craftsmanship we can use—it can be with Lesage embroidery or high-tech people from California. The sky’s the limit. Every time I go into that studio, it’s like Christmas every day.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Eternal. Chanel Pre-Fall 2021

December 4, 2020 | Design & Culture by Ed

Virginie Viard‘s Chanel seems not to care about being “cool” or “relevant” – maybe that’s why her vision is often underrated and simply mistunderstood. Her Chanel is eternally… Chanel. And I think that’s why I learned to love it. This collection highlights the creative dialogue between Virginie Viard and the Maisons d’art, enhancing the creations of the house. This year, the Métiers d’art collection was held at the Château de Chenonceau, located in the Loire Valley and also known as Le Château des Dames. The show was nearly guest-less due to COVID-19 – there was only Kristen Stewart, the brand’s ambassador, in the audience (this had to be fun!). Le Château des Dames’s history is closely linked with the legendary women who alternately lived there: Katherine Briçonnet, Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de’ Medici, Louise de Lorraine, Gabrielle d’Estrées and Louise Dupin. In the second half of the 16th century, the queen of Italian origins, Catherine de’ Medici gave this residence the splendour of the Renaissance. As proof, numerous inscriptions of her monogram remain visible in the castle’s décor: two interlaced Cs that bear an astounding resemblance to the double C that Gabrielle Chanel presented as early as 1921 on the stopper of the N°5 perfume. Beyond the emblematic CC, echoes of the castle’s rich history meet the world of Chanel in the black-and-white hues of the tiling in the “Royal Gallery“, the appearance of the lion, Gabrielle Chanel’s beloved symbol, embroidered tapestries and in the ordered lines of the castle’s gardens. What about the collection? It’s pure elegance and craftsmanship, all created with the skills of Métiers d’art artisans: paruriers from Desrues, feathermakers from Lemarié, milliners from Maison Michel, embroiderers from Lesage and Atelier Montex, shoemakers from Massaro, goldsmiths from Goossens, glovemakers from Causse Gantier and pleaters from Lognon, in Paris and in France. The collection was a balance of princess style and something a bit darker. The chess board sequin miniskirts (and matching purses) worn over shiny lycra (or bejeweled stretch velvet) leggings, an amazing woven tweed ball skirt paired with a black sweater with Renaissance white flower motifs growing up the arms, capes, poet blouses, ruffled gauntlet gloves, and massaro’s D’Artagnan boots for a bit of 16th-century dress-up swagger. There’s a lot to love about this collection, especially seen through the lenses of Juergen Teller. Viard, as she explained, took inspiration from Lagerfeld’s fall 1983 trompe l’oeil “shower” collection for Chloé that featured embroidered faucets and showerheads spouting crystal water sprays. Her own playful trompe l’oeil, developed with the inventive embroidery house of Montex, reimagines the castle in Lego-like sequin bricks, used as cummerbund sashes that cinch the waists of full satin ball skirts worn with fragile organza blouses flourished with some of those Catherine de Medici–via–Coco Chanel ruffled collars. The chateau’s tapestries inspired intarsia knits and Lesage embroidered evening sweaters. Lemarie, meanwhile, famed for their feather and artificial flower work, are responsible for the trellis of black ribbons laid over translucent organza that evoke Chenonceau-era court dress with a light 2020 touch. That dialogue across the centuries is also expressed in the playful drama of a floor-length black velvet coat that opens to reveal a pale tweed body, gilt buttoned like a traditional Chanel jacket. Delightful.