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.
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Beauty For Beauty’s Sake. Thom Browne AW24 Couture

June 25, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Beauty is pain. Too much beauty can be lethal. That’s a thought that returns to my mind every single Thom Browne show, this season especially. The New York-designer designer has two contrasting qualities: he’s both a maximalist and a comfort-zone-lover. I think we will never see him emerge from the vocabulary of regal tailoring he’s so well-known for. But the maximalist side of him makes him overthink his own style, making his most splendor-filled collections feel suffocating. Even the models walking in his corsets, voluminous, multi-layered coats and statuesque gowns seem to have problems with breathing – and moving. Since he’s doing couture in Paris, Browne is doing extremely technique-demanding, yet absolutely superfluous collections, so tedious and overburdened with embroideries, embellishments and other pretty details. Yes, it’s impressive that the entire, latest collection is made from muslin, but what of it when the overall line-up looks like a big, amorphous blur of ecru? Beauty for beauty’s sake is important in our lives, but with Thom I wish he would fuck it up a little from time to time and do something… rougher?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Old World, Vampy Glamour. Schiaprelli AW24 Couture

June 25, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

This haute couture week started with a regal twist as Daniel Roseberry took us back in time. “I had this dream of finding a forgotten couture collection in the basement of Elsa’s country house,” he said backstage at his Schiaparelli fashion show. This is a couture label that flourished in the 1920s and ’30s. Its contemporary creative director has never seemed hemmed in by that era, but this season he made his gaze more explicit. “I wanted people to feel the collection was referencing a different time… and there was something about the ’50s that felt so fresh and simple. You’ll find homages to those silhouettes.” The show was staged in a basement – the basement of the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, whose upper salons have long been used for couture shows. In the dark, chandelier-lit space Roseberry conjured something of the haute couture shows of old, with models emerging at a stately, almost reverential pace, and making eye contact with the audience. Maybe it felt stuffy and history-heavy at some moments, even archaic, but there’s an irresistible charm of that old world, vampy glamour. Who wouldn’t want to indulge in wearing the show-opening cape, with the broad shoulders of an eagle with silver lozenge embroidery arranged to look like gleaming feathered wings? Or a black party dress, with its tulle skirt in a permanent can-can kick flip exposing an underside lavishly embellished with pink rhinestones? Or spiral in some mirrored hall, covered in millefeuille circles that trimmed the arabesque hems of an hourglass dress? Couture is a dreamworld, and Roseberry has no shame about it.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – Birds of a Feather. Loewe SS25

June 24, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

When you’ve got Paul Thek’s “Spinning Top” installation, Peter Hujar’s “Shoe for Elizabeth” photograph, a Charles Rennie Mackintosh “Argyle” chair and Carlo Scarpa’ “Easel” scattered around the runway, then you know it must be a Jonathan Anderson fashion show. No other designer has such a sensitivity towards contemporary art like Loewe‘s creative director, who often works and creates like a curator. This season, however, Anderson resorted to radical restraint in regards of his menswear. “Razor looks” is how he described his approach. It indeed was sharp. Slim silhouette, very French C-suite tailoring with almond-toe leather oxfords in black opened the show. Shorts and t-shirts were painted with a cable knit shaped finish. Edged in golden piping and emanating a shiny gleam, they appeared almost ceramic. A short-sleeve shirt was fabricated in sections of tonal fringe that resembled a hairy houndstooth, while a long brown coat was made in nappa leather on its right side that gradually transitioned into ostrich on its left. Anderson said the gold or monochrome feathers were there to divide our view of the faces beneath them as part of his consideration of forced perspective. This was a collection that stimulated you to question exactly what it was you were seeing, without going for chaotic eclecticism that Anderson has been channeling lately.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Shape-Shifting. Hed Mayner SS25

June 24, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Hed Mayner keeps on delivering some of the most intriguing, form-defeating menswear in Paris. “There is this idea of attacking the proportion, from an angle that is more related to textile and from that textile creating the shape,” he explained. Collarless bomber jackets were puffed to perfection but crafted in lightweight linens for the summertime. Leather button-downs exaggerated the human form with striking, cocooning outlines, while buttoned vests revealed chiseled torsos beneath. Leather motorcycle vests were upgraded with tripled belts, followed by broad-shouldered pinstriped suiting and voluminous trench coats rolled at the cuffs to reveal checkered lining. Crinkled fabrics enclose the sense of pre-loved garments on multi-faceted outerwear, accompanied by the designer’s oversized version of Canadian tuxedos. You want to dance, jump, live in Mayner’s tactile and evocative garments.