Passage Of Time. Vautrait AW24

March 24, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

One of the most intriguing runway debuts of the season belonged to Vautrait, the Paris-based brand established in 2021 by Yonathan Carmel. Every label today tries to join the conversation around tailoring, but most of these efforts end up looking pretty much the same. Vautrait however is different. For a young brand, it’s astounding how mature its designs are – just take a look at Carmel’s autumn-winter 2024 show to get what I mean. Take the statuesque wool jacket with a nonchalantly notched label. Or the oversized trench coat with cognac leather, vest-like insert with big, utilitarian pockets. Or the black coat with broad shoulders and faux-fur-trimmed collar and cuffs (from afar it looks like crow feathers). These pieces say: we’re classics. Carmel champions traditional crafts as the key to sustainable creations that shape and accompany the body over the course of its life. According to the designer, the evolution of the body echoes the passage of time, developing and revealing new qualities and properties, just like vintage wine transcends the grapes its contains. Embracing the signs of age thus emboldens Vautrait’s designs that shun a system and its unattainable standards, so focused on establishing temporary and disposable stuff. Yonathan is one of this year’s LVMH Prize semi-finalists. The competition in this edition is especially tough, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Olfactory Gestures. Niccolò Pasqualetti AW24

March 21, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Niccolò Pasqualetti‘s work is like olfactory memory: it can be both elusive and evocative, you nearly think you’ve caught it, but then it fleets like a butterfly and you want to catch it once again. For autumn-winter 2024, the Italian designer and LVMH Prize semi-finalist, muses about ways of dressing formed by gestures, some re-imagined from Etruscan ruins and Renaissance frescoes, some observed in our contemporary times. In fact, an extension of fabric, thrown over the shoulder, makes a garment appear out of nothing but instinct: that’s the case with this line-up’s stunning tailoring and cape-like coats. Solid shapes, cut from cloth, are draped so that their solidity gives way to something more fluid. The latest collection orbits around the idea of riffling through the wardrobe, stuffed with old, but cherished clothes, and how the textures you encounter sweep you away from the present: denim from pairs of jeans in all different washes, scraps from a faux fur coat, a classic tweed blazer starting to fray. Pasqualetti also has an incredible sense of clashing textures and fabrications, which might origin from the fact he started out as a jewelry designer. Sheets of rigid metal collapse into themselves like sheets of paper. Worn as jewellery – a brooch to secure a scarf, a pair of earrings, a cuff over the sleeve – or even as clothing, the shiny warped surface reflects and distorts its surroundings. In the distorted reflection, you see wooden pearls assembled into a kind of “armor”, and leather which looks like crocodile skin forming a variation on the archaic silhouette: the pannier.

Styling: Samuel Drira Photography: Cécile Bortoletti Art direction: Sybille Walter Hair: Mayu Morimoto Makeup: Asami Kawai Casting: Chouaïb Arif Assistance: Eva Rapti Press release: Rhys Evans

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Cristaseya Edition #22

March 20, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Cristaseya is a Paris-based, lifestyle brand which isn’t bothered with the fashion industry’s crazy-paced schedule. Cristina Casini and Keiko Seya, the founders, both have worked for years as stylists for publications like L’Officiel, Numéro and i-D. One day they realized they don’t really see their personal style reflected in any of the clothes they go through everyday at work. In 2013, the duo decided to launch their own label with an aim to release “editions”, not collections, of around 20 items – specifically, one edition per six months. No overproduction, no hurry – just a pure, creative process which combines highest quality craftsmanship with the attitude of soft minimalism. The newest edition – #22 – is now available on their site, and the offering looks like the perfect transitioning-into-spring wardrobe. Fell in love with their voluminous collarless coat with leather piping, all the party silks, cool pajama suits and their ventures into handbags: the leather basket in different earthy shades and the fit-it-all weekend bag.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Less is More. Y/Project AW24

March 15, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Y/Project‘s Glenn Martens proved this season that sometimes less can be really more. The high profile and influential designer owned the fact his brand faces financial pressures and cancelled his runway show. In response, an important discourse opened up on the internet: the current industry system isn’t really working for independent brands. “Very honestly, we had a cash flow issue,” Martens candidly said. “We did the commercial showroom during men’s week, and we actually did grow. But at a certain point you have to make a choice. It’s €450,000 for a show, or €450,000 for pre-payment for production and making sure the collection is on time on the sales floor.” That Martens chose production and the sales floor will benefit his team and his brand in the end, of course. And somehow, the autumn-winter 2024 collection benefited too from that decision, because the lookbook is brilliant. Everyone from his father to to Interview‘s Mel Ottenberg and Purple‘s Olivier Zahm to his favorite stylists Haley Wollens and Camille Bidault Waddington is captured in the line-up. For the new collection Martens said he was thinking of pleurants, the sculptures of mourners that decorated tombs in medieval times, an instinct motivated by a sudden personal loss. He also mentioned Umberto Eco’s Middle Ages murder mystery The Name of the Rose. Putting his draping chops front-and-center, he added hoods to otherwise familiar garments like button-down shirts and fleece jackets, or inset sheer panels behind a row of buttons that gave his clothes a slouchy asymmetric shape. Some pieces featured manipulable velcro pieces that let their wearers adjust their silhouettes in the same way his bendable wire has been used in the past. A coat, for example, can convert into a cape, while a painterly floral print skirt can completely change form. Other pieces were shrouded with sheer net. The veiled pant suit gave the term fashion nun new meaning.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Chic Interaction. A.P.C. x Natacha Ramsay-Levi

March 15, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

For its 22nd Interaction, Jean Touitou invited designer Natacha Ramsay-Levi to revisit the great A.P.C. classics. Known for imagining clothes that reveal the personality of their wearers, Natacha Ramsay-Levi, former Louis Vuitton and Chloé designer, also likes to push the boundaries of masculine/feminine binarity.

It is with this state of mind that Natacha Ramsay-Levi has taken on the materials and emblematic pieces of the A.P.C. wardrobe: denim, poplin, cotton gabardine, which she twists in her own way, rethinking proportions.

Here are my favorite pieces from the capsule collection, which has dropped today!

ED’s SELECTION:

Lemaitre top

Cartel belt – this belt will age SO well in your wardrobe.

Horace trench coat – cropped trenches are a thing now!

Versailles shorts

Concarneau sandals – Natacha did similar sandals at Louis Vuitton under Nicholas Ghesquière’s direction, a very distinct chunky sole.