Decade Later. Louis Vuitton AW24

March 8, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

The way time flies is crazy. I remember Nicolas Ghesquière‘s debut at Louis Vuitton like yesterday. But it was exactly a decade ago. 10 years is an eternity in fashion. Probably his first collection for the brand feels so fresh in memory because it was so distinct and sharp, so envelope-pushing. That can’t be said about every Ghesquière moment for Louis Vuitton, and definitely not about the autumn-winter 2024 line-up, additionally suffocated by the sci-fi venue production and the list of front row guests, with everyone from Cate Blanchett to Brigitte Macron. The designer was definitely looking back at key pieces from his Vuitton oeuvre. As strong as his design language is, the references were easy enough to spot. The jackets heavily embroidered with metallic threads and embellished with cabochon stones recalled the anachronistic frock coats of the Louis XVI collection for spring 2018 he presented in the medieval part of the Louvre. Sparkling skirts that bubbled below the knees seemed to be a callback to spring 2021, a pandemic-time show he staged without an audience. And the swirling asymmetric hems of the fringy evening numbers evoked the deconstructed scuba-suit dresses from his resort 2017 show in Rio De Janeiro. But while Ghesquière is a master of constructing the most innovative clothes, which he proved throughout his tenure at Balenciaga, I often feel like his Louis Vuitton lacks on ergonomics, especially in the way its (over)styled lately. If you’re not on a brand contract, do you really want to dress like that in 2024 with conviction?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Lady Girl. Miu Miu AW24

March 7, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

“Every single morning, I decide if I am a 15-year old girl or a lady near death“, Miuccia Prada told Vogue in her recent profile. Looking at her latest Miu Miu collection, Miuccia definitely felt like the first, but with perspective of an experienced woman who has lived a LIFE. It seems that while being 74 years old, the designer has never felt that liberated creatively. She knows her codes. She knows what’s up. She’s loves to mess it up, and she understands exactly how to make the industry fall on its knees.

Again, Miu Miu is the winner of Paris Fashion Week, and the impact of the autumn-winter 2024 – styled by Lotta Volkova – will be perceivable in the way we interact with fashion for the next six months (or more!). Classics, uniforms and bourgeois staples are twisted and subverted, creating a collection just so multi-faceted and frivolous that you just can’t resist it. The show opened with shrunken coats in heavy wool, worn with cuffed slacks, mum’s pearls, and a roomy zip-top bag tucked under the arm. Capote’s “Swans“? Not really. The man-size gloves suggested the Miu Miu girl sees the world through a different lens. She’s on the ground with her two feet. Even while wearing her short little baby-doll shift dress sprinkled with strasse embroidery and lady-like wool suits paired with grey schoolgirl tights and black leather Mary Janes. “Everyone can choose from them, to be a child or a lady”, said the designer after the show, which included some models who were nearer to the designer’s age including Kristin Scott Thomas and Dr Qin (a Shanghai-based doctor and huge Prada collector).

This season, Miu Miu – which originally in the late 90s and early 2000s meant to be Prada’s sister line – has always been like a daughter, who sometimes hates her mother’s image, and sometimes looks up to her. By mother, I mean the Prada wardrobe. Silk 1950s skirts came in so-bad-it’s-good floral prints in the most acidic shades known to human eye. Even the family heirloom “mink” coats (they were actually dyed shearling) and the kind of chic LBD’s that Audrey Hepburn might have worn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” weren’t just classy, they were daring, they had nonchalance of a youngster. Miuccia, I love you!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Deauville. Chanel AW24

March 7, 2024March 7, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Virginie Viard presented a confident and absolutely charming collection, one that made even the biggest nay-sayers of her Chanel change their minds (even a bit). Inspired by Deauville, the town in Normandy that had a great importance for Coco Chanel’s career, the autumn-winter 2024 is a beautiful ode to its breezy, bourgeoisie ambience. In the 1920s, the brand’s founder started her business as a milliner in a shop in the seaside resort. Hence the symbolic connection Viard drew with the turned-back brims of the the sun hats. Her translations of Chanel’s earliest, revolutionary jersey signatures flowed into state-of-the-art modern knitwear in multiple versions of belted cardigan pajama-like trouser suits, and made sense of the ease of the house tweeds in long-line coats and, later, the fluttery, 1930s-via-1970s chiffon prints. All the cognac-brown shearling outerwear and suede boots are just so chic. It felt as if Viard had truly found an unforced connection with the original intention of Chanel – to make chic clothes easy for contemporary women.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Upbeat. Stella McCartney AW24

March 7, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Stella McCartney show began with a video message from Mother Earth, a manifesto read by the actor Olivia Colman. It went: “Show me you love me / It’s about fucking time“. If somebody is still skeptic about global warming, just see how early spring has sprung in Paris. McCartney, a pioneer sustainability activist in this industry, wondered this season how does a woman, especially if she’s a mother, not get depressed about it all? McCartney is preternaturally upbeat and that refusal to see the cup half empty infuses her collections. Though her tailored jackets are cut with power shoulders that could command a board meeting, she styles and sends them down the runway sans shirts or underpinnings. On the more laid-back side of things, slouchy matching knit sets are accessorized with loopy yarn boas long enough to dust the floor with. Other cases in point this season included the tailoring with cut-crystal detailing in the style of a Chloé collection McCartney designed circa spring 2000 and jeans with built-in eco-leather chaps accompanied by a tank printed with the ending refrain of the Mother Earth manifesto. That much of this had been constructed with responsibly sourced or recycled materials and vegan alternatives to animal products is another reason to feel good in McCartney’s clothes.

Here’s a couple of sustainability-conscious beauty products from Stella’s line…

ED’s SELECTION:

Restore Cream Refill

Alter-Care Supplement

Alter-Care Serum Full

Travel Essentials Set

Restore Cream Full

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Time. The Row Resort 2025

March 6, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

People went wild when they learnt about The Row‘s photo ban at their Paris Fashion Week show. Well, they didn’t know Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen were preparing the most beautiful lookbook shot on film by Jamie Hawkesworth that would do absolute justice to their new season offering. Patience pays. In general, time is a big theme for the Olsens. Their garments are so timeless, their look is simultaneously contemporary and as if from another decade.

For resort 2025, the designers – who are having an seismic impact on other brands – eschewed some of their more intense experiments in cocooning and draping, replacing them with a gorgeously thoughtful ease. That was well represented by the likes of the oversized and all enveloping comfort of two masculine-inflected coats, one black, one navy, and popped by the surprise of their accessories; a knitted hat encrusted with silver metal embellishments with the former, ginormous gold and ebony hoop earrings with the latter. Vintage-tinged hats with character are having a huge comeback, all thanks to the Olsens. That easiness was also evident in the way a burnished tan leather blazer was popped over another, with black lean pants; ditto the perfection of cut and fabric evident in a charcoal gray pantsuit. But things took a bit more of a daring turn, too. The ivory shaggy robe coat, with its richly unfettered texture, secured with a knit sash belt whose tassels had been dyed red, somewhat redolent of north African Berber craft. Another robe coat, in the kind of black plissé fabric Issey Miyake might have used back in the day, had a whole lot of volume without weight. The frayed fronds on a rawly woven ivory dress which slinked its way to the floor, or a fluid black top and pants embroidered with a gazillion shimmering beads, were eveningwear specials. And then, just to bring us back to what always seems to last and last and last, what the Olsens have made their life’s work at The Row, out came a simple gray cashmere sweater worn by Malgosia Bela, slouchy, tactile, desirable, and a pair of simple gray pants, a look accessorized by what looked to me to be their now-classic Margaux bag.