Beauty That Ages. Hodakova SS24

September 27, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

It’s interesting to see how the new generation of brands in Paris reinterpret Martin Margiela. Vaquera nods to the grittiness and rawness of the famously anonymous designer; Marie Adam-Leenaerdt references the conceptual aspect of the garment. Just like the legendary Belgian visionary, Stockholm-based Ellen Hodakova Larsson has a similar interest in the daily objects and upcyling, which she revisits through artisan techniques. Hodakova‘s spring-summer 2024 was created from selected with great care fabrics that she found in warehouses, tag sales, and secondhand shops; as such, they don’t have the happy, shiny newness of something wrapped in plastic or right off the rack. Plus Larsson chooses to work with not only easily translatable finds, like suiting, but also slightly ickier ones: nylons and brassieres. The designer specifically thought about the beauty ideal in this lineup. Her flower dresses were a reaction to filters and body modifications that seek to trap youth in amber. In response, Larsson said she “captured beauty – beauty that actually ages.” A dried flower might not have the same allure as a fresh-cut one, “but it still has a beauty.” These flora were preserved in silicone and individually, lovingly, hand-sewn onto linen. Then, the designer used lipstick this season as a metaphor for “perfection and desire,” she said. The counterpart to those tubes of rouge were ink-filled ballpoint pens. This collection included many greatest hits, all thoughtfully considered. The plastic used for the finale dress was repurposed from last season’s version, for example. New for the season was menswear, which, though twisted, had a classical feel, as did a lovely dress made of vintage tablecloths that was an actual pillar of minimalism. It was a sartorial equivalent of a blank page, much like a white shirt can be. A plain button-down paired with a spiky pencil skirt took on a kind of note-to-self function, showing the audience that these special pieces can be grounded with wardrobe staples.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Paris. Peter Do SS24

September 27, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

New York’s Peter Do delivered a refined and strong collection for his Paris Fashion Week debut. This was a much-needed distance between his eponymous brand’s abilities and the designer’s stint at Helmut Lang – which had some very mixed reviews at the beginning of September. “I want to make grown-up clothes,” Do said backstage yesterday. To start, what that meant here was you didn’t see the silly short-shorts that were for instance all over the Milan runways. The designer cut his blazers into horizontal sections, placing a band of silk twill lining with subtle logo details between a top and bottom in summer-weight wool. Some jackets were tucked into pants with a similar treatment. If that’s a runway styling trick that may not make it in the real world, many other pieces have good odds, like the jackets cropped at the midriff and the blazer vests with exaggerated shoulders. Then there were great looking trousers. The most ambitious were the pairs with vertical slices down the front that revealed a bold lash of red underneath. On the softer side, a pair of halter dresses ad provocative sheer insets in front and elegant draped backs. The draping and twisting felt new for Do, an expansion of his vocabulary. Sprinkled in were pieces from his Banana Republic collaboration, due in stores on October 10. The khaki trench with a removable shearling collar and a two-in-one chunky ribbed sweater added a more easy-going vibe to the show. Just don’t call them casual. There’s nothing casual about Do’s drive.

Create The Surprise. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt SS24

September 26, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is on everybody’s lips in Paris. Although considered a newcomer by the industry, she in fact was a ready-to-wear designer at Demna’s Balenciaga for a couple of seasons. Spring-summer 2024 collection comes in perfect continuity with her previous outing, deliberately designed to complement the ideas that are at core of the brand. The raw, intense, dazzling light of the summer sun at its zenith is used in a quasi-extreme vision that aims to question seasonality and obsolescence through a counterpoint and paradox. In the same spirit, Marie Adam-Leenaerdt’s garments multiply their uses, with systems of ties, fastenings and buttonholes. They can be worn as desired, far away or close to the body, and we appropriate them to create our own personal wardrobe, our own collection. Objects stripped of their initial function are adorned with dress codes, and hybridization is a given: Marie Adam-Leenaerdt’s signature. “Create the surprise“, she says. “Thus, the portable beach hut becomes, almost literally, a dress, in the same referential fabric – a conceptual garment“, the designer enigmatically says. The collection is enriched by some Margiela-isms (like at Vaquera; it seems that this Paris Fashion Week will be big on references to the Belgian designer): a trompe-l’oeil stiletto heel, pool and sand prints, and over-sized, raw denim.

Big Chic Energy. Vaquera SS24

September 26, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee opened Paris Fashion Week with a bang, delivering big chic energy with their Vaquera fashion show. The designers emerged for their bows in matching sunglasses, big eye-obscuring shields of the kind worn by A-list celebrities. They said their collection was a consideration of the ways in which stars (and the rest of us) negotiate lives mediated by a 24/7 barrage of cameras. Do you want to be seen or do you want to hide? Is there a difference in a world where everyone is wielding an iPhone? The collection had a couple of gritty Margiela references, especially all the faux fur elements and XXL silhouettes, but in case of Vaquera, it’s never about knocking off, but revisiting their fashion gurus. After opening with a gold fishnet catsuit, the breasts outlined like bullseyes, many of the “normal” looks that followed were split down the back, exposing bra straps and panties. Other looks used underwear as decoration. The pink satin briefs fixed to the front of an otherwise conventional skirt might not have registered as all that outré on the runway, but on the street it’d be a different story. Standing up along the runway, like fans crowding a police barricade at a red carpet or outside a fashion show, the crowd hooted and hollered in appreciation. There aren’t many collections in Paris that deliver Vaquera’s kind of edgy fun. Hopefully, some bold starlet will wear Vaquera’s bleached denim ball gown.

Clarity. Fendi AW23 Couture

July 8, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Kim Jones placed the creative synergy between himself and Delfina Delletrez at the heart of his Fendi haute couture show, and it worked: the collection felt assured and strong, comparing to his last attempts at the brand. “I started with looking at Delfina’s Fendi high jewelry, which she’s done for the first time,” he said. His palette flowed “in almost an organic way, with colors and embroideries based around the hues of natural stones, rubies and sapphires,” he added. “It’s the idea of the silhouette being ‘nothing’, but everything at the same time.” This collection didn’t reinvent the wheel, but it had couture clarity that can subtly compare with Pierpaolo Piccioli’s couture work at Valentino. The aesthetic Jones established is based around draped, wrapped, shapes – 1990s minimalist aesthetics merged with echoes of the statuary of ancient Rome, where Fendi is based. This season’s iteration became his canvas for the launch of Delletrez’s 30-piece collection of Fendi precious jewels. The models walked around a marble floored quadrangle, a scenographic impression of Fendi’s headquarters in Rome. Most were clutching a version of a Fendi bag – small rectangular leather jewelry boxes. Delfina’s distinctive diamond earrings, brooches, and necklaces shone from the runway. “Everything is very fluid,” she explained, showing how she created draped, asymmetrical shapes, studded with pink spinels and yellow diamonds, ingeniously incorporating tiny geometric plays on the Fendi logo.