Playful Derision. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt AW23

March 29, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

One of the hottest Paris Fashion Week runway debuts belonged to Marie Adam-Leenaerdt. 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. The Belgian designer presented her collection in what she called a “soulless” conference room. This arguably male domain was a foil for her sophisticated women’s designs, which might have read as bougie if there weren’t something so “off” about them – like jackets with small shoulders that slanted toward the chest, strange geometric silhouettes, and the collection’s hero pieces – oats with standing lapels. Adam-Leenaerdt style is all about hints of playful derision. But there’s nothing gimmick-y about it: her garments are trendless, and appeal with the strength of the cut, the precision of the construction, and the luxury of the materials. There’s been a lot of discussion about the female gaze as it applies to “sexy” dressing; Adam-Leenaerdt seemed to be turning hers to ideas around femininity and propriety. This is a very covered-up collection that reconstructs a woman’s curves into geometries of enveloping drapes, with proportions either blown-up or shrunken. A dress that seems to have a box inside of it is tied with a couture bow, other dresses seem to have three arms. There’s a deliberate domestic aspect to Adam-Leenaerdt’s work. Women have often been relegated to the home, but she wants to transform and celebrate ordinary aspects of life – “to reveal the beauty in the ‘has-been’ elements of the daily world, to divert them, to have fun with them.” To that end Adam-Leenaerdt reimagined a folded table napkin as a white dress, and she fashioned dresses out of tablecloths. Her aim, it seems, is to make us engage with what is immediately around us, by taking something known, a code or a silhouette, and giving it a subtle strangeness that makes you stop and adjust your vision.

Follow the designer on Instagram: @marlastar

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Brave Princess. Renaissance Renaissance AW23

March 15, 2023January 6, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

I love the post-fashion month time, because it’s the right moment to look closer at collections coming from smaller brands that often deliver more substance than the usual, runway big-players. For a couple of seasons now, I’m in absolute awe with Renaissance Renaissance, created by Lebanese designer Cynthia Merhej. Last spring, Merhej told the story of runaway princess searching for a life of her own making. For autumn-winter 2023, the Renaissance Renaissance designer continued that charming story, imagining her heroine weathering the winter months in a makeshift wardrobe made of pre-existing and new materials. But as conductive as that narrative is to Merhej’s own storytelling, the most compelling story she has to tell is her own. “This season I started playing with this idea of transformational garments,” Merhej told Vogue. “I was looking again at the lifestyle of this princess, who may be too poor to buy two dresses so she makes something she can get more wear out of.” The personal side of that story, however, is that Merhej was looking to reconnect with her own sense of playfulness and independence in creating after a period of unresolvedness and evolution. The piece opening this ethereal lookbook is a deadstock pinstripe vest with a stylized cape, which unbuttons from the collar to become a bubble-hem train. This idea is replicated in a sweetheart neckline LBD, its capelet romantically tied around the neck, and on an upcycled fur stole worn as a strapless top. Merhej used mink fur from a vintage coat for some of these special pieces, paneling the material for the stole or dividing it in thin strips to use as accents in a gauzy silk skirt or wool double-breasted A-line coat. “The woman I’m designing for is very free,” Merhej said, “she doesn’t want to be tied down to anything, she’s experimental and playful.” As much as her convertible designs – most part of her Atelier program, which consists of one of a kind pieces – adhere to this ideal, it’s in her ready-to-wear that the designer is truly bridging the gap between her storytelling and her customer. A blush pink skirt and top set, as well as a khaki tailored jacket with matching skirt, are highlights.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Real. A.P.C. AW23

March 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Ending this Paris Fashion Week (it did feel like a month, though) coverage with an A.P.C. collection that captured the authentic, real, charismatic youth of Paris. “The kids are all right” was Jean Touitou’s conclusion of his latest show. Paraded in front of a crowd of press, brand friends and buyers in typically low-key style at the brand’s Rue Madame base, the collection was a highly personal presentation, modeled by Touitou’s daughter Lily and her teenage classmates from Paris’s École Diagonale. Perhaps Touitou felt the need to emphasize the family-run spirit of the label he founded in 1987. After all, last week came the announcement that L Catterton, the LVMH-backed private-equity group, had taken a majority stake in the company. “The young people who are going to walk this runway are like veterans. They experienced the raging of their hormones in a bunker with their parents during the COVID crisis,” he said. “That crisis could have wiped us out as a brand. We survived that war by getting stronger. Everybody you see here was born in 2006, and I think it’s a good metaphor for the sort of transmission process we started recently.” What followed was a determinedly youthful take on A.P.C.’s well-honed vision of Gallic urbanity, each look a nod to what Touitou called “a tribe” in a backstage debrief postshow. There was a Take Ivy preppiness to Japanese selvedge denim miniskirts and high-waist jeans worn with stripy shirts and shiny penny loafers; a street-inflected attitude to gray marl sweatpants and nylon flight jackets; a grungy insolence to flannel shirts worn with slip skirts, fluoro T-shirts, and scuffed plimsolls. And what stunning teenagers! All with their own carefully considered quirks – a snazzy Bananarama hairstyle here, swooping black eyeliner there – and forming a touching antidote to the celebrity-packed catwalks to which we’ve become accustomed. “I love this idea of no casting. You don’t say to people, ‘You’re too tall, too fat, too this, too that.’ Everybody was just cool about it,” said Touitou, who confirmed that, post-partnership deal, he will remain creative director of the brand alongside his art director wife, Judith.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Ruched & Twisted. Y/Project AW23

March 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The ruched and twisted shapes, the sculptural pieces draped from wire – with the latest Y/Project collection, Glenn Martens revisits his greatest hits. “The whole idea of this brand is to reinvent techniques, construction, and to experiment as much as possible. That’s what we like to do,” he said backstage. Though the where-do-the-jeans-end-and-the-boots-begin question is sure to keep construction obsessives guessing, this collection was less oriented around pushing new shapes than it was in pumping up the surface interest of the clothes. Maybe because he is so well-versed in denim now at Diesel, it was the major leitmotif in this show. There were baggy jeans that buttoned up on themselves and boxy jean jackets, and even a faded denim caftan, but the real marvel was how Martens cut the material into thin biomorphic shapes, shredded it, and used it as embroidery – on everything from wool coats to clingy body-con dresses. A pair of tulle evening gowns, one in blush pink and the other in ivory, were also embellished with the denim shapes. They were the most delicate pieces ever to walk down a Y/Project runway.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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The Scent of Camellia. Chanel AW23

March 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

At Chanel, Virginie Viard did her usual thing: a spontaneous, instinctual take on the Chanel wardrobe. For autumn-winter 2023 season, it was sprinkled with silk, white camellias – the brand’s famous signifiers. Viard had even organized a giant symbolic white camellia as a set, and had a real one placed on every guest’s seat. “The camellia is more than a theme, it’s an eternal code of the house,” she said in her press release. “I find it reassuring and familiar, I like its softness and its strength.” A taste for propagating a contemporary realness around Chanel’s enviable Frenchness is more Viard’s thing. Like so many others this season, she opened with variations on black, white and gray. From the minutest of embroideries to the button-shapes to the big, fuzzy angora pattern on a sweater, and swinging on multiple chain-bags, the aforementioned flowers were absolutely everywhere. The formalities of the Chanel canon are constantly open to reinterpretation, as Karl Lagerfeld supremely taught. While staying within the guardrails of Chanel’s femininity and decorativeness, his former first assistant and successor has added her own dash of quirkiness to the mix – not always with success. Viard didn’t make a big play for evening—the finale was of camellia-print silk dresses, layered over sweaters and longjohns. This was more a depiction of what Parisian style might mean as worn by women on the street. It was good to see Viard extending her sense of reality to including mid-size models in that.