The Nipple Isn’t Freed. Ann Demeulemeester AW23

March 7, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Ludovic De Saint Sernin as the creative director at Ann Demeulemeester: this sentence still surprises. The Antwerp-based brand – and its founder – affiliate with a certain depth, as evocative and raw as Patti Smith’s poetry and music; it’s about a humble crisp white shirt so well-tailored it will serve you for years; her brand used to be the epitome of sensuality that was mysterious, fluid and in a way ephemeral, blink-and-you-will-miss-it. Ludovic De Saint Sernin, meanwhile, judging on his Parisian namesake label of hyper-sexualizing clothing, isn’t really about those elusive notions. His debut collection for the Belgian house seemed to check all the boxes of the preconceived image Demeulemeester has in the mind of general public: long floor-sweeping lenghts, boy-ish black suits, a dark colour palette with drops of maroon. What certainly felt like an ambiguous idea was De Saint Sernin’s choice of covering female models’ breasts. With an exaggerately big feather (another Demeulemeester code), with a shearling capelet, or with hands. The brand’s founder, who through clothes celebrated women’s liberation and their bodies, would never censor her models. Probably, De Saint Sernin’s idea sprang from Instagram’s and TikTok’s disturbing, AI-generated anti-nipple policy (being applied to women only – because men’s nipples appear to be absolutely acceptable, and ironically, De Saint Sernin didn’t cover them in his menswear looks…), which is a topic for a whole another post. And here’s the problem: Ann Demeulemeester, the designer, wouldn’t seek approval from such thing as Instagram, while Ludovic De Saint Sernin’s vision of sexuality is conceived for that specific platform. The autumn-winter 2023 clothes weren’t bad – they might even sell well – but they weren’t an innovative take on Demeulemeester’s design legacy. Except for a couple of Ludovic-look-a-like models (this designer has a certain level of heavy narcissism about him), you wouldn’t be able to distinguish this line-up from what the brand had in offer for the past couple of studio-designed seasons.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Radical Carte Blanche. Balenciaga AW23

March 6, 2023March 7, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

After THE controversy – which became an unprecedented case study that polarized the fashion industry – that escalated in the second half of December and continued to be dynamically scrutinized in the beginning of 2023, Balenciaga and Demna are back. Cautiously. The autumn-winter 2023 fashion show was provocation-free: just a white-cube venue and models in clothes, with no sociopolitical context playing in the background or a performative, highly-viral shock value. Stripping back to the fundamentals of design has been a thrust of this latest round of shows, but nowhere was the extreme tension between those two poles felt more sharply than at this show. Demna’s explanation and apology, with information about the brand’s plans for internal reform and its offer of reparation through a three-year partnership with the National Children’s Alliance was published by Vogue in early February. “I needed to have a show because I need to move on. I need to liberate myself – through my work, and what I do, and put it out there,” he’d said in a one-on-one conversation held at Balenciaga headquarters in the days before the show. “Because it has been a hell three months, and I really don’t know how I had the strength in me, mentally, to go through it.”

The choice he made was to ditch his mega-set methodology and showcase his personal bid for reputational integrity as a designer. “It had overshadowed the collections – most people didn’t see the clothes even when it was packed with great clothes. You know, I just felt almost like [I was] betraying that by doing those kinds of set designs, because the most important thing for me in my work was being overshadowed by 15 minutes of buzzy concept. I was like, I was like, ‘Okay, I need to change that anyway,’” he said. “And this whole situation really just confirmed to me that it cannot be about that anymore. I love doing that. But I don’t love doing that more than making clothes and I felt like I needed to put this in focus. It came together with something that truly represents me as a designer. I feel like this is the message I want to give: This is who I am.” Who he is, and where he is now: it was hard not to read the imagery of a world turned upside down in the makings of the long, somber sequence of 17 black oversized tailoring looks that opened the show. Black is a Balenciaga core non-shade; it syncs with the mood of fashion at large, and it was a reminder that Demna was, after all, the progenitor of the super-sizing that’s swept fashion in the last decade. Nothing new there. What was different: all these pieces were constructed from reverse-tailored trousers. There were coats and jackets with pant-loops and pockets in the hems. And below them hung doubled pairs of trousers, giving, from the side, the surreal illusion that the people were walking on four legs. In the next part of the collection, Demna refocused on Cristóbal Balenciaga’s legacy. “Evolving it is the number one reason why I am here,” as he’d commented to Vogue earlier. Shorn of distractions, critically, the collection could be seen as a hybrid of Demna-isms – cyber-avatar menswear, his familiar flower-printed knife-pleated dresses – segueing into more of a distinct homage to the founder’s archival evening gowns. These were long, slim, covered-up dresses, minutely embellished, and with a new signature rounded-bump of a shoulderline. Aside from the styling, there is one far more radical change on the way for Balenciaga. It was heralded only by its absence – the fact that the clothes and accessories were wiped clean of logos. The attraction of highly visible branding has been part and parcel of the cult of Balenciaga that Demna has brought to popular street culture everywhere. “It’s a big thing,” he admitted. “But I think we’re going to enter the stage in my work where it doesn’t need to be justified by the brand on it. To be honest, it’s necessary, and I use this opportunity now to convince that this is the right thing to do. And of course, you know, doing that means not doing it only once. You have to persist to be able to change.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Return To The Source. Comme Des Garçons AW23

March 6, 2023March 7, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Trust Rei Kawakubo to deliver a powerful, ritual-like show. The show notes from Comme des Garçons “Return to the Source” collection mused about “a feeling of wanting to go back to the starting point”. For the Japanese designer, the concept of creating something completely new through the medium of a garment has always been a relentless, sometimes brutal, yet deeply beautiful motivation. For autumn-winter 2023, Kawakubo talked of “working with free patterns” and “using basic materials” in terms of her wearable, highly-deconstructed forms. She sent out 11 separate groups, like mini-families. Each group had their own idiosyncratic mood and music. Some wore recognizable Comme garments (rosettes on a full skirt topped with a quilted funnel neck poncho that stood proud of the body), other looks were far more abstract (a pilgrim collared black wool box, paired with another box-shaped dress). Another piece looked like an exploded dress, its wadding and padding violently bursting out from within. The gorgeous headwear could be read as an interpretation of different East-European folklore traditions. All of that was a truly touching fashion moment.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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The Wolf And The Lamb. Coperni AW23

March 6, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Coperni guys seem to have perfected the art of a viral fashion moment. After last season’s finale dress that was sprayed over Bella Hadid’s body, for autumn-winter 2023 we had a pack of robotic wolves – Boston Dynamics canines – violently undressing Rianne Van Rompaey from a blanket wrap. The thing about these viral moments is that the moment they stop flooding social media, they aren’t really expanded by Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant any further. The “spray” technology wasn’t actually used in the production of Coperni’s summer collection, while the unsettling performance we’ve seen in their latest outing in general felt flat after a second thought. What else makes me quite skeptic about the label’s “new” approach, not only in its bold use of technology, is its inspiration with Alexander McQueen. The new collection seemed to be referencing a number of McQueens show – the infamous “Highland Rape”, for instance, oozed from the ragged lining of Coperni’s dresses, just like the red tights and even the hair styling. Ok, lets move on. What all of that actually meant? The creative duo leaned into their model of shaping shows around a futuristic mise en scene by recruiting the cyber-canines to play their part in an updated retelling of French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine’s The Wolf and The Lamb. Said Vaillant: “It’s a beautiful story that talks about the balance of power between different groups. Instead of the wolf and the lamb we reinterpreted it as humans and robots.” Glossing over the fact that De la Fontaine’s original is actually a pretty brutal demonstration of the relationship between force and self-justification, this was an interesting literary device for the show. The collection featured a loose underlying riff on Red Riding Hood. The models walked out in inverted collar capelets in black and tweed before we saw looks featuring adapted versions of Gustave Doré’s illustration of the fable, featuring a robo-dog instead of the wolf, and leather trousers fringed in low-grade off-cut leather skirts. There was a pivot into emoji-based pieces: a real-life handbag shaped after the messaging equivalent, and gathered dresses pinched by appreciative hands. Yet again, the big concept overshadowed the designers’ clothes. And these guys actually know how to make great clothes, so it’s a pity.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Family. Andreas Kronthaler Vivienne Westwood AW23

March 6, 2023March 6, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The latest Andreas Kronthaler Vivienne Westwood fashion show was charged with a spectrum of emotions and a beautiful, beautiful homage to the late Dame Vivienne. The sadness of her physical absence was tangible, yet her spirit was conveyed throughout the vivid sense of her creative legacy in her husband’s autumn-winter 2023 collection. And Corra Corré, Westwood’s grandaughter, was the show’s magnificent bride, which made this family affair even more moving. “She left things very clear,” Andreas Kronthaler said backstage. “And she finished a lot of things that she wanted to finish.” He added that the collection she had mentioned in the memorial film shot by her brother Gordon – her latest attempt to bring down capitalism – will be shown in London soon. “But she wanted me to use this one,” he said of the collection shown this Paris Fashion Week: “We worked on it together a bit. I brought her things home mostly and showed her. I thought of her in everything I did, about what were her favorite pieces: full skirts, petticoats, things that reminded me slightly of Buffalo Girls. I remember her first telling about it when we first met, back at the very beginning. In a way it was also about her, coming down from the North and changing the status [of fashion].” The platforms, the minicrini (made more midi), that corsetry, the pirate boots and jerkins, the drunkenly undulating gathering and drape, and the gender-fluid mix-and-matching were all present in a collection that was overwhelmingly crafted from deadstock. The trachten-tinged Tirolian overtones in darkly autumnal brown gilets and some of those full skirts were Kronthaler-originated nuances that have long been assimilated within the broader Westwood canon. More personal touches included the eye make-up that Sara Stockbridge’s tears had smudged, a tribute to Westwood’s own, and the pavé and metal pigs that were widely used as accessories. These referenced a wooden good luck charm that Westwood had acquired many years ago and kept on her mantle. Said Kronthaler: “I do think it’s a very good thing to do, to continue, not stop anything, or make big decisions. Because you need to process things and you need to go through: it’s something which happens to everybody. I thought I was very well prepared. But it’s very strange.”