Hed Mayner, the designer from Tel Aviv who keeps on charming the Parisian crowd for a couple of seasons now, loves a big, big silhouette. He is known for blowing up conventional, “normal” clothes to capacious, XXXL volumes, creating garments that are both timeless and absolutely poetic. Those that fall under the roomy category for spring-summer 2024 are the beautifully tailored suits, eternal chinos, (crinkled) cotton poplin shirts and minimal jumpers. Mayner chooses to see the beauty of normalcy and simplicity by giving it a dramatic makeover. The way that the pieces fall on and fit the body, and how these garments with vintage-y soul have characters of their own, is a combination of Mayner’s well-considered design and Samuel Drira’s masterful styling.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram! By the way, did you know that I’ve started a newsletter called Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!
The Row‘s appearances on the Parisian fashion week schedules are always slow moments of delight. The spring-summer 2024 by collection makes you truly question all that pointless noise that other brands are emitting to just be noticed for an Insta-second. A selection of the 80 looks for spring, designed and dreamed up by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, appeared on mannequins through an enfilade of handsome hôtel particulier salons on Place Vendôme, punctuated with hand-picked furniture from Parisian galleries, naturalistic floral arrangements, and waiters serving plates of red currants. There was no music; simply an ambiance of calm grandeur suggesting a certain cultivated, very Parisian sensibility. That got perfectly conveyed by the clothes.
The collection was introduced with an explanation that an expanded range of men’s wear yielded pieces that overlapped with the women’s offer. Can you spot the knee-length, black leather trench that reappears throughout the lineup? The leisure shirts with their retro stripes? The jeans that have been skillfully shredded at the knees, enhancing their desirability? Note, too, how the tailoring that seemed intentionally boxy and generous on a female frame is as intentionally streamlined on the male counterpart. Although the designers were absent, their presence was felt across the spectrum of this covetable wardrobe: laid-back layering; intellectual silhouettes; and lived-in looks that might be as basic as a button-front shirt and chinos. For every item in a dressier register – see the hand-embroidered slip dress worn over a gray T-shirt (very Martin Margiela), or the pumps with higher heels – the collection suggested a casual confidence. The lineup was also particularly palette-diverse, as primary hues alternated with pastels – see the bold red high-neck dress and pale pink cashmere polo. An outfit that comprised an outdoorsy jacket, pine green corduroy shirt, and jeans was at once erudite and everyday, as though it conveyed some admixture of vintage inspiration and social studies. New versions of signature bag styles were unapologetically capacious and as faithful to The Row as any logo. We all know that Paris style is ineffable and cannot be reduced to a single archetype. But the studio here can absorb the local culture and benefits from the proximity to manufacturers in France and Italy, where a large part of the collections are made. If a retail location to rival the stores in Los Angeles, New York, and London would give The Row its Paris bona fides, let’s agree for now that the brand has definitely perfected its je ne sais quoi.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram! By the way, did you know that I’ve started a newsletter called Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!
In anticipation of Pharrell Williams‘ debut collection for Louis Vuitton, the actual meaning of a “fashion designer” became a big discourse on the internet. Do we even need a skilled designer when a brand like Louis Vuitton hires a big (and undoubtedly stylish) entertainment industry name instead? What we’ve seen yesterday in Paris was a show (more of a business-, than fashion-, noting the Grammy-like front row featuring everyone from Beyonce to Rihanna) in its purest sense. The Voice of Fire choir singing loud; the Pont Neuf and what seems half of Paris lit up and ready to accommodate the mega-event; the Jay-Z concert afterwards… and what about the actual clothes? There was plenty of merch, as well as true eye-candies, that’s for sure. But Pharrell seemed to approach the debut more like a styling exercise. A bit of Nigo and Kim Jones menswear sensitivity here, a couple of Wales Bonner and Bode touches here, a sprinkle of Virgil Abloh nods there. The Karl Lagerfeld-level ego was palpable as well (even a Chanel-like tweed jacket popped in one of the looks). As you might already know, the garments were heavily covered with the green pixelated Damier duds, and all sorts of LV monograms known to man. Of course, the most powerful of all were the accessories, the brand’s primary money-makers. Zingily colored Keepalls and Almas and Neverfulls and Speedys, worn in clusters. To be truly honest, the collection wasn’t neither bad… or outstandingly good. But it will definitely sell loads.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram! By the way, did you know that I’ve started a newsletter called Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!
Victoria Beckham – and her design team – seem to enjoy a newly found freedom in their creative process. The brand’s aesthetic can’t be as easily categorized as in the past: Beckham’s fashion is no longer about minimalism, that’s for sure. Rather, it’s about contemporary femininity that needs no labels. As she puts it: “There really is a strong reality in the garments. Everything looks really quite simple, but it’s all about the consideration, the execution, and the subtle details.” Somewhere along the line, her collections have assumed a non-uptight flow that strikes a good balance between usefulness and sophistication. Her confident assemblages of tailoring and mostly ankle-grazing fluid dresses have been garnering critical approval since she started showing in Paris a couple of seasons back. Still, it always takes a little while for a look to sink in, and then it’s another thing to follow up with tangible product that follows through on a good runway impression. Her spring pre-collection makes it clear that she’s got that covered as well. Asymmetry plays another role in her dressmaking. It’s not always easy to understand dresses that fly off madly in all sorts of directions, but here Beckham is using the possibilities of bias cutting, ruching, and collaging to great effect. Some of her eveningwear has the air of 1930s dance dresses, minus the vintage-y feel. There are day dresses that are somehow patchworked from pattern pieces that run in diagonals and seem to spiral around the body. You notice the dynamic lines because of the white piping edging each component. All that plays into hanger appeal, provoking the kind of curiosity liable to make a woman want to try something on rather than pass (as we do so often) because it looks too difficult. “I think it’s just about finding a point of difference,” Beckham observed. That doesn’t sound like much, but in a world overloaded with competing product from high street to haute level, such considerations count for a lot.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram! By the way, did you know that I’ve started a newsletter called Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!
Ever since Demna‘s beginnings in fashion, honest and straightforward observation of how people dress on the street and for various occupations has always been a dynamic behind his design. The scenario playing out in his new Balenciaga resort 2024 video is very much that way, except that this time the street is the Avenue Georges V. The time-lapse slice-of-life captures people busily going in and out of the Balenciaga maison at number 10, or passing by. Whether they’re denim-clad teens, a motorcycle delivery person, a bourgeois dog walker, a skateboarder, or the retinues of black-clad hoodie-up fashion people going about their business – this is how the whole world would look if everyone dressed in Balenciaga. Underlining the fact that Demna is steering the brand narrative back to Paris, and to the house, he punningly named the collection Capital B. His second take on the collection is by way of a lookbook, apparently shot in grand rooms that variously overlook the Place Vendome and the Arc de Triomphe. Here, his perma-silhouettes are clearly in view: the oversized suiting, enveloping trapezoid coats and puffed-up trenches, the hoodies, and the bug-eyed shades with almost everything. As a pre-collection it encompasses every Balenciaga category, womenswear and menswear, formal black tailoring to denim, motorcycle leathers and sweatpants. Interspersed are also pieces from the high-luxe “Garde-Robe” collection, which are an annual release, such as the silver-fringed embroidered dress at the end. And of course the Cristobal Balenciaga-inspired ecclesiastical gowns and chasuble coats: the ultimate highlights of this very well-executed collection, which is about good dose of drama (in the clothes, not in anything around it!).
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram! By the way, did you know that I’ve started a newsletter called Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!
