Bizarre. Gucci Resort 2024

May 17, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Gucci‘s resort 2024 might officially own the title of “the most bizarre collection of the year”. It’s gimmick-ness, randomness and out-of-place-ness is sort of criminal… The no-designer period is a hard moment for the Italian brand, that’s for sure. The aesthetic echoes of Alessandro Michele can still be perceived, but there’s no method to all that madness. I think Sabato De Sarno won’t have an easy task with his debut.

Gucci is the latest house to stage a premiere event in Seoul. By now, the West understands the importance of this market, which holds a global influence. But it is no longer enough to simply show up and believe the sales will follow. Indeed, the idea of a show at Gyeongbokgung, the former royal palace where the Gucci show unfolded, induced more than one raised eyebrow among locals. Any Korean has been a hundred times over on field trips, escorting overseas guests, to see the cherry blossoms bloom, and it is the de facto destination for all foreigners shooting music videos, ad campaigns, and short films. The front row was filled with celebrities, both international (Dakota Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Saoirse Ronan) and domestic (NewJeans’s Hanni, IU, Lee Jung-jae). So what did Gucci see of Seoul? Model Sora Choi opened the show in a long black padded coat over jeans, clutching a fetching baguette-shaped bag that appeared again and again (kitted out in crystals, quilted in holographic lilac). There was a blend of bourgeois streetwear and sportswear, such as the bouclé bike shorts with the ladies-who-lunch jacket, cropped to flash the midriff, as well as a standout pale pink chiffon dress with tiered ruffles that fluttered down the runway, which was worn over a black scuba suit. Neoprene was seen as layered turtlenecks that zipped up to the chin, and paired with tweed midi skirts embellished with diamanté crystals racing up the sides. The referential mix of Tom Ford-era at Gucci nods was another move, although very forced. A sateen lilac coat worn by Karen Elson that closed with a red bow resembling the one which closes a traditional jeogori jacket was an elegant take on Korean heritage, as were the surrealist illustrations of pink jello and cat’s paws by local artist Ram Han. These were the finest highlights of this very unfocused collection.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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One Night Only. Chanel Resort 2024

May 14, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

For its resort 2024 collection, Chanel took us to Los Angeles – the Paramount Studios lot to be specific. With stars including Margot Robbie, Kristen Stewart and Marion Cotillard lighting up the front row, and a post-show performance by Snoop Dogg, this was a very Hollywood affair. Ahead of Virginie Viard’s show, movie billboards promoting it as a “One Night Only” event went up around town, making an explicit point about Chanel’s embeddedness in LA’s dominant culture (a 30,000-square-foot Chanel store, the brand’s biggest in the U.S., opened on Rodeo Drive last week). As a matter of fact, Viard didn’t look at the silver screen or the red carpet for inspiration, but to what appeared to be a more quotidian example of Los Angeles: the Venice Beach boardwalk, a see-and-be-seen playground for roller skaters, weight lifters, beach bunnies, and epic sunsets. “I thought let’s do Jane Fonda, Cindy Crawford – all our heroines,” she said at the “accessoirsation” of the collection. “There are jeans, a more aerobic feeling; every show is the occasion to do something we’ve never done before.” Viard’s stamp is the more feminine, youthful hand she’s brought to the house since taking over as artistic director in 2019, but the sporty vibe of the collection, with its leg warmers, wedge heel sneakers, running shorts, and swim tanks, plus the occasional skateboard, was something new. Not every look was a success, though. Still, think of it as a Chanel look for a star’s every occasion, including, in a serendipitous bit of timing, Robbie’s upcoming press tour for Barbie, which is shaping up to be the movie of the summer.

Unfiltered Variety. Valentino Pre-Fall 2023

May 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Scrolling through the images Valentino provided for pre-fall 2023, the impression was that of a wildly over-saturated wardrobe where luxe was given a twist of cool, in keeping with Pierpaolo Piccioli’s current direction. “The idea of a wardrobe as a vocabulary of various and diverse semantic layers has always fascinated me. Every one of us is a collector, creating a vision through selection and personal taste”, the designer summed it up. The collection has it all. At some points, even too much. Valentino’s PPPink returns, just like the monogram logo. The V-neck sweater tucked in a brocade full-circle skirt look felt sciura in a Prada way; a sweatshirt worn over an evening dress gave Jenna Lyons; some of the more bare-it-all looks made me surprisingly think of Alessandro Dell’Acqua’s early 2000s style. The nonchalant, unfiltered variety of separates is styled in the “counterintuitive way” Piccioli embraces – but this method tends to worryingly look like a collection of inspirations, rather than an actual Valentino look. However when you consider the pieces separately, they do have a polished ease about them, with no conceptual detours. Broad-shouldered masculine pantsuits introduced the monochrome palette that punctuated the evening offer. Dense pops of bright green and Valentino red added vitality to sleek long dresses with side bow-knotted cut-outs, as well as to fluid jumpsuits with wide palazzo pants. Glamorous, they exuded the charisma of haute dolce vita ingrained in the house’s codes. Quiet luxury? Never heard of her.

The Essentials. Balenciaga Pre-Fall 2023

May 5, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Balenciaga‘s pre-fall 2023 look-book – made up of dressing room selfies – is a cleverly staged invitation for the customers to come back to the brand’s shops. And a reminder, much like Demna’s winter runway show in Paris, that the Balenciaga creative director remains one of the key architects of the look of contemporary fashion. The emphasis on exaggerated suiting, the embrace of couture-ish shapes, and the return of rave jeans – all of that is covered, just in time as the new season clothes start hitting the shops. Double-breasted black blazers were alternately puffed up with a layer of padding, or cropped at the hips, with the hems tucked under in almost makeshift fashion. A third was worn like a wrap, its buttons askew. Demna cut similar styles in glen plaids and checks. More so than the runways, Balenciaga’s pre-season collections are devoted to daily wear. And so there were oversize parkas, peacoats and trenches with more of those folded under hems, fluid velvet sweatsuit separates in surprising pastels, and denim in both raver proportions and a newer skinny cut lopped off at the knees. Standing in for the dramatic evening dresses in the March show were a couple of full-length looks in a quotidian key, one dress in a body-conscious knit and a shrunken logo hoodie and matching ankle-length skirt in what looked like stretch velvet. The accessories game is strong too: Le Cagole comes in sportier shapes, and Pantashoes are revisited in Margiela-esque fishnet overlays.

Dream of Creation. Christopher John Rogers SS24

May 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Christopher John Rogers has emerged from the pandemic at the top of New York’s young generation of designers. In his rainbow stripes and grids of colorful polka dots, he’s found strong, identifiable signatures, which is an important element of brand building that not all emerging talents understand or are capable of. The uptown, put-together polish of his clothes is another distinguishing factor. Many of his peers practice a scrappier, dirtier, more underground kind of fashion. His garments feel at ease on the red carpet. “I love being with a model and draping, or doing research, or really thinking about fit, about fabric, about texture, but I feel like only 10 to 15% of what I do is making clothes,” Rogers explained. “In some ways this collection was informed by wanting to go back to that essential feeling.” The sleeveless top and ball skirt of the first look suggested a new direction – as @londongirlinyc put it, very Carrie Bradshaw style, pre-And-Just-Like-That. To start, they were all-white, and then there was the off-kilter, undone aspect of their construction, but they were red herrings. Rogers quickly found his way back to the bright color and unbridled exuberance that are his hallmarks. The graphic stripes he’s known for were joined by similarly bold florals in the vein of Warhol’s daisies; a pair of evening dresses in black-and-white polka dots of varying sizes and overlays, both of which are definitely red carpet-bound; and going-out tops constructed like oversize birthday present bows. Rogers does a good business with knits. This season, he played with chunky yarns and thick, cozy layers, or fine gauges, though in both cases, he styled them to expose a flash of décoletté or midriff. On the opposite end of the texture spectrum were an elegant fitted button-down and matching long skirt and a pantsuit in a shiny material he likened to Glad garbage bags. “It’s this really amazing fabric that’s actually coated taffeta,” he said. To finish, there was a group of black looks, including a panniered ball skirt and a draped top with the romance of the opening outfit. Success begets success, and as Rogers’s business grows he’ll face ever more pressures and responsibilities that keep him from the design studio. The industry can be uniquely hard on promising newcomers, putting them in a box at the same time we demand they grow and evolve. But if that draped top and ball skirt can tell us anything, it’s that Rogers is as committed to the dream of creation as ever.