Buckle Up. Christopher Kane Pre-Fall 2023

January 15, 2023January 14, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

No one does “sex” and “sexy” like Chistopher Kane. His pre-fall 2023 is yet another reminder that the London-based designer owns this territory. The collection’s main character is a buckled strap. Broad, big, buckled straps are bound around the shoulders, necks, and hemlines of mini-shifts and coats. In one case they formed the entire upper body of a dress. Bondage and fetish might be the words we’d automatically reach for here, but not so fast. To Kane, the heavy-duty strapping, combined with reflective yellow, neon green, and orange fabric is more bound up with “uniforms, security, police women, and school lolly-pop ladies.” This season the designer indulged himself with circular cutouts, creating some of the most captivating eveningwear of the season. Circles roll through the naked waist of a long black column, and then wickedly expose two half-moons of flesh above a built-in bra. Kane points out that the collection will start dropping in April, so he’s also found room for “clothes to wear to weddings, cocktail parties, the things you need for summer.” There are little white dresses decorated with hand-drawn micro-flowers, patchworked from organic-shaped “blobs.” Flounced skirts in highlighter orange or lime have hems which can either be buttoned up in front, or left long. All-in-all, it’s a collection that covers a lot of bases, yet still looks inimitably Christopher Kane. By now, he’s accumulated a big playbook to draw on.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Teenage Madness. DsQuared2 AW23

January 14, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

I just love it when DsQuared2 goes naughty, sleazy, hot and unapologetically DsQuared2. While other brands are trying to desperately capture the Y2k style, Dean and Dan Caten don’t have tii force it – they simply have it in their blood. And with styling help of Haley Wollens, they delivered a great show on the first day of men’s Milan Fashion Week. “Teenage madness!” shrieked the Caten twins in unison backstage before the show. “We’re looking back to look forward, thinking of what we’ve done in the past, and the energy of the Dsquared2 rebels,” they said. “We’re celebrating what we were already pushing a long time ago – being yourself, being individual, and the freedom of feeling comfortable in your own skin. No judgment.” The Dsquared2 posse of teenagers flaunted a string of characters straight from the Catens’ dorm room years: the geek, the goth, the starlet, the emo, the femme, all in their own broken-up/put-back-together-again finery. The dorm room in question was actually meticulously reproduced as the catwalk’s backdrop, furnished with all the cool paraphernalia which has populated the teenage years of every generation, from X to Y to Z and everything in between. Describing the zillion combinations the twins were able to concoct would, in fact, be madness. To very partially summarize, Western fringed jackets, Canadian outerwear, crystal-studded destroyed denim, cowboy leather jockstraps, ultra-low slung cargos, exposed boxers, teddy bear bombers, lace panties and see-through camisoles were put into their fashion percolator, spit out and re-assembled into beautifully body-revealing crazy ensembles. “Playing with girl things, playing with boy things, nothing is hotter than a hot guy in girly panties!” they enthused. “So we kind of went there. Openness! Playfulness! Courage! And no judgment.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – Fill The Gap. Gucci AW23

January 14, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The menswear Milan Fashion Week started with the first Gucci show without Alessandro Michele’s creative direction. The designer’s abrupt exit in the end of 2022 left the brand in a confusing position. Michele’s Gucci definitely needed some rest – those last collections were just over-the-top, feeling more like a parade of costumes. Nevertheless, the designer created an inclusive wonderland with his vision for the Italian brand. And the studio-designed autumn-winter 2023 collection foreshadows the end of that colorful world that kept the industry dreaming for the last seven years. Skinny boys are in, bland indie-sleaziness is in, subtle (but very subtle) echoes of Tom Ford are in. The first look said it all: a white T-shirt with oversized chinos, From this beginning unfolded a collection that Gucci said in its notes was an act of improvisation, a freestyle “reflection of the individualities represented by the multifaceted creatives and craftsmen who inhabit the house of Gucci.” In other words, a collection that lacked overall coherence. After the opener we drifted into a section of volumized tailoring which was possibly purposefully banal. Suiting with detachable arms and legs, a rugby shirt worn above an unpicked trouser-like skirt, oversized vintage-design womenswear bags with Tom Ford era hardware and hilariously described “vintage-like” silk scarfs used ’90s-style to patch denim were more dynamic elements. We saw the occasional horse bit loafer, apparently distressed. Around halfway through, the collection began to come freighted with identity beyond the jackets featuring a 1953-issue logo boasting of outlets spanning “Florence-Rome-Milan-New York” (plus those near-ubiquitous pirate’s boots and sailor’s beanies). Volume was replaced by indie sleaze in a section epitomized by a look featuring black patent-sheened five-pocket pants, and a sheer scarlet shirt that strangely echoed the first ever look put out by Michele. The furry leopard bag and pink boots that accompanied it added a touch of hustler-ish glunge. Moto pieces, knitwear, and pastel sportswear were thrown in to evoke a purposefully peripatetic, thrown-together aesthetic. Thick socks worn over jeans is a thing to consider, though. Still, this isn’t a good moment in Gucci’s history.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Off To The Races. Rosie Assoulin AW23

January 13, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Rosie Assoulin dropped her autumn-winter 2023 look-book yesterday, and it feels like a New Year vibe shift. Usually, you would see Assoulin’s gorgeous gowns and smart daywear in an equally chic surroundings, say, a charming New York park or on the streets of a Parisian arrondissement. This time, she took us to the racetracks of New Jersey’s RPM Raceway. Inspired by her childhood memories of Delia’s catalogues (the most literal interpretation is a two-piece blue halter and maxi skirt inspired by a tankini that Assoulin vividly remembers seeing) and her grandparents’ sportswear looks, the collection orbits between the 1990s cool (cargo pants, done the Rosie way), old-school racing chic (the finale statuesque silk gown feels very Tamara Lempicka in her green Bugatti) and a signature level of sophistication that blurs the line between day and evening style (the eye-candy sequinned coat is a great example). A stripe motif appears throughout the collection – on mini skirts and matching jackets, on a semi-transparent blue and black gown – and it reads as a hybrid between ’70s graphic design and motocross. But it’s the black maxi skirt with a champagne dinner jacket with a cropped cape that is the standout: pure elegance with a wink. Assoulin’s style is multi-faceted, and this collection delivers that with a twist.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Flowing. Saint Laurent Resort 2023

January 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Anthony Vaccarello is staying close to the obsession he’s been evolving lately at Saint Laurent: the super-chic and ultra-elegant flowing, languid, maxi silhouettes. The silk skirts are floor-sweeping, the boxy coats are long, the eveningwear is all about the body-clinging column. For resort 2023 (which serves as a sweet entrée to the fabulous spring-summer 2023 fashion show collection), all the YSL-isms are here, but adjusted because Vaccarello has that ineffable way of remaking their proportions to feel totally right for the moment we’re in. Like the draped cocktailania of Monsieur Saint Laurent’s ’80s and ’90s reinvented into tiny dresses and just as tiny bodysuits. Vaccarello has been busy perfecting his drapery style for some time now. What else resonates here, what gets that eye fixated on the proceedings, is how this collection tackles the twin pillars that the house of Saint Laurent was built on, the mid-century couture-era codes of tailleur and flou, that are the very guiding principles of French fashion. Vaccarello gives the collision of those two approaches a very distinctly personal spin: gorgeously frothy chiffon dresses, with flouncing hems come with cabans embellished with blowsy blooms, or beaten-up leather bomber jackets. Heritage, tradition, and craft, but handled with a snap and crackle. This is an example of really good in fashion in 2023.