Reviews

Realistic. Valentino AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Approximately a year ago, COVID-19 hit Europe. Pierpaolo Piccioli was presenting his Valentino collection during Paris Fashion Week (who would have ever believed back then that fashion weeks will switch to digital?!) and the solemn, melancholic elegance he sent down the runway captured the first feelings of crisis. For autumn-winter 2021, you would have expected some sort of bold, joyful vision of future re-emergence most designers are desperately talking about this season. But surprisingly – especially having in mind his recent, extraordinary couture collection! – Piccioli decided to stay a realist, staying in the black-and-white colour palette. The line-up was livestreamed from Piccolo Teatro in Milan, as a gesture of love and support towards cultural institutions that are having a very tough time with all the lockdowns and limitations. The new season offering wasn’t exactly theatrical, but the dramatic lighting elevated the ready-to-wear silhouettes. Piccioli thought of a modern-day punk attitude with a romantic twist. From the sheer lace evening gowns to over-sized shirts worn as dresses, the collection looks towards the aspect of comfort, but not in a lazy way. Knitted capelets styled with heavy leather boots; ruffled blouses worn with simple mini-skirts (sexy is returning to fashion, as Tom Ford proclaimed); chunky cardigans contrasted with light pumps. Maybe this isn’t anything ground-breaking, but it’s a properly edited collection of clothes women will always want to wear. As for men, Piccioli leaves tailoring behind and decides for equally refined, yet easier wardrobe staples: an over-sized sweater, loosely-cut pants, a chic coat with a cape-like shape. The “net” motif comes in unisex turtlenecks and fantastic eveningwear. While the fashion industry is asking itself the million dollar question of ‘what will sell in the (close) future’, Valentino answers it with the right balance of stay-at-home, Zoom-ready classics and a sense of much-needed ‘dress-up’ for the better times.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Hot & Short. Tom Ford AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Tom Ford keeps it hot and mostly short. “The slight deconstruction of luxurious pieces is something that I feel will be a legacy of the pandemic for a few seasons to come,” he wrote in the press notes. Meaning, Zoom-perfect tops in lace and net were paired with bleached jeans, and dresses took their cues either from stretchy activewear or lingerie. Ford’s new hot pants, worn with turtleneck sweaters and puffer or aviator jackets bring that kind of sultry secutiveness he delivered in his Gucci days. Ford said the oversized jackets and underwear combos sprung from a lingerie ad he remembers from his youth. “It was also a very Edie Sedgwick thing to do,” he added. Another legacy of the pandemic he foresees will be the return of sexy. Meanwhile, the autumn-winter 2021 men’s look book includes three loungewear outfits that combine softly structured robes, button-front shirts, and elastic-waistband pants stitched with Ford’s logo (one thing I wish wasn’t there…). This is a distinctly Tom Ford collection – you want to be that girl or guy.

“Live” collage by Edward Kanarecki.

It’s Perfect. Zanini AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

It’s always refreshing to see a Zanini line-up during Milan Fashion Week. While it’s mostly about who’s louder and bolder in Milan, Marco Zanini delivers quiet collections (the lockdowns in Italy prevented him from doing so last season, so he used his sketches to present his collection to buyers instead) that actually speak volumes and have true substance. Don’t get me wrong, I love a camp-y Moschino, but nothing beats a well-edited offering that includes a perfectly tailored, felted double-faced cashmere peacoat or a sartorial jacket made from ultralight wool flannel. Zanini is a place for women (and now for men as well) who seek timeless, investment pieces that aren’t plain, cold minimalism, but got the human touch palpable in every single seam. The autumn-winter 2021 collection is simple, but studied, while the materials are luxurious, but unshowy. “Fabrics inform everything,” he confirmed on a Zoom call with Vogue. The cotton of an elastic-waist full skirt and top with handmade buttons down its back was embroidered by specialists in St. Gallen. Scottish cashmere was used for a roll-neck jumper, and a chunky turtleneck was hand-knit from yak wool. A heavy-gauge rib-knit cardigan coat with a deep collar that Zanini showed with a pair of very well-cut pleat-front side-zip pants is another delight. Love everything.

Collages by Edward Kanarecki.

Real Clothes, Real Feelings. Marni AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Really, who didn’t play bed-sheets-couture dress-up, even once during the year of endless lockdowns? Those fabulous, voluminous duvet garments Francesco Risso offered in his Marni autumn-winter 2021 surely had this sort of stay-at-home-laziness origin. But this collection isn’t another mumbling about “fancy” home-wear. When fashion weeks went digital and wardrobes turned domestic, designers faced new pressures from the marketing machine. “People came to me saying, ‘It has to be digital savvy; it has to be digital friendly; it has to go through the screen,’” Francesco Risso recalled. “Fuck that.”Posed with designing his second Marni collection in Italian lockdown, he asked himself: how do we respond to times of continued separation? Do we surrender to a digital overthrow, or do we fight back with all the things cyberspace could never give us: the human hand, tactility, and the chemistry of nature? “To me, it’s been revelatory,” Risso told Vogue.  Developed almost entirely by hand, the collection became a quest for understanding what triggers a romantic state of mind. He found his answer: “Life! Life is romantic. A life that allows for laughs, for positive thinking, and definitely not for abandoning the feeling of the hand that makes things.”His search materialized in the tongue-in-cheek transformation of the sportswear and loungewear codes of lockdown into real dressmaking, expressed in silhouettes informed by the classic silhouettes of haute couture. Inevitably, it generated a ladylike romanticism conveyed through Risso’s countercultural lens: a chic wrap was abstracted into a puffer cape, but retained its neat little plume trim; a mermaid skirt morphed with sweatpants; and tennis trainers sharpened into evening shoes. Paradoxically, Risso had started his search for romanticism by dyeing everything black. Wanting to witness the power of nature, he placed his all-black garments in the Marni courtyard, embellished them with real flowers, and watched the sun do its magic. “The corrosion made our prints,” he explained. Then, he took his tricks to the factories, girding himself with the patience needed to watch age-old dyeing techniques do their thing through the soak-dry-wait, soak-dry-wait ceremonies necessary. “It’s cathartic,” Risso said. “This patience has been romantic…not forcing it because it ‘has to be digital.’” Screened on Zoom, the presentation portrayed a familiar lockdown situation shot in Risso’s Milanese apartment. It turned into a salon show and culminated in the kind of lunch we are all looking forward to – with a performance by Mykki Blanco. “I hope we’re not going to forget all we’ve learned,” Risso said about the still abstract-sounding ‘reemergence’ that will sooner or later come. “It’s about narrowing things down and not wasting time and not making bullshit clothes. It’s about being more focused.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Beauty, Silhouette & Pose. JW Anderson AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

For some designers, the pandemic brought a sense of freedom, and also let them really rethink how to do things. Jonathan Anderson is an example. “I do not want to be bound by the idea that we have to show 60 looks, that we have to do this thing, that it has to be presented this way. I want to be able to have the freedom. I’m enjoying the freedom at the moment that we’re not part of the vehicle. And I didn’t want to put pressure upon pressure on my team – the last six months have been a nightmare. I said, ‘Let’s just focus on getting 19 fantastic propositions.’ I don’t want urgency. I want to just put it out when it’s ready.” Continuing with a format established several seasons ago, JW Anderson presented its women’s autumn-winter 2021 collection in the form of nineteen double-sided posters shot by Juergen Teller in addition to a video message from Jonathan Anderson. This season’s presentation is a curation and juxtaposition of Jonathan’s passions: art and fashion. Alongside the nineteen looks of the collection are portraits of Dame Magdalene Odundo DBE and Shawanda Corbett and their works. Anderson uses his fashion platforms as creative outlets for people he finds inspiring and wants to introduce to his audience. The designer got to know the internationally lauded Odundo when she loaned him pieces in 2017 for the “Disobedient Bodies” exhibition that he curated at the Hepworth Wakefield Gallery, a show that sparked comparisons between art forms and fashion forms (“I really look up to her. She’s one of the most important ceramicists of the 20th century”). He discovered the young American Corbett at the Corvi-Mora Gallery in London last summer. Corbett, who was born with one arm and without legs, creates vessels that she has described as “stand-ins for people,” as well as dance performances. “I went into that room, and there was nearly a landscape of people talking to each other,” he remembers. “It was incredible to feel the power and influence objects can have on you.” In both Corbett’s work and Odundo’s practice, he feels a physical connection. “This is about an exploration of two artists’ work, my own work, and the idea of the body. And that is what clothing is about.” For Jonathan the collection was an attempt to “boil everything down to beauty, silhouette and pose.” It is an exploration of volume, a recurring theme in JW Anderson womenswear collections, with a focus on totemic structures. Knitwear expands into extreme, cocooning shapes. The everyday becomes surreal in prints on trousers and tops. The body, grounded on sturdy boots with chain embellishment, is celebrated as a vessel. Like the art and the images, the fashion is “curated” (one of Anderson’s favourite words, both at his London-based brand and Loewe). The combination of art and fashion this season is embodied in hand-knit and woven blankets (four hand-knit blanket styles  featuring works from Odundo and Corbett can be pre-ordered on the brand’s website) and the entire presenation is “one of the most personal projects I have ever done,” as Jonathan summed up.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.