Men’s – Tableau Vivant. KidSuper SS23

August 20, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Look 21 in KidSuper‘s spring-summer 2023 collection – a half-realized, elusive portrait on a pink sweater and pale cords – was based on an original painting called Con Artist. It was one of 23 Colm Dillane paintings, which in turn inspired the 23 looks in his KidSuper collection that were auctioned off by Christie’s Lydia Fenet live during his show. As each model walked, the audience had its chance to bid. The big spender was Russ – a close friend of Dillane – who apparently walked away with several paintings including the night’s headline sale, The Girl That Breathes Life Into The Inanimate (Lot and Look 23). After a fierce bidding war, Fenet eventually banged her gavel after Russ’s $210,000 bid went unmatched. In total, the paintings ‘sold’ for $529,000. This was all in itself a piece of performance art designed ingeniously to stretch the boundaries of the fashion show as visual theater. Dillane said afterwards that as he’d prepared for his first on-schedule Paris show, he’d been to some others and had been struck by the divide between audience and subject. “And I was like, how do I get people to interact and participate, and make it an experience. And I had always wanted to do an art show as a fashion show. And thinking about participation in an art show, that’s where the auction idea came from.” The auction was designed to animate the fashion show through artistic intervention. It was clever, fun, and funny. Apart from the clues to the process we were subject to in the names of some of the paintings, Fenet – who is absolutely masterful at extracting serious sums of money with the lightest of rhetorical touches – was apparently representing an auctioneer named Superby’s. We got no indication of her commission. When the final painting – named The Finale – emerged stretched on its frame, there was a hole where the on-canvas face of one of its subjects “should” have been. A model’s painted face loomed through it. Just as Fenet’s gavel went down, the canvas whisked from the frame to reveal itself as the upper layer in her tulle pentimento dress. This show raised many interesting ideas, including the notion of clothing reproduced with original artworks acting as wearable editions of those pieces.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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August 20, 2022August 19, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Men’s – Natural Allure. Brioni SS23

August 19, 2022August 20, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Norbert Stumpfl came across a mid-’50s newspaper with pictures of Brioni’s collections of that time: “They looked incredibly modern,” he said during his spring-summer 2023 presentation. ”They made tailored jackets out of jersey, trousers in leather, traditional masculine suits were made with sumptuous women’s evening wear fabrics.” This spirit of modernity is what he wanted to propose in the spring collection, presented in the verdant private cloisters in one of the hidden locations Milan is famous for. Expanding on the idea of individuality, Stumpfl offered an anecdote: “One of our young clients choose a pale pink suit to propose in,” he said. “It made me so happy, it felt so nice, and it was proof that Brioni is the go-to label to celebrate the most special and intimate moments.” The sentimental gesture of the young customer inspired him to draw the line: for spring, he said, “no business, no ties, but supple, formally informal tailoring for young men.” Playing on subtle contrasts, pajama suits were made in silk knitwear; blousons in matte crocodile felt as malleable as jumpers; a shirt’s fabrication, light as air, was used for an equally weightless unlined soft tailored suit. Reprising the house’s tradition of using women’s fabrications for menswear, a trench coat was made in satin de cuir, a heavenly smooth, sumptuous fabrics with a discreet, inconspicuous shine. Stretching the remarkable skills of Brioni’s tailors and artisans, a three-pieces suit was entirely made by hand as if it were a couture piece. But the jewels in the collection’s crown were the evening tuxedos, made in precious silk jacquard woven on antique looms by Setificio Leuciano, an historic artisanal company which was purveyor to the Royal Palace of Caserta. The edited women’s offer was as elegant and breezy as the men’s, with masculine silk shirts elongated to become a dress worn over soft straight pants, and ankle-grazing evening coats impeccably cut. Brioni is imbued with a quintessentially Roman mindset: lightness of spirit, a perfect eye for beauty, and the natural allure of nonchalance which comes from millennia of proximity with the world’s most stunning artifacts.