Design & Culture by Ed

The energy of the concise, item-driven modernity Nicolas di Felice brings to Courrèges is all over the spring-summer 2023 collection. “You know, back in the day, Andre [Courrèges] was speaking to the young generation. I knew from my first week that it was part of the house,” said Di Felice. “So I really want young people to be able to afford the clothes; to make it, let’s say, more accessible.” He grabbed a vintage zip-up scuba-fabric jacket which Courrèges had designed for men in the 1970s as an introduction to how he got started. “I found this in the archive, and thought, ‘This shape is amazing,’ but there’s no point in doing it again. So I wanted to mix this silhouette with a biker vibe, because I had a motorbike when I was young. I thought about how it feels to drive to the beach, or to a festival in the summer, or something,” he laughed. “I’ve been at the house for two years now, so I feel more comfortable to explore a bit more of who I am.” One thing about Di Felice is his knack for filtering lived experience into his minimal-seductive design. His collection captures all the features of young masculine body-con display that’s taken off this summer: tight-to-the torso leather jackets, twisted, cutaway T-shirts, slick moto pants in the house’s heritage-look black vinyl, gabardine polyester trousers and denims with a hint of bootcut flare. It’s his addition of the faux leather bondage straps across the front of jackets that adds a clever utilitarian twist. He demonstrated: “So what you can do is take off your jacket or poncho and hang them off your shoulder by the strap, like this. It came to me simply when I was one more time in a party, and it’s hot and there are not enough cloakrooms. I was like, ‘OK, um, so when I go in on Monday – I’m going do that in the collection!’” The lookbook shows the device in action – clothes gradually becoming cool-looking drapes toted from shoulders, until the last guy ends up naked, carrying all of his clothes. “Like he’s just come out of the water on the beach,” Di Felice grinned.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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The saddest news. Legendary Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake has died from liver cancer at the age of 84. The Hiroshima-born, Tokyo-based creative icon – who launched his namesake label in New York in 1970 – was famed for his innovative and technological approach to fashion design, which married precise, industrial techniques with poeticism. His garments were beloved by members of the creative industries, viewed often as the unofficial uniform of architects and graphic designers. Miyake, who cut his teeth in the ateliers of Guy Laroche and Hubert de Givenchy, was most famous for his revolutionary approach to fabric design. In the ’90s, he showcased his Pleats Please line, comprised of crease-free, shape-retaining garments creating using a heated pleating machine. He also debuted his APOC, or A Piece of Cloth, concept: an edit of machine-made garments using a knit fabric that was pre-fused with clothing patterns. He was a pioneer of the art-fashion collaboration, and worked with a number of artists, including Nobuyoshi Araki, on guest-designed collections. Today, Miyake’s signature fragrance, L’Eau D’Issey, is still considered an olfactory icon. After years creating breathtaking designs on the runway, Miyake stepped back from the fashion industry in 1997. Today, the brands that exist as part of his namesake group are still steeped in innovation and experimentation, debuting game-changing garment-making techniques each season. The power of Miyake’s utterly precise and architectural approach to design is that it simultaneously imbues its wearer with lightness and joy.