Utopian Youth. Maison Margiela SS22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Oh, to live in his world… John Galliano’s Co-Ed collection – his name for his all-gendered ready-to-wear – carries all the hallmarks of the terrific Artisanal haute couture collection that he launched with a film back in July. To recap: the narrative swirled through a fantasy that connected historic imagery of Dutch fishermen with an imagined community of young Maison Margiela survivors, washed up together on a coastline. For spring-summer 2022, Galliano re-emphasized how inspired he’s been by “the dreams of the future that young people are having, and making their reality.” All his experimental work of last summer has now flowed down into a highly inventive haul of romantic-utilitarian textures, new silhouettes, sweeping coats, fragile dresses, desirable knitwear – and thigh-high fishing waders. While working through his fisher-people theme, Galliano said he’d come across the new phenomenon of electro-magnetic fly-fishing. “What the kids are doing now, is they’ve got these magnetic fishing lines, and they’re going out to fish out the trash in Canal Saint Martin, and estuaries. I thought, how genius!” he exclaimed. “This is something that is becoming a hobby. So the waders are perfect to wear when you go out electro-magnetic fishing!” He noted that the waders and the bright red, yellow, and blue tabi-boots also comply with the wishes of the climate-conscious generation. “They’re bio-degradable, I should add. Pops of color in 3-D printed, molded rubber.” Designing for what he imagines as this new brigade of ‘Utopian Youth’ triggered a whole raft of free-floating creativity. There are coats decorated with feathered fishing flies and others braided from strips of gray herringbone to look like a net, sailor collars, a brilliantly voluminous pair of high-waisted Dutch-boy trousers, and a conceptual meeting of cotton sou’westers and 17th century Flemish hats on the heads. Knitwear sails through reinterpretations of traditional Guernseys and Fair Isles and lands at one point on an amazing cream and blue- embroidered Delft-tile patchwork cardigan. There’s an air of the reclaimed, semi-destroyed, and reconfigured about the collection that is very in sync with Martin Margiela history here. That’s no stretch for Galliano, who takes glee in turning garments inside out, exposing seams, weathering, shrinking, and overdyeing fabrics. His ‘neo-alchemy’ has a sensitive, erotic, mysterious touch that is all his own. There’s a celadon silk faille beaded dress “that you can shrug off to reveal the lining,” sheer layers of black chiffon veiling, and a slip dress of spider-fine knit, covered with an iridescent mesh composed of recycled glasses lenses. As he signed off the call, he was laughing. “As a designer one is always trying to find a new way to communicate sensuality; what you reveal, what you don’t. I know there’s quite a lot of noise about S-E-X at the moment. But it’s a bit what we always think of…”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Surreal Beach. Schiaparelli SS22

| Design & Culture by Ed

“People are coming to us as an alternative to the mass luxury houses,” said Daniel Roseberry said of his extraordinary take on Schiaparelli. “They’re looking for something really strong.” So that’s what he’s prepared for spring-summer 2022. Schiaparelli’s Place Vendôme salons were organized by room, and first up was Roseberry’s wildly imaginative bijoux of body parts – ears, nose, eyes, lips, pierced nipples, and so on – and leather bags embellished with the same. His exaltation of the human form also took the shape of a gold-dipped resin bib molded from a model’s torso and suspended from a chain. There’s an inflatable black leather bolero and matching belt, as well as an inflatable parka, complete with air valves; a fitted knit dress with raised details in the form of Salvador Dalí’s famous rib cage dress; and cone bras à la Gaultier every which way: in leather, denim, and silk arranged in swirls like the petals of a flower. The vibe, Roseberry said, was “David Lynch holiday.” Tailoring and outerwear, meanwhile, were classically cut, but treated to all manner of gilded body part baubles. Many of the cocktail numbers had their beginnings in the couture, including a pair of sublimely draped black silk charmeuse dresses suspended from gold chokers. A cropped but boxy bolero with outsize lapels had a different starting point, Roseberry said. It was based on the jacket he made for playwright Jeremy O. Harris to wear to the Tonys last month. The words Schiap Hotel were stitched around the hem of a densely embellished bathrobe. I’m off to the plage de Schiap.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Désir. Ludovic De Saint Sernin SS22

| Design & Culture by Ed

On Ludovic de Saint Sernin’s runway, heat and sex are regular ingredients. For the young French pioneer of sex positivity in fashion, his steamy return to what the industry is calling “physical” shows was pulsating with a whole other layer of significance. “I feel like we were in such a digital world for like a year-and-a-half that it was really critical for me to reconnect with physicality and sensuality, in a way that you could almost grab it,” said De Saint Sernin behind his co-ed spring-summer 2022 fashion show titled “Désir“. He wove all of that pent-up tension into a collection that stretched tiny strands of leather into minuscule dresses and taut bodices equally across genders to eye-popping effect. “We wanted to showcase the artisanal feel of the collection,” he explained. “All these pieces are entirely braided, knotted, and laced by hand. There’s no sewing at all. It’s really body formatted.” De Saint Sernin has been well ahead of the generational game of blurring underwear with outerwear. His easy, elasticated-waist, pajama-like pants and shirts and leather bralettes are part of this. This season it also meant a semi-sheer smocking technique, used in dresses and shirts cut to cling and strain at buttons, and delicate, semi-transparent fabrics, like laddered knits. “Mermaid, California-gothic girlfriend” is how he described the inspiration for overtly glam transparencies in crystal-beaded fishnet: a one-shoulder dress, a couple of miniature sparkly sarongs. His two finale dresses hinted at either having been shipwrecked or wrecked from a long night of partying. De Saint Sernin has a burgeoning business in his flared jeans with eyelet-laced flies, shown again this season with split hems. The signature eyelet was also an unmissable feature on a black thong. It was, he remarked with a straight face, “just a little teaser,” because Pornhub sponsored his show, and he has a collaboration with the porn site coming next spring. Of course this makes complete sense. There’s just one thing the designer might consider for the future: inviting a wider range of body shapes to his model casting. Everybody want to look and feel sexy, right?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.