Heart Beat. Marine Serre SS24

June 25, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Marine Serre‘s co-ed spring-summer 2024 line-up was pretty loaded with musicians: Teyana Taylor, Noah Cyrus, Miguel, Brooke Candy, and Sevdaliza all walked the show, turning the presentation into quite a star-studded affair. The latest offering was classic Serre, including patchwork graphic pieces, cutout dresses, full patterned outfits, and that signature crescent moon motif. As usual, all garments were made from upcycled, deadstock materials, making the French designer still one of the most uncompromisingly sustainability-forward name in fashion. The collection spoke to the label’s essence of marrying couture elements with sportswear feels, underscored by that familiar wild, haphazard energy that garnered its cult following. Titled “Heart Beat” (with the actual rhythm joining the show’s soundtrack), this fashion show bumped with charisma.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – Substance. Loewe SS24

June 25, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

“Substance” seemed to be keyword for Jonathan Anderson‘s spring-summer 2024 menswear collection for Loewe. The three Lynda Benglis fountains that the designer’s curatorial enthusiasm had brought together for the first time were the first clues. One was tall and looming, another an apparently kinetically charged wave mid-break, and the last low and spreading like an unpruned shrub. Splashes of water erupting from Beglis’ structures inhabited the runway space, making the Loewe show an art experience, not just a parade of clothes. But the clothes were equally transfixing as the liquid-like installations. The garments hewn by Anderson and his team for this collection defined the shape and aspect of the moving human substance within them. By pulling the waistband of his pants up so very high, Anderson said afterwards, he wanted to create a way of seeing this collection that was akin to viewing it from ground level with a fish-eye lens. Coating some looks with crystals that glinted in the skylight sunshine invited you to see another watery parallel with Anderson’s installed artworks. When not obscured by long coats, or three hypersized swatches (complete with hypersized pins) of what looked like chintzy vintage wall upholstery fabric, that looming silhouette was generally undisturbed yet variously expressed. Sparkly polo shirts, chunky knits, argyle sweaters, trench coat shirts, and bonded gray rib knits with rounded shoulders or two dimensional side-tabs were all cropped around the southern reaches of the wearer’s ribcage. Three leather jumpsuits near the end, one pastel pink, latter scarlet, the last black, combined the trouser shape with the upholstery facade into a hybridized silhouette. “It’s always about trying to find contradictions in men and women: like how do you blur all of that? I feel like something in this is very precise in that message, it’s very reduced, very luxe”, Anderson said.

Men’s – Study of Elegance. Dries Van Noten SS24

June 23, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

“We wanted to make it a study of elegance. To make it very masculine. So we asked what is masculinity now? And how we can make elegance also young, and interesting to the young?… I think streetwear is one thing, and it’s fantastic, but I also think people want more ways to dress to express who they are, and to enjoy,” said Dries Van Noten of his powerful spring-summer 2024 menswear offering. The herringbone wool in a gorgeous belted raglan shoulder coat contained zig-zags of camel and black, the two shades that set the tone for the opening phase of this collection. A stately orchestral start segued slowly then less so towards sweet repetitive beats by Soulwax. Gabardine pants fronted with trench coat skirts were foils against deep-V knits with matching wrapped skirts: modern twinsets. Slubby shantung silks, net linen knits, coated linen outerwear, knit velvets and muted optically enveloping prints provided textures both visual and tactile. The palette became dyed, sun-drenched, or even sun-burnt. To mix a bronze shirt and coat with gold sequin shorts (!), or play aubergine shorts against a mustard bomber was simultaneously unlikely and self-evidently effective. Some tops in mousseline were sheer, some sandals were strapped with fur, some hems on shorts and combat pants were frayed and raw, and the knit velvet sweater featured a grid of plucked perforations across the chest: layers of patina, wear, and form. This was a collection crying out to be moved into.

Men’s – Slender Goths. Rick Owens SS24

June 23, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

(To experience the full version of this collage, check out my Instagram!)

The super-slender silhouettes of the models walking the Rick Owens spring-summer 2024 fashion show were both ethereal and disturbing. As the designer observed from backstage, even portlier people could work the season’s elongated look: those pants sat high to create a center-point at the base of the sternum, north of the paunch. His simultaneously ancient and futuristic Italian-crafted riff on Victorian stricture, structure, and suture – those hard shoulders against the coiling soft folds of draped silk organza – contrasted with a more primitive habit: goth-phase Flintstones fare. There were high top versions of his leg-brace boots and “brutalist concrete sandals.” The parade of statuesque, elegant goths was accompanied by abrupt fireworks, detonated from towering rigs set in the Palais de Tokyo pool. The eruptions filled the space with swirls of purple and yellow smoke. The smell of cordite was in the air. Ash rained down (reportedly, one of the editors’ brand new bag got irrevocably stained). The scene seemed simultaneously apocalyptic and ecstatic. That’s how Owens feels lately. “Maybe it’s just to celebrate while we can. Is that what people are feeling?” Arguably, the designer was having his cake and eating it; yet this was mindful consumption, contradiction with a cause, fashion with a profound position.

Lightness. Lemaire SS24

June 23, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

As the models arrived at the expansive Lemaire runway – an enclosed university parvis accompanied by a score composed of rain, city sounds and birds – looking this way and that, walking with purpose, their light, tonal layers were primed for a summer afternoon downpour. And for all their stylistic idiosyncrasies, they could have belonged in Paris, but also Vietnam, where a recent trip inspired Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran to explore how travel encourages a more deliberate rapport with what we wear. “We like to design from reality,” said Lemaire. “Like everyone, we’re experiencing global warming and the need for lighter fabric, lighter clothes, protection pieces – and we try to bring that functionality to our work.” Tran noted how this body of work is currently full of archetypal shapes – twisted, balloon, boxy – that can be revisited season after season. These designs are already so elemental and timeless that adjustments need only be incremental to register as fresh. “It’s just about adding layers that evolve with time,” she said.

The palette brought added dimension through an alluring spectrum spanning earthy, fleshy, inky, and airy. Two unassuming prints – a dark stripe and a faded floral – made the lineup feel believable, less rigid. But to see a sea of sameness would be missing the Lemaire approach altogether. “What we like to do is present characters and not just themes,” Lemaire said, noting that they spend considerable time on casting. “We want [the models] to feel credible. For us, style is about that… when there is a coherence of the personality and outfit.” For the designers, the intention in every collection – but particularly in this one – was about seeing the clothes in the street. “What we’re interested in is to try and embellish reality. We should learn to look at reality, so we start by that… and hopefully we end with looking like a better version of ourselves,” Lemaire summed up.