Strangeness In The Mundane. Jw Anderson SS24

September 17, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Finally, a collection this season that makes the viewer truly wonder. Nobody transforms the mundane into extraordinary like Jonathan Anderson. Plasticine – that’s what the blue hoodie and white shorts were molded from at the beginning of the JW Anderson spring-summer 2024 fashion show in London. Anderson discovered that Plasticine is still being manufactured in Northern Ireland, the place of his birth, plus it makes adults smile as much now as back in their childhoods. That was an emblematic starter for a collection that had Anderson’s collection circling back to the youth-based energy of his brand. “It was kind of re-going back to find a new path,” he said. In the summer he “saw all these girls and boys hanging out wearing biker jackets and cargos.” Street observation – seeing the generic clothes young people really wear, but with a different attitude in each generation – put him in the mood to think about “what happens when you focus on reduction. It wasn’t about a lot of tricks. Kind of a cleanser.” Adding glamour to the MA-1 archetype by inflating it as a cocoon and having feathers explode from the seams was another cheerful moment, equally beautiful. And putting something that might have been a Hula-Hoop up the skirt of a knitted dress. Playfulness balanced with practicality might be a way to sum it up. Love!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Fetishization of Pain. Mowalola SS24

September 17, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Mowalola Ogunlesi delivered a sharp start of London Fashion Week. Mowalola, the brand, is fast, furious, and at times obscene, but in a creatively vital way. Backstage of her spring-summer 2024 show, the designer, said the collection had been sparked by her first-ever viewing of David Cronenberg’s Crash. “I was really excited by the fetishization of pain through crashing,” she said. It prompted her to imagine “a whole universe that resides on the street,” filtered through a prism of ecstatic jeopardy. But Mowalola doesn’t stick to one reference. Masturbating anime girl prints; off-the-shoulder bombers with faux Highway Patrol patches; thigh-highs and micro skirts inspired by street walkers. A lot of stuff that Ogulensi’s customers will love. All that, like the excellent dirty denims, seemed to emanate a conceptual solar system adjacent to some of Glenn Martens’s work at Diesel. The pants that flashed cracks at the back and crotch hairlines were maybe subject to the influence of Alexander McQueen’s gravity. This was good company to keep: however the gartered, bisected pants and skirts, now a Mowalola signature, were all Ogunlesi’s own. The flags-of-the world theme was another highlight. This also ran into a poignant EU skirt meets Union Jack cap look. The extreme contrast of volumes in some sportswear looks made the generic appear particular.

Time For Fun. Batsheva SS24

September 15, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Batsheva Hay is in her daring, experimental era: for the past few seasons she has been pushing against the limits that delineate what her brand can be. “I have no classical fashion background, so I learned with cut-and-sew garments, and it was all handed off,” she explained. “I used to feel like I couldn’t work with the garments. I had to hand things over, then pick them up, and it was very nice for my lifestyle. Then I’d go home and nurse my baby and then hand her off, pick the clothes up, pick out the buttons or whatever.” She laughed at the familiar juggling of so many women who go home at the end of a workday for a different kind of work. “But now I find the really fun part is tearing things, shredding things, adding little bustles, pinning things onto things. And I do think that’s an important part of what distinguishes my brand from other brands; that there’s a little bit of naivete in it. It’s not quite feral, but just the amateurness of it all.” For sping-summer 2024, Batsheva went The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with all the 1950s volumes and colours, but also in the sense of humor. These “grotesque experiments,” as Hay calls them, involved her pinning a surplus of cotton placemats and oven mitts that she had lying around. “I just started safety-pinning them on my body, and I thought, Oh, it’s so sexy,” While the oven-mitt dress feels very much like oven mitts that have been safety-pinned together when you’re just “being goofy,” the experimentation did take her to some groovy places. Like the dress made from delicately embroidered cotton placemats, which has a sort of romantic quality to it, and the top made from floral-print cotton placemats, which Hay draped over a white cotton “cheerleader full-circle skirt” with turquoise godets further propped up by a hoop skirt underneath. If it all sounds a little nutty, it is, but it also feels wearable and oddly accessible. Hay expanded, elongated, or otherwise stuffed some of her go-to silhouettes, like the turquoise dress modeled by Amy Fine Collins, which is one of her bestsellers, and the high-waist, pleated skirt in turquoise with embroidered kissy prints, which she makes every season in different fabrications. The designer was also having fun at her presentation inside the BondST restaurant at Hudson Yards, where models holding little number signs walked around guests, midcentury couture show style, while Hay narrated the looks and then opened the floor for questions and comments from the audience.

Antiheroines. Elena Velez SS24

September 15, 2023September 15, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

In the sea of New York Fashion Week’s collections that deliver mediocrity mixed with business, Elena Velez is an outlier. She is here to disturb the peace. And the system. The spring-summer 2024 fashion show took place at a warehouse in Bushwick. After the finale walk, a handful of the models started a mud fight. Some guests got splattered. Velez enjoys creating such discomfort. The designer gave no interviews after the show. She wanted the spectacle to speak for itself. Instead she let her press notes do the talking. “Where are our antiheroines?” she asked, adding that the collection, titled The Longhouse, was a “ritualistic catharsis to the coddling, histrionic, and moralistic ills of oversocialization.” Maybe the mud fight was a visual representation of our online interactions, which often lack nuance and have little care for context. Velez went on to state that the show was a “creative interpretation of the reorganization of contemporary society around feminine expressions of control and behavioral modeling” and a reaction to a “climate of post-progressivism where resistance to a monolithic cultural paradigm is intensifying.” It’s hard to unpack these ideas. What was clear was Velez’s commentary on contemporary womanhood. “It feels to me like the sanitization and unilateralization of womanhood in popular culture today leaves no room for the nuance and multiplicity we deserve as architects of labyrinthine interior lives,” she wrote. In short, and in plain English, her point is that women can be good and evil, kind and angry, soft and rugged, and passive and aggressive. Velez offers them eveningwear that remains as compelling and striking as ever; a standout was an askew and elongated corset that melted onto the body with a draped skirt covered in silicone latex. But most fascinating were her commercial propositions: waffle-knit tights, zip-up bustiers, canvas jackets and shirting constructed with seams and darts inside out, layered T-shirts, and a terrific cropped bomber jacket with its bust cups slashed in half. You want to meet the woman who wears Velez’s clothes; you might fear her, but you also want to befriend her.

Forever Spring. Rosie Assoulin SS24

September 14, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Rosie Assoulin celebrates 10th anniversary of her name-sake brand this year. For that occasion, she had her “first fashion show” this New York Fashion Week, which was a joyous mise-en-scène accompanied by the euphoric sound of Vivaldi’s “Spring”. Rosie’s fashion is like forever spring: it’s always blooming, no matter the season, and feels effortless, hopeful and so joie de vivre. “Spring, in all its abundance, is a reminder that we are here to grow. In a way, it’s a memento mori, urging us to savor the fertility of the season, with the knowledge of its impermanence. As it comes in, so it goes out, and we must enjoy and celebrate in the moment,” the show notes read. Assoulin’s signature eveningwear – never constricting, always freeing and easy in wear – oozed with colors and textures, all thanks to horizontal strips of organza that created a mille-feuille effect. The collection of course had the designer’s laid-back tailoring, perfect for any occasion. Silk pajama sets looked super compelling, especially when topped with big, funky flower brooches. “We just wanted to take a moment and sit down,” Assoulin said. “We love to do what we do. We wanted to bring optimism, color, hope, and a little bit of humor.” To another 10 years!