Sex Positive. Diesel AW23

February 23, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Ecstatic moaning on the soundtrack and 200,000 boxes of Durex condoms on the runway both suggested that Glenn Martens will deliver a sex-positive Diesel collection. Before the autumn-winter 2023 show, the designer stated that in April the brand would be handing out half a million free company-branded Durex prophylactics in its stores around the world, promoting fun and safety. “We are a very cheeky, straightforward brand”, the designer added. Also cheeky were the first look’s Y2k-inspired low-low rise jeans – whose moto styling accelerated us into this collection. As is de rigueur at this house, denim innovation was front and center. But in overall, the line-up had nothing new to offer, as most of the ideas were recycled from Martens’ first offerings for the brand. Nomadically shaped knitwear had been finely plucked by laser into wild, but cool disrepair. Two cleverly tufted knitwear pieces – one pink on black, the other gray on black – were there to reflect Marten’s stylistic penchant for grown-out hair dye. Painted and over-layered utility wear in a subtly wild paint-splash camo contrasted with double layered jersey pieces from which the outer sometimes was peeled back to reveal the inner. Digitally distorted pictures of over-toothed smiles were used as close up prints on the phase of near-climax fits. The most intriguing pieces of all were from the hand-fashioned artisanal section; these included a long jacket of layered lining and a moto jacket that referred back to the opener artistically melted and then layered with another skin – accidentally vaguely condom-like in consistency – of membrane. Martens said rightly that he believes his Diesel design language is becoming ever more distinctly identifiable.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Not A Man’s Territory. Dilara Findikoglu AW23

February 21, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Dilara Fındıkoğlu plays with your emotions like no other designer in London right now: she pulls on your heartstrings, makes you feel her pain, and conjures an intensity that makes you feel what she’s portraying in front of you. For autumn-winter 2023, the designer took her guests to a chapel in East London to display her latest collection, and it was a divine experience. While so much of the “Not A Man’s Territory” collection explored sexual tensions (and a pain related to this), there was also Fındıkoğlu’s usual amount of fetishization on display. Latex tights clashed with leather bursting at the seams, tightened together with clips and metal fastenings that intended to make us feel awkward. Likewise, models dropping their demure coverings revealed boned corsets and lingerie dripping in crystals, subverting opulence with the idea of something voyeuristic. Fındıkoğlu’s collections are impossible to not become fixated upon. Models stare into the eyes of the crowd, the heels hit the stone with a sharp sensuality, and performances of others clinging to walls or having a moment to themselves once again draw you in, but in a way that implies we shouldn’t be looking. This is Fındıkoğlu’s power, expressed through looks that also give her power. The most exceptional was the eveningwear. A dress made from black feathers à la Black Swan was powerful. A black satin gown covered in butter knives that curved around the breast and sculpted the hips alluded to finding one’s strength, as if the dress was Fındıkoğlu’s shield. Bravo.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Anti-Hero. Talia Byre AW23

February 21, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Talia Byre is a designer worth keeping on your fashion radar. For autumn-winter 2023, the London-based designer found inspiration in the leading women of films like The Graduate and Funny Girl, and wanted to celebrate the ‘anti-hero’ with her latest offering. “The person I’m designing for is brash, greedy, selfish; all of what’s perceived as the worst traits to have,” she said in a preview. “But what’s great about them is that they’re also strong and independent – it’s their way of saying a big ‘fuck you’ to society.” The collection explored the sort of wardrobe that an anti-hero figure would aspire to own. There was a duality of toughness while retaining sensuality, whether in the form of screen-printed leopard patterns on wool and cashmere pieces, or figure-hugging maxi dresses in black and dark cherry brown. “This season, sexiness is expressed more subtly,” Byre said. “However, a look can unravel into more daring silhouettes with the undoing of a single button.” The tailored coats were particularly strong – one in navy wool with a dangerously high slit up the back, and another featuring a hood constructed from waterproof technical fabric. A cotton poplin shirt dress with woven stripes, a dramatically cinched waist-line, and voluminous sleeves was also worth noting.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Pleasure. Christopher Kane AW23

February 20, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Sexuality is the focus point behind every Christopher Kane collection, and he manages to always approach it in a strikingly different, intriguing way. This time, the notion of it was amplified as a recording of a cat purring in the show’s soundtrack, a sensual metaphor for female pleasure. Animal instincts, biology, his working class Glaswegian school days, and, lately, artificial intelligence are all wrapped up in the matrix of Kane’s imagination. At a moment when it feels as if fashion ought to be going towards something cleaner and sharper, there he was, cutting plain gray school uniform shifts, but with stiff geometric upstanding collars that he later alarmingly called “chopping boards.” Then, his grappling with nature wasn’t all it seemed, either. There were pretty micro-flowers and solitary daisy embroideries he attributed to his championing of ordinary urban plants that “grow through concrete,” of the sort he saw growing up in a working class conurbation outside Glasgow. And then, there were his animal prints – overlapping hyper-real images of chicks, piglets, and rats (a TW moment for me) – on stretch jersey body-con dresses. It turned out, when quizzed backstage, that Kane had designed them with AI. “What you do is speak to it, give very specific descriptions, and then it comes up with it.”There are always some things in Christopher Kane’s work which feel a bit covertly disturbing or off – it wouldn’t have its weird originality if it didn’t. What’s for sure, he’s never someone who concocts things for the sake of instant public notoriety and clickbait. What he’s really about is being a designer of hot clothes that give women the chance to have a really great time with fashion.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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A Moment for Retrospection. JW Anderson AW23

February 20, 2023February 20, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Jonathan Anderson isn’t really a designer who takes a look back at his previous work, but for JW Anderson‘s autumn-winter 2023 collection, he had a moment of retrospection. He came about it through a collaboration, or rather a creative dialogue, with the Scottish choreographer Michael Clark, whose famed subversive performances blurred the lines between ballet, gay nightlife, and fashion performance in the early 1980s. The giant billboard graphic of a penis as the show’s venue was part of that conversation. “In September of last year, we had a conversation with Michael, we’ve been trying to do something for while – and while looking through his archive, I was like, ‘Well, I can’t look through someone else’s archive without looking through my own. And I decided to take one element from every single collection of the last 15 years and try to work out a way in which you would merge two archives.” Clark, he added, isn’t crazy about looking back, and nor is he – but he forced himself. “I wanted something which was about how do you kind of reconcile the past, and how do you deal with what you have done, because ultimately the job of a designer is going through a series of rejections of things. And it was really nice to kind of work out ways in which you could break everything. And maybe improve on them.” Fans of Anderson will now get a chance to get their hands on revisited reissues of his greatest hits, like the kangaroo-pocketed bustiers that now come in fake furry chenille. His big experimental voluminous shapes, coats in subverted country checks, and bound-arm knits came out, interspersed with tributes to his hero. At one point, a best-seller JWA anchor-logo sailor stripe t-shirt was simply over-printed with the name Michael Clark in luminous green lettering. The ability to create great merchandise while often doing things that will fire the internet at the same time has always been central to Anderson’s talent, and has sent him right to the top in Paris with his role at Loewe as one of the most significant designers of our times. It had been fun to look back, before moving on, he remarked.