Lady Chic. Thom Browne Resort 2023

July 23, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Marisa Berenson came running into Thom Browne’s salon-like spring 2023 menswear show. Farida Khelfa and Dree Hemingway followed, and Sasha Pivavorova emerged last, rushing to get to her front row seat. The women wore fantastical suits from Browne’s resort 2023 collection, a small preview of what is being released this week, almost a month after Browne’s sexily tweeded guys hit the catwalk. “I knew the collections were connected,” Browne said, “but I didn’t realize how well it was going to work.” The women had the kind of bravado required to pull off a mannish floral jacquard blazer or a pastel color-blocked midi skirt suit. “They are women who have lived interesting lives,” Browne said of his muses, who also include artist Anh Duong and photographer Cate Underwood. “Accomplished, strong, and iconic in their own way.” That’s the Browne promise: even for those of us who live the most normal of existences, his clothes offer the opportunity to feel extraordinary and unique. There’s no way to slip into a white suit embroidered with children’s storybook scenes and not experience an almost instant mood lift or to pack your things into a giant sunflower backpack and not smile. This season, Browne has supersized some of his proportions and continues to play with pleated skirts, allowing his sometimes overly strict vision to attract people with different body types and ways of life. Still, the classics are always Browne’s favorites. “It’s true to what I did 20 years ago and it still feels so new and strong,” he said. “It shows there is still a way for us to go forward.” Going forward, trying new things, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible in fashion – well, that’s just the Thom Browne way. It’s no wonder that many are drawn to his unconventional approach. “The love you see in these pictures,” he said, “was free.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Hotness. Magda Butrym Resort 2023

July 20, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Unabashedly feminine and sexy, Magda Butrym‘s resort 2023 party-ready pieces sit in a league of their own – and continue to evolve in her new collection. The Polish designer delivers new off-shoulder necklines and the return of her signature, hot-red rose appliqués, now on separates, rendered in crochet and denim, and adorning an elongating pink number that exudes high statuesque glamour. She also introduces more coverage – most notably on a crystal-flecked long-sleeve gown in scintillating pale beige. The tailoring is sharp as usual, this time in an array of colours, from bold magenta to deep black. The pink long-sleeve floor sweeper with a dramatic side slit and floral-detailed high neck is the Aphrodite of Butrym’s latest eveningwear. These are clothes to dance in, all night, in the moonlight. No wonder why the collection is titled “Super Moon”.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Entrancing. Area Pre-Fall 2022

July 19, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

The eternal flora and fauna theme were Piotrek Panszczyk’s most obvious starting point for pre-fall 2022, taking hot pink duchesse satin and creating static floral poufs that could be sized up or down to create a crop top and mini skirt or an entrancing dress. Flowers also appear as spiked crystal tops and pasties, as sunglasses, as earrings, and as crystal pants that wind up the legs. Since Area’s last collection, its showgirl potential has become more fully realized; these experiments in fluttering crystal seem destined for Beyoncé, Olivia Rodrigo, Precious Lee, or any of the other larger-than-life women that swear by the brand’s devilishly saccharine clothes. Careful to not give it all away in a pre-collection, Panszczyk has balanced it out with sharpened tailoring in black, white, and brown houndstooth boasting crystal trim, as well as an extended section of leopard print pouf skirts and teensy bustiers. The disparate harmony of a blazers-to-pasties collection is justified by the Area books. According to Panszczyk and Area’s co-founder Beckett Fogg, the customer wants a crystal-strewn tee as much as she wants a Vegas-worthy headpiece. For seasons, Area has been reckoning with these two poles, daily use versus drama, but it seems the brand is on its way to a single more unified vision of something “dainty, natural, sultry, and thorny.” Per Panszczyk, “sexiness is just a byproduct of wearing Area.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Hard Candy. Burberry Resort 2023

July 17, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Burberry, with the Italian creative director Riccardo Tisci in charge, is one British institution which continues to believe in centering itself on border-free, non-nationalistic points of view. Tisci’s policy of turning over his pre-collections to perspectives on Burberry’s Britishness from his international network of “friends and family” is a proof of that. This season, he looked to his American friend, the artist Jared Buckhiester, to collaborate. According to notes winged from Burberry HQ, the two see eye-to-eye on looking at the brand signatures through the lens of UK rave culture – the lasting impression of the late ’90s which Tisci has held close to his heart since he studied at Central Saint Martins over 20 years ago. Maybe no one ever actually turned up to illegal warehouse raves in Kings Cross or one-nighters in the muddy fields of England looking like the people in the lookbook. The remnants of that rave past seemed to have been cleaned up and embedded, perhaps, in hybridized military bombers and tailored coats in the form of the classic Burberry trench fused with a biker jacket. But really, the Tisci /Buckhiester vision is a far more polished, lux-ed up vision of what the notes called ‘workwear,’ spiked with some glam heavy-duty black leather and contemporary twists of gender non-conformity. As part of that, there are long, tailored column skirts – or possibly maxi-aprons – that appeared to be assigned to the menswear side of the collection. There are Burberry customers with conservative tastes, or, put it this way, people who are in the market for straightforward classic clothes without any overt branding. Tisci hasn’t forgotten to design for them this season. Alongside the Burberry plaid denims, the male maxis, and some of Tisci’s hyper sexy slit skirts and curve dresses, there were moments when clean, sharp tailoring – particularly two black tuxedo jackets – stood out. With all the black leather, sometimes head-to-toe, the dark sexiness returns for good to Tisci’s repertoire. It’s something we’ve all missed since his best Givenchy years, and wanted to see again at Burberry. Finally, we’ve got it back.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

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Muse. Patou SS23

July 15, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Just before the haute couture fashion week began, Guillaume Henry had his first IRL show for Patou at the brand’s charming headquarters in the Île de la Cité. Over the pandemic, Patou built up its identity as a playful young Parisian brand that’s popular with influencers with a collection that was early into the celebration of exuberant oversized shapes on French themes. Well, post-isolation years, it’s as if Patou has shed its chrysalis and emerged into the sunshine in super slimmed-down body-conscious shape. Tiny mini shifts, hourglass curve-clinging dresses, sexy high waisted bootcuts, little cropped tops. The voluminous flounces had more or less flounced out. And there was Julia Fox, beig THE moment of the spring-summer 2023 presentation. The fact that she topped off the show in a body-dress with an Art Nouveau print is an indication, perhaps, of how far the perception of this brand has penetrated. But Henry always said that his main way of designing is listening to what his coworkers and girlfriends say, clocking who they admire, who they’re talking about, and observing what they’re actually wearing on a daily basis. Which brought him around to the idea of muses – a classification which Fox has redefined in 2022. In Henry’s mind, it was deeper than that – considering that muse culture has very high art French roots. He found photos of young women students carving clay maquettes at the Beaux Arts school in the late 19th century, the time of the Belle Epoque and Toulouse Lautrec, and of female stage and cabaret performers. He wanted to capture something of that in a self-directed way for the worlds young women are inhabiting these days. Well, the collection hardly translated that message, and I honestly missed Henry’s exuberant take on the contemporary Patou wardrobe he has shown us in the previous seasons.