Art

Real Clothes, Real Feelings. Marni AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Really, who didn’t play bed-sheets-couture dress-up, even once during the year of endless lockdowns? Those fabulous, voluminous duvet garments Francesco Risso offered in his Marni autumn-winter 2021 surely had this sort of stay-at-home-laziness origin. But this collection isn’t another mumbling about “fancy” home-wear. When fashion weeks went digital and wardrobes turned domestic, designers faced new pressures from the marketing machine. “People came to me saying, ‘It has to be digital savvy; it has to be digital friendly; it has to go through the screen,’” Francesco Risso recalled. “Fuck that.”Posed with designing his second Marni collection in Italian lockdown, he asked himself: how do we respond to times of continued separation? Do we surrender to a digital overthrow, or do we fight back with all the things cyberspace could never give us: the human hand, tactility, and the chemistry of nature? “To me, it’s been revelatory,” Risso told Vogue.  Developed almost entirely by hand, the collection became a quest for understanding what triggers a romantic state of mind. He found his answer: “Life! Life is romantic. A life that allows for laughs, for positive thinking, and definitely not for abandoning the feeling of the hand that makes things.”His search materialized in the tongue-in-cheek transformation of the sportswear and loungewear codes of lockdown into real dressmaking, expressed in silhouettes informed by the classic silhouettes of haute couture. Inevitably, it generated a ladylike romanticism conveyed through Risso’s countercultural lens: a chic wrap was abstracted into a puffer cape, but retained its neat little plume trim; a mermaid skirt morphed with sweatpants; and tennis trainers sharpened into evening shoes. Paradoxically, Risso had started his search for romanticism by dyeing everything black. Wanting to witness the power of nature, he placed his all-black garments in the Marni courtyard, embellished them with real flowers, and watched the sun do its magic. “The corrosion made our prints,” he explained. Then, he took his tricks to the factories, girding himself with the patience needed to watch age-old dyeing techniques do their thing through the soak-dry-wait, soak-dry-wait ceremonies necessary. “It’s cathartic,” Risso said. “This patience has been romantic…not forcing it because it ‘has to be digital.’” Screened on Zoom, the presentation portrayed a familiar lockdown situation shot in Risso’s Milanese apartment. It turned into a salon show and culminated in the kind of lunch we are all looking forward to – with a performance by Mykki Blanco. “I hope we’re not going to forget all we’ve learned,” Risso said about the still abstract-sounding ‘reemergence’ that will sooner or later come. “It’s about narrowing things down and not wasting time and not making bullshit clothes. It’s about being more focused.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Beauty, Silhouette & Pose. JW Anderson AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

For some designers, the pandemic brought a sense of freedom, and also let them really rethink how to do things. Jonathan Anderson is an example. “I do not want to be bound by the idea that we have to show 60 looks, that we have to do this thing, that it has to be presented this way. I want to be able to have the freedom. I’m enjoying the freedom at the moment that we’re not part of the vehicle. And I didn’t want to put pressure upon pressure on my team – the last six months have been a nightmare. I said, ‘Let’s just focus on getting 19 fantastic propositions.’ I don’t want urgency. I want to just put it out when it’s ready.” Continuing with a format established several seasons ago, JW Anderson presented its women’s autumn-winter 2021 collection in the form of nineteen double-sided posters shot by Juergen Teller in addition to a video message from Jonathan Anderson. This season’s presentation is a curation and juxtaposition of Jonathan’s passions: art and fashion. Alongside the nineteen looks of the collection are portraits of Dame Magdalene Odundo DBE and Shawanda Corbett and their works. Anderson uses his fashion platforms as creative outlets for people he finds inspiring and wants to introduce to his audience. The designer got to know the internationally lauded Odundo when she loaned him pieces in 2017 for the “Disobedient Bodies” exhibition that he curated at the Hepworth Wakefield Gallery, a show that sparked comparisons between art forms and fashion forms (“I really look up to her. She’s one of the most important ceramicists of the 20th century”). He discovered the young American Corbett at the Corvi-Mora Gallery in London last summer. Corbett, who was born with one arm and without legs, creates vessels that she has described as “stand-ins for people,” as well as dance performances. “I went into that room, and there was nearly a landscape of people talking to each other,” he remembers. “It was incredible to feel the power and influence objects can have on you.” In both Corbett’s work and Odundo’s practice, he feels a physical connection. “This is about an exploration of two artists’ work, my own work, and the idea of the body. And that is what clothing is about.” For Jonathan the collection was an attempt to “boil everything down to beauty, silhouette and pose.” It is an exploration of volume, a recurring theme in JW Anderson womenswear collections, with a focus on totemic structures. Knitwear expands into extreme, cocooning shapes. The everyday becomes surreal in prints on trousers and tops. The body, grounded on sturdy boots with chain embellishment, is celebrated as a vessel. Like the art and the images, the fashion is “curated” (one of Anderson’s favourite words, both at his London-based brand and Loewe). The combination of art and fashion this season is embodied in hand-knit and woven blankets (four hand-knit blanket styles  featuring works from Odundo and Corbett can be pre-ordered on the brand’s website) and the entire presenation is “one of the most personal projects I have ever done,” as Jonathan summed up.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Total Fantasy. Moschino AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Jeremy Scott‘s autumn-winter 2021 collection for Moschino is hilariously good. Forget the lockdown-and-loungewear talk. Here’s total, camp fantasy. Possessed by the mad spirit of Franco Moschino, Scott has become a master of meta. He had to design this collection in tandem with the short film he wanted to make, with every model, look and dimension planned to precision before the clothes ever existed. There we were, sitting in front of screens as Scott knew we would, watching a digital show about a real-life salon show, which turned out to be a show within a show, all its players part of the line-up. In this imposed digital moment in fashion and life, Scott’s theater was a thought-provoking image of our current surreal lives: layers and layers of trompe l’oeil, in garments as well as their unreal surroundings. “I wanted to do things in film that you can’t do live,” Scott said on a video call from Los Angeles, reflecting on the two digital showcases he’s created during the lockdown period. Last season he designed a puppet-sized collection for a complex and fantastic marionette show. This time, he called upon 36 star models, It girls and pin-ups as diverse as Maye Musk (who presented the salon show) to Precious Lee, Dita Von Teese, and Winnie Harlow (who attended it), and Hailey Bieber, Miranda Kerr, and Shalom Harlow (who modeled in it). They staged a multi-dimensional portrayal of a lady’s everyday life: outfits for business, leisure, upkeep, travels and balls; all activities we haven’t had a reason to dress for over the past year. Even for a wardrobe designed for coming out of lockdown, the Old Hollywood Technicolor glamour of Scott’s collection – titled Jungle Red after the name of the nail varnish du jour in the 1939 George Cukor film The Women – was decidedly extravagant. “I guess I live in such a fantasy land I didn’t really think of it that way. I mean, you have to get dressed anyway, don’t you?” Scott quipped, rolling his eyes at continued fashion forecasts for comfort-wear. “Comfort schmomfort! What we need now more than ever is fantasy and glamour and things that make you feel wonderful, and I don’t think sweatpants do that.” So, call it a surreal wardrobe for surreal times: for lunch, little tweed dresses with purses dotted around them as adornment. For work, bankers’ pinstripe suits reconstructed into bustier dresses. For the countryside, Franco Moschino’s cloud and cow motifs unified on gowns alongside burlap potato sack peplum dresses – all delightfully impractical, of course, for the actual countryside. There was Kirsty Hume with a windmill on her head. And for afternoons at the museum, chic skirt suits cut like biker jackets, and paintings that came to life in brushstroke evening wear. Flamingo gloves framed the arrival of an actual dress shaped like the bird. Dita Von Teese closed the film in a show-stopping moment that was, quite literally, a cheeky statement of glamour in a time of dullness. All’s well that ends well, as they say. Let that be the concluding remark for this digital chapter in fashion history, which no one has aced quite like Jeremy Scott. Brilliant!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Easy Opulence. Prada AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons‘ joined vision for Prada starts to unravel. It’s elusive, enigmatic and far from straightforward – and what’s most important, exciting. Autumn-winter 2021 is the second full season coming from those two brilliant fashion minds, and while the debut left many hungry for more, the latest line-up has the virtual audience in awe. Adjusting to the idea that “normal” isn’t coming back took all of us longer than it probably should have. But whatever shape the world takes when we re-emerge, there’s a collective feeling of hope that’s new. At a small press conference after the Q&A (which featured Prada lovers and collaborators like Marc Jacobs, Hunter Schafer and Rem Koolhaas) Miuccia said, “optimism is mounting.” Reason? The inevitable brightening of moods as winter ends and spring begins, or the pleasures that Prada and Simons are finding in collaboration. “It feels natural,” Simons said of their partnership. “At the same time, of course, it’s challenging, but I expected that. And I wanted it to be, otherwise I wouldn’t have come.” Together, these factors produced a collection with a tantalizing sense of glamour. It glimmered most clearly in the rectangular double-sided wraps – paillettes on one side, faux fur on the other – that models clutched to their breasts in a gesture “of protection, but also of elegance.” One such wrap was worn over a matching black paillette dress which itself was layered over the second-skin jacquard knits that appeared in many of the looks. In its endorsement of these foundational knits, the collection was a showcase for the key way the pandemic is changing fashion. Ease is the flip side of elegance: In 2021, in contrast to the past, both are integral; and women seem unlikely to sacrifice the former for the latter. “Ease and movement were very important to us,” Simons confirmed. This is a positive development, especially because Prada and Simons were able to manage it while also reigniting a fashion spark that a year of online living has otherwise made dormant. A few of the compelling ways to celebrate our reemergence here included a drop-shoulder, puff-sleeve coat in electric yellow and green, a chesterfield in midnight sequins, and a clutch coat in faux fur. It’s easy opulence, fit for our times.

“Live” collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Hot Confidence. Blumarine AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Blumarine is hot! While nobody really paid attention to Nicola Brognano‘s debut last season, it was clear that he (with Lotta Volkova’s styling help) has a plan for this Italian brand that once was the synonym of sexy glamour. “I’ve always been fond of Blumarine since I was a kid, Vogue Italia issues were treasured in my mother’s bridal atelier,” Brognano said during a visit to the set where the fall video was being filmed. “I still remember vividly the Blumarine advertising campaigns shot by Helmut Newton in the ’90s, they were fabulous!” That was the label’s heyday. Making it pertinent for today’s sought-after young audience, winning not only their social media attention but also their spending power is the challenge the designer has to face. He might succeed – he ticks all the boxes. For autumn-winter 2021, Brognano looked at his teenage heroines, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and their early aughts excesses. He was a huge fan. The collection screamed Madonna-meets-Steven-Meisel-‘Sex’-Book as well. “My Blumarine is more dirty, bitchy, sexier,” he said. It definitely seems to have the punch celebrities respond to. Ariana Grande, Rihanna, and Dua Lipa have all asked for clothes, or for the impossibly high stilettos with crisscrossing full-leg straps that are becoming a hit. If Brognano knows how to put the power of stardom to good use, but he’s also business savvy. The ultra-short draped minidresses in candy colors can be covered up by cozy oversized cable-knitted cardis with fake-fur collars. Elongated crocheted-wool vests had a thrifty feel; they were see-through enough to look sexy without being too revealing. Nostalgic Blumarine fans weren’t neglected either; the everlasting roses motif was abundantly represented, digitally abstracted in liquid watercolor prints or knitted in sprouting 3D rosettes on cropped wool sweaters paired with matching briefs. Denims were totally Britney – low-slung, extra tight, bell-bottomed, and studded with crystals (properly kitschy!). Brognano’s Blumarine is firing up.

“Live” collage by Edward Kanarecki.