Miu Miu‘s spring-summer 2025 collection was a post-post-modern collage of various notions of femininity, seen through the lens of Miuccia Prada‘s absolutely distinct Miu-isms. This girl was certainly interrupted – the Miuccia way, with styling help of Lotta Volkova. To start, there were underthings worn as outer things, such as white cotton slips; some had graphic sequined embroideries. Sporty track separates and cutout bathing suits were also in the mix, along with private-school uniforms 1970s-ish geometric prints lifted from a spring 2005 collection (that’s the thing about Prada: 20 years later, her concepts feel like new). It was a wild juxtaposition of things that don’t belong together yet somehow work together. Western belts and waitress dresses, well-worn shirting and sporty bikini tops… but in the end, there was method to this chaos. And then you had Willem Dafoe closing the show.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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With every season, Rick Owens is reaching new levels of supreme, untamed and convention-breaking beauty. The gothy elegance and high camp of his sensationally blooming aesthetic was built on his fascination with Old Hollywood. Think long narrow skirts with fishtail hems – silhouettes lifted from movies of the 30s – and dramatic volumes. The grandeur of the Palais De Tokyo setting, the evocative hair and makeup, the otherworldliness of his models (the most inclusive casting of the entire season, featuring women of very different body sizes and shapes), the extremity of his elongated, extraterrestrial clothes… just incredible. “I’ve always thought of my life’s mission as kind of balancing out oppressive discrimination and intolerance in the world by proposing a very cheerful perversity – that’s always been my thing,” Owens summed up. We are so lucky to have him.
Speaking of Rick, I met his wife Michele Lamy in Paris. What a woman! What an aura! Beyond. Here she posed for me:
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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It’s Niccolò Pasqualetti‘s fourth fashion show, and you could sense real, mature confidence oozing in his spring-summer 2025 collection. The line-up orbited around the connotations with water (“something absolutely pure, something sincere“) and explored contradictions, mixing unexpected combinations of artisanal fabrics with a more refined, pared-back silhouette that played with feminine and masculine notions. Think oversized trench coats and sleeveless jackets, viscose blazers paired with translucent trousers; swimsuits were worn under asymmetric tops and evening gowns. Niccolò also experimented with sequins in many forms: large paillettes glimmering like the sun on the ocean’s surface, sometimes merged with feathery fringes, producing an unusual, chimeric texture. Found objects, like shells and various trinkets were attached to floor-sweeping metal chains, and occasionally integrated into the clothing. Pasqualetti is a designer surrounded by a nurturing support system: his collections are styled by Samuel Drira, while lookbooks are shot by Cecile Bortoletti. The spring fashion show was accompanied by the heavenly – and sublimely intoxicating – fragrance by Vilhelm Parfumerie called “Basilico & Fellini“. It all makes sense.
I had the utmost pleasure of attending Pasqualetti’s show – which makes me super happy as I truly appreciated this collection. Here’s a backstage look:
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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Pardon my review absence for the last couple of days, but I was in Paris for fashion week. I’m catching up now – equipped with a much-needed, refreshed perspective on what’s going on in the industry, IRL. Let’s start with Chloé!
Chemena Kamali is on a roll. It’s her second full season at Chloé, and the way her take on the brand resonates with the industry – and clients who are literally storming the boutiques in Paris! – is a rare thing to see nowadays. Also, comparing to other designers this season, she presented a proper, summer collection that actually felt summer-ish. And just like in her confident debut, Kamali once again showcases her intimate understanding of Chloé’s history. Photos of Karl Lagerfeld designed collections were pinned to the mood board in her studio. Two of her most inspired lifts were the waist shapers of spring 1977 and the lace bloomers of spring 1978. Jackets – in sturdy workwear cotton or soft suede – gave the sensual lightness of these pieces a reality check. It’s good to see flou femininity back on Chloé runway – for some reason, Kamali’s predecessors thought it wasn’t the right thing to channel. But there’s a new sense of strength in these carefree girls and women wearing floral-bouquet-print dresses in cascades of ruffled chiffon.
And speaking of Chloé stores in Paris, here’s what I saw at the rue de Saint-Honore boutique: the perfect marriage between retail and art. Mie Olise Kjærgaard‘s absolutely beautiful paintings are exhibited across the entire space, perfectly matching the current season.
And FYI, here’s what you should get from new Chloé!
Magda Butrym’s spring-summer 2025 “Gossamer” collection marks the house’s first-ever presentation during Paris Fashion Week’s official schedule. The collection fully captures the designer’s sophisticated, distinct and authentic sense of style and aesthetic that she has formed throughout a decade of her oeuvre. It also encapsulates a certain sentiment that’s close to her heart: gossamer.
A fleeting moment, a notion deeply rooted in Slavic sensitivity, a feeling thin like spider’s web drifting in the warm air, an invisible season that softly wraps the senses and dazes the mind. A sun-drenched moment that’s sheerly feminine in its subtlety and changeability. Blink, and you miss it. But when you happen to perceive it, you feel like in a dreamworld.
The spring-summer 2025 collection captures a sense of contemporary urgency and uncontrived, lively chic. Body-hugging, artisanally-woven crotchet is instinctively layered with utilitarian minimalism in form of high-necked, cotton cargo jacket or suede, broad-shouldered coat with a just-right, over-sized fit. Silky jersey dresses that strike with flou lightness are put in unobvious contrast with pragmatic trench-coats and no-nonsense leather outerwear. Floating-in-the-air veils are complementing the unashamedly sexy eveningwear that is subtly flourishing with draped rosettes – and is not afraid of subversive cuts and slits. With new shapes and sizes of the house’s Brigitte it-bag and sling-back mesh pumps covered in intricate crotchet, the collection is a thoroughly considered blend of womanly mystery, daring attitude and Slavic Heritage preciousness.
Other than the idea of gossamer, the collection’s creative impulse are the enduring and singular depictions of Slavic women seen in paintings by Polish artists from the turn of 19th and 20th century: Stanisław Wyspiański, Jacek Malczewski and Józef Chełmoński. In their idiosyncratic, artistic perceptions, where reality blends with buoyant dreams and mystical beliefs, and the visual codes of Polishness are eternally preserved, women are reflected as both strong and sensual; assertive and mythical; refined and esoteric. These women are in-between the real world and the world of goddesses. Their heads are swathed in swirling shawls and draperies – a bold, exuberant vision that inspired SS25’s sculptural headscarves woven with metal threads. Their bodies are covered – and uncovered by gusts of wind – with layers of flimsy silks and precious lace, like literal gossamer. Yet these characters are in their element, in full control of their destiny. In those paintings, women emanate with commanding, perplexing and empowering energy that inspires – and intrigues – the designer. In her SS25 collection, Magda Butrym paints – with transparent jerseys, hand-made crotchets, lasting cottons, brisk suedes and smooth leathers – a portrait of a woman who encapsulates that kind of modern mysticism.
This woman is nobody’s muse – other than her own.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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