Tough Chic. Magda Butrym Resort 2025

There’s an appealing, sensually charged toughness about Magda Butrym’s collection for resort 2025. The Polish designer’s smokey-eyed and red-lipped glamazons are in a dreamworld, but one that isn’t a saccharine wonderland. A sense of enigmatic chic informs the entire line-up, blurring the lines between daywear and eveningwear, feminine and masculine, precious and utilitarian. The collection’s brave, tough chic mood finds inspiration in cinematic depictions of women in West Berlin during the late 1970s, from Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria” remake to Andrzej Żuławski’s “Possession“. The first, a perplexing story of a witchy dance school and its female-only cadre and students, informs the collection’s color palette. Rusty-tones, overcast-greens and earthy-ecrus meet intoxicating blood-red – the color of lipstick on the pale faces of Madame Blanc’s dancers, and their nail polish, and the unsettling interiors of the Tanz Akademie. In Possession, the high-pitched fever dream directed by the renowned Polish provocateur, Isabelle Adjani’s character Anna – entangled in an illicit, forbidden romance – storms metro stations and soc-realist neighborhoods in utilitarian, yet feminine dress-coats. These two so female-centered films deliver an unobvious outlook on women, their emotions, sensuality, and most importantly, their sacred power. The lookbook, photographed by Vitali Gelwich, was captured inside Warsaw’s iconic Dom Pod Orłami (“House Under Eagles”). This modernist pearl keeps in its thick, marble walls many untold secrets, from pre-war bank affairs to wild raves of the 1990s. Who knows what rituals happened down these long corridors and hidden staircases? The brute, monumental beauty of the building charges the lookbook with certain mysterious, elusive, even esoteric ambience, one that can be perceived in Guadagnino and Żuławski’s cinematic universes.

In all that highly feminine, yet commanding mood the designer is channeling and refining in her latest offerings, an assortment of no-nonsense, investment-worthy garments: a drab olive-brown jacket with a high, chin-grazing collar styled with matching pair of knitted panties; sensational outerwear in broad-shouldered cut; pleated, wool pants refined by the designer to perfection. But there’s also place for unabashed glam: the eternal style of Milanese sciuras unexpectedly dialogues with the unsung chic of Old Warsaw’s starlets like Zula through a retro-imbued overlap that comes evident in faux fur stoles wrapped around the shoulders, worn over seductive, ruched dresses with built-in corsets. Meanwhile, the two finale pieces of the collection are hooded black dresses in either above-the-knee or floor-sweeping length. They intrigue with minimalist sharpness of cut and the seductive depth of plunging necklines, subverting monastic connotations. As usual in case of Butrym’s style vocabulary, there’s a charming nod to her Slavic heritage. For resort, it comes in form of hand-made lace from Koniaków which is very proudly used in a crocheted body with sharp shoulder-pads, an apron-like skirt, shopper bags, and next season’s ultimate it-accessory: bonnets.

Psst… have you seen the designer’s first ever flagship store that she opened last month in Warsaw? Read about it right here!

Need a Magda Butrym wardrobe update? I’ve got you covered.

ED’s SELECTION:


Magda Butrym Silver-tone, Faux Pearl, Crystal And Resin Earrings



Magda Butrym Leather-trimmed Embroidered Mesh Ballet Flats



Magda Butrym Belted Leather Jacket



Magda Butrym Strapless Ruched Silk-taffeta Maxi Dress



Magda Butrym Oversized Silk-blend Chiffon Shirt

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Delightful Insouciance. Zegna SS25

Mads Mikkelsen closed Zegna‘s spring-summer 2025 show, and also men’s Milan Fashion Week. Alessandro Sartori‘s take on the brand is always a pleasure to see, and a reminder that maybe there’s no need in reinventing the wheel. In the end, the best clothes are the ones that strike with quality and look always great, whatever trend is terrorizing the streets at the moment. Wearing Zegna, a man (or woman – Sartori confidently tips his toes in this field too!) doesn’t have to overthink his appearance, because these garments do all the work for him. The latest collection had a nuance of sensuality that was “quintessentially Italian, a certain idea of Italian elegance in the ’60s,” a feel for lightness and insouciance that seemed to break away from Sartori’s renowned, disciplined minimalism. The designer has translated traditional suiting into a luxe version of sportswear, and has given workwear an elaborate, rich new identity. His work is about hybridization of the highest refined order, with a constant tension in reducing the categories of masculine dressing and finding new solutions to liberate classics from the weight of their codes. He does it brilliantly, and with one of the best color palettes in the industry!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Kink-ly Elegance. Dunhill SS25

Dunhill‘s renaissance under Simon Holloway is revelatory. The designer brings uncompromising refinement to male wardrobe, done the British way through a Milan filter. The elegance he offers is radical. Kink-ly, even. “This collection is really a sort of mirrored version of what we started with in autumn, so it’s this quintessentially English wardrobe,” he said. The designer explored Dunhill’s extensive archive, whose ready-to-wear origins lie in creating sports tailoring for when the car was invented and driving was still a luxury pursuit, and so the collection began with a deliciously expensive-looking spread of butterscotch suede car coats and chocolate brown leather jackets. Then came tropical wool tailoring the color of clouds – sharply cut but with breezy movement – charming tennis garb with leather racket cases, and finally a set of tuxedos so immaculate they kill with their look. Most models wore leather driving gloves – a menswear accessory at the verge of extinction, looking totally viable in Holloway’s vision, even for summer. Doing traditional, occasion-driven menswear without veering into archaic territory isn’t easy, but Holloway has a knack for striking that balance. This collection felt fresh and cohesive, and its rigor – aspirational.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – Irrational Approach. JW Anderson SS25

Irrational clothing” is how Jonathan Anderson described the idea(s) behind his JW Anderson spring-summer 2025 collection. The sheer number of concepts the designer played with on his runway is a lot to take, especially at menswear Milan Fashion Week where most designers barely deliver one, substantial idea. The wearable collage of adjacently sourced thoughts all set on designing garments that aggravated and stimulated the outer reaches of familiarity. Liner jackets in lushly colored silk and hula-hoop-hemmed, billows-pocketed denim gilets were both delivered in steroid-shot proportions to transform them beyond their conventional categories. “Sometimes it’s about movement and sponginess and being tactile,” offered Anderson of the three inside-out knit mega bomber jackets that followed. Pastel leather supersized blouses that followed a few looks later just looked so delightfully squishy. But there was also a sense of utilitarian toughness, some sort of exaggerated mannishness rooted in historicism. Take the pants in the closing look, musketeer-ishly tucked into vintage military-style boots unlaced up from the shin. Anderson’s disruptively irrational approach to worn façades became even more evident in a series of three two-story cardigans and two taller shifts knit with purposefully homespun craftiness to resemble various English architectural styles. The designer also proposed a not-so-discreet return to the tie in menswear, in XXL sizes, creating a cartoonish caricature of a businessman’s attire. Shirts, jackets, and a coat were affixed with roundly folded supersized silk tags in harlequin colors that resembled deflated balloons. They were lovely and strange. And then, in a very JW manner, another random element that will be a hit: the sweats and knits featuring vintage Guinness advertising. The designer said this was partially because he is Northern Irish and a fan of Guinness and partially because he has always relished that non-fashion brand’s history of radical image making, from the vintage pieces showcased here to Jonathan Glazer’s 1999 surfer advertisement. Now I wonder which of these concepts will reappear – even subtly – in Anderson’s forthcoming collaboration on costumes for Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” starring Daniel Craig, premiering this August in Venice.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Deja Vu. Valentino Resort 2025

It’s a new dawn for Valentino. Gone are the days of Pierpaolo Piccioli’s minimalist sensibility and sharpness of cut. Alessandro Michele’s “surprise” debut collection for resort 2025 is an unabashed return to Valentino Garavani’s 1960s and 1970s opulence and over-the-topness. Is this nostalgia something people really want in 2024? Many wrongfully described the collection as “so Gucci”. The deja vu feeling is valid, but rather it’s “so Alessandro Michele”. But let’s be honest, this line-up could easily pass as any of Michele’s previous collections for the other Italian brand, and you’re really not the only one constantly mistyping Gucci instead of Valentino. More than 170 looks, none really memorable or distinct, is either a result of Michele’s prolificness or his overt maximalism – something I thought he would rethink and refine during his hiatus. When the designer arrived at Gucci, his debut collection – contrived at light speed pace – was a revolution-in-the-making and it shifted the way people dress for seasons ahead. His Valentino debut lacks that radicalness, and feels like a missed opportunity in making a strong point. The dense, thick retromania of this collection makes one feel simply tired. 

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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