Deauville. Chanel AW24

March 7, 2024March 7, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Virginie Viard presented a confident and absolutely charming collection, one that made even the biggest nay-sayers of her Chanel change their minds (even a bit). Inspired by Deauville, the town in Normandy that had a great importance for Coco Chanel’s career, the autumn-winter 2024 is a beautiful ode to its breezy, bourgeoisie ambience. In the 1920s, the brand’s founder started her business as a milliner in a shop in the seaside resort. Hence the symbolic connection Viard drew with the turned-back brims of the the sun hats. Her translations of Chanel’s earliest, revolutionary jersey signatures flowed into state-of-the-art modern knitwear in multiple versions of belted cardigan pajama-like trouser suits, and made sense of the ease of the house tweeds in long-line coats and, later, the fluttery, 1930s-via-1970s chiffon prints. All the cognac-brown shearling outerwear and suede boots are just so chic. It felt as if Viard had truly found an unforced connection with the original intention of Chanel – to make chic clothes easy for contemporary women.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Upbeat. Stella McCartney AW24

March 7, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Stella McCartney show began with a video message from Mother Earth, a manifesto read by the actor Olivia Colman. It went: “Show me you love me / It’s about fucking time“. If somebody is still skeptic about global warming, just see how early spring has sprung in Paris. McCartney, a pioneer sustainability activist in this industry, wondered this season how does a woman, especially if she’s a mother, not get depressed about it all? McCartney is preternaturally upbeat and that refusal to see the cup half empty infuses her collections. Though her tailored jackets are cut with power shoulders that could command a board meeting, she styles and sends them down the runway sans shirts or underpinnings. On the more laid-back side of things, slouchy matching knit sets are accessorized with loopy yarn boas long enough to dust the floor with. Other cases in point this season included the tailoring with cut-crystal detailing in the style of a Chloé collection McCartney designed circa spring 2000 and jeans with built-in eco-leather chaps accompanied by a tank printed with the ending refrain of the Mother Earth manifesto. That much of this had been constructed with responsibly sourced or recycled materials and vegan alternatives to animal products is another reason to feel good in McCartney’s clothes.

Here’s a couple of sustainability-conscious beauty products from Stella’s line…

ED’s SELECTION:

Restore Cream Refill

Alter-Care Supplement

Alter-Care Serum Full

Travel Essentials Set

Restore Cream Full

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Back To Black. Valentino AW24

March 5, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Similarly to Rei Kawakubo, Valentino‘s Pierpaolo Piccioli sent down the runway an all-black collection as a response to our troubled world. While the Comme Des Garçons designer offered some light at the end of the tunnel – a white bridal cocoon dress – Piccioli presented a fully veiled, transparent gown. This super elegant line-up, filled with very fine day-to-day wardrobe staples and simply beautiful, at points austere in silhouette eveningwear, offered no happy end. And just a moment ago the designer would go PPPink.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Overload. Balenciaga AW24

March 5, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

“What seems truly rare and finite right now is actually creativity itself,” Demna said backstage at his autumn-winter 2024 Balenciaga show. “I believe that creativity has secretly become a new form of luxury.” As a big admirer of Demna’s work, however, I must admit I found the creativity part missing this season. The collection felt like AI-generated line-up of the designer’s now-trademark style codes, with plenty, plenty of references to Martin Margiela. Of course, it’s not the first time when Demna goes Margiela, but this time I found it quite redundant. Taped clothes, deconstructed dresses patchworked from other garments, square-legged boots, denim pants worn as tops… the list goes on and on. This season’s Balenciaga tribe – gum-chewing, septum-ringed, eyes wrapped in futuristic silicone masks – marched headlong through a digital AI–aided visual cacophony playing on hundreds of wall and floor screens. “Photoshopped into the fake reality, into basically the overload of content that is killing our society, in a way. You know, like TikTok videos,” the designer said of the immersive experience. It did say a lot for the human brain that there could be any attention spared for the clothes at all. Well. I felt absolutely exhausted somewhere mid-show. But maybe it’s the fashion month that hits hard especially during the last days of Paris Fashion Week.

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Don’t Bother Me. Comme Des Garçons AW24

March 5, 2024March 5, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Rei Kawakubo goes back to black. Her Comme Des Garçons collection was simply titled “Anger“. “This is about my present state of mind. I have anger against everything in the world, especially against myself.” Global conflicts, wars that seems to have no ending, general social unrest. Kawakubo seems to be angry at herself for being in the fashion industry, for its schemes and formats, and for being a designer herself. She instructed some of the show’s models to go out and vent, to break the fourth wall that divides the runway from audience. The third model, dressed in black polyurethane exploded-flare pants and a biker-jacket cape, suddenly did a massive clenched-fist stamp of frustration in the middle of the runway. Another model turned and loomed over some people in the front row, confrontationally invading their space with a bow-front pannier skirt. The constructs of extreme historical tropes of femininity – the pileups of rosettes, panniers, bows, and pompadour wigs – seemed to be on the brink of sarcastic self-parody. But then, a bride in white appeared in the show’s finale. Maybe there’s some light of hope at the end of this dark tunnel?

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