Unhinged Galliano. Maison Margiela SS24 Couture

January 27, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

The moment the Maison Margiela haute couture show started, it was clear that no other collection we’ve seen this week really matters anymore. John Galliano did the most noble thing a contemporary designer can do: make people believe in fashion again. And confirm that couture is still really, really needed, because it can be the most beautiful, visually striking, inspiring and astonishing form of escapism.

In the last couple of seasons at Margiela, it was clear that Galliano is returning back to himself as a designer. But this spring-summer 2024 couture collection feels like a total release, total encapsulation of the unhinged Galliano – even not from the Dior days, but rather the early 90s shows in Paris under his own name, that stunned with theatricality, pure romanticism and casts of model so authentic you believed you’ve been transported to a different epoque. The scene: under the Pont d’Alexandre III after dark, down rain-soaked steps, with the Seine roiling alongside, a rancid Parisian nighttime joint with bare floorboards, cafe tables, dim mirrors, and a bar overflowing with spent drinks. The runway mise-en-scène suddenly turned into a living Brassai’s 1920s and ’30s portraits of the night-time underbelly of Paris’s clubs and streets. Galliano’s transferences into cutting, ultra-extreme corsetry, padded hips, erotically sheer lace dresses, and wildly imaginative hair, chiffon-masked makeup, and eerie doll-like body-modifications took a year. A year to work on a production that seamlessly mixed film – which played in the mirrors – into the scenario, showing lovers, dancers, and gangsters prowling the banks of the Seine. To make it seem that these strutting denizens, fugitives from fights, or half-dressed from sexual encounters, clutching their moon-bleached coats or scrappy cardigans around them were actually congregating from the riverside and into the club before our eyes. Through some of Galliano’s beautifully delicate hourglass dresses there was pubic hair to be seen through tulle and lace (they were merkins on underwear, but still bound to stir up a storm). Some of his indescribable techniques looked almost like walking paintings, greenish-pink watercolor nudes with blurry dabs for eyes. All the images and impressions from this show will be burned on the mind’s eye for many reasons and many years.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Futurism. Fendi SS24 Couture

January 26, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

“I wanted the collection to feel quite graphic rather than romantic because I was thinking about Fendi and how, under Karl, there was always an element of ‘futurism,’” Kim Jones said of his latest haute couture collection. “I didn’t go back to look at what Karl did, but I like to take the essence of it.” This couture collection landed especially well, because Jones didn’t base his concept on a specific Karl Lagerfeld collection that much. This was finally a Jones for Fendi collection, not a dig into the archives. The designer developed trompe l’oeil decorativeness of an unexpected kind, which appeared to be one of the biggest highlight from this very streamlined, sharp collection. “We wanted to do fur, but without using fur or fake fur,” he said. “So we’ve done it with embroidery instead.” Embroidered with miniscule filaments, and sewn in densely overlapping rippling formations, the results are feather-like and feather-light to wear, be it as a coat, dress, or pencil-skirt. There’s also something for the couture-minimalists: the opening look was as spare and reduced as could be, specifically a black, strapless calf-length column Jones called “a box-dress.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Crescendo. Valentino SS24 Couture

January 26, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

For spring-summer 2024 haute couture, Valentino‘s Pierpaolo Piccioli opted for the hushed intimacy of its salons on Place Vendôme. The designer’s aim was to emphasize the “sacred process” of couture. But there was nothing quiet about the presented haute garments; this was a full-tempoed crescendo from the first look till the finale. Piccioli’s lineup included the requisite red carpet stunners, but also indulged in a quirky day wardrobe in unusual volumes and colors. Oversize jackets, palazzo pants, scooped vests, fishtail skirts and duster coats came in shades like chartreuse, oxblood, lime, putty, mustard and sage. The designer skipped elaborate embroideries, focusing on silhouettes that require the highest skills of tailoring (and artisan) precision. Small oblong discs were bonded with patent leather to resemble crocodile skin on a glossy green men’s coat, while a barely there chiffon top sprouted tiny white feathers that were actually made from cut organza. “The magic comes from the illusion,” Piccioli said. With 64 sublime looks, the collection offered a dizzying array of options for awards season, including a stunning black velvet cutout dress trailing a long silk chiffon stole.

Piccioli noted that each piece that comes out of his workshop is unique, since no two people execute his sketches the same way – and that’s just how he likes it. “If you don’t project your own experience, your own life, your humanity into what you’re doing, you will never feel the soul,” he said.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Contrasts of Femininity. Jean Paul Gaultier SS24 Couture

January 25, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

When Jean Paul Gaultier announced Simone Rocha as the guest designer for the spring-summer 2024 haute couture collection, it was clear that this unexpected match would result in an intriguing dialogue between Parisian artisanship and the Irish designer’s idiosyncratic take on femininity. The way Rocha interpreted the iconic JPG cone-bra into thorn-shaped protrusions signaled that she, unlike the previous guest creatives, will take a closer look at the couturier’s interest in the female body. This took her to the idea of playing with contrasts of couture: the tension between restraint and fragility. “His love of the breast and the hip and the female form – exploring that and harnessing it,” the designer said, explaining all the skirts and gowns buffeted with crinoline panniers and bustles. Corseting, another Gaultier landmark signature, seemed to be Rocha’s favorite element to play with. The designer treated the corset “as a security and this kind of second skin on the body.” The tattoo prints earned certain pagan mysticism in her hands, something I always love about her London shows. Meanwhile Breton stripes were represented by navy ribbons tied into bows and tacked loosely to illusion tulle, which also appeared on offbeat padded underpants. This was definitely a noteworthy fashion experiment to unpack.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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It All Makes Perfect Sense. Alaïa AW24

January 25, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

The latest Alaïa collection is about simplicity and purity. It’s about intimacy, about reducing to an essence, about finding a freedom and invention in that. At the same time, Pieter Mulier managed to keep it sensual and tactile, not brutally minimal. The entire autumn-winter 2024 collection was created using a single merino wool yarn, reinvented over and again with the maison’s textile and knitwear suppliers, who have worked with Azzedine Alaïa, the late designer and his brand, for decades. Mulier’s take on the part-ready-to-wear, part-haute–couture collection is predominantly based on the curve, on the circle – the curves of women, and circles of friends, of chosen family, an idea essential to the essence of Alaïa. “For this show, I wanted to bring us all together, to view everything up close – close together, close to the clothes“. Draped tops fell asymmetrically in supremely elegant folds; minimalist skirts and dresses were looped and wrapped, sarong-like, to show a leg. A black jumpsuit seemed to be made of one continuous piece, gathered into a halter in front, leaving the back bared. Knitted turtleneck tabard sweaters showed slivers of naked torsos in passing. “I love that you’re covered, you’re covered completely – but then you show something”, the designer mused. The two-storied show space integrated the collection with design objects that are signifiers of the Alaïa boutique on rue de Marignan: the Pelota lamps, created by Marc Newson, and the Mollo sofas by Philippe Malouin. It all made sense.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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