AW21

First Lady Approved. Markarian AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

On January 20th, the Inauguration Day, Dr. Jill Biden wore Markarian from head-to-toe: a custom cerulean tweed dress and matching coat trimmed with pearls and velvet cuffs. Michelle Obama boosted the profile of many young American designers in her day, and Biden’s choice was a reminder of how deeply women care about what First Ladies wear – and how influential their choices can be. But also, it worked as a statement: supporting small brands and companies is important. That day, Markarian’s Alexandra O’Neill experienced ultra-visibility that most young designers only fantasize about. On a Zoom call with Vogue, O’Neill said her social media following doubled instantly, and the e-tailer Moda Operandi reported a 570% spike in traffic to Markarian pieces within 24 hours: overnight, the label went from relative obscurity to international news. And here’s a plot twist. Anyone expecting an autumn-winter lineup of Dr. Biden-esque coats or a deep political statement will be surprised to hear that O’Neill’s inspiration – one she conceptualized months before the election – was actually Ancient Rome. She studied Roman art and mythology in college, and the relaxed glamour of the period (draped tunics, twisting braids, lots of gold jewelry) felt newly relevant in a year of lockdowns. Markarian isn’t a casual brand, so O’Neill’s challenge of late has been creating elegant clothes you can wear out or at home. A brocade robe dress met the criteria, as did a long-sleeved style with a burnout velvet motif of shimmering grapes. Yet many of O’Neill’s customers will be more excited by the pieces that read fantastical, not practical: an LBD with “firework” crystal embellishments or the dreamy, yet unpretentious wedding gowns. With so much unexpected recognition the brand has received, it’s exciting how O’Neill will push her vision forward.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

A Fine Edit. Victoria Beckham AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

It’s the official start of fashion month, which of course won’t be the usual, hectic marathon we know from the pre-COVID times. Look-books and videos are here to stay, and much less brands will show in the traditional schedule. New York Fashion Week is having a hard time, cropped down to just two days. Many designers are reflecting on the way they used to work and put sustainability as their main priority. Victoria Beckham‘s autumn-winter 2021 is a fine edit of both pre- and main collection. It’s all about unmistakable wardrobe essentials with versatile intentions – meaning easy day-to-night transition pieces. After the financial shockwaves of the epidemic, this season marked Beckham’s pared-down foot forward in general. “I sell clothes,” Beckham told Vogue. “I don’t sell so many shoes and bags that my collections are just about ticking a fashion box. They’re about creating clothes that people want to wear and can really wear. That’s why commerciality is not a swear word to me.” The look-book she released today demonstrated what a consolidated Victoria Beckham woman looks like. Rather than introducing new complex cuts or ambitious experimentation, familiar VB garments bore testimony to a certain studiousness: they’ve been simplified and perfected. Prairie and flapper dresses were streamlined, her slinky long-sleeved everyday dresses were recut for a t-shirt-like ease, and tailoring looked as optimized for comfort as it must have felt. For anyone hankering for more bling-bling, there were those knee-high silver sparkle boots and some rather subversive floral prints. In one instance, the latter clashed in a mad floaty dress that evoked some of Beckham’s more directional collections. “We never want anything to be boring,” as she put it. The morale of this collection is that less is more, if the quality and design is at its best. “People ask me if I think people will buy less when we come out of lockdown, and I hope they will! We want to sell clothes, don’t get me wrong, but I hope people will want to invest in pieces they really want to wear. Buy a piece and get your wear out of it. Don’t just buy it for one season,” Beckham concluded.

“Live” collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Classics. Alaïa AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Azzedine Alaïa‘s studio team respects the late monsieur’s aesthetic, techniques and silhouettes, and keeps on working with well-known codes of the maison. The brand consistently evolves, mostly in peace and silence (the rumours of big-name designer appointments are just rumours). Given Alaïa’s decades-old archive of tens of thousands of prototypes, patterns, samples, and unfinished ideas, it’s amazing the house manages to edit down about 40 pieces for the seasonal Editions line. “It’s difficult and horribly frustrating because every time I go through [it, I] see so many pieces I know and love,” explained the house’s Heritage and Editions director Caroline Fabre Bazin. Ultimately, she and Alaïa CEO Myriam Serrano decided to focus on pieces they see as “important for the house, important in the history of fashion, that also speak of technique and timelessness.” Alaïa followers will recognize such iconic designs as the body-con black dress with a wraparound zip, now in long and short versions. They may also recall the intricacy of a coat held together with a technique the designer extrapolated from woodworking and transposed onto leather for a coat from 2006. Called charnière, the French word for hinge, it involves interlacing leather seams by hand in lieu of stitching. A rose-beige knit dress recalls the time a supplier turned up to show Monsieur Alaïa new lacelike techniques; he took them all and used them together for a corset dress. Elsewhere, a wool that was accidentally overboiled became a mesh-like coat, and entered into the house lexicon. Every piece has not just a date, but also a backstory. Autumn-winter 2021 revisits house techniques in new treatments and combinations that sometimes rival couture-level craftsmanship. Fragility and strength meet on a tiered lace dress with a charnière construction on the neckline, waist, and skirt. African inspirations inform the weave of a graceful skirt in russet, beige, and black; the skater skirt is revisited in a sculptural Japanese fabric, and a white skirt picks up on origami techniques. Laser-cut leather features a new style of perforation named for Sidi Bou Said, Alaïa’s Tunisian hometown and final resting place. The snow white sheepskin jacket embroidered with arabesques is a showstopper. Classics that never get boring.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

His & Hers. The Row AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Seeing both The Row womenswear and menswear in one collection makes so much sense. Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsens‘ autumn-winter 2021 collection is like the full picture of their luxe minimalism world, now shared by her and him. The designers decided to modify their showing schedule, skipping New York Fashion Week altogether and showing in January and June. One of the reasons is logistics and sustainability. Both the women’s and men’s collections are rooted in minimal tailoring and they share materials across them; these include the double-felted wool of outerwear, wool flannel for suits, and a textural knit that they call fur cashmere, all of them subtly luxurious. Of course, the collection is delightful – and feels like detoxicating palette cleanse after all the couture fantasy we’ve experienced last week. Their autumn suiting is strong across both genders. The women’s jackets come with removable shoulder pads, as does a mock-neck, midi-length cashmere dress. Alongside the tailoring, they showed wrapped shapes, emphasizing comfort and warmth. A male model looks practically cocooned in a three-piece fur cashmere set. Amid the oversized proportions and the swaddled forms, a button-down with short three-quarter-length sleeves worn with washed linen wool pants that taper at the ankles stands out. On the accessories front sturdy burnished-leather rain boots in a range of lengths look like top sellers in the making. They’ve also added a nylon tote to their handbag offering. Comfort and practicality have become important talking points in the last year as the pandemic has impacted the industry in so many ways. The Olsens are taking on those conversations – and the one about collection timing, too – but they’re doing so in their usual elegant, refined way.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Feeling is Luxury. Lemaire AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

I love Lemaire and I will acknowledge this a hundred times. I just don’t know how Christophe Lemaire and Sarah Linh Tran do it every single time. This level of goodness should be illegal. The co-ed autumn-winter 2021 collection is a dream, from the clothes (drooling over each garment, really) to the model casting. Partially as a result of confinement, the designers framed the development of this collection according to shifted criteria of demand: feel was as important as look, and adaptability inside and outside our front door paramount. The result was a hierarchy of layerable garments that began with a base of pajama-like pieces in cotton, silk and fine knits, in typically evocative earthy tones. These were arranged under mid-layers of Mod inspired tailoring and workwear sourced pieces, softly rendered but structured in appearance, plus Shetland knits and turtle-necks that were themselves contained within a protective carapace of excellent outerwear choices. These included a supremely livable-in reversible shearling, and greatcoats worthy of the name. Parkas and Afghans came trimmed in Mongolian wool (those pieces are delightful…); trenches and macs featured beautiful abstract marbled print; billowing robe-coats in down or alpaca were enveloping and arresting. Tran noted her favored heel height had been reduced in slouchy uppered boots as a result of her appetite for walking as much as possible when the opportunity presented itself, while men’s footwear included commando-soled slippers and the usual impeccable boot. Bags had a pouch cut like a mitten for double usage. Tran said: “during the confinement we were fantasizing about going out into the streets of Paris, and we were inspired by the idea of the flâneur from Baudelaire; going in the street with no special agenda in mind.” Taking pleasure in a purposeless saunter is a purpose in itself, and this was a collection beautifully built to enhance mindful loitering in every milieu. Added Lemaire: “Luxury is more about how you feel in the clothes than the image you project to others: this we have always been convinced of. And it’s more relevant than ever today… the changes in the rhythm of life and our habits have encouraged us to be even more attentive.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.