Rule The World. Ottolinger AW22

March 24, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient’s autumn-winter 2022 Ottolinger collection challenges what prettiness or functionality mean in our digital age. This season, they continue with themes begun during the pandemic: bulbous, hefty knotted tops; long, trailing flare trousers with tons of stretch; and chunky outerwear either cropped or belted with a shearling rope at the waist. The shapes almost look virtual, rejecting the natural laws of gravity or glamour. Finding new ways to take up space, now modes of projecting the body, is the duo’s stated mission with their fall line. There’s enough clingy body-con stuff out there already; enough sexy and seductive. The designers have tapped into a new aesthetic that is more organic, bordering on biological. And they have worked for two years to perfect their language of lumpy, bumpy bad gals, partnering with a women’s collective of hand knitters for a white cardigan and bringing on new knitwear production to make filmy post-apocalyptic layers. It’s not all fashion for philosophy’s sake: the designers have also introduced their first bag “that can actually hold something!” said Gadient with a laugh before the show, demonstrating the use of their new slimy shoulder bag, large enough for a phone, wallet, and maybe even a Nintendo Switch. The show was held at an Esports Arena in Paris, where guests watched a video on personal monitors before the models came out, and heard for the first time Azealia Banks’ latest banger, “Rule The World“. In addition to pushing their garments to a steady, intriguing place, Bösch and Gadient also contribute to play in the digital world. It’s a smart move and they will surely be among the first to define the new aesthetic language of Web3 and beyond.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

New Eclecticism. Chopova Lowena AW22

March 22, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Chopova Lowena‘ cult carabiner skirts are a runaway success, worn the world over by Fashion Week guests, pop stars, and Real Housewives. The brand’s monogram chain necklaces and upcycled jewellery sell out instantly, and their growing blouse and bag categories have set the business up well for the future. But Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena aren’t the type to take it easy. As Chopova says, “Every season we’re trying to do new things, things that don’t feel like us. It’s interesting to see how we can make new categories our own.” For autumn-winter 2022 they have tackled suiting. “Skirt suits felt the most Chopova Lowena, obviously,” says Lowena. Theirs are made with a rounded double breasted jacket and pleated miniskirt, in deadstock orange plaid or deadstock silky synthetic. Necklaces and bracelets are laced into the collars and cuffs so that the pieces jingle and sparkle. The integration of metal chains into their clothing comes from their research into medieval dress. Each season, the designers clash a folk reference with a sport one – this time they’ve landed on ice hockey versus Renaissance Faire, extrapolating tying and knitting details and armor-like finishes and titling the collection “kiss the hare’s foot,” a medieval expression used, per Chopova, “for when you miss dinner but savor the leftover scraps.” A witty reference to their deadstock practice. The romantic-meets-brutal spirit of their collection works well, the CL boys and girls existing in an in-between. They are not pretty in their laced-together flocked dress with a white slip. They are not strange in a taffeta skirt made of 8 plaid panels, each knotted at the hem, worn with a fuzzy floral cardigan, the brand’s first earnest foray into knitwear. They are not silly either, even if rabbit-ear hoods and cartoon-print tops telegraph childlike humor. Standing boldly in their velvet tops and hardcore metal-trimmed trousers, they are something else, a new aesthetic, a new spirit of furious eclecticism that could only be Chopova Lowena. That’s the genius of their work: it simply cannot be mistaken for anything else.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

This Is Us. ERL AW22

March 21, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

ERL‘s collection look-books always have that unique, beautifully disturbing, theatrical quality. Browsing through the autumn-winter 2022 line-up, one might have an impression of watching a coming of age school play – which went full art-house. Eli Russell Linnetz’s propensity to confound and inspire is what makes him an engaging designer to watch. He crafts entire worlds for even the simplest garments and images, attaching stories to even mundane items. The forthright, yet whimsical clothing he makes goes against mainstream understandings of jeans, tees, puffers, and prim plaid dresses. Basic garments are often stripped of their magic, divorced from beauty, and reduced to mere stuff. In championing “normal clothes,” Linnetz continues the great American design tradition of Calvin, Ralph, and Dapper Dan – making the ordinary extraordinary. Linnetz signatures, like worn-in denim, printed tees, and pastoral skirts were all here, alongside new pieces like a camouflage patchwork puffer, knits in ombré patterns, crisp little cardigans, and star jacquard denim in tonal blue and the colors of the American flag. A collaboration with Salomon’s snowboarding imprint brought kooky color-ways to the collection. Plaid flannel shirts were styled to evoke Victorian bustles, shirts were strewn with pins that riff on Vietnam War protest paraphernalia, and the quilt Linnetz upcycled for ASAP Rocky at the 2021 Met Gala was reinterpreted as bulky, blocky puffer jackets. All together the collection contained many wantable, wearable things, each representing a thread of ERL’s story.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Cheerful Vibrance. Rosie Assoulin AW22

March 19, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Rosie Assoulin‘s autumn-winter 2022 collection radiates with cheerful vibrance and off-kilter charm. The new season offering is driven by experimental silhouettes and idiosyncratic details that make the designer’s clothes always so compelling. The biggest surprise is the play with big hips, inspired by 19th century panniers. But in case of Assoulin, such fashion statements never feel “too” evening or “too” red carpet – those are charismatic garments for a bold personality that loves the process of dressing up on the daily basis. What makes the New York-based designer stand out is her ability to transform everyday life observations into fashion. The opening look, in powder blue moire accented by caramel-colored gloves, is a crop top with a jutting ruffle inspired by the silicone bib Assoulin’s young daughter wears while eating. The skirt mirrors the top’s 3-D shape, but while the latter feels futuristic, the former is historical. Still, they work together, the sweeping fabric with the sculptural accents. The folkish patterns feel lively and naive in a good way: nature-inspired watercolor prints run throughout the collection, and on the vegan shearling coats (obsessed!) they look straight out of the 1970s. In our turbulent and highly disturbing times, the simple message behind the top with an oval front depicting a blossoming tree and its roots speaks volumes. The tree’s symbolism of constant evolution was crucial to Assoulin’s conception of the collection. P.S. Pay attention to the accessories: the label’s signature jug hand-bags are back!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Mycelium. Alexander McQueen AW22

March 18, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Showing in New York somehow made Sarah Burton‘s Alexander McQueen feel more compelling and… fresh. Lee Alexander McQueen brought his show to New York twice, first in 1996 with Dante and again in 1999 for Eye. Sarah Burton was with him on both trips, and she was back in the Big Apple to present her autumn-winter 2022 collection for the label. “America and New York have always been so much a part of McQueen,” she said backstage. “It feels part of our creative community. It’s great to honor that.” Piles of mulch made from fallen trees gave off a peaty tang in the Brooklyn warehouse venue (it’ll be reused in plantings, she said), and birds and insects chirped on the speakers before the soundtrack settled into the groove of “A Forest” by The Cure. Backstage Burton was talking about mycelium, the underground fungal network that’s sometimes called nature’s “wood wide web,” connecting trees with one another and transferring nutrients and minerals plant-to-plant. The humble mushroom has taken on a new vogue in recent years with the mainstreaming of psychedelics, but Burton laughed off a question about microdosing. “What I really love is that the trees talk to each other and they sort of heal each other,” she began. “The thing is, they’re healing, but they’re toxic as well. There’s a danger to them.” A pair of dresses were fantastically embroidered in mushrooms whose vivid colors Burton said were lifted from real life, their mycelia represented by long skeins of silk fringe. A couple of unraveling sweaters were almost as trippy. Burton’s McQueen is a thoughtful balance of hand craft and haute tailleur. She was in New York City, after all, so she didn’t neglect to show off the label’s sartorialism. A smoking with a crystal-embellished back panel and a spangled bandeau in place of a shirt would be a glamorously restrained red carpet look for what’s likely to be a sober Oscars ceremony at the end of the month. Other sharply cut pantsuits picked up the psychedelic colors of those mushrooms – acid green and yellow, electric blue, bright red. “I wanted it to have a pace to it and an energy to it… and there to be color,” Burton said. “I wanted it to have a vibrancy.” Most notable were the suits that looked like they’d been spray-painted with the shadow of a rushing body. Burton said these were inspired by yet another archival McQueen collection, Number 13, the show in which the model Shalom Harlow and her strapless white dress were painted by a pair of robots normally used in the automotive industry in a sort of erotic dance. McQueen would’ve likely dug the mycelium theme; he was always intrigued by the elements, always finding his way back to a nature vs. machine theme. Many years on, that struggle is more real than ever. Burton brings that awareness and a woman-centered approach to what she’s doing here.