Winter Rose. Magda Butrym AW23

March 5, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Magda Butrym wardrobe keeps on evolving and expanding, always keeping it true to the idiosyncratically feminine style of the brand. The autumn-winter 2023 look-book’s spotlight-stealer award goes to all the outerwear the Polish designer has in offer for the new season: from the gorgeous, floor-sweeping suede shearling coat to the fluffy hooded jacket, there’s plenty to love. The winter-ready, layered look is even more convincing when styled with slinky, body-fitting dress or a pair of not-that-casual leggings. Speaking of eveningwear, the collection is filled with Butrym’s all-time classics, like the red mini-dress with floral drapings and hand-made crotchet ensembles, but there’s also the new star: the black, body-baring column dress with a blooming rose sticking out of the bra part. Styled with a chic headband (like in case of most of the looks), there’s something very Loulou de La Falaise about this entire silhouette. I wonder which actress will pick that dress for the red carpet.

By the way, have you seen my footwear collage campaign for Magda Butrym? If not, check it out here, here, and here!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Feel-Good. Isabel Marant AW23

March 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

At the Isabel Marant fashion show, you had a comforting feeling of familiarity and were reminded who is the epitome of true coolness in Paris. The runway classics, from Anna Selezneva and Liya Kebede to Malgosia Bela and Sasha Pivovarova, hit the autumn-winter 2023 runway in quintessentially Marant designs. Square shouldered blazers, oversized parkas, boyish sweaters, ’80s cocoon coats, conical heeled boots, slinky dresses, denim boiler suits and a killer trousers shape with straight yet slouchy legs. The list goes on. Isabel Marant has long championed female empowerment in everything her label stands for, and that includes making the kind of louche, sexy but always spiritedly casual look that focuses on allowing the woman wearing her clothes to express herself and her physicality. In a season where the everyday and the real are being celebrated and elevated, where good clothes can matter and not be disposable, Marant cannily underscored how much she’s been doing that for years now. That, plus the casting of models who are her stalwarts, women who’ve been around a bit but still look utterly fab, not to mention the celebratory atmosphere of her show, translated into the fact that wearing Isabel Marant means looking good and feeling good at the same time.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Prêt-à-Porter. Schiaparelli AW23

March 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Schiaparelli‘s very couture-ish prêt-à-porter goes runway. “The higher you go in the stratosphere of luxury, the more basic it feels,” Daniel Roseberry, the brand’s creative director, declared. The collection retained many of the signatures Roseberry has established in his first three years at the house, some inspired by Schiap’s codes and some by those of other Paris couturiers: the gold buttons in the shape of keyholes and body parts, the measuring tape embroidery, the cone bra detailing inset into everything from bustier tops to jean jackets. Roseberry’s own whimsical drawings were hand-painted onto nipped waist boiled coats. The places-to-go sensibility remained as well, but no-one is wearing Schiap leggings to a hot yoga class, or doing the school run in the dark-rinse denim sets. The parkas aren’t hitting the slopes. These were lunch date, cocktails, and stepping out of the car and into the five-star hotel with the paparazzi hot on your tail clothes. Where it differed from the couture most significantly was in the fabrications. The jersey dresses, one with a keyhole on the chest and the other with miniature gold buttons marching up the torso, had an appealing ease; Roseberry called the stretch velvet of a brown halterneck dress a celebrity secret weapon: “it drinks the light.” Chic!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Exquisite. Rick Owens AW23

March 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Rick Owens‘ latest collection is powerful and beautiful in its strangeness. The bulbous shapes, the rough textures, the elevated silhouettes… “Conditions in the world being the way they are, it’s kind of a delicate time,” the designer said pre-show, alluding to the war in Ukraine. “And I was thinking I wanted to do something earnest, and more formal and more deliberate. I kept thinking of the word exquisite.” In pursuit of the exquisite he leaned into matte sequins, not in the gaudy red carpet colors you associate with embellishments like that, but in more muted tones of lime green, art deco pink, and bordeaux; and not, of course, in the fishtail silhouettes that seem to multiply during awards season, but in those donut duvets and inflated draped miniskirts. Those sequins aside, Owens was working with humble materials. The cutaway skirts that exposed the hip bone on one side and trailed down the runway in a long train on the other, and the dresses sliced to the armpit? Those were ribbed knits made from GRS certified recycled cashmere. And those decaying and fraying half-skirts and coats? That was indigo denim from Japan, which had been treated with a mineral wash and shredded by lasers. Extraordinary effects out of relatively simple materials. “That’s my job,” said Owens, “to present the most excellent aesthetics I can. I know I’m commonly referred to as dark. I think no, I’m just realistic and I’m acknowledging the beauty and horror of the world. There are some people that prefer something more sugar-coated, and that’s fine, I don’t criticize that. But I prefer something with more nuance.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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In Search For Renaissance. Chloé AW23

March 3, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

As usual in case of Gabriela Hearst‘s vision at Chloé, sustainability is the ultimate priority. She’s an expert on scientific progress, political initiatives, knows how to effectively replace environmentally damaging fabrics with better solutions, and she’s also a long-term supporter of many NGOs. She manages to pack all that ambition into her designs for the French brand and her eponymous, New York-based line. Sometimes, at an expense of the creative side of her work. The autumn-winter 2023 collection was, however, a bit more daring in terms of the “fashion”. Hearst found a muse, and that is Artemisia Gentileschi, the Renaissance painter. However, don’t expect baroque costumes. There was instead a lot of shearling and leather (the by-products of meat), fine-gauge lacy knits, and the ponchos. The vaguely medieval-inspired vertical strips of leather in yellow, black and white, and the harlequin pattern that emerged toward the end of the show, was a distant interpretation of the Gentileschi theme. “I like it that nothing is gimmicky. They’re not clothes for Instagram,” Hearst quipped. “I’m tired of working for Zuckerberg all the time – like, where’s my check?” I get her point, but… The Row, Lemaire and Hed Mayner are also brands that offer a non-gimmicky look, but this doesn’t mean their collections are that plain-looking. The best look from the Chloé show was a dress with vivid patchwork embroidery in the craft style of “Central America”. Sadly, Hearst just dropped that idea in the middle of the show, without expanding on it. And that that was actually a Chloé-kind-of look: feminine, a bit quirky, intriguing. The designer should try a more spontaneous, laid-back, less-serious approach in her creative process.