Legacy. Paco Rabanne AW23

March 2, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Julien Dossena‘s autumn-winter 2023 collection for Paco Rabanne was an homage to the late founder of the brand, who passed away this February. In his most convincing offerings for the house, Dossena revisited Rabanne’s design heritage through a contemporary, not overly literal lens. This collection, however, felt more like a straightforward tribute which ranged from Paco Rabanne’s famous space-age era to less-known surreal phase (echoed in Salvador Dali paintings used as prints for the eveningwear; the surrealist was Paco’s friend). There was of course plenty of chain-mail, used in mini-dresses that looked exactly like the ones the brand’s founder did in the 1960s. According to videos from the show that flood social media, all the metallic looks gave comforting, ASMR-sound effect. Indeed, Dossena’s voice felt exceptionally silent in this collection due to its nature. Let’s treat it more like a run-through Rabanne’s legacy, fit for the label’s client in 2023.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Contemporary. Courrèges AW23

March 2, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Nicolas Di Felice‘s take on Courrèges is truly taking shape. In the autumn-winter 2023 fashion show, emerging from the fog, the first model stared down at the phone in her hands, her face lit up by its LED screen. The brand’s creative director has been thinking about all the time that we spend on our devices. The hoodie the model wore was hunched forward, its volume sort of flattened, and di Felice cut armhole slits into the front, for easier access. There was a leather motorcycle jacket, a tweed coat, and a vinyl caban cut the same way. Di Felice is on his phone as much as the next guy, he admitted. But watching his friends text when they’re sitting at opposite ends of a bar on a night out, rather than walking over to each other for a chat, he realized that our pocket-sized computers are changing more than our postures, they’re changing our lives. “I don’t judge,” he said, “but I question it, and I wanted to try to reflect on it.” There’s a lot of heat around Courrèges. Di Felice excels at the kind of body-baring clothes young women today respond to. Last season looked like the morning after a long night of raving, the girls carrying their sandals in their hands; this season, they’re headed to the office on the metro, in shades of black and gray, and even pinstripes, although in nothing as conventional as your standard pantsuit. Tunics with huge circular pendants suspended from portholes on the chest replaced jackets. They were cut in the same general proportions as the ’60s-ish A-line shifts that followed them. As the show progressed, the black and gray gave way to red and pink, and the straight lines to soft, sexy drapes suspended from wire necklaces, including one or two with the house logo, the collection’s only drawback. The final series of dresses came in silver or iridescent sequins accessorized by those mirrored pendants, right over the solar plexus. With the help of a spotlight, it looked like they were emanating energy, the phone’s LED replaced in the end by inner light.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Beautiful Melancholia. Dries Van Noten AW23

March 1, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

There are those Dries Van Noten collections, where the designer isn’t really into his usual vibrant flower-garden moments, and goes for something definitely more somber, melancholic. The autumn-winter 2023 collection shown in Paris today is one of those moody Dries seasons, and I love it with my whole heart. The latest offering has a dark and Antwerpian quality about it, with its velvets and antique-looking embroidered silks patchworked into turtleneck tops and jackets in a deconstructed, Martin Margiela manner. In general, the collection’s beautiful garments have that feel of being well worn, as if time has been behind the sun-bleached look of the tapestry florals or the weather-stained fringed hems of the dresses. With this line-up, Van Noten also reminds us that he’s a master colorist: the delightful palette of ochre, burgundy, maroon and lilac are here to inspire our wardrobe next autumn. There was also gold: sometimes super-polished, sometime crinkled on the waists of the coats. It was very kintsugi – the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted with powdered gold. In a world that needs lot of repairing to be done, why not wear this gorgeous Dries Van Noten collection?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Chic, No? Saint Laurent AW23

March 1, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Anthony Vaccarello‘s work at Saint Laurent has reached new levels of creative success since the designer started to read the YSL glossary and began translating its nuances and quintessences into contemporary interpretation of painfully hot, Parisian chic. The autumn-winter 2023 collection, presented on an elevated, chandelier-lit runway that looked exactly like the one on which Yves presented his shows in the 1980s, focused on a look as simple (and eternally good-looking) as a masculine, big-shouldered jacket worn with a pencil skirt. This power-look came down the runway in various fabric and silhouette iterations, nearly always kept in black or white with pops of tartan plaid or earthy brown. Some of these sharp blazers evolved into flowing, floor-sweeping capes of silk or velvet (for the evening), or were nonchalantly wrapped with plaid scarves (for a rainy, Parisian day). There’s really not much more to say about the collection except for the fact it’s another impressive exercise of refinement coming from Vaccarello, and a very seductive, smart, and commercially-vital homage to the YSL legacy. In the voice of a Catherine Deneuve-esque Parisienne, “chic, no?“

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Runaway Bride. Vaquera AW23

February 28, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Backstage at their Vaquera fashion show on the first day of Paris Fashion Week, Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee were talking about dreams and nightmares, and how they can become interchangeable as time goes by. “We’re excited about selling commercial things,” DiCaprio said. “But I think this season we weren’t afraid to make things that weren’t necessarily for sales, and to say that that is an integral part of our brand.” Take the fun silvery sequin dresses or the various iterations of the wedding dress. I mean, wearing Vaquera on that special day is quite a statement. Other non-commercial garments were the jeans studded with blunt-ended nails which reportedly weigh a couple of kilograms. Mixed in amongst those punkish pants were more readily wearable pieces in the form of army sweaters and nylon cargos, and a faded black leather peacoat and pants. In the early New York days of Vaquera, back when the brand had a more conceptual direction, they designed polo dresses with pointillist renderings of their designer heroes, Vivienne Westwood among them. She was present in their latest show via an updated version of her infamous “tit top” with twisted and tucked “nipple” details. She’s the proof that you can mix business and non-conformity.