Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. Mugler AW23

January 28, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Back in the 80s and 90s, nobody did a (fashion) show like Thierry Mugler. In 2023, Mugler, the brand, lead by Casey Cadwallader, delivers an equal level of showmanship. “We’re showing during couture week because we’re bad. At Mugler we do whatever we want,” the designer stated before the choreographed mayhem kicked off. “We’re quite an outlier in the way we do things,” he added. What went down: a runway frenzy that idolized the talents and bodies of models and friends of the house simultaneously merged with live-captured dolly footage of said models and friends, which was consumed on a vast screen erected at the top of a set of stairs. And all over the internet, obviously. Crews of men on movie dollies slid on tracks filming the wildly whooped-at cast: Arca, Ziwe, Mariacarla Boscono, Shalom Harlow, Eva Herzigova, just to name few. There was hair swishing galore. A synchronized handbag-swinging lace-bodysuited dance troupe occupied some center steps. Then one by one, each Mugler supermodel climbed aboard another dolly, on which they could pose around a pole for the return journey. This second crew had a low-down camera which zoomed up crotch-wards, deploying a technique which might be termed up-skirting – had there been any skirts in evidence. Magnified on the monolithic screen, these oooh-aaah fragments were flashed in a live-streamed mix. What about the fashion content? Categorizing it as a collection of leather and lace doesn’t quite cover it. One thing to be said: Whether manifesting as baggy-topped leather chaps suspended under a hip-grazing heavy-duty chrome-zippered bodysuit, or a bisected one-leg, one-sleeve motorcycle suit, or indeed anything Cadwallader did with stretch black lace – it all miraculously stayed in place. And that is quite a technical achievement. It’s tricky to compare Cadwallader’s Mugler with Manfred Thierry Mugler’s original haute couture extravaganzas. In 2023, as far as being inclusive to bodies and identities, Cadwallader for sure outdoes the master. But Mugler was the outlier in his time: the man who foresaw fashion shows as cinematic spectacles. It’s a great continuation of the legacy.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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An Ode To Punk. Maison Margiela AW23

January 24, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The world became a sadder place without the Dame and the Queen of punk, Vivienne Westwood, who passed away just a couple of days before the New Year. Who else could create a more authentic and vivid tribute to Westwood’s work – and the entire subculture she helped create and kept leading – than John Galliano? His co-ed autumn-winter 2023 collection for Maison Margiela, one of the best ready-to-wear collections he’s done for the brand in a while, makes you believe punk isn’t dead. Galliano brought up the term ‘Rorschach test’ for the subjective seeing of different things when we look at fashion. Through these eyes, it looked very like a fierce, urgent reveling in the subcultural spirit of the 1970s and early ’80s in London – Galliano’s youth, but brought forward, mashed up for today. “You might see some familiar figures in it,” he suggested. “Jordan on the King’s Road; the fishnets; Johnny Rotten, maybe.” He’d sent out crude collaged photocopied flyers with his invitations – like fanzines and invites to underground gigs, the way kids navigated nightlife long before mobile phones. A couple of models were clutching them with their handbags as they lurched down the runway, as if in a hurry to get somewhere. In some of their hats, fancifully collaged from trash bags and scraps of tulle, were cockades made from chopped-up flyers. The plaids didn’t look like punk tartan – Westwood’s eternally favorite fabric—but then again, it almost did. And, to these eyes at least, there she was, almost personified in the girls who were dashing along in Galliano’s ingeniously wrapped pencil skirts – the sexy ’50s rocker style that Vivienne always spoke about as the first clothes she loved making for herself as a teenager. If that really was a salute to the late designer, it was also mixed up in the layers and layers of Galliano’s spins on 1950s tulle ballgowns, his huge, swinging opera coats, and chopped-up Americana. There were also Western-type jackets with Mickey Mouse plackets, Hawaiian prints, all seen through a punk, D-I-Y filter. Beautiful and emotionally moving.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Just Drive. Marine Serre AW23

January 23, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

“Nothing is created. Everything is transformed. To love is to repair. It must be simple. We are repaired, we are reused… We are restitched, we are re-embroidered…”. So went the poem – written by Marine Serre – at the beginning of her public-facing autumn-winter 2023 fashion show. In the heavily light-produced outing, Serre systematically set about showing what she could do with deadstock materials. The first eight looks or so were crafted from the totes, and included the cropped jacket silhouette that would ricochet across the collection. The next set was denim, and featured Caroline Issa who wore a siren silhouette denim dress with Serre’s new moon breast inserts. Other looks featured jewelry fashioned from upcycled cutlery. Then we pivoted to motorcycling gear, recycled. Although the motocross trend is widespread (all thanks to Rosalia’s seismic success of Motomami), Serre is a designer who owns that aesthetic, regardless if it’s trending or not. Next we hit knit: Look 20, on a proudly body-positive model, featured a patchwork “lozenge” knit fashioned from 15 or so pullovers. After that were upcycled or chemical-free processed leather looks which sometimes came with some pulled-pile knit trims that understandably set their models in unplanned directions when used as face coverings. A series of sophisticatedly faux-sophisticated moon monograph pieces followed. We were getting to the climax now, building tension with a swathe of house moiré looks interspersed with tapestry topped couture shapes and reclaimed upholstery fabrics. Then a series of pieces fashioned from strips of material, specifically scarfs, that were amongst the most compelling here. This was another highly effective and affecting collection from Serre.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Dream A Little Dream Of Me. Bode AW23

January 23, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

For autumn-winter 2023, Bode is back on the runway, and back in Paris. But there’s also a debut coming from Emily Adams Bode Aujla: a gorgeous womenswear line. At the Theatre du Chatelet, her American family storytelling took place. The models came out of the house and walked stage left, close enough so that every detail of the embroidery and embellishment could be appraised close up. There was a lot of it, and it looked great, from edging men’s suits to decorated with gold and green beads flapper dresses. The Bode program notes spoke about how the designer looked for inspiration to her mother’s side of the family – the four Rice sisters. Janet, her mom, had a college job in the 1970s on the Crane Estate at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with a 90-year-old lady who kept to the old social formalities of her class, and would descend for dinner in dresses which went back to the 1890s through the 1940s. Somehow, that story got mixed up with Emily’s memories of family life, from every day dressing to celebrations over the years. By the time a dress came out that was clearly a Christmas tree, hung with baubles, the Parisian crowd was won over. Most of all, the success of the show was to prove what a range Bode has as a brand. The gliterry shimmy dresses apart, she also pulled out some drop-dead American-glamour 1930s/‘40s evening dresses in emerald green sequins or red velvet. On top of that, her all-gendered, novelty-type knits are already real stand-outs in stores. If Ralph Lauren is looking for a successor, Emily Bode Aujla is the right person to reach out to.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – Ubi Amor, Ibi Oculus. Loewe AW23

January 23, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Season after season, Jonathan Anderson keeps on delivering the most innovative, technically mind-blowing, disturbing – in a way great art feels! – and unexpected collections for Loewe. His autumn-winter 2023 line-up for the brand is the most brilliant and thrilling outing we’ve seen this entire menswear season. “I do feel like less is more. But in a new way,” said the designer. “I don’t think we’re heading into modernity like it was. It’s not like ’90s modernity; there’s something more peculiar happening.” For Anderson, clothes are the main objects of consideration – not the runway venue (a white cube showcasing artworks by contemporary artist Julien Nguyen became the perfect, harmonious backdrop), not celebrity appearances (it’s not easy to make the collection itself more attention-seizing than Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russel sitting in the f-row). This designer is one of the vanishingly few in the luxurysphere who believes that it’s enough to put clothes, and deep-thinking about them, first. It’s reached the point where it feels radical, avant-garde. “I think – I hope – that we’re going into a period where it is about being uncomfortable in design,” he added. “That we are trying to find something new.” This conversation was in his debrief, after a menswear show that proved, par excellence, that there’s nothing more absorbing and mentally exciting than simply being able to react to the meanings of what’s before you. And to witness configurations of stuff you’ve never quite seen before.

In Anderson’s world, the subject of clothes is multi-layered but startlingly focused on clarity; what be called “a reductionist act.” His collection was about exaggerating the materiality of fashion fabrication into the realms of pure-lined 3D sculpture – full metal jackets beaten by artisans from copper and pewter; stand away structured coats molded by hat-makers. What he’d done with the short, back-fastened shirts is quite a riddle. Some of them were rigid, wrinkled vellum – the work of traditional book-binders. Others were delicately made in hammered silk, a match for the boxer shorts, worn with nothing but leather ankle-boots. “I wanted the idea of something which is quite sensual underneath, with something quite hard,” said Anderson. Some of the boys wore angel wings. That’s where the reference spun sideways into the multiple art-historical/homoerotic sensibilities that focus Anderson’s vision. Partly, it was about resurrecting to modernity the iconography of old masters painters, specifically, the work of the French romantic allegories of Prud’hon and the link Anderson has made with Nguyen. His digital artworks – referencing traditional painting techniques – of Nikos, a Loewe model, were blown up in the center of the stage. What might end up sounding complicated was as distilled and to-the-point as could be. Anderson glorified Loewe’s craft skills in leather goods in textures of suede and shearling, shaved into sensuously tactile bulbous silhouettes in this show. But equally as head-turning were his pared-back, brilliantly on-the-money Loewe desirables: long, slimline coats in leather, and the reiterated wool shapes with deeply plunging cowl necklines. They were worn with a gesture—one arm out, crooked in a way which played on the mind like a memory of classical portraiture. Simple, but way out of the ordinary. Anderson felt that arriving at that coat had hit the quintessential mark. “Sometimes, by getting that one look, it helps you to create a narrative throughout the show,” he said. “There’s something in that it says everything and nothing at the same time“.