Intuition. Chloé AW24

March 1, 2024April 22, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Somehow this season, you really see the difference between how men design for women, and how women design for women. Take Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent where the all-sheer dresses impose unreal standards. And now look at Chemena Kamali‘s Chloé debut, where ease, frivolity, chic, and joy interweave, opening up a new, very promising chapter at the brand. The authentic stir of enthusiasm among female front-rowers of the show were the first sign that Chemena’s has is to make Chloé really, really cool again. Kamali knows the history of the brand inside out, and worked there as a Chloé-obsessed junior designer in the noughties under Phoebe Philo’s creative direction, and then again under Clare Waight Keller. Nobody knows better than Kamali the spontaneous feeling of it-ness that belongs to the female-centric Chloé philosophy; a power recharged through so many generations since the house was founded in the 1950s by the Jewish-Egyptian emigré Gaby Aghion as a free-spirited ready-to-wear antidote to Parisian haute couture. Kamali called autumn-winter 2024 fittingly, as the “Intuition” collection. “You know, it’s how it makes you feel and how you want to feel,” she said. “I think there’s this connection where today as a woman you need to be able to follow your intuition and be yourself. It’s very much about an intuitive way of dressing, about lightness, movement, fluidity and emotion. I also, love the power of nostalgia; where you go backwards, you go forwards – you also think of today and what women want to wear now.” The collection was triumphant remix of all things Chloé stands for. Karl Lagerfeld’s 1970s time at the brand was referenced by brilliant white scalloped-edged blouse and swirling musketeer capes, modernized with cool boot-cut flares and kitten-heel clogs. Then, we had splendid iterations of bracelet-bags and platform sandals that were Chloé’s bread-and-butter during Philo’s reign. Bananas and pineapples (redone as gilt jewelry) were nods to Stella McCartney’s tongue-in-cheek time at the house. What felt very Chemena was the ease with which she remixed the brand’s codes, and how she single-handedly gave rebirth to the style of the both real and fictional 2000s It-girls: Sienna Miller, Serena Van Der Woodsen, Kate Moss, the Olsen twins. Finally, huge lived-in bags, platform clogs, sexy denims, lingerie dresses are back, baby.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Belle Du Jour. Saint Laurent Pre-Fall 2023

June 29, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

If you’ve had a yearning for big shoulders lately, you can thank Anthony Vaccarello for that. For several seasons now, and for both the women’s and men’s collections, Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent has been pumping them way up. It’s a look that rests on a squared-off line with a lot of impact. It’s also been a neat way to underscore his and the house’s exemplary tailoring skills which are impeccable. The deadly-chic Saint Laurent women’s pre-fall 2023 sketches out the look. There those shoulders are on masculine inflected overcoats, their swagger exaggerated by dark glasses, door knocker hoop earrings, and spike-heeled black boots. There they are again on leather and shearling jackets, some cut with a curvy blouson-y look or natty aviator versions, with featherweight shawls knotted at the neck to trail in the wind, leaving everything and everyone in their wake. The high-gloss, high-power era of fashion, roughly the late ’70s to the just dawning ’90s, is something that Vaccarello’s YSL has long been tapped into. Yet his smartness with it has been to amplify the look while also denuding it of some of its associations. Yes, he might be evoking that time with his second-skin black dressing, the wrists weighted with hefty golden cuffs, or with the roomy boardroom coats over sliver-thin pencil skirts that finish a fraction above the knees. But this isn’t a historicist retreat; there’s no desire here to create clothing shellacked with outmoded notions of power and status. Instead, Vaccarello’s attitude reads as modern: a touch of dishevelment with the hair of his models, a certain androgynous beauty, a kind of casual offhandedness about the whole proceedings. Vaccarello is designing for someone who’s curious about wearing chicer, glossier, more structured clothing, but who is still firmly living in, and dressing for, the world today.

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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Flowing. Saint Laurent Resort 2023

January 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Anthony Vaccarello is staying close to the obsession he’s been evolving lately at Saint Laurent: the super-chic and ultra-elegant flowing, languid, maxi silhouettes. The silk skirts are floor-sweeping, the boxy coats are long, the eveningwear is all about the body-clinging column. For resort 2023 (which serves as a sweet entrée to the fabulous spring-summer 2023 fashion show collection), all the YSL-isms are here, but adjusted because Vaccarello has that ineffable way of remaking their proportions to feel totally right for the moment we’re in. Like the draped cocktailania of Monsieur Saint Laurent’s ’80s and ’90s reinvented into tiny dresses and just as tiny bodysuits. Vaccarello has been busy perfecting his drapery style for some time now. What else resonates here, what gets that eye fixated on the proceedings, is how this collection tackles the twin pillars that the house of Saint Laurent was built on, the mid-century couture-era codes of tailleur and flou, that are the very guiding principles of French fashion. Vaccarello gives the collision of those two approaches a very distinctly personal spin: gorgeously frothy chiffon dresses, with flouncing hems come with cabans embellished with blowsy blooms, or beaten-up leather bomber jackets. Heritage, tradition, and craft, but handled with a snap and crackle. This is an example of really good in fashion in 2023.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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City Warrior. Isabel Marant SS23

October 2, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

It’s one of those Isabel Marant collections which she might have designed with her eyes closed. And there’s nothing bad about it. This super chic, super Parisian, super effortless Marant look is eternal. For spring-summer 2023, she doubled down on that approach, with a look that was abbreviated, exuberant, and went from soft to tough – often in the same outfit. The designer clearly went back to basics, as it were, revisiting the moment when she started her label in the mid-’90s through to the dawn of the 2000s. There was a new mood in the air then, streetwise and raw, but also with a kind of world-weary, knowing charm. It was a moment when a different kind of woman – a little grunge, a little boho, a whole lot cool – made herself known. “I wanted to go back to a certain fragility of femininity, but still keeping in mind the Isabel Marant woman, who is a bit of a city warrior,” said the designer. She referenced the work of the brilliant late photographer Corinne Day, who pretty much photographed Kate Moss before anyone else, but who also, importantly, spent her sadly all too brief career photographing women as they would like to be seen themselves. You could also say that that’s quintessential Marant: a label where women can see themselves in it. The very personal era that Marant revisited was writ large in this collection. Racer cut tanks and swingy little dresses in patchwork configurations of metallic-threaded floral silk chiffon came with zippered leather minis and moto pants that had been washed and washed to get the perfect lived-in patina. Laser-cut suede jackets were as long as the shorts and fluttery skirts they were worn with. Camo looked as if it had been sun-bleached, cut into an oversized jacket or cargo pants, another from the Marant arsenal of killer trousers. And to underscore what makes Isabel Marant, the woman and the label, tick, there was a profusion of artisanal detailing, from the tiny seed pearls sprinkled across an organdy camisole, to the macramé threaded across an organza blouse.