Method. Saint Laurent SS24

September 27, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The spring-summer 2024 Saint Laurent collection, presented on a marble runway against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower last night, gave a mood. But did it deliver truly great, contemporary-looking clothes? Anthony Vaccarello has found a new formula for his job at the Parisian maison: find a theme from Yves Saint Laurent’s vast archive, refresh it for the eyes of a contemporary customer, and consistently stick to it for the entire season. This sort of repetition-technique delivers strikingly coherent collections that sell well – and give YSL’s legacy a new relevance. But I felt that something started to crack in Vaccarello’s “genius” method this season.

The new collection was inspired by pioneering women through the lens of Saint Laurent’s late 1960s Saharienne look. Vaccarello looked to the likes of Amelia Earhart and Adrienne Bolland, who infiltrated “domains once considered exclusively male.” Earhart’s influence was perhaps the most evident, with aviation themes filtering through in aviator sunglasses and head-caps. Formula 1-style racing dress also came to the fore, with utility-style jumpsuits sitting sharp on the shoulders, slouching at the leg and belted tightly at the waist for shape. As the models progressed through the stage, service jackets and cargo trousers gave way to billowing, pleated gowns, mesh tops and glittering mini dresses in khaki, beige, burgundy and deep blue. Of course, it all looked super-chic and refined on the moody runway – an entire production, actually – but in the end, I thought the clothes had a rather dated outlook at what successful, contemporary women want to dress like. I doubt they want to be invested so much in 20th century nostalgia.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Paris. Peter Do SS24

September 27, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

New York’s Peter Do delivered a refined and strong collection for his Paris Fashion Week debut. This was a much-needed distance between his eponymous brand’s abilities and the designer’s stint at Helmut Lang – which had some very mixed reviews at the beginning of September. “I want to make grown-up clothes,” Do said backstage yesterday. To start, what that meant here was you didn’t see the silly short-shorts that were for instance all over the Milan runways. The designer cut his blazers into horizontal sections, placing a band of silk twill lining with subtle logo details between a top and bottom in summer-weight wool. Some jackets were tucked into pants with a similar treatment. If that’s a runway styling trick that may not make it in the real world, many other pieces have good odds, like the jackets cropped at the midriff and the blazer vests with exaggerated shoulders. Then there were great looking trousers. The most ambitious were the pairs with vertical slices down the front that revealed a bold lash of red underneath. On the softer side, a pair of halter dresses ad provocative sheer insets in front and elegant draped backs. The draping and twisting felt new for Do, an expansion of his vocabulary. Sprinkled in were pieces from his Banana Republic collaboration, due in stores on October 10. The khaki trench with a removable shearling collar and a two-in-one chunky ribbed sweater added a more easy-going vibe to the show. Just don’t call them casual. There’s nothing casual about Do’s drive.

Create The Surprise. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt SS24

September 26, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is on everybody’s lips in Paris. Although considered a newcomer by the industry, she in fact was a ready-to-wear designer at Demna’s Balenciaga for a couple of seasons. Spring-summer 2024 collection comes in perfect continuity with her previous outing, deliberately designed to complement the ideas that are at core of the brand. The raw, intense, dazzling light of the summer sun at its zenith is used in a quasi-extreme vision that aims to question seasonality and obsolescence through a counterpoint and paradox. In the same spirit, Marie Adam-Leenaerdt’s garments multiply their uses, with systems of ties, fastenings and buttonholes. They can be worn as desired, far away or close to the body, and we appropriate them to create our own personal wardrobe, our own collection. Objects stripped of their initial function are adorned with dress codes, and hybridization is a given: Marie Adam-Leenaerdt’s signature. “Create the surprise“, she says. “Thus, the portable beach hut becomes, almost literally, a dress, in the same referential fabric – a conceptual garment“, the designer enigmatically says. The collection is enriched by some Margiela-isms (like at Vaquera; it seems that this Paris Fashion Week will be big on references to the Belgian designer): a trompe-l’oeil stiletto heel, pool and sand prints, and over-sized, raw denim.

Big Chic Energy. Vaquera SS24

September 26, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee opened Paris Fashion Week with a bang, delivering big chic energy with their Vaquera fashion show. The designers emerged for their bows in matching sunglasses, big eye-obscuring shields of the kind worn by A-list celebrities. They said their collection was a consideration of the ways in which stars (and the rest of us) negotiate lives mediated by a 24/7 barrage of cameras. Do you want to be seen or do you want to hide? Is there a difference in a world where everyone is wielding an iPhone? The collection had a couple of gritty Margiela references, especially all the faux fur elements and XXL silhouettes, but in case of Vaquera, it’s never about knocking off, but revisiting their fashion gurus. After opening with a gold fishnet catsuit, the breasts outlined like bullseyes, many of the “normal” looks that followed were split down the back, exposing bra straps and panties. Other looks used underwear as decoration. The pink satin briefs fixed to the front of an otherwise conventional skirt might not have registered as all that outré on the runway, but on the street it’d be a different story. Standing up along the runway, like fans crowding a police barricade at a red carpet or outside a fashion show, the crowd hooted and hollered in appreciation. There aren’t many collections in Paris that deliver Vaquera’s kind of edgy fun. Hopefully, some bold starlet will wear Vaquera’s bleached denim ball gown.

The Eye Has To Travel. Bottega Veneta SS24

September 25, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

“The eye has to travel“. Matthieu Blazy‘s sumptuous spring-summer 2024 collection for Bottega Veneta seemed to be a visual response to that phrase, coined by Diana Vreeland, the legendary fashion editor who happened to love the noisy jewellery around her employees’ necks to know where they were at all times. The collection was an audacious, charismatic and bold journey, but not inspired by specific locations or geographies. It’s a travel seen through a rather philosophical lens, as Blazy said, “it’s about what you can become after this journey as well; everything you get from a journey transforms you.” Leather wrap poncho topping a leather trench. Shaggy salt-and-pepper coat. Crocheted raffia dresses with the giant pompom embellishments. A large “straw” bag made from leather intrecciato. Those were just a couple of instances when you really want a run-of-show listing the garments’ textile information and the techniques employed to create them, like a map legend. Blazy’s aim was to “create some kind of new culture”, and he succeeded (interestingly, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons investigated the topic of “culture about clothing” this Milan Fashion Week). The Belgian designer who reinvents Bottega believes in the transportive possibilities of fashion. Wear those “banana leaf” sandals or carry the bag and “you escape.” Rachel Tashjian of Washington Post summed it up perfectly: it’s a “very Roland Barthes way of seeing as a form of social exchange, in which every passing person is a jumble of signals and symbols, and you put together a narrative in your head that’s half-reliable assumption, half-fictional fantasia“. But you can extract the backstory, and this was still an extraordinary collection, more like couture than ready-to-wear when it comes to the craftsmanship that went into individual pieces, from the cowl neck top and “bias-cut” skirt made from strips of different colored leather to the chunky woven jacquard coat that read almost like fur. “Where people call craft dusty, I think it’s the opposite,” said Blazy. “It’s a world of possibilities.”