Fairy-Tale. Conner Ives SS25

November 16, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Conner Ives isn’t only a talented designer, but a great storyteller whose fashion fairy-tales make you believe in fantasies and miracles. For his spring-summer 2025 collection, the London-based, American designer took us on a journey from the medieval lords and ladies of Arthurian legend to the invocation of Camelot by Jackie O’ to describe the Kennedy administration. The eclectic patchwork of centuries and eras – medieval England, 1960s Americana, the It girl of today – made for a line-up with truly wonderful clothes (and desirable accessories, like the “hard-bodied bias” bag inspired with a vintage clutch from his mother’s wardrobe or an actual hennin hat). Slinky knit dresses with trumpet skirts were inspired by cotehardies (long-sleeved medieval garments), while jacquard knitwear took its cues from the elaborate motifs found on 17th-century clocked stockings (just the right kind of whimsical chic). There was plenty of fabulous, demi-couture dresses for the loyal coterie of glamorous party girls that surround the designer (think Ivy Getty), from a swishy mauve pink dress hand-painted with polka dots to his final, swan-like bridal look, a silk jersey column dress worn with a dramatic vintage fox-fur collar.

Ives’ eveningwear, even though packed with history and sentiments, never feels like “too much” or too retro (even though the term “vintage” plays an important role in the designer’s brand, noting all the upcyling practices). You can picture both a Carrie Bradshaw and a real, contemporary girl wearing those dresses. And Carrie would definitely style them with one of the season’s most adorable accessory: upcycled fishing lure charms adorned with colorful feathers and tinsel of the kind Ives remembered seeing glitter from his Florida aunt’s bait and tackle box as a child. You really want to read deep into Conner’s fairy-tale.

Here are some of my favorite Conner Ives pieces you can get now…

ED’s SELECTION:

Conner Ives Ruched Stretch-jersey And Silk Mini Dress

Conner Ives Reconstituted Printed Silk-blend Pencil Skirt

Conner Ives Crystal-embellished Recycled Stretch-jersey Maxi Dress

Conner Ives Ano Fringed Macramé-trimmed Embroidered Silk-crepe Halterneck Top

Conner Ives Appliquéd Cotton-blend Midi Skirt

Conner Ives Fluted Checked Cotton-blend Gauze Midi Dress

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!

Hey, did you know about my newsletter – Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!

Late Capitalism. Conner Ives SS24

September 20, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

We live in the times of late capitalism. It’s also how Conner Ives entitled his spring-summer 2024 collection, which starting point was a TikTok video he stumbled across a few months ago of a girl live-blogging her experience queuing for a fashion sample sale in New York as smoke from the Canadian wildfires bathed the city in an ominous orange glow. “As much as it felt like the end of days, there was also a dark humor to it,” Ives said at a preview. “It’s the beginning of the end of the world, and we’re waiting in line at a sample sale.” “Late Capitalism” – a collection that invitates to talk more openly about the economic realities of what keeps the fashion world moving – is “a subject that makes me uncomfortable, which made me feel like it was something worth talking about,” he said. Ives is one of a generation of designers for whom sustainability is something of a given, meaning he hasn’t telegraphed his eco-credentials all that loudly in the past (although with his signature approach of lending deadstock and upcycled vintage clothes a glamorous new life, you didn’t have to dig very deep to notice it). But he now feels a greater urgency to share the various methods by which he’s carved out his own, more responsible lane. “I think part of me didn’t want to get up on my soapbox, as I wasn’t sure if anyone really cared,” Ives said, noting that in his few years of doing production at scale, he’s repurposed nearly 15,000 T-shirts destined for scrap yards, while a new partnership with Depop will see him use the platform to source bulk raw material for production. And he’s open to talking about the fact that the system still isn’t perfect. Sure, he’s made a firm commitment to only staging a runway show once a year, but he still needs to produce lookbooks in between to allow him to sell year-round and keep his business afloat. “I’m very aware there’s an irony to the ‘Late Capitalism’ collection being an answer to getting more items into stores,” he acknowledged.

So, then, to the clothes. In his signature spirit of character-driven styling, Ives’s lookbook- photographed by Johnny Dufort, and starring the TikTok-favorite model of the moment Alex Consani – began with one of his “archetypes,” a T-shirt and skirt decorated with a swan motif as an ode to Natalie Portman’s doomed ballerina in Black Swan. Once again, there was plenty of fun to be had identifying the various figures he was paying homage to, from Charlotte York to Carmela Soprano. Ives also continued his journey of expanding out from the spliced T-shirt dresses that made his name as a fashion editor favorite, continuing to develop his tailoring and elevate his eveningwear offering. Highlights included a series of T-shirt dresses with 1930s-inspired trumpet skirts made of recycled jersey, a sheer bias-cut dress cut from baseball jersey material, and a swishy black halter gown with a mother-of-pearl shell as a belt buckle. But perhaps the most striking looks came at the end, in the form of a dazzlingly intricate dress strung together from 9,000 soda can tabs, and a slip made from cowrie shells strung together in a bias lattice. Cowrie shells, being one of the earliest forms of currency in human history as Ives pointed out, is another nod to the collection’s meditations on commerce.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram! By the way, did you know that I’ve started a newsletter called Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!

What’s Hot (31.5.23)

May 31, 2023May 28, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Magnolia. Conner Ives AW23

February 18, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Remember the 1995 documentary Catwalk, which followed Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss through the fashion month? That film captured not only the quintessence of 1990s cool, but also an image of model-hood filled with friendship, fun and mutual support. Somehow, Conner Ives managed to convey that fleating feeling in his London Fashion Week collection – and it didn’t feel forced, which is the most amazing thing. While last season’s eclectic extravaganza proved Ives can do more than just the spliced T-shirt dresses that earned him a following while still a student at Central Saint Martins, the 26-year-old designer explained that he wanted to mature things with this collection. Titled Magnolia after Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling 1999 film charting the lives and loves of a disparate group of Angelenos, it contained all of the greatest hits of Ives’s collections thus far: slinky fringed skirts made from upcycled piano scarves; diaphanous Lilith Fair slip dresses with sheer ruffles; and yes, those vintage T-shirts, here transformed into a bias-cut camisole dress trimmed with black lace. To Ives’s point, there were a few more grown-up tricks in the mix too, including a handful of retro silk button-downs and tailored trousers, along with Ally McBeal-core minimalist tailoring in muted shades of green and gray. There was also fun to be had: not least in the dizzying soundtrack, which cycled relentlessly through everything from Lil Mama’s Lip Gloss to the opening theme of Psycho. And as with last season’s smorgasbord of winking references to everything from reality TV to film history, part of the thrill was engaging with Ives’s Guess Who?game of pop culture icons from across the decades. The second look was a Kate Moss-inspired “Glasto girl” trudging through the mud in a fur gilet and Hunter wellies, while other looks paid homage to the “shiny set” of New York society women who would descend on the Paris couture shows each season, such as C.Z. Guest and Nan Kempner. Most bonkers of all was the bridal look at the end: a tongue-in-cheek nod to a wedding dress from the Lindsay Lohan remake of The Parent Trap (as well as the highly questionable top hat-veil hybrid that remains seared onto the retinas of all who have seen it). “That was really something where I was like: This is so fucking ridiculous,” Ives added, with a grin. Ives may have a winning sense of humor, but between all those granola girls and Coyote Ugly bartenders and new-age mystics with agate pendants swinging over their jeans, there was a method in the madness. Notably, a series of looks that was plumbed from the depths of Ives’s encyclopedic knowledge of ’90s and ’00s fashion: the bulbous trapeze coats, horse-riding hats, and platform Mary Janes of Nicolas Ghesquière’s influential autumn 2006 collection for Balenciaga. “I remember being a 10-year-old kid looking at that collection, having stolen a magazine from my mom’s bathroom,” Ives said. The designer is, above all else, a true fashion fanboy and it translates palpably through the clothes. “I want to emphasize that same guttural feeling I felt when I was 10 years old looking at that magazine,” he said. “I’m aware of how schlocky that sounds, but it feels messy and human and real, and I think that’s more interesting than painting some pristine picture of what fashion should be like.”