Cupid’s Door. Alexander Wang AW23

February 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

And just like that, it’s New York Fashion Week. The first show on the schedule, at least for a brief moment, made you feel like in the old days. 10 years ago, in 2013, Alexander Wang‘s show was also an opener in New York’s biggest fashion event. Anna Wintour sat in the f-row, hot music was bumping all over the rave-y venue, Instagram was just starting to be a thing, TikTok was non-existent. Wang was the city’s favourite fashion darling – and he was about to show his first collection for Balenciaga in Paris (anyone remembers that?). But we are in 2023, and the world-wide mood is different, even if NYFW does it best to look like in the pre-pandemic times. And Alexander Wang is no longer a new-gen designer with no controversies attached to his name.

In between May 2019, the time of Wang’s last NYFW show, and now, the designer faced allegations of sexual misconduct that threw the future of his business into question. He made a public apology and his accusers announced they were “moving forward“. He put on a show in Los Angeles’s Chinatown in April of 2022. Honestly, nobody cared to look at it. Yesterday’s New York comeback had a dramatic tension: will anyone care this time? It seems the fashion world forgave Wang, and the designer somehow managed to dive back into the city’s scene of good PR and viral people. A promo spot on his Instagram Reels starring Anna Delvey, the socialite fraudster under house arrest in an East Village apartment, seemed to suggest he wasn’t proceeding from a chastened place. Cheeky is more like it. That fits with the collection’s theme. He gave it a name, Cupid’s Door, and dressed the location in boudoir-ish style, with dusty pink velvet curtains and a mesmeric zebra-stripe carpet; lighting gels that cast a red glow over the whole place. Sexy is enjoying a comeback of its own in the wake of the pandemic. Julia Fox walked the show dressed in a barely-there nude dress and and man’s jacket, like the modern-day version of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex & The City‘s season 1. Lace-edged camisoles, low-slung python print pants, boxer briefs peeking over the tops of waistbands – all of that was here, too. No sight of novelty, clearly. Rather, a lot of ideas many other designers in New York went through in the last couple of seasons.

The show was divided into three acts: the opening women’s section featured a lot of denim and faux fur in a variety of textures and silhouettes, very downtown style. Backstage he mentioned Wong Kar Wai films like 2046 and In the Mood for Love, which might have prompted the dressy vibes. Next came a men’s grouping that was quite cool and simple: athleisure-y items like sweatpants and sweatshirts in soft, high pile fabrics, alongside cropped vests and more animal print pants. The ending was the weakest point of the collection. A series of silk fringe dresses suspended from heart shapes built on a foundation of sheer net that revealed as much as they concealed. Eveningwear was never Wang’s thing, and that previously mentioned short stint at Balenciaga didn’t help with crafting that. The thing is, the tumultuous period the designer went through eventually revealed the basic fact that fashion has dozens of other designers who can fill the “sexy” niche in a much better and fresher way than Wang. The autumn-winter 2023 line-up had its ups, but in overall, it seems to be nothing more than Insta-friendly styling.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Muse. Patou SS23

July 15, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Just before the haute couture fashion week began, Guillaume Henry had his first IRL show for Patou at the brand’s charming headquarters in the Île de la Cité. Over the pandemic, Patou built up its identity as a playful young Parisian brand that’s popular with influencers with a collection that was early into the celebration of exuberant oversized shapes on French themes. Well, post-isolation years, it’s as if Patou has shed its chrysalis and emerged into the sunshine in super slimmed-down body-conscious shape. Tiny mini shifts, hourglass curve-clinging dresses, sexy high waisted bootcuts, little cropped tops. The voluminous flounces had more or less flounced out. And there was Julia Fox, beig THE moment of the spring-summer 2023 presentation. The fact that she topped off the show in a body-dress with an Art Nouveau print is an indication, perhaps, of how far the perception of this brand has penetrated. But Henry always said that his main way of designing is listening to what his coworkers and girlfriends say, clocking who they admire, who they’re talking about, and observing what they’re actually wearing on a daily basis. Which brought him around to the idea of muses – a classification which Fox has redefined in 2022. In Henry’s mind, it was deeper than that – considering that muse culture has very high art French roots. He found photos of young women students carving clay maquettes at the Beaux Arts school in the late 19th century, the time of the Belle Epoque and Toulouse Lautrec, and of female stage and cabaret performers. He wanted to capture something of that in a self-directed way for the worlds young women are inhabiting these days. Well, the collection hardly translated that message, and I honestly missed Henry’s exuberant take on the contemporary Patou wardrobe he has shown us in the previous seasons.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Material Gworl. LaQuan Smith AW22

February 16, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Before debuting his fiery autumn-winter 2022 collection on the runway this evening, New York-based designer LaQuan Smith took a moment of silence to acknowledge the late and great André Leon Talley – the longtime Vogue editor who changed the industry as we know it, due to his discerning eye and unparalleled enthusiasm (to be honest, it’s shocking that no other brand in the city mentioned Talley’s passing this season). During the hectic, fast-paced week, it was a classy touch on Smith’s part that reminded one to take a moment and to reflect. It also allowed spectators to quite literally take a breath, before having it taken away by the ultra-sexy clothes that followed. The opening number, for instance – modeled by Julia Fox, It girl of the moment – was a black turtleneck dress with bold chest cutouts. The crowd went wild for it. After two years of the pandemic, and the overuse of terms like “comfort dressing” or “loungewear,” Smith wanted to dial up the sex factor for autumn and vouch for the return of naughty glamour. This resulted in loads of sequins, fabulous mink coats, and extremely-mini skirts that just skimmed the buttocks – like a modern-day take on wild Studio 54 style. “This collection was really about the revival of New York City and celebrating life again,” said Smith. “I wanted to create a collection that gave women a sense of hope and celebration.”

His color palette of neutrals, paired with electrifying golds, reds, and blues, certainly woke you up with a jolt. Smith does sexy well. Sequin- or mink-covered body suits were paired with low-slung trousers that exposed hip bones. The dresses were cut short with deep-V necklines, while his version of leather pants came all zippered up like a moto jacket. Outerwear was a new category push for him, Smith said: “It’s all about these super-strong, big, New York shearlings, with these little itty-bitty sexy silhouettes underneath. It’s cold outside, but she’s going somewhere.” Smith’s clothes are certainly not for wallflowers. In the spirit of recent collections from, say, Blumarine or Versace, Smith sees the future of fashion as a time to be raunchy and show some skin. After two years of sweatpants, this feels right. There were a few key women who stuck with him during the design process as well. He cited style icons like Lil’ Kim and Grace Jones, as well as the regular everyday Manhattan women he’s witnessed growing up in New York. “I’d see women teetering in their heels in the Meatpacking District, when New York was vibrant, fun, and all about nightlife,” says Smith. “That kind of energy and level of excitement is what I’m trying to revive.” His latest assortment, he says, is what he envisions the current crop of New York party girls wearing. “It’s fresh, young, and sexy,” said Smith. “To me, it’s the new New York bitch.”