Ceremonies & Roses. Simone Rocha SS24

September 18, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Simone Rocha staged her spring-summer 2024 show in the rehearsal space at the English National Ballet. “I love the rise and fall of doing a show,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a big spectacle, sometimes it really brings people in.” By shows, she also had wedding ceremonies on her mind. The cake-inspired tiers of appliqué on white tulle dresses and the sound of silver “wedding” bells tinkling on slippers, sleeves and bags. “It’s almost fragmented,” the designer said of Frederic Sanchez’s music for the show. “It’s that disturbed feeling, all the emotions of a rehearsal… the nerves!” Despite the sense of tension Rocha set out to create, there’s little chance of a bride wearing one of these dresses getting cold feet the night before. The show’s highlight: instead of a bride holding a bouquet, fresh roses were bunched between layers of sheer tulle, and fabric versions were manipulated into dresses and jackets. Models carried single stems fashioned from cotton or pearls, and bare legs were decorated with red rose tattoos. As a motif, it was equal parts enchanting and fragrant.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Hard Folk. Chopova Lowena SS24

September 18, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Chopova Lowena, a relatively young brand, is stomping its way through a period of economic gloom, in a country severely hamstrung by the after-effects of Brexit and the pandemic, with good humor, common sense, and clever ideas. Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena’s weakness for folkloric whimsy with a streetwise swagger speaks for itself and keeps on enchanting the clients. Extra spice came courtesy of the casting, which took in friends, colleagues, acquaintances, plus mothers and brothers and boyfriends, resulting in a compelling line-up of characters you simply couldn’t take your eyes off. For their spring-summer 2024, the designers had chosen the skatepark as an homage to the “skater boy you love” (that’s Bulgaria-born, New Jersey-raised Chopova) “or the boy you want to be” (Somerset-raised tomboy Lowena-Irons). Tony Hawk made his presence felt in plaid pajama pants, graphic zip-up hoodies, board shorts and studded Ugg boots, part of a collaboration with the brand. The rest referenced the ancient Flora Day festival, held every May in the village of Helston in Cornwall, on England’s wild south-west coast. Comprising numerous processions and dances, including mermaids and maidens, angels and devils, it manifested in hand-embroidered broderie anglaise dresses, thick leather belts and a pair of knickers adorned with hundreds of beads and charms, and a particularly fabulous jacket made of white crispy ribbons like those you’d see on draped across a wedding car.

Strangeness In The Mundane. Jw Anderson SS24

September 17, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Finally, a collection this season that makes the viewer truly wonder. Nobody transforms the mundane into extraordinary like Jonathan Anderson. Plasticine – that’s what the blue hoodie and white shorts were molded from at the beginning of the JW Anderson spring-summer 2024 fashion show in London. Anderson discovered that Plasticine is still being manufactured in Northern Ireland, the place of his birth, plus it makes adults smile as much now as back in their childhoods. That was an emblematic starter for a collection that had Anderson’s collection circling back to the youth-based energy of his brand. “It was kind of re-going back to find a new path,” he said. In the summer he “saw all these girls and boys hanging out wearing biker jackets and cargos.” Street observation – seeing the generic clothes young people really wear, but with a different attitude in each generation – put him in the mood to think about “what happens when you focus on reduction. It wasn’t about a lot of tricks. Kind of a cleanser.” Adding glamour to the MA-1 archetype by inflating it as a cocoon and having feathers explode from the seams was another cheerful moment, equally beautiful. And putting something that might have been a Hula-Hoop up the skirt of a knitted dress. Playfulness balanced with practicality might be a way to sum it up. Love!

Behind The Scenes. Molly Goddard SS24

September 17, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

This season, Molly Goddard played with the notion of a “behind the scenes” moment: what’s happening behind the surface, or closed doors or… the clothes. The spring-summer 2024 show took place at Christie’s auction house on King Street, the other occasions upon which the designer would tend to visit were during the set up of displays. She elaborated: “When there are these masterpieces just lying on the floor: it’s kind of amazing to see and very exciting, which I guess in some way is connected to the collection.” Goddard fashioned a fair few masterpieces of her own in a lineup that focused on nudging the mechanics of garments to the surface, turning them inside out in order to create a patina of production. She said she’d done her research in the National Theatre Costume Hire, examining the stitched clockwork of garments ranging in style from Regency to contemporary. Long skirts were shirred at the hip to create drape down to edged froths of pale ruffled petticoat. The trademark tulle skirts were teamed with loosely corseted tops whose sheerness exposed the geography of boning and corsetry that defined their gentle geography. A dusty pink woolen cardigan was edged with a two-inch strip of satin, like some old granny blanket left bundled in the cupboard of a spare room. Washed out red rose prints used on more skirts and knitted into another cardigan – magenta paneled at the shoulder – added to the sense of comfortable, domestic nostalgia. A precise excavation of the deeply familiar but also overlooked, this was a quietly masterful collection. Said Goddard: “What I enjoy most is when I get really stuck in to how to make clothes; the techniques and the fabrics and the fit.” That pleasure in Goddard’s process was evident in its result.

Fetishization of Pain. Mowalola SS24

September 17, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Mowalola Ogunlesi delivered a sharp start of London Fashion Week. Mowalola, the brand, is fast, furious, and at times obscene, but in a creatively vital way. Backstage of her spring-summer 2024 show, the designer, said the collection had been sparked by her first-ever viewing of David Cronenberg’s Crash. “I was really excited by the fetishization of pain through crashing,” she said. It prompted her to imagine “a whole universe that resides on the street,” filtered through a prism of ecstatic jeopardy. But Mowalola doesn’t stick to one reference. Masturbating anime girl prints; off-the-shoulder bombers with faux Highway Patrol patches; thigh-highs and micro skirts inspired by street walkers. A lot of stuff that Ogulensi’s customers will love. All that, like the excellent dirty denims, seemed to emanate a conceptual solar system adjacent to some of Glenn Martens’s work at Diesel. The pants that flashed cracks at the back and crotch hairlines were maybe subject to the influence of Alexander McQueen’s gravity. This was good company to keep: however the gartered, bisected pants and skirts, now a Mowalola signature, were all Ogunlesi’s own. The flags-of-the world theme was another highlight. This also ran into a poignant EU skirt meets Union Jack cap look. The extreme contrast of volumes in some sportswear looks made the generic appear particular.