For its resort 2024 collection, Chanel took us to Los Angeles – the Paramount Studios lot to be specific. With stars including Margot Robbie, Kristen Stewart and Marion Cotillard lighting up the front row, and a post-show performance by Snoop Dogg, this was a very Hollywood affair. Ahead of Virginie Viard’s show, movie billboards promoting it as a “One Night Only” event went up around town, making an explicit point about Chanel’s embeddedness in LA’s dominant culture (a 30,000-square-foot Chanel store, the brand’s biggest in the U.S., opened on Rodeo Drive last week). As a matter of fact, Viard didn’t look at the silver screen or the red carpet for inspiration, but to what appeared to be a more quotidian example of Los Angeles: the Venice Beach boardwalk, a see-and-be-seen playground for roller skaters, weight lifters, beach bunnies, and epic sunsets. “I thought let’s do Jane Fonda, Cindy Crawford – all our heroines,” she said at the “accessoirsation” of the collection. “There are jeans, a more aerobic feeling; every show is the occasion to do something we’ve never done before.” Viard’s stamp is the more feminine, youthful hand she’s brought to the house since taking over as artistic director in 2019, but the sporty vibe of the collection, with its leg warmers, wedge heel sneakers, running shorts, and swim tanks, plus the occasional skateboard, was something new. Not every look was a success, though. Still, think of it as a Chanel look for a star’s every occasion, including, in a serendipitous bit of timing, Robbie’s upcoming press tour for Barbie, which is shaping up to be the movie of the summer.
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Maryam Nassir Zadeh skipped New York Fashion Week this season, and instead shot her autumn-winter 2023 look-book at her parents’ house in Los Angeles. Lately, the designer enjoys revisiting places and things she loves and seeing them afresh. “We got inspired by the idea of building a core collection, which we had never done before,” the designer explained. There were not-so-basic, quintessentially MNZ pieces aplenty here, from her signature backward pants to leather bombers for all genders, greatcoats to kilts, rendered in materials like pinstripe and corduroy. These are items that the designer still finds relevant after all these years and wants her customers to be able to come back to again and again. While going through the clothing archive she stores at her childhood home, Zadeh came across her RISD portfolio and pieces from her earliest collections. The garments and textiles she made back then didn’t just look relevant to her today; they reinforced her desire to get even closer to her work. “I really want to create textiles and make clothing that has a richness of texture and life to it,” she said. Some of the pieces, like a sash dripping with beads, are whimsical one-offs made using vintage materials; others, like an embellished stretch-lace bodysuit, will go into production. It’d look great with a pair of asymmetric laced leggings that have the special off-ness that defines the brand. In a reflective mood, Zadeh set her own pace this season. Post-lockdown, she mused, we have “a new relationship with the times, and it really has to do with things being fast. I don’t think I have to do what everyone’s doing and be so fast; sometimes doing less is just so much more. That’s where I’m at.” Going forward Zadeh will present her collections publicly by choice. The nostalgic turn her work has taken is connected to her belief that what you need you can find within yourself. As she put it: “Some things are just part of you, and some things are where you start, and then even if you go far, you still arrive back to where you began.” Zadeh’s collection might be fragranced by déjà vu, but it has the potential to take you places you haven’t yet been to.
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Versace skipped Milan Fashion Week this season to show at a later date in Los Angeles – just a couple of days before the Oscars gala. On the roof of the landmark Pacific Design Center, Donatella Versace presented her autumn-winter 2023 vision: a wardrobe for Versace heroines and Versace bad boys, seen through a captivating, LA lens. “I mean I love this city, I love the people, the laid back vibe, the atmosphere,” the designer said. To set the tone for house’s destination show, Versace circled back to a pivotal mid-’90s moment. Easily the most prominent inspiration images on the moodboard for the collection were Richard Avedon’s 1995 images of Kristen McMenamy. The chic skirt suit that McMenamy wore in those photos was tailored close to the body and replete with the brand’s signature gold buttons. “I wanted to go back to the cut and shape of the clothes, to concentrate on the perfect little black dress, the perfect black suit,” Versace said. Gigi Hadid opened the show dressed in a look that echoed those elegant proportions. Naomi Campbell took her turn on the runway in an ankle-grazing black dress with an embellished bustier. Jill Kortleve wore a hot, shoulder-padded LBD. There was also Ivan De Pineda, the ultimate Versace man, wearing a croco-embossed trench coat. For celebrities that were still shopping for Oscar dresses, there were options aplenty. Some of the standouts: a crystal-encrusted naked dress that called to mind a modern Marilyn Monroe, a slinky black chainmail number with sculptural floral embellishments, and va-va-voom interpretations of the cone bra worked into various hourglass shapes.
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For Rodarte‘s spring-summer 2023 collection, Kate and Laura Mulleavy harnessed the theatricality and glow of live performances into a lineup of dresses and sets that balance fluid shapes with busy prints and intricate, rich textures. Alongside rainbows of psychedelic swirls – which take shape across bias-cut chiffon slips – and velvet burnout silhouettes, you will find a range of high-shine threads and embellishments with a light-refracting quality that adds striking dimension. “We were really wanting to feel something that was really vibrant and alive and about lighting and connectivity,” said Laura. A sense of ease and lightness was achieved on an entirely hand knit purple gown with long sleeves and a contrasting orange trim on the hem and cuffs. The yarn was made from a material “that almost looks like saran wrap,” Kate concluded. “No one believes it will be, and that’s what’s so cool about it. It’s very shiny.” They used the same fabric to create little skirt suits worn with matching cropped tops; one in shades of green, and another in orange and pink. The concept of light – both in terms of weight and illumination – played an important role in the collection. Metallic details abounded in fabric construction and embellishments, bringing into play the light that surrounds the garment as an added accessory. “All of the materials are in some way reflective of light. Even the lace has a sheen on it,” one of the Mulleavy sisters said. “So what’s interesting is that you see them differently depending on the angle at which you are looking at them.” This were manifested in straightforward ways, as in some of the looks in the second half of the collection: holographic sequins on an architecturally draped asymmetric gown; silver sequins on a spaghetti strap tunic and flared trousers; silver fringe on a Nick Cave-esque (the fine artist, not the musician) long sleeve cropped top and matching trousers; and gowns with mosaics made from small mirror shards. “We’re starting to see the red carpets open back up again,” said Laura. “I feel like there’s no version of us as designers at Rodarte if there never was a red carpet. We’re in Los Angeles, and it’s one of the thrilling aspects of designing eveningwear. If you design a gown, you want to see it out there, that’s the beauty of it.” But the Mulleavys know that the magic of their clothes is that they can impart that same feeling to anyone that wears them, no matter the place.
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Sometimes, we just want something stable and lasting in the world where everything changes so instantly and abruptly. That’s Ralph Lauren‘s allure, which seems to be going through a sort of renaissance in the last couple of seasons. Over the years, Lauren has shown us his New York – a show in Central Park, the café society show presented at his uptown store, the swanky supper club he erected near Wall Street and last season’s soignee affair at MoMA. While there’s no denying he’s a New Yorker through and through, nothing gets the creative juices flowing quite like a case of wanderlust. And so the designer looked farther afield for spring-summer 2023. Specifically to Southern California – shockingly, the first time he’s shown here. He could have gone anywhere he pleased, but Lauren landed on an unexpected choice – the Huntington Library, a museum and botanical garden just northeast of Los Angeles proper, founded in 1919 by an industrialist family that made their fortunes in railroads and real estate. It was against the museum’s Mediterranean Revival style facade that Lauren presented his vision to his Hollywood pals – Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, Diane Keaton, Laura Dern, John Legend, to name but a few. The cushioned loungers and twilight cocktail hour set the tone – this was California casual, done the Ralph way. “California has always been a land of dreams and contradictions – rugged coasts and red carpets,” he said in his show notes. You could sense that those contrasts fascinate him. “For the first time ever,” he continued, “I bring my dream of living here, sharing my worlds in an experience that celebrates a way of life I have always believed in – a mix of grit and glamour, energy and inspiration.” In his six-decades-long career, there’s nothing in the American psyche that Lauren hasn’t addressed in some way. And yet, the West and its mythos, has been particularly transfixing. So it’s not surprising that he found ways to wring out new insights from archetypes and codes that he’s explored before.
The show opened with a trim, wheat-colored suit worn with an oversized cowboy hat, a Western belt, and antique-style jewelry. The effect was confident and assured – a mix of the urbane and rugged, of masculine and feminine. Floral-pattern bias-cut prairie dresses fluttering atop cowboy boots followed, adding a demure touch, while fringed knits became oversized cardigans or wrap skirts, imparting gravitas. Men, meanwhile, wore dusky denim suits, evoking the hardscrabble dignity of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, or, alternately, looked like suave frontiersmen of classic Hollywood westerns, the models tipping their hats and winking at audience members as they strutted by. The show shifted through different modes, first came looks in an easy key: breezy pleated pants worn with louche white button-ups, preppy sweaters tied around the neck, tennis shorts paired with a creamy brown turtleneck, a shimmering gold safari suit, all imbued with a sense of offhanded elegance. Next, it moved into a more eclectic, youthful beat: madras patchwork mixed with tailoring, athletic gear mixed with prep, polo shirts atop ball gowns or maillots worn with billowing nylon floor length skirts. Lauren seemed to be shaking off the formality of the East Coast, embracing the outdoorsy lifestyle of Los Angeles. It was a looser, freer collection, one that was a snapshot of the breadth and variety of the American style idiom (the wonderful casting of various ages and ethnicities helped tell that story beautifully). Instead of the normal final walk, the enormous cast came out and lined the stairs as Lauren, smiling, took his bow.
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