Victoria Beckham Ribbed Wool Sweater
Marie Adam-Leenaerdt Bow-embellished Leather Wedge Mules
Jil Sander Silver-tone Earrings
Marie Adam-Leenaerdt
What’s Hot (29.2.24)
Construction. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt AW24
Belgian designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is working her way through the building blocks of a woman’s wardrobe, and her third runway collection proves she has a capacity to do that. The show she put for autumn-winter 2024 is devoted to the skirt. Her idea was to test the skirt’s versatility and to explore its possibilities. There were a couple of midi skirts that she also showed as trapeze dresses, the waistband slipping asymmetrically off a bare shoulder; coats with collars that looked more like waistbands; and bags of all sizes designed with horizontal zips – remove the middle sections and guess what they look like? “Skirt skirt, dress skirt, coat skirt, bag skirt,” is how she put it on her press notes. Even the wedding dress finale was constructed simply, like a skirt with hoops that gave it its tenting volume. Adam-Leenaerdt used to work at Demna’s Balenciaga, and the designer is very assertive in making the codes she formed at the brand now her own. So no, these volumes, saturated color palettes, and cape-coats aren’t Balenciaga knock-offs. They originally were 100% Marie Adam-Leenaerdt.
Here are couple of absolutely amazing Marie Adam-Leenaerdt pieces you can shop now!
ED’s DISPATCH:
Fitted-Back Oversized Button Down Shirt
Reversible Wool Maxi Skirt Suit
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Create The Surprise. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt SS24
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.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Playful Derision. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt AW23
One of the hottest Paris Fashion Week runway debuts belonged to Marie Adam-Leenaerdt. 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. The Belgian designer presented her collection in what she called a “soulless” conference room. This arguably male domain was a foil for her sophisticated women’s designs, which might have read as bougie if there weren’t something so “off” about them – like jackets with small shoulders that slanted toward the chest, strange geometric silhouettes, and the collection’s hero pieces – oats with standing lapels. Adam-Leenaerdt style is all about hints of playful derision. But there’s nothing gimmick-y about it: her garments are trendless, and appeal with the strength of the cut, the precision of the construction, and the luxury of the materials. There’s been a lot of discussion about the female gaze as it applies to “sexy” dressing; Adam-Leenaerdt seemed to be turning hers to ideas around femininity and propriety. This is a very covered-up collection that reconstructs a woman’s curves into geometries of enveloping drapes, with proportions either blown-up or shrunken. A dress that seems to have a box inside of it is tied with a couture bow, other dresses seem to have three arms. There’s a deliberate domestic aspect to Adam-Leenaerdt’s work. Women have often been relegated to the home, but she wants to transform and celebrate ordinary aspects of life – “to reveal the beauty in the ‘has-been’ elements of the daily world, to divert them, to have fun with them.” To that end Adam-Leenaerdt reimagined a folded table napkin as a white dress, and she fashioned dresses out of tablecloths. Her aim, it seems, is to make us engage with what is immediately around us, by taking something known, a code or a silhouette, and giving it a subtle strangeness that makes you stop and adjust your vision.
Follow the designer on Instagram: @marlastar
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Design & Culture by Ed 