The Anthony Vaccarello method for Saint Laurent is about finding a distinct element from Yves’ vast archive, and blowing it up on the contemporary runway. In 1988, YSL had an obsession with billow-y, sheer fabrics that wrapped the female body, but at the same time left nothing much to imagination. Following this trope, Vaccarello presented an all-sheer collection yesterday in Paris. It did look like a statement. But there’s one burning question: with Saint Laurent’s huge platform and worldwide influence, wouldn’t it be great to cast at least a couple of models with curvier, fuller shapes? Wouldn’t that make a collection like this even more fiercer and, to some extent, grounded in reality? The transparency of all these silks seems to only embrace the thinness of Vaccarello’s models. Not even the fabulous powder puff marabou jackets that were casually draped over the arms helped conceal the Ozempic-ness of this collection.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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It’s quite ironic that Vaquera, a formerly New York-based brand with the best humor in this industry, opens Paris Fashion Week. It’s like a pill for the overdose of snobbishness that will avalanche on us throughout these ten, long days. Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee are candid about the harsh reality of being designers in 2024. Through their clothes, they manage to communicate these oh-so-not-fashion, yet relatable on human level, dilemmas. The time crunch between seasons, lack of days off, their bank accounts. What really ticked them off this season, they said, is how much they found themselves caring about money. “Fashion these days is dominated by the crudest form of currency,” DiCaprio said. “We felt like in the past, artistic merit, a vision, and being punk was a bit more of a powerful currency.” And so, in a punk move, they developed an American currency print and graffiti’d Andrew Jackson’s eyes or painted over his face with hearts, and stamped the word FAKE over the White House. And then they used it for a matching button-down and tie, the cummerbund on a loose-fitting pair of trousers, and the three-dimensional rosette bodice on a cocktail dress. Toying with another currency – sex – there were cone bra tops and cone bra-printed t-shirts, titty twister tees à la their icon Vivienne Westwood. DiCaprio and Taubensee aren’t naive enough to think that (real) fashion is an artistic pursuit, but they aren’t cynical enough to believe that it’s all about dollars and cents, either. They would like a day off, but then again, they wouldn’t change it. “I’m grateful for where we are,” DiCaprio said.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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I’ve never really put my finger on Toteme until its first runway show in Paris presented during the last haute couture week. In the words of the Swedish brand’s creative directors Elin Kling and Karl Lindman, the autumn-winter 2024 line-up is “designed for real-life situations”, and it certainly delivered such hero-pieces. Toteme is all about feminine minimalism that sits somewhere between The Row, Khaite and Fforme, but at (a bit) more affordable price point. The strong-shouldered silhouettes play out best with masculine-inspired outerwear and tailoring, offset with sheer knits and streamlined, soirée dresses – creating a subdued yet self-assured effect. Texture comes to the fore with shearling, cashmere, wool bouclé and feather-like fil-coupé, all rendered in restrained colourways. The pieces are familiar yet elevated enough to make the brand seem right at home as it took its first steps on the Parisian circuit.
And now here are a couple of Toteme pieces you can get right now…
The moment the Maison Margielahaute couture show started, it was clear that no other collection we’ve seen this week really matters anymore. John Galliano did the most noble thing a contemporary designer can do: make people believe in fashion again. And confirm that couture is still really, really needed, because it can be the most beautiful, visually striking, inspiring and astonishing form of escapism.
In the last couple of seasons at Margiela, it was clear that Galliano is returning back to himself as a designer. But this spring-summer 2024 couture collection feels like a total release, total encapsulation of the unhinged Galliano – even not from the Dior days, but rather the early 90s shows in Paris under his own name, that stunned with theatricality, pure romanticism and casts of model so authentic you believed you’ve been transported to a different epoque. The scene: under the Pont d’Alexandre III after dark, down rain-soaked steps, with the Seine roiling alongside, a rancid Parisian nighttime joint with bare floorboards, cafe tables, dim mirrors, and a bar overflowing with spent drinks. The runway mise-en-scène suddenly turned into a living Brassai’s 1920s and ’30s portraits of the night-time underbelly of Paris’s clubs and streets. Galliano’s transferences into cutting, ultra-extreme corsetry, padded hips, erotically sheer lace dresses, and wildly imaginative hair, chiffon-masked makeup, and eerie doll-like body-modifications took a year. A year to work on a production that seamlessly mixed film – which played in the mirrors – into the scenario, showing lovers, dancers, and gangsters prowling the banks of the Seine. To make it seem that these strutting denizens, fugitives from fights, or half-dressed from sexual encounters, clutching their moon-bleached coats or scrappy cardigans around them were actually congregating from the riverside and into the club before our eyes. Through some of Galliano’s beautifully delicate hourglass dresses there was pubic hair to be seen through tulle and lace (they were merkins on underwear, but still bound to stir up a storm). Some of his indescribable techniques looked almost like walking paintings, greenish-pink watercolor nudes with blurry dabs for eyes. All the images and impressions from this show will be burned on the mind’s eye for many reasons and many years.
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“I wanted the collection to feel quite graphic rather than romantic because I was thinking about Fendi and how, under Karl, there was always an element of ‘futurism,’” Kim Jones said of his latest haute couture collection. “I didn’t go back to look at what Karl did, but I like to take the essence of it.” This couture collection landed especially well, because Jones didn’t base his concept on a specific Karl Lagerfeld collection that much. This was finally a Jones for Fendi collection, not a dig into the archives. The designer developed trompe l’oeil decorativeness of an unexpected kind, which appeared to be one of the biggest highlight from this very streamlined, sharp collection. “We wanted to do fur, but without using fur or fake fur,” he said. “So we’ve done it with embroidery instead.” Embroidered with miniscule filaments, and sewn in densely overlapping rippling formations, the results are feather-like and feather-light to wear, be it as a coat, dress, or pencil-skirt. There’s also something for the couture-minimalists: the opening look was as spare and reduced as could be, specifically a black, strapless calf-length column Jones called “a box-dress.”
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