Slow Moments of Delight. The Row SS24

June 21, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Row‘s appearances on the Parisian fashion week schedules are always slow moments of delight. The spring-summer 2024 by collection makes you truly question all that pointless noise that other brands are emitting to just be noticed for an Insta-second. A selection of the 80 looks for spring, designed and dreamed up by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, appeared on mannequins through an enfilade of handsome hôtel particulier salons on Place Vendôme, punctuated with hand-picked furniture from Parisian galleries, naturalistic floral arrangements, and waiters serving plates of red currants. There was no music; simply an ambiance of calm grandeur suggesting a certain cultivated, very Parisian sensibility. That got perfectly conveyed by the clothes.

The collection was introduced with an explanation that an expanded range of men’s wear yielded pieces that overlapped with the women’s offer. Can you spot the knee-length, black leather trench that reappears throughout the lineup? The leisure shirts with their retro stripes? The jeans that have been skillfully shredded at the knees, enhancing their desirability? Note, too, how the tailoring that seemed intentionally boxy and generous on a female frame is as intentionally streamlined on the male counterpart. Although the designers were absent, their presence was felt across the spectrum of this covetable wardrobe: laid-back layering; intellectual silhouettes; and lived-in looks that might be as basic as a button-front shirt and chinos. For every item in a dressier register – see the hand-embroidered slip dress worn over a gray T-shirt (very Martin Margiela), or the pumps with higher heels – the collection suggested a casual confidence. The lineup was also particularly palette-diverse, as primary hues alternated with pastels – see the bold red high-neck dress and pale pink cashmere polo. An outfit that comprised an outdoorsy jacket, pine green corduroy shirt, and jeans was at once erudite and everyday, as though it conveyed some admixture of vintage inspiration and social studies. New versions of signature bag styles were unapologetically capacious and as faithful to The Row as any logo. We all know that Paris style is ineffable and cannot be reduced to a single archetype. But the studio here can absorb the local culture and benefits from the proximity to manufacturers in France and Italy, where a large part of the collections are made. If a retail location to rival the stores in Los Angeles, New York, and London would give The Row its Paris bona fides, let’s agree for now that the brand has definitely perfected its je ne sais quoi.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – PharreLl’s Take. Louis Vuitton SS24

June 21, 2023June 21, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

In anticipation of Pharrell Williams‘ debut collection for Louis Vuitton, the actual meaning of a “fashion designer” became a big discourse on the internet. Do we even need a skilled designer when a brand like Louis Vuitton hires a big (and undoubtedly stylish) entertainment industry name instead? What we’ve seen yesterday in Paris was a show (more of a business-, than fashion-, noting the Grammy-like front row featuring everyone from Beyonce to Rihanna) in its purest sense. The Voice of Fire choir singing loud; the Pont Neuf and what seems half of Paris lit up and ready to accommodate the mega-event; the Jay-Z concert afterwards… and what about the actual clothes? There was plenty of merch, as well as true eye-candies, that’s for sure. But Pharrell seemed to approach the debut more like a styling exercise. A bit of Nigo and Kim Jones menswear sensitivity here, a couple of Wales Bonner and Bode touches here, a sprinkle of Virgil Abloh nods there. The Karl Lagerfeld-level ego was palpable as well (even a Chanel-like tweed jacket popped in one of the looks). As you might already know, the garments were heavily covered with the green pixelated Damier duds, and all sorts of LV monograms known to man. Of course, the most powerful of all were the accessories, the brand’s primary money-makers. Zingily colored Keepalls and Almas and Neverfulls and Speedys, worn in clusters. To be truly honest, the collection wasn’t neither bad… or outstandingly good. But it will definitely sell loads.

Playful Derision. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt AW23

March 29, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

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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Real. A.P.C. AW23

March 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Ending this Paris Fashion Week (it did feel like a month, though) coverage with an A.P.C. collection that captured the authentic, real, charismatic youth of Paris. “The kids are all right” was Jean Touitou’s conclusion of his latest show. Paraded in front of a crowd of press, brand friends and buyers in typically low-key style at the brand’s Rue Madame base, the collection was a highly personal presentation, modeled by Touitou’s daughter Lily and her teenage classmates from Paris’s École Diagonale. Perhaps Touitou felt the need to emphasize the family-run spirit of the label he founded in 1987. After all, last week came the announcement that L Catterton, the LVMH-backed private-equity group, had taken a majority stake in the company. “The young people who are going to walk this runway are like veterans. They experienced the raging of their hormones in a bunker with their parents during the COVID crisis,” he said. “That crisis could have wiped us out as a brand. We survived that war by getting stronger. Everybody you see here was born in 2006, and I think it’s a good metaphor for the sort of transmission process we started recently.” What followed was a determinedly youthful take on A.P.C.’s well-honed vision of Gallic urbanity, each look a nod to what Touitou called “a tribe” in a backstage debrief postshow. There was a Take Ivy preppiness to Japanese selvedge denim miniskirts and high-waist jeans worn with stripy shirts and shiny penny loafers; a street-inflected attitude to gray marl sweatpants and nylon flight jackets; a grungy insolence to flannel shirts worn with slip skirts, fluoro T-shirts, and scuffed plimsolls. And what stunning teenagers! All with their own carefully considered quirks – a snazzy Bananarama hairstyle here, swooping black eyeliner there – and forming a touching antidote to the celebrity-packed catwalks to which we’ve become accustomed. “I love this idea of no casting. You don’t say to people, ‘You’re too tall, too fat, too this, too that.’ Everybody was just cool about it,” said Touitou, who confirmed that, post-partnership deal, he will remain creative director of the brand alongside his art director wife, Judith.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Ruched & Twisted. Y/Project AW23

March 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The ruched and twisted shapes, the sculptural pieces draped from wire – with the latest Y/Project collection, Glenn Martens revisits his greatest hits. “The whole idea of this brand is to reinvent techniques, construction, and to experiment as much as possible. That’s what we like to do,” he said backstage. Though the where-do-the-jeans-end-and-the-boots-begin question is sure to keep construction obsessives guessing, this collection was less oriented around pushing new shapes than it was in pumping up the surface interest of the clothes. Maybe because he is so well-versed in denim now at Diesel, it was the major leitmotif in this show. There were baggy jeans that buttoned up on themselves and boxy jean jackets, and even a faded denim caftan, but the real marvel was how Martens cut the material into thin biomorphic shapes, shredded it, and used it as embroidery – on everything from wool coats to clingy body-con dresses. A pair of tulle evening gowns, one in blush pink and the other in ivory, were also embellished with the denim shapes. They were the most delicate pieces ever to walk down a Y/Project runway.