Men’s – Body. Y/project AW22

January 21, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

There was a lot to unpack in this men’s autumn-winter and women’s pre-fall 2022 Y/Project show. This must be why it was held in a spaceship-sized logistics artery on the northern edge of Paris that every day, all day, connects freight trains and trucks bringing goods into the city with 23 loading bays’ worth of courier vehicles. The epic venue offered beyond-enough room for social distancing. And it made for a runway so long that by my watch it took a full four minutes for the models to transit from one end to the other. Amongst the models were two fashion insiders that are close to Glenn Martens: Camille Bidault-Waddington and Olivier Theyskens. Theyskens said just before the show started: “Glenn proposed it to me. I know him and I love him. We work in the same neighborhood and we both come from Belgium.” The next highlight of the collection: the creative presence of Jean Paul Gaultier. Next week during the haute couture presentations, Martens will moonlight as a one-season only creative director for Jean Paul Gaultier. At this ready-to-wear show, Martens presented first hints of the dialogue: “We took one of his most iconic prints and we interpreted it in a Y/Project way. It’s very layered – you have men’s prints and women’s prints and they go on top of each other.” The trompe l’oeil body prints and penis pants that Martens was referring to, and which will be part of Y/Project’s Gaultier-facing ready-to-wear capsule, were certainly striking and worked well with the Belgian designer’s signature garment distortion.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Travel Somewhere. Lemaire AW22

January 21, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

I have such a sweet spot for Lemaire. I’ve said it plenty of times, and I will say it again: this is the brand that utterly satisfies me in the context of my personal, day-to-day style. Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran just never disappoint me. For autumn-winter 2022, the designers-slash-life-partners turned to the idea of “traveling somewhere” – something we all fantasize about in our harsh, pandemic reality. The destination was purely imaginary, an Impressionistic landscape painted on a 30-meter backdrop by the playwright, scenographer, and theater director Philippe Quesne. It proved a strong foil for what Lemaire described backstage as a nomadic tribe, and the show notes called “an urban horde of modern-day hunter-gatherers.” “Dressing up is a little bit like traveling,” Christopher mused. “You get dressed up, you go to someone, or you have a destination in mind.” Hence a collection composed of thoughtfully layered pieces that neatly spliced ease, movement, and a sophisticated take on functionality. Softly tailored outerwear in the form of a tobacco trench, a coat that can be worn like a blouson or a gilet, a black overcoat with a white lapel and lining, and an elevated take on the denim jacket looked like they could walk straight off the runway and into the streets of Paris to take on a life of their own. A blouse with a red marbled print – the result of a collaboration with theartisan Frédérique Pelletier – brought a bit of psychedelia to a lineup focused on elevated effortlessness. Discreet luxury is, after all, Lemaire’s home turf. Presenting men’s, women’s, and unisex looks on a diverse cast further underscored the designers’ interest in fashions as worn out in the real world, as opposed to on glossy paper, Lemaire allowed. “We can only do half of the job,” he observed. “The rest is the way people move, how they embody that style, and personality.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Parisian Crowd. Ami AW22

January 20, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

This was one, big, star-studded Ami collection. “We have done two digital shows and now we’re back. It’s a kind of resistance,” said Alexandre Mattiussi backstage at his autumn-winter 2022 fashion show. “We wanted to stay brave – because it feels like [in Paris] we can still go to the restaurants, we can still go to the cinemas and theaters, why would you want to cancel a show?” He chose as his venue Palais Brongniart, the old stock exchange building at Place de la Bourse. Mattiussi had the Métro on his mind. “It’s the only place today in a city where everybody is on top of each other. There’s an old lady, a guy coming out from a party, a guy who is on the way to work, kids, grandmothers, different vibes, different cultures. This is the only place where you don’t have the choice of who you will be seated with,” he observed. “It’s a democratic thing. And Ami is about dressing everyone.” So, in the Ami world, Isabelle Adjani commutes with metro, just like Emily Ratajkowski, and wear clothes that draw heavily on the French wardrobe tropes. Trench coats, shearling aviator jackets, slip dresses, black blazers, and tweedy skirt suits – all the timeless essentials, mainly kept in elegant black (and from time-to-time contrasted with neon colours, which wasn’t that necessary). Meanwhile, the big casting shots continued to ring out: Sage and Paloma Elsesser, Ben Attal (son of Charlotte Gainsbourg), and the most gorgeous Laetitia Casta, all brought charisma to the outing. Isabelle Huppert sat front row, chatting to Catherine Deneuve. That’s a very Parisian collection with a very Parisian crowd.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Men’s – Poetic Outerwear. Hed Mayner AW22

January 20, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Hed Mayner’s autumn-winter 2022 collection exists in the space “between despair and ultimate hope“. The Israeli designer explained further: “But I am thinking about the space between you and the garment, layered and protected…you are in a bubble.” Mayner speaks like a poet and he designs like one too, operating instinctively and emotionally, more interested with how a garment will feel on the skin, move about the body, and imprint on a life than how cool it looks or how hype-y it is. It’s this humanity that has garnered Mayner fans across the world, some in fashion and some far outside it, who plug in to the gentle ideas he pushes each season. For the new season, the sloped shoulder is the big story. “It’s not just about a refined jacket,” he said, “it’s about injecting an energy, a vibe.” The vibe here is one of movement – clothes are moving, dripping down off shoulders, pooling around the ankles, or cinching up at the waist, tucking in under heels and into flat buckled shoes. Quilted faux-leather scarves and squares of Liberty fabric are hung around necks or clipped onto lapels and belt loops. In a season of statement outerwear and bold coats, Mayner’s offering will leave a big mark; double-breasted wool styles and clever Macintoshes promise artful protection against the elements. A first foray into prints, done with Liberty fabrics, is a counter to the almost-businessman spirit of his wide blazers. In sensitive pastels, the quilted pants and filmy button-downs look like something “maybe from your grandmother, or something American, even though it’s a British company.” Mayner’s clothing evades provenance like this: based between Tel Aviv and Paris, thinking in a way that’s not really of a place. But it’s certainly of our time. His clothing offers a gentle reprieve from stress and worry. Wouldn’t it be nice, lovely, refreshing to settle into to a Mayner puff of jacket?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Neo Future. Comme Des Garçons AW20

March 10, 2020 | Design & Culture by Ed

“Is it impossible to make something completely and utterly new, since we are all living in this world?”, Rei Kawakubo asked rhetorically in the press notes of her autumn-winter 2020 Comme Des Garçons collection. Looking at some “big” designers for a couple of seasons, this question is an actual punch with a fist. At this stage in her legendary career, what’s still driving Kawakubo is the tantalizing goal of being able to make work that relates to nothing else; that triggers no associations; is devoid of storytelling and free of history, politics, or satire; and is incapable of being interpreted as belonging to any culture or subconscious brew of any of the above. Among the 20 looks she sent out – bubbles, ledged pieces apparently made for furniture, towering headpieces – it felt like she was aiming to design for some post-world state. There appeared to be echoes of Comme Des Garçons collections from the past – the Flat collection; the ones rotated around the idea of weddings and funerals; fragmented reminders of the Lumps and Bumps presentation. Kawakubo admitted it was true – she really let herself remix some of her past works. “Continuing my work as a perpetual futurist, I worked from within the CDG world.” But when you’re having such a well-formed, complex and distinct vocabulary – Miuccia Prada as well comes up to my mind as one of those designers – then there’s no wonder you want to recycle some of those concepts from time to time.