Intensity of Living Today. Lemaire Aw25

February 1, 2025 | Design & Culture by Ed

In Paris, once you had to stand in a long line to enter a Christian Louboutin or Chanel boutique. Today, those stores are relatively empty, and the (even longer) lines are now shaping in front of Lemaire and Buly 1803 stores. That’s really telling about the contemporary customers. And honestly – they’ve got taste.

Lemaire, the product of Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran‘s highly-coherent creative dialogue, is a brand that although makes big numbers, still feels like a safe, intimate space for people who feel their best in soft minimalist sensibility. For the autumn-winter 2025 co-ed show, the duo delivered what they do best: chic layering, no-nonsense outerwear, witty accessories, and body-skimming silhouettes inspired by Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham’s post-rehearsal outfits. Tran said that the clothes sum up “the intensity of living nowadays.” Strokes of Almodovar-esque scarlet red made the offering feel exciting and livid. The Lemaire designers know what they’re doing.

ED’s SELECTION:

LEMAIRE Beaded Cord Keyring

LEMAIRE Printed Denim Jacket

LEMAIRE Twisted Belted High-rise Barrel-leg Jeans

LEMAIRE Mini Fortune Croissant Paneled Leather Shoulder Bag

LEMAIRE Wool And Cotton-blend Jersey Midi Skirt

LEMAIRE Wool Cardigan

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Costume. Valentino SS25 Couture

January 31, 2025 | Design & Culture by Ed

Let’s be honest: this haute couture season was brief and left you feeling hungry. Maybe it wasn’t a famine for beauty, as Andre Leon Talley liked to say. There was way too much beauty – of the conventional kind. Hundreds of metres of tulles, thousands of hours of handwork, millions of digital impressions. But to me, this couture signalled one thing: it’s a growingly archaic commodity. Gone are the days when Raf Simons at Dior presented absolutely contemporary-looking vision of eveningwear. Or Karl Lagerfeld showing couture sneakers at Chanel. This season painfully missed true fashion moments. There was absolutely nothing close to a spectacle like THAT last John Galliano collection for Maison Margiela. Demna shows couture for Balenciaga only once a year, in July, but I really wished he saved this season. In the meantime he wore a T-shirt while being awarded with the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. And a plastic bag to Alessandro Michele’s debut Valentino couture show. I feel him.

Speaking of that debut, it was a brief moment of high this season, but as Angelo Flaccavento very rightly observed, this was a parade of great, convincing costumes, but not that great clothes. In the end, haute couture is a form of very precious, very costly applied art that’s being worn – at least once in its lifetime.

Michele really showcased all the possibilities of the Valentino artisan savoir-faire. To such extremes it felt dizzying (as the show’s title, “Vertigineux”, suggests), even nauseous. Huge ball-dresses dipped in embroideries and embellishments, meaty lace, massive crinolines, sumptuous excess all over: this certainly could be a separate costume department for a Fellini film. Unfortunately, as it’s the case with costumes, they wear the wearer. This isn’t very couture.

So, if Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s Bronwyn Newport ever wears anything straight from that runway, Britani Bateman has full right to question it as costume.

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Haute Refinement. Dior Men AW25

January 29, 2025 | Design & Culture by Ed

Kim Jones‘ sensational Dior Men collection is exactly what happens when a designer is unburdened from another super-demanding job (meaning Fendi, the Roman brand where the British designer just couldn’t find his rhythm). This autumn-winter 2025 menswear collection was evidently thoroughly considered and planned, like an haute couture outing. The most stunning silhouette was either a trouser nor a skirt. It was a coat, worn backward, with the collar creating a kind of asymmetric cummerbund, the tucked-in sleeves forming “pockets,” and buttons running down the back. The silk-ribbon blindfold some of the models wore gave a pinch of extra-seduction. If only Dior womenswear was this good. Maybe when – as the rumor has it – Jonathan Anderson takes helm?

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Awaken. Lanvin AW25

January 28, 2025 | Design & Culture by Ed

When the news broke that Peter Copping is taking Lanvin under his wings, a collective sigh of relief went through the industry. The absolutely talented designer, known for his deliciously refined stints at Nina Ricci and Oscar De La Renta, is a master of supreme elegance and chic femininity. And Lanvin – the oldest operating French maison – just needed a person like him after all these years of creative confusion that started since Alber Elbaz’s departure back in 2015. Yes, Lanvin was steadily falling into oblivion for a decade.

Peter’s debut collection was a beautiful return to form – his and the brand’s. It felt like a much-needed moment of true savoir-faire – especially after the embarrassingly dishonest, faux-elegant Jacquemus outing (in which the designer knocked off everything from Pieter Mulier’s Alaia to Matthieu Blazy’s Bottega Veneta on the way) that took place just a couple of hours before.

The unquestionable success of Copping’s autumn-winter 2025 collection lies in the effortlessness with which approached Jeanne Lanvin’s legacy. There are no literal references to her 1920s silhouettes or archaic-looking eveningwear (a huge mistake both Bouchra Jarrar and Bruno Sialelli, Copping’s predecessors, did during their blurry tenures). What’s present is a sense of understated modernity shaped by artisan techniques, unpretentious tailoring and richness of materials (these velvets! those crushed-pleats!). The finale dresses – especially the gold number – are just what the red carpet needs today.

This is a great beginning of a Parisian rebirth.

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New Age. Dries Van Noten AW25

January 22, 2025 | Design & Culture by Ed

The new age has begun at Dries Van Noten under Julian Klausner‘s creative direction. One good thing: his debut menswear collection doesn’t feel as plain as the studio-designed womenswear we’ve seen back in September.

But his autumn-winter 2025 confusingly feels like a collection that could come from another Antwerp-originating brand: Maison Margiela (seen through John Galliano lens) or Ann Demeulemeester (black coat cinched at waist with thin string-belt and black feathers). The Willy Vanderperre-shot lookbook gives yet another Belgian designer’s distinct vibe: Raf Simons.

I hope that in the proper runway debut come March, Klausner will somehow show us what Dries Van Noten means without Dries. This outing doesn’t say much.

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