A High Moment. Dries Van Noten AW24

February 29, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Dries Van Noten‘s show was definitely a high moment of the rather “play-it-safe” first days of Paris Fashion Week, where many brands based their collections on vapid, blurry ideas and concepts. The Belgian designer titled his autumn-winter 2024 collection “The Woman Who Dares to Cut Her Own Fringe“. “This means for me audacity, but also considered… She is in one way really tender but also very strong.” This too: “it’s about style and not so much about fashion.” The Yves Saint Laurent quote – “fashion fades, style is eternal” – is forever relevant, and during fashion month you really see how neglected that wisdom is. Van Noten’s latest collection was pure style, because how else can you call a gray sweatshirt fabric with iridescent sequins, or lavender silk duchess worn with faded denim jeans?

The show started with a camel coat, double-breasted with a stand-up collar and rounded sleeves, but its neutral minimalism was more of an appetizer that prepared your taste buds for the next dishes. This was a collection of many colors, often in surprising pairings or trios, even better if Van Noten could add strange textures ranging from shaggy fur-like mohairs to tinselly metallics. “There is no process and there is especially not a system. The last thing that I want is a system because then it feels organized. These things need to happen in a very spontaneous way.” Emphasizing that sense of spontaneity, zip-up hoodies were worn with one sleeve off and wrapped around the neck like a scarf and button-downs were shown back-to-front, the collars popped under stretchy nylon shirts. The offbeat, irreverent mix was the thing, but he also made a point of saying, “every piece has to stand on its own. It’s important that it’s not just looking nice when it’s an outfit, every piece has to have its value.” See, there’s a big different between “style” and “styling“. Most shows we see today are pure styling, a combination of clothes that separately would mean nothing. With Van Noten’s clothes, you’re equipped to create style.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!

Hey, did you know about my newsletter – Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!

Construction. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt AW24

February 28, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

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:

Self-Tie Silk Cape Blouse

Mange Debout Caped Midi Dress

Fitted-Back Oversized Button Down Shirt

Long Pinched Trench Coat

Reversible Wool Maxi Skirt Suit

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!

Hey, did you know about my newsletter – Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!

Currency. Vaquera AW24

February 27, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

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!

Hey, did you know about my newsletter – Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!

Streamlined. Toteme AW24

February 6, 2024February 6, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

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…

ED’s SELECTION:

The Mid Heel Croc-effect Leather Ankle Boots

Embroidered Silk Shirt

Draped Fringed Wool-blend Jacket

Croc-effect Leather Knee Boots

Organic Denim Skirt

Striped Organic Cotton-blend Mini Dress

The Peep-toe Satin Point-toe Flats

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!

Hey, did you know about my newsletter – Ed’s Dispatch? Click here to subscribe!

Unhinged Galliano. Maison Margiela SS24 Couture

January 27, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

The moment the Maison Margiela haute 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.