Feel-Good. Isabel Marant AW23

March 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

At the Isabel Marant fashion show, you had a comforting feeling of familiarity and were reminded who is the epitome of true coolness in Paris. The runway classics, from Anna Selezneva and Liya Kebede to Malgosia Bela and Sasha Pivovarova, hit the autumn-winter 2023 runway in quintessentially Marant designs. Square shouldered blazers, oversized parkas, boyish sweaters, ’80s cocoon coats, conical heeled boots, slinky dresses, denim boiler suits and a killer trousers shape with straight yet slouchy legs. The list goes on. Isabel Marant has long championed female empowerment in everything her label stands for, and that includes making the kind of louche, sexy but always spiritedly casual look that focuses on allowing the woman wearing her clothes to express herself and her physicality. In a season where the everyday and the real are being celebrated and elevated, where good clothes can matter and not be disposable, Marant cannily underscored how much she’s been doing that for years now. That, plus the casting of models who are her stalwarts, women who’ve been around a bit but still look utterly fab, not to mention the celebratory atmosphere of her show, translated into the fact that wearing Isabel Marant means looking good and feeling good at the same time.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Chic, No? Saint Laurent AW23

March 1, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Anthony Vaccarello‘s work at Saint Laurent has reached new levels of creative success since the designer started to read the YSL glossary and began translating its nuances and quintessences into contemporary interpretation of painfully hot, Parisian chic. The autumn-winter 2023 collection, presented on an elevated, chandelier-lit runway that looked exactly like the one on which Yves presented his shows in the 1980s, focused on a look as simple (and eternally good-looking) as a masculine, big-shouldered jacket worn with a pencil skirt. This power-look came down the runway in various fabric and silhouette iterations, nearly always kept in black or white with pops of tartan plaid or earthy brown. Some of these sharp blazers evolved into flowing, floor-sweeping capes of silk or velvet (for the evening), or were nonchalantly wrapped with plaid scarves (for a rainy, Parisian day). There’s really not much more to say about the collection except for the fact it’s another impressive exercise of refinement coming from Vaccarello, and a very seductive, smart, and commercially-vital homage to the YSL legacy. In the voice of a Catherine Deneuve-esque Parisienne, “chic, no?“

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Le Sentiment. Officine Générale AW23

January 22, 2023January 22, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

I gasped a couple of times while browsing the Officine Générale autumn-winter 2023 collection. Those were gasps of utmost awe with Pierre Mahéo‘s take on the eternal French style, which is a combination of restrained elegance and exploration of the idea of uniform. For this designer, consistency of dress is a form of elegance that he not only studies but has practiced for decades. He’s always admired people who, by choice, design, default, or whatever, stay true to their own style. He, too, continues to wear, and cherish, a timeworn pea coat. “It’s about a sentimental relationship to clothing,” the designer offered backstage before the show, recounting how last autumn, when his team was brainstorming this collection, he realized he wanted to just focus on the two colors he’s been wearing himself for the past 30 years or so. “I don’t want to change things, I want to perfect them,” he said. Monochro-Mania therefore took shape as an ode to blue and grey, the two elemental colors of every Parisian wardrobe. For Mahéo, it was an essential exercise in exploring why he does what he does: why those colors, why he reinterprets them season after season, why continuity makes him happy despite the fashion pendulum’s inevitable swings. And, especially, expressing many things with a spare vocabulary, “in the same way that Serge Gainsbourg famously stuck to five pieces of clothing.” For the new season, the Officine Générale uniform might be a simple-looking T-shirt in wool jersey, layered over another and paired with matte wool trousers that are slightly more ample than they were last season. Here and there, Mahéo slipped in some iconic references, variously a military-inspired jacket that nods to the olive one worn by Al Pacino in Taxi Driver; a steel gray velvet jacket – perhaps worn with a touch of pink – that plays on Wes Anderson’s register; or a style of cape long favored by Prince. Here and there, a swirled print cropped up on a shirt and trouser, or a blue silk flower on a shirt (obsessed!). On the runway, the clothes gave an overall impression of reassuringly chic Rive Gauche style. Love it.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Shades of Paris. Ami AW23

January 21, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Ami is a brand that orbits around the idea of Paris. Parisian chic, Parisian grayness, Parisian je ne sais quoi. Sometimes, it’s just too much Paris. Last season, the brand shut down Sacré-Coeur and coaxed French actor Audrey Tautou out of semi-retirement to open the show. After the brand’s ridiculous appearance in an episode of the third season of Netflix’s series Emily in Paris, in which the titular marketing whiz orchestrates a campaign featuring Ami-logo balloons, show attendees might have expected to have Paris’s perkiest American envoy Emily Cooper leading the latest line-up. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and Alexandre Mattiussi went back to basics. “I’ve already done a lot about that Parisian postcard vibe,” he said. “After 12 years, this is what we’ve been known for, this Parisian chic, easygoing energy. But I felt with this collection it has to be something else.” Something else turned out to be an Opéra Bastille location and a pared-back collection that focused on semaphoring languid ease. The label shelved the bright colors in favour of a muted palette of vanilla, butter, and gray. Great emphasis was put on fluid silhouettes – generous overcoats cut with a certain amount of slouch, pleated wide-leg trousers, flat shoes worn with nubbly cappuccino-hued socks – and comfortable fabrics. As Charlotte Rampling closed the show, radiant in a navy-blue pant suit, one sensed a vibe shift coming from a brand that at one point became too all-over-the-place.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Being Dressed. Saint Laurent Pre-Fall 2022

June 16, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

“I never gave up on being dressed, even when the trend was about sportswear,” says Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello of his pre-fall women’s collection, the until-now-unseen curtain raiser to his sublime and epic winter show, presented earlier this year. “I am glad that people want to dress up again, because for me nothing has changed.” Never let it be said that Vaccarello doesn’t have unerring instincts. When the rest of the world was letting it all hang out while being holed up at home, he was showing hyper-colored tweedy suits dripping with jewels on an icy tundra, or had marabou and pop-floral chiffon marching across a vast Sahara-like vista; big themes, big landscapes, big drama. In their way they were as much paeans to hope for the future as statements of intent about how you might want to dress in the present. Except change was to a degree part of the narrative: Vaccarello also took on board the prevailing desire for comfort and ease, he just didn’t do it in the obvious, cliched or un-YSL of ways; there were modern compact jerseys and fluid silks to move in and to feel free in. This pre-fall collection builds on that as much as planting the seeds for the aforementioned winter, which he describes as “lots of volumes, more rounded shapes, a bit of Art Deco, a bit ’90s and a bit of Poiret.” His trick is to take all of that and work it through some of the classic Saint Laurent-isms. The columnar line for evening that Yves loved so much now looks perfect for daytime, partnered with a tough belted leather jacket and an armful of bangles. The iconic le smoking also makes it to the other side of the dawn, as an eased up suit, a cape, or a sharp-shouldered coat. Those are just some of the strong outerwear statements on show here: oversized faux furs, cozily chic but with a casual flick-the-collar-up attitude; voluminous-shouldered cocoon coats and nifty leather trenches thrown over some particularly ravishing slithery lingerie slip dresses, a hint of romanticism given by their guipure or frothy lace edges. Finishing all this off: stretch velvet high-heeled boots; gilt-trimmed square-toed pumps; and frame topped handbags. Magnifique.