Madame X. Maison Margiela SS24

October 5, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

It was a great joy to see John Galliano thrive with his return to Paris Fashion Week schedule. This Maison Margiela collection felt like just the right balance of Galliano’s romanticism, and the brand’s knack for garment deconstruction. Imagining how a young, present-day descendant might customise an inherited wardrobe, the designer proposed a series of “exfoliage” dresses where the top layer of the bust had been ripped off and pulled down over the skirt to reveal its lining. He’d then boldly run that silhouette over with a laminate roller and covered the fabric in high-shine varnish, creating a relief effect where it was layered. He evolved that technique in “pressage” dresses and shirts, which you have to imagine came out of a suitcase completely flattened after which they were laminated, their creases and drapes pressed down for eternity. In the “misfit” evening dresses the closed the show, Galliano evoked the gestures of DIY party girls, shortening hems with tape, twisting necklines into straps, and styling pieces back-to-front. Galliano scored the show with the powerful song “Masculinity” by Lucky Love. Its lyrics – “Do I walk like a boy, do I speak like a boy, do I stand like a boy” – served as a reminder of the genderless attitude with which he approaches fashion. With that in mind, the Katharine Hepburn-esque tailoring fused with gestures from the mid-century lady’s wardrobe in a string of coats and suits that nailed our burgeoning appetite for elegant ease and simplified sophistication. Later, Galliano continued his tailoring story in jackets cut in the image of mid-century mauvais garçons – street urchins – and the gestures that shaped their clothes. Galliano cast those movements with Oscar-worthy gusto.

This wonderful Maison Margiela moment was creativity-driven and life affirming: a designer having a ton of fun with fashion, but executing his ideas with the most inventive, cutting-edge expertise. Often its most immediate effect lies simply in the gesture of a mid-century hat made from wire and bin liners, or a polka dot you suddenly realise looks like a cartoon character, or the sassy walk of a model who finally gets to have a good time on a runway. All this, of course, is a product of the authentic and truly passionate love of fashion that compels this designer to imagine stories, dress up its characters in his mind, and execute those fantasies in real life.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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High Relief. Valentino SS24

October 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

For spring-summer 2024, Pierpaolo Piccioli merges Valentino‘s couture roots with ready-to-wear sensibility, creating a touching ode to femininity. Against the backdrop of FKA Twigs performing with her dancers, his models walked in cut-out mini dresses that looked like the floral 3D relief you might find on an ornate plaster ceiling or a precious porcelain vase. He called the technique “high relief”, borrowing the term from sculpture and explaining that, “what you see as decoration becomes the construction itself”. Flying birds were appliquéd into tiny shift dresses, worn unlined with the flesh peeking through. The same high relief technique was applied to denim and printed on stretch knits. “It’s important for women to be free to express themselves through their body and not to be judged,” said the designer of his short, peekaboo styles. He’d been appalled by a spike in violence against women in Italy recently and wanted his show to be a manifesto for wearing what you want and expressing your self freely. He applied his couturier’s touch to the simple shapes, perfecting the cut of white shirts, immaculate kaftans, jeans, and mini-shifts. The clothes had an ease that belied the craft that was lavished on them.

Mothering. Balenciaga SS24

October 4, 2023October 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

With his spring-summer 2024 Balenciaga fashion show, Demna reminds once again that he’s a contemporary fashion visionary. “I have to be me. I can’t repress my creativity. I can’t castrate my vision. I just can’t do those things. It’s not me. So this collection is a celebration of everything that I love about fashion”, the designer said. Demna was coming off a year during which, he said, “I felt very alone.” In reaction, his latest show was a gathering of “the people who have meant most to me in my personal and professional life,” from his mother, who opened the show, to his husband Loïck Gomez, also known as BFRND, who wore the finale wedding dress, and mixed and scored the soundtrack featuring Isabelle Huppert reading out the instructions for tailoring a jacket. There were a whole lot of hot topics to unpack. When Demna talks of what he loves about fashion, he defines it in opposition to luxury. Some of his people were carrying faux passports with boarding cards to Geneva (where he lives) slotted into them – they were Balenciaga wallets, in fact. “Because it’s more about identity, to me,” he said. “I questioned a lot about that: How is fashion created? For me, I have to be honest: I don’t care much about luxury. I don’t want to give people a proposition to look like they’re rich or successful. Because ‘luxury’ is top down, and what is often seen as quite provocative about me is – I do bottom up.”

As for the clothes, it’s all about the quintessence of Demna’s trademark style: humungous tailoring, oversize hoodies and jeans, sinister leather coats and military camouflage were represented. So were plissé evening gowns, floral prints, bathrobes, motorcycle leathers. Vintage trenches and bombers were cobbled together with four sleeves apiece. Multiple evening gowns were made from multiple old evening gowns—black velvet, fuchsia satin, glittery gold. Demna’s jokey accessories were everywhere: Balenciaga sneakers grown even more absurdly vast than ever; supermarket grocery totes reproduced in leather; marabou-trimmed men’s kitten-heeled boudoir slippers, and hand-carried shoes converted into clutch bags. With all his favourite people on the runway – starting from Cathy Horyn and Renata Litvinova and ending on Elizabeth Douglas and Amanda Lepore – it seemed that Demna was truly proud of the collection. “What I showed today was probably my most personal and my most favorite collection, because it was about me; it was about my story.”

Slavic Chic. Magda Butrym SS24

October 3, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

For spring-summer 2024, Magda Butrym emphasizes her vocabulary of signature Slavic chic. Roses are the Polish label’s key signifier, and this season the designer offers a range of iterations of this motif. Silk-petal roses appear on shoes and arm-bracelets; floral shapes are draped around the bustiers, come hand-crotcheted or materialize in form of meticulous lace. The most intriguing version of Butrym’s favorite flowers was created in collaboration with Heven, Breana Box and Peter Dupont’s artisan brand. The gorgeous, blooming necklace made entirely from glass is fit for a goddess. Just like all the sheer, slinky dresses that look light as a feather.

Vivacious Farewell. Alexander McQueen SS24

October 3, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

For her final collection for Alexander McQueen, Sarah Burton was inspired by female anatomy, Queen Elizabeth I, the blood red rose and Magdalena Abakanowicz, a transgressive and powerfully creative Polish artist who refused ever to compromise her vision. Abakanowicz’s tactile artworks served as the show’s venue elements as well as reference point for all of Burton’s magnificent knitwear. That was a vivacious farewell, not only to her loyal fans, but the 26 years the designer spent at the brand, of which 13 years were without Lee. Poignantly, the collection served as a sequel to last season’s show, a proposal Burton – at the time – said was founded in the origins of the house: observing the virtues of Savile Row tailoring before tearing it apart and turning it on its head. For spring-summer 2024, the effect was heart-wrenching. Burton cut her tailoring like it was skin, flaying it open in slices along the ribs, shoulders and busts. With her reference to Elizabeth I lingering at the back of the mind, and her era’s taste for torture, there was something fierce and vicious about Burton’s incisions, aggressive and agonising all at once. After long-time house model Naomi Campbell closed the show, David Bowie’s “Heroes” filled the space in preparation for Burton’s final bow. She came out in her modest jeans-and-shirt uniform, embracing the industry figures who have been by her side since her early years with Lee McQueen – starting with fashion journalists par excellence Susannah Frankel and Sarah Mower – before blowing kisses at an audience that will soon be back to welcome her next chapter. Leaving Le Carreau du Temple, the atmosphere was one of gratefulness rather than sadness. Now the big question: who will replace her at McQueen? I’m rooting for Dilara Findikonglu, a fearless London-based talent who would be the perfect match for the brand.