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.
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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.
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Sheer. Saint Laurent AW24

February 28, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Anthony Vaccarello method for Saint Laurent is about finding a distinct element from Yves’ vast archive, and blowing it up on the contemporary runway. In 1988, YSL had an obsession with billow-y, sheer fabrics that wrapped the female body, but at the same time left nothing much to imagination. Following this trope, Vaccarello presented an all-sheer collection yesterday in Paris. It did look like a statement. But there’s one burning question: with Saint Laurent’s huge platform and worldwide influence, wouldn’t it be great to cast at least a couple of models with curvier, fuller shapes? Wouldn’t that make a collection like this even more fiercer and, to some extent, grounded in reality? The transparency of all these silks seems to only embrace the thinness of Vaccarello’s models. Not even the fabulous powder puff marabou jackets that were casually draped over the arms helped conceal the Ozempic-ness of this collection.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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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.
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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.