PFW

Haunted Glamour. Thom Browne AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Most designers go for their signature codes this season – which basically means commercial and safe pieces. Thom Browne also went back to his core, but comparing to other brands (especially American ones), there’s nothing banal about his latest offering. For autumn-winter 2021, Browne’s men’s and women’s collection is an outrageous flexing of his prowess, garments made on such an extreme scale they’re almost overwhelming to look at, let alone think about wearing. There is not a shred of coziness, comfort, or relaxation here. If anything, Browne’s silhouettes have become stricter, more confining, more formal, unapologetically dramatic and glamorous. His starting points are always deceptively simple, like fusing black-tie clothing with sport apparel. But in result, we’ve got cinched and corseted, fanned out skirts, and shrunk jackets to little shrugs layered over voluminous wool piqué and flannel shirtdresses. A ball skirt that looks like layered puffers took more than 100 pattern pieces to make. A pleated trench coat required 209 patterns. The most mind-boggling pieces are made of curved plissé, inspired, Browne says, by the lines ice-skaters make on the rink and those that slalom skiers do as they race down the mountain. Underneath those bubble helmets and big-time bows are models of all genders, but Browne insists gender really doesn’t matter. He’s making beautiful, at points haunted clothes for everyone.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Body, Body, Body. Schiaparelli AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Daniel Roseberry has already proven that he’s a genius haute couture designer. With his autumn-winter 2021 collection for Schiaparelli, he also confirms he knows how to make ready-to-wear a ‘wow’ moment. “I really like the freedom in which Schiap explored things,” Roseberry told Vogue over Zoom. “You know, while Chanel was making buttons made out of double C’s and it was very much an exercise in branding, Schiap’s buttons were peanuts and wrenches and hammers and birds and insects. It’s kind of this referential gymnastics that I feel like we can have here, as long as it feels like part of one world and one language. People know they can go other places for more polite designs.” If Roseberry has more freedom than his creative director predecessors that’s largely down to the fact that Lady Gaga wore his designs at the U.S. inauguration. Overnight, as he put it in the days afterward, Roseberry had a place in fashion history, and the label itself had a new international relevance and cachet. The dove brooch (it reminds the pieces Yves Saint Laurent sent down the runway in his spring-summer 1988 couture collection) that Lady Gaga wore to the inauguration has become a visual trope; it perches on the shoulder of a fitted black minidress among several other surreal bijoux and its outline is painted in black on a white button-down. Instant Insta-favourites are of course all the “body-ornaments”: the breasts and pierced nipples, ears, eyes, noses, and lips – all of it has been cast in gold, moulded in leather, or quilted in wool crepe. “I don’t want to be precious about any part of the body; you know, it’s about kind of celebrating the whole thing,” he said. But Roseberry is no doubt well aware that breasts are a cultural flashpoint. Exploiting that flashpoint, he managed to render all the other designers playing with lingerie and kink this season look tame. The fashion industry urgently needs a provocateur, and Daniel is the ultimate answer.

“Live” collage by Edward Kanarecki.

New Romantic. Magda Butrym AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Magda Butrym, the Warsaw-based designer, delivered a brilliant line-up for autumn-winter 2021. With every season, the designer consistently builds her style vocabulary, which is the right balance between impeccable tailoring and chic eveningwear. The new collection, entitled “New Romantic“, photographed by Sonia Szóstak and starring the one and only Małgosia Bela, is the dream wardrobe for re-emergence: a timeless, shearling coat in beige, a le smoking suit covered in sequins, masculine blazers that mean business and some of the most delightful dresses we’ve seen from Butrym up to now. Flowers are a reocurring motif for the brand, with its origins based on Polish folklore culture. This time, the designer went one step further and presented a fabulous, sequinned, red capelet that looks like an actual blooming rose. And then we’ve got the pink peony cocktail dress, which just needs a fittingly dramatic occasion to go to (even if still wearing a face-mask).

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Predictable Hits. Givenchy AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

It’s Matthew M. Williams‘ second season at Givenchy, and it’s quite clear what he’s about: celebrity-driven moments, Insta-friendly accessories and a well-edited clash of different aesthetics that should hit the Gen Z target. While his debut was promising, his autumn-winter 2021 collection didn’t feel overly noteworthy. It really looks like a mash-up of Riccardo Tisci’s Givenchy-era style tricks with a pinch of new Bottega. Which of course isn’t a crime – I bet it will sell pretty well. The biggest highlights were the big, furry coats and gilets with matching horned balaclavas, giant “extra-terrestrial” mittens and hoof-like platform shoes, fit for a centaur. Presented in the industrial Paris La Défense Arena with headlights hovering above models’ heads like they were on the run from a flying saucer, the collection was very sci-fi inferno but with the lockdown-inspired outdoorsy twist we’ve become accustomed to this season. Supersized Cuban chains are here to stay, while hardware on tailoring and as embellishment on dresses continued Williams’s clash between the Givenchy ateliers and his own industrial world. He translated that same sensibility into his first digital red carpet moments, in evening dresses shingled with rigid sequins, which cascaded into vivacious hems like the crashing of waves. Their lines reflected Williams’ ongoing proposal for a women’s silhouette, expressed in knitted bodycon numbers or column dresses. In overall, the collection reads to me as “proper” – a similar feeling I had with Kim Jones’ ready-to-wear debut this season.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Hints of Boldness. Jil Sander AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

This was a classic Jil Sander collection by the Luke and Lucie Meiers. Even too predictable. The life-and-work partners’ collection proposed clothes as tools for giving a purpose to people’s step in the wake of the pandemic. “It’s a time of change for everybody. To be able to achieve change you need to feel empowered to do so. The way you dress changes the way you feel about yourself,” said Lucie. Luke added: “You want people to feel better, to feel good, strong, powerful; that this is our future. This is our medium to do so.” Within the purist frames of their expression, they conveyed that message in hints of boldness, from the decisive sculpting of coats and skirts to hand-spun dresses with fringing cascading from the bias, and lingerie dresses with glamorous lashings of lace (very Old Céline). Big, ornate crystals made princely appearances. Still, it’s the slightly ‘wrong’ elements that make their Jil Sander offering interesting – think operatic gloves in pastel colours or the top-slash-necklace made of strings of pearls that opened the look-book. The designers have proven they can master a wardrobe that quietly but solidly evolves around the idea of ‘soft minimalism’ every season. I kind of wish they went a bit further and did something more surprising in the near future – maybe the brand’s new owner, Only the Brave’s Renzo Rosso, will let them champion that riskier side?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.