PFW

One Foot in Bed, One Foot in Reality. Acne Studios AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

The new season Acne Studios collection is quite close to Jonny Johansson‘s recent outings: incredibly tactile, playfully deconstructed and intentionally ‘unfinished’ if you know what I mean. The difference is that it’s a direct response to current lockdown feelings and isolation moods. Spending lockdown at his Swedish country house, the designer has found it a sort of pastoral escape from reality: “a dreamscape, fantasy situation,” he said. “It’s been quite an easy place to focus, a comforting world to be in.” There’s a certain relaxed, cozy feeling in the opening, vintage-y looks. Distressed dressing gowns and fuzzy fabric pajamas, floral nightgowns and distended knits appropriated the cutesy fabrics that furnish his home, thick knitted socks stuffed into sandals… so Acne Studios and so, so desirable right now, during what seems to be a global fatigue. Stripped back, some of the underlayers (notably a tie-dye, silken dress, or a button-down micro-floral ’90s number) were charming as well. Johansson explained he was also designing with the future in mind. His somewhat severe snapback to reality, which appeared toward the end of the collection, revolved around the weddings and funerals precluded by gathering restrictions – hence the monochromatics that followed a palette of well-washed pastels. It felt somewhat dystopian, gaping crochet and wader boots read more directly as apocalyptic than churchgoing attire, but a twisted lace version of a wedding dress or some black taffeta tailoring would certainly suit cocktail hour. This season, designers are grappling with the notion of a post-pandemic wardrobe, and nothing has yet been decided – although it feels unlikely that many people will want to extend a year spent in pajamas much longer than is strictly necessary. Acne Studios offers that in-between wardrobe, one foot in bedsheets, one foot in actual life.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Healing Powers. Thebe Magugu AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

The first days of digital Paris Fashion Week are definitely lively – especially, thanks to new-gen designers who aren’t really Paris-based. In the last several years, South African designer Thebe Magugu observed friends and relatives overhauling their lives while studying traditional healing. Compelled by their connection to their ancestors, these young creatives began to learn practices with roots in antiquity, an experience that altered their perspectives. “It’s called ukuthwasa, and the way it manifests itself is quite interesting because it starts as a sickness, a kind of spiritual illness,” explained Magugu on Zoom to Vogue. “It causes people to take this monumental journey where you leave for months on end to train under a traditional healer. In the past it was something that felt far away from me, but now, as peers have received those sorts of callings, it’s fascinating. Once they return, they are completely changed.” This movement within African spirituality served as Magugu’s starting point for his powerful autumn-winter 2021 collection. The tension between old and new is a familiar fashion theme. Still, it has rarely been approached through the millennial South African experience, and never with healers as creative collaborators. Stylist Noentla Khumalo’s background in the subject adds a layer of authenticity and the collection’s key print. It’s through the articles used within her divination – goat knuckles, bones, seashells, and dice among them – that the pattern comes together, each element photographed by Magugu against a bed of straw. Abstracted from their original purpose and transferred onto pants and blouses, the items make for a kinetic design that draws the eye closer. The tale behind the floating dice and textured stalks isn’t instantly evident, but Magugu strives to create pieces with the kind of visual impact that requires no explanation. “With my collections, I always hope you can appreciate the fabrications or the construction even if you don’t know the whole backstory,” he says. “The story is an added plus.” Despite his claims to the contrary, Magugu is a detail-oriented storyteller whose pieces could come with footnotes and citations.

A certain surreal sentiment is perceivable clothes. An ombré cape dress laden with fringe was originally intended to be a costume, but Magugu decided to include it in the mix at the last minute. “It was conceived as the film’s opening look, and originally I wasn’t going to offer it as a commercial proposition,” he says. “It has a tactile feel to it, and it’s really a garment that showcases all this handiwork.” The importance of touch became a recurring theme, with tufted fabric from famed Japanese textile maker Mr. Adachi San and textured eco-prints by Larissa Don that utilized botanical transfers of imphepho, a flowering licorice plant used in traditional medicine. The materials also served to reference scarification, the raised surfaces on blazers imprinted with a proverb in braille that read, “What you do for your ancestors, your children will do unto you.” With cozy, straightforward pieces currently in demand, Magugu’s refusal to go humdrum was admirable. Sure, the buyer-friendly essentials are present – a blue and white shirtdress feels ready for a post-lockdown street style moment – but the excitement lies with esoteric pieces.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Core. Marine Serre AW21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Digital Paris Fashion Week started today, and it hit off with Marine Serre‘s “Core” collections. We’ve got used to Serre’s dystopian visions, which appeared to be ironically precise (she pioneered face masks on the runway seasons ago…). However, her autumn-winter 2021 line-up is all about optymism and hope. The collection wasn’t heralded by a shallow short movie,  but by a website, http://www.marineserrecore.com, which went live at her regular spot on the Paris schedule. The website is a chronicle of all that goes into her designs, and ergo her view of the world, as much as it is a reveal of her new offering and a joyful, life-affirming celebration of family, friends, and community. “Core means the core of the brand, in much the same way as the idea of the core of a computer,” Serre said during a preview. “It’s all of the memory; how everything connects. Pragmatically,” she went on to say, “it’s been three years since we began. We’ve been doing a lot, being an extremely creative brand; we felt the urge to talk, ring the bell, raise the alarm, and reflect that in what we’ve created. This is maybe another moment. An opportunity to look at the interesting processes we’ve put in place; to really think about the garments and the materials we make them from – the transformation of those is really part of our creativity.” The collection is essentially a blueprint of all that Serre has accomplished since she launched the label, filled with her signatures. It’s also a pretty breathtaking and brilliant statement of what can be achieved in the space of three short years; what can emerge when you harness talent with a clear sense of purpose and convictions about what constitutes your values.

There are plenty of Serre’s upcycled silk scarves, draped around sinuous black dresses, which have been accessorized with talismanic metal belts and petite chain-strap bags, while other scarves have been worked into tunics and tees. Deadstock leather in shades of black, tan, and brown is graphically patched, with an anthropomorphic feel into blazers with squared-off shoulders, biker pants, and jeans-style jackets, sometimes layered up with short dresses created out of antique tablecloths. And the now iconic crescent-moon-motif-embellished bodysuits and regenerated denim or else was mixed with more hybridity in the form of sweaters and dresses collaged out of upcycled knits. All of this was shot on a terrific cross-generational cast of characters, kids included. “It was interesting to revise what we’d already done,” said Serre. “Basically the goal was to bring more real life to our design process, to bring garments into daily life.” Her solution was to ask the team to try things on, give their feedback, then modify to make everything more relatable. The website also houses a charming series of depictions of those within the extended Serre label family, wearing a few of the pieces, and engaged with their routines. “Cooking, spending time with your mother, in the garden, playing with your dog…pleasures which are simple,” said Serre, describing the scenes. “Fashion has always been about a dream, and I don’t like that. Here, fashion is the last thing you see. What you see first are the people.” Serre’s thinking about the site is akin to the way she thinks about her designs. Visit, spend time, come back, visit again, get to know what something means and what it stands for. Nothing should ever be fleeting, or disposable, gone in the blink of an eye.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Be Bold, Be Extra. Charles De Vilmorin Couture SS21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Couture is changing, and the best sign of that is the appearance of new, young talents. When Charles de Vilmorin launched his first collection after graduating from design school last year, no less a French fashion legend than Jean-Charles de Castelbajac was singing his praises: “Charles designs his dreams, paints his creations on the skin as on paper – and these silhouettes transform his muses into psychedelic conquerors…. His future is passionate.” Then, in December, Jean Paul Gaultier sponsored the young designer’s guest appearance on the Paris haute couture calendar. His spring-summer 2021 debut was virtual, but there’s no arguing that De Vilmorin is enjoying a charmed rise. The exuberantly patchworked puffer jackets of his first collection evoked Niki de Saint Phalle’s iconic Nanas. He must feel a connection with the artist. In the video he made this season with Studio L’Etiquette, De Vilmorin operates a paint gun, an obvious reference to the shooting paintings of the early 1960s with which De Saint Phalle made her name. The late artist attached buckets of paint to her canvases, then invited people to shoot at them; the paint would splatter all over her work when the bullets hit. De Vilmorin’s technique is more controlled, but his Instagram account reveals that he did paint his textiles by hand before they were assembled into the 11 looks in this collection. Flowers, butterflies, and psychedelic nudes are his chosen motifs, and the silhouettes, which are worn by all genders in the video, are playful. He likes a puffed sleeve and a full skirt and sprays of feathers at the hem of a dress. The short film stars De Vilmorin’s friends, and he says he keeps them in his mind when he’s designing. “You don’t need a special occasion to wear something extra,” he insisted. Hope to see more of his bold fashion in the near future!

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Romantic Melancholy. Fendi Couture SS21

| Design & Culture by Ed

Kim Jones‘ big debut at Fendi‘s womenswear hit off with a haute couture show. You might know that I wasn’t his fan at men’s Louis Vuitton, and I’m not overly obsessed with his current Dior menswear venture. So I didn’t expect much from his arrival at Fendi. The spring-summer 2021 couture show is an example of a fashion spectacle, where everything wows the viewer except the actual clothes. First, the literary and artistic sources that shaped Kim’s Fendi line-up started in Charleston Farmhouse, the 16th-century Sussex retreat of the Bloomsbury set located not far from the village of Rodmell, where the designer was partly raised and owns a house. Young Jones would spend school trips exploring the house and learning about Bloomsbury’s bohemian members. Those dreamy stories stayed with him. Second, his Fendi collection showed a demonstration of how Jones expresses himself in form and decoration in womenswear.  Of carving out that silhouette, Jones said he observed “the reality of what women around me are wearing. I have friends that just buy couture clothes, and they don’t buy big ball gowns. They buy real clothes, things that fit their bodies.” Above all, he wants to create work “reactive to the time we’re living in.” And three, enter ‘Orlando’, Virginia Woolf’s time-traveling tale of androgyny and fashion’s favorite lexicon for the study of genderlessness. “’Orlando’ was published in 1928, and Fendi was founded in 1925,” he pointed out. The “journey from Bloomsbury to Borghese” interpreted Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s frescoes of Charleston in hand-beaded prints and the marbles of the Galleria Borghese in painted tailoring, meanwhile dresses evoked the wet drapery of its Bernini sculptures. It all sounds delightful and thorougly considered, but the effect was overcharged, heavy and most of the time, simply unflattering. In the prerecorded show, Jones echoed ‘Orlando’’s themes in a coed cast featuring many of his high-profile friendships: Demi Moore, Kate and Lila Moss, Christy and James Turlington, Adwoa and Kesewa Aboah. The family constellations celebrated Fendi’s values as a matriarchal fashion dynasty, whose class-act custodian, Silvia Venturini Fendi, still serves as artistic director of accessories and menswear. Joining the cast were her daughters, Leonetta Fendi and jewelry designer Delfina Delettrez, whom Jones has now named as creative director of the brand’s jewelry. Delettrez’s supersized murano glass chandelier earrings accompanied each look, and must have been heavily inspired by Romeo Gigli (if this name doesn’t ring a bell, you better Google him!). Tailoring felt more rigidly structured for male anatomy, framed by floor-sweeping capes. At times, forms grew shapeless, like a pink look of highly textured layers topped off with a lace coat webbed from roses or a mound of marbled garments draped over Naomi Campbell (I love Naomi. But this look didn’t serve her at all – she drowned in it!). Jones’s juxtapositions culminated in split-personality dresses hybridized from half an evening gown and half a blazer or shirt. The inspiration was found in the sketches of his predecessor, Karl Lagerfeld, who left 54 years’ worth of archives behind him when he died two years ago. Lagerfeld’s Fendi was epitomized by Roman modernism, a handsome glamour that often found time for quirk. Jones’s approach was romantic (and suffocating) melancholy in contrast. Of course, most ‘major’ debuts go wrong. It’s the beginning of a new chapter at Fendi, and I’m looking forward to see what Jones will bring next to the table.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.