Eyes. Area SS24

February 13, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Area‘s Piotrek Panszczyk is a maximalist; when he loves a theme, he goes all the way with it. This see-now-buy-now collection’ the starting point was eyes, which led to cartoon eyes, which led to the simplified shape of a circle inside another circle. “The eyes as a symbol just always speak to us because they connect so many of our favorite art forms like Pop Art in the ’60s or surrealism in the 1920s; from Warhol to Man Ray,” the designer said. The show opened with a simple mini shift dress in white leather with circular leather appliqués at the chest in the shape of eyes. Eye shapes were also cut out from pink leather to create an oversized coat and matching mini skirt in carnation pink, and another in white, which he paired with a high waist slim maxi skirt. Denim is a big category for Area and every season there is a new novel approach to the fabric. This season, he created a Dalmatian jacquard denim that was truly fantastic. The spring-summer 2024 collection has it all: for editorial, a very Balenciaga-esque long veiled-cape dress. And for those who fall in love with that piece, a pair of hot pants, an oversize shirtdress, a corset top, and of course, wide-leg jeans. Panszczyk can also create impact through minimalism. At the end of the show, the concept had been stripped back to its essence: a gold metallic ring with a crystal floating in the middle, floating in a sea of black cotton. It appeared at the center of a simple oversize cotton shirt, at the halter neck of an easy jumpsuit, and also on the breasts of a slim strapless shift.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Primal Instinct. Area AW23

September 12, 2023September 12, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

While other designers in New York get nostalgic about the 1990s, 70s, or 20s, Piotrek Panszczyk looked back a couple of thousand years, BC, for his latest Area ready-to-wear and couture collection. He’d been “thinking about prehistoric times and how pelts and bones were kind of the first things humans had to build an identity around. It started with this idea of the primal instinct that through the centuries morphed into desire, and then eventually a kind of excess and the life cycle of luxury.” The unsettling ambience of the fashion show, plus the inventive, at points bizarre “bone-y” silhouettes, eventually delivered one of the strongest and intriguing collections coming from the label in the last seasons. The idea was cleverly developed: there were “fur pelt” coats made from fur-printed denim in a variety of colors that delivered runway drama, fur-print, low-slung jeans, and a mini dress with bulbous little godets that spoke to Panszczyk’s commitment to offering real-world alternatives to fantasy. The collection’s highlight: models in big-shouldered jackets or slinky jersey pieces punctuated by beastly rips, the gold-embellished bones of their attackers still elegantly attached to their clothes.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Stages Of Life. Area SS23

February 13, 2023February 13, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Lately, Area becomes more and more experimental, transforming its “occasion-wear” into something conceptual, even metaphysical (through a slightly ironical, tongue-in-cheek lens). The noise of flies buzzed through speakers as the guests waited for the spring-summer 2023 show to start. The invitation came in the shape of two, fake squishy bananas. “This season is all about fruits,” Piotrek Panszczyk said before the show at his studio in Chinatown. “The beauty of them, but also the symbolic meaning of them. In a way you can think of fruit as something fresh, a new start, but when it starts decaying, it becomes about mortality.” And so the show opened with sculptural banana looks: a cropped top and a skirt made of oversized banana sculptures, followed by a jacket with banana sculptures surrounding the bodice, followed by a strapless denim mini dress, all in tie-dye shades of pink, purple, and white which were meant to mimic the colors of bruised, rotten fruit. The next dress was made of small, individually draped and formed banana shapes that were joined together in the style of a bandage-dress, hugging the body and leaving nothing to the imagination. While there were many sculptural pieces on the runway, it was indeed in the softness that Panszczyk found the most success.“This season there’s way more fluidity, we’re all about construction. We really started lightening it up, using laces, and fluid fabrics. Example: the red strapless empire waist flocked tulle gown with black lurex whose pattern brought to mind squashed grapes when wine is being made. Another highlight of the show was its diverse cast, which featured a few older models as well as a few “curvier” models, the latter wearing tailored gowns which hugged their bodies in the right places. “Aging also comes with beauty,” Panszczyk explained. “And I think for us it’s always important to showcase these different stages of life.” He added, “for us, it’s really about balancing these ideas, like how can it be about really, truly fantasy? And how can you evoke this kind of energy in real life?”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Bling Bling. Area Resort 2023

December 9, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

A proper dose of bling-bling and show-girl-attitude keeps the doctor away. For all that, go to Area. Piotrek Panszczyk and his team began thinking about the label’s resort collection from a very literal place – the word resort itself. “If you look through history at people like Yves Saint Laurent, Ungaro, Jean Paul Gaultier, there’s always this idea of going back to a marinier, a rope, an anchor…these symbolic tropes, basically,” he said. “We wanted to dissect these ideas and kind of turn them on their head“. He chose the mussel (“something quite erotic and not really glamorous”) as his starting point, because it reminded him of hometown. “I was raised in Holland, on the Belgium border and that area has a really big mussel-fishing industry,” he explained. He cast the mussel shells in metal and paired them together in a floral pattern that adorned skimpy glamazon-ready bras, bustiers, and bodysuits. They are highly editorial pieces ready to be photographed for magazines and record covers. Garments that are 100% Area. Although his sculptural pieces are certainly works of art, his “more approachable” pieces carry just as much of his energy. Like the pink leather car coat decorated with laser cutouts and embellished with the metal mussel flowers, which manages to be both practical and completely fantastical, and a black column gown whose bodice is draped to resemble two mussel shells, trimmed in crystals. He also cut and quilted leather to resemble mussel shells, which he whipped into a mini skirt (shown with a matching mussel-shell-flower bra, of course). Also successful were explorations around rope, which resulted in intricately constructed tailored pieces – squiggly strips of fabric cut and hand-woven to look like strands of material wrapping around each other – that showed off Panszczyk’s talent. In an open-work coat done in Area’s signature houndstooth print in contrasting shades of black and pink, it hinted at the demi-couture the label is known for; in white crepe, it was a sexy-yet-easy dress suitable for red carpets and parties alike. “If you look at our brand, it evolves, but it never really changes, you know?” Panszczyk said. “Some of these techniques are actual couture techniques that we began exploring during our first show, and no one ever thought we could actually commercialize them, but it’s because we did it like nine times after that. It takes a lot of research and development.” He continues, “I love to see them used in major pieces, but I really love them also in utility pieces; when we can have an amazing denim that can actually be in the closets of a way-broader group of people. It doesn’t really say anything about our creativity, it says something about the way we see our business growing.”

Check out some of my favourite Area bling-blings, ready to kick off the festive season:

Area Cropped Embellished Denim Top

Area Strapless Draped Sequined Tulle Mini Dress

AREA Cropped Open-back Embellished Cotton Top

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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P.S. In this post, I happen to endorse products I genuinely love. If you end up buying something through the links, my site might earn an affiliate commission – which is always nice!

Spikey. Area AW22

September 14, 2022September 14, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

The opening look of Area‘s first ever runway collection was quite a message. A cage dress made from bands of Japanese selvedge denim and covered in jumbo spikes around the body, sleeves and neck, was an immediate plea to be left alone, but worn with flat sandals, you could almost imagine the practical implications of wearing such a garment out in the real world – perhaps to take the train by oneself late at night? If it wasn’t obvious that underneath the spikes there was a wearable sporty denim dress, then the second look, a bustier with a sweetheart necklace and a matching miniskirt also made of denim, and featuring the season’s “folded bondage bow,” as it was named it in the show notes, finished spelling it out. At Area there is constant exploration of the liminal space between aggression and rebellion and making beautiful clothes that sell. “For me it’s always been so hard to understand that there’s this separation between stuff that you sell and stuff that you dream of,” designer Piotrek Panszczyk said after the show. “And it’s really about connecting the dots and showing people how they’re related to each other, and why both are really important.” And so if you looked beyond the jumbo spikes and the folded pyramid elements and the fantastic sculptural pieces that are Area’s signature, you’d notice the sporty jersey track pants with multicolor Swarovski details down the side worn with an easy sleeveless tank with a cutout detail at the chest, or the silver velvet jeans worn with a matching bustier. You’d also spot a series of cocktail dresses that were classic in their execution, including a purple mini dress with a pleated detail at the sweetheart neckline (“Purple is this kind of religious color, there’s something very priest-like about it, so we wanted to embrace that and twist it and show it in a different way,” Panszczyk explained). Area also announced a collaboration with Sergio Rossi for this season, who did several pairs of high heeled strappy sandals as well as a pair of flats. This certainly isn’t my favourite Area collection (feels too overworked), but big thumbs up for all the experimenting.