Spring will come back. Looking back at Dries Van Noten‘s delightful spring-summer 2021 and I’m dreaming of sunny days, blooming colours, twirling butteflies and refreshing sea breeze…
Live Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
I knew I would end up being obsessed with the new Prada, co-designed by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons. The nylon wrap-coats from the show (which we’ve all seen live-streamed from Milan back in September), with utilitarian, triangle-shaped pocket on the back, yet draped and cut in a lady-like, statuesque silhouette, are the definition of contemporary elegance and a sharp exercise in refinement.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Hidenori Kumakiri creates shape-shifting garments at his Tokyo-slash-Paris-based label, Beautiful People. The former Comme des Garçons pattern-cutter makes classic clothes bordering with fantastical volumes, a mix of femininity and 1950s couture sensibility combined with the Japanese avant-garde. The brand presented the spring summer 2021 Side-C Vol.5 Motional collection, which explores today’s world, where we are stuck in our homes, and overwhelmed by emotions, with a striking film directed by Takahiro Igarashi. The collection sends message of optimism and rebirth, with the bustle-like shapes, and big and flowing volumes. “Side C, the transformative look at classics that focuses on the layers and the in-betweens of clothing, finds another dimension: a flowing, dynamic one. By creating an interconnecting system of pockets inside the garments, and filling them with small beads, movable silhouettes are created. The beads flow as the body moves, sits or stands, allowing for endless reconfigurations. A skirt turns into a couch, a dress into an armchair, only to revert back to what it was,” the press note says. The result is a look at the classics and the layers in between the clothing – a collection filled with an interconnecting system of pockets inside each look which allows them to be filled with small beads. With each movement, the shape and volume of each look changes into an endless array of silhouettes. And when topped off with pillow-like hats, there’s another nod to home and the familiar elements of our humble abode. Incredible.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
ONRUSHW23FH, the Barcelona-based label created by Albert Sánchez and Sebastián Cameras, advocates an experimental and high-quality design, aimed at a versatile audience that has an interest in in the boundary-less field of art and design. The brand reached out to me with their latest collection, and it’s truly worth sharing. Seldom do people in fashion come across concepts such as the ones developed by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, where liquid society and immediacy are implied – and the “Almost There” 2021 collection has its roots in those ideas. “The collection is based around the concept of celerity that as individuals it marks us and induces us to a certain self-demand, creating a distorted reality resulting in an intangible objective. From this point on, we reduce this utopia and disfigured scenario to the most visual and uncomplicated image of “arriving late” in our everyday life“, the designers explain. The garments have undergone through a complex process by mixing 3D prototypes of toile on the mannequin, looking for a rich visual imagery of immediacy starting from details such as someone waking up, a sort of “misplacement of a garment“, caused by chaos of being late and the process of arriving at the destination at any cost. One of the most significant resources in being able to achieve the effect of immediacy is either accomplished visually, as it would be in the case of a twisted or superimposed garment created as a result of the speed from the action that has been carried out, as well as the introduction of more rigid, but transformable structural figures which illustrate the agility that specific objects can provide, thus being the ones that give closure to the meaning of the collection. The collection features atemporal and gender-unspecific silhouettes where garments are completely displaced from their centres. For instance, gabardines in which the neck becomes the armhole; or shirts and trousers, presented with the components that construct them completely twisted. Concepts such as “nomadic couture” are used, enlighting compositions in which the traditional purpose of each garment shifts, as a case in point a blazer built into a skirt or a trench-coat as a dress. Simultaneously, “layering” as a resource plays a leading role not only in the creation of silhouettes but also on the illusion of superimposition of trousers or tank tops, resulting in a “trompe l’oeil” that deceives the eye and makes it unclear whether it is a single garment or a set juxtapositioned pieces. Clothes, which are food for thought, but as well look simply cool.
Discover the brand here.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
Sophie Buhai is one of my favourite, contemporary labels specialising in jewellery. The L.A. talent is rewriting the rules of luxury with her handmade, softly sculptural, sterling silver and gold vermeil blings. Her spring-summer 2021 collections delivers all her signatures with some gorgeous updates. From freshwater pearls to sensual curves and bulbous shapes (think earrings resembling water droplets), those pieces are here to last forever. Find it alongside new statement ear and hand pieces, inspired by time spent in the garden, featuring metal renditions of the vines from the designer’s favourite spot. Those pieces – which are actual wearable art – make me think of Claude Lalanne’s delightful works (the artist especially known for her collaboration with Yves Saint Laurent – ‘Les Robes Lalanne’ and bodily adornments from the 1969 haute couture collection). In her signature, intricate electroplating process, objects like leaves, twigs, petals, berries and other organic materials are completely transformed into copper. But back to Buhai. The “Fantasy Collection” is now available for pre-order on her site. I recommend taking a look at it…
Photos courtesy of Sophie Buhai’s website.
Design & Culture by Ed 