Natural-Fake, Real-Artificial. Loewe SS23

October 2, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

After his terrific JW Anderson show in London, I was sure that we’re not ready for what’s coming at Loewe. Jonathan Anderson‘s spring-summer 2023 collection hits different. After questioning the fakeness behind our screens, here he set out to explore the fake in nature. A giant fiberglass anthurium grew out of a hole in the floor in his show location, and he adapted the unreal-looking flower for clothing, molding bodices that wrapped around the torso and bra cups out of the suggestive blooms. These were not femme fleurs in the way fashion used to conceive of the term – for one thing the anthurium’s nubbly spadix looks like nothing so much as an erect phallus; for another the flower is poisonous. The women who will wear these dresses fancy themselves more dangerous than dainty. There’s a new element of provocation to Anderson’s work since the pandemic. And a sense of idiosyncratic, Loewe community: Dev Hynes, Caroline Polachek, Hari Nef in the front row, and on the runway in look 1, Taylor Russell, who stars alongside Timothée Chalamet in the Luca Guadagnino (also present in the f-row) film Bones and All. Russell wore a breath-taking strapless black velvet dress with panniers jutting out from the hips, a silhouette lifted out of the Baroque period via the 1920s robe de style that is once again appearing on the runways. Anderson revisited it in three other colors. Repetition was a motif in and of itself here. There was another quartet of strange dresses whose fronts were swagged and suspended from triangular wire peaks that reached up toward the face. Still more short styles – you could hardly call them dresses – were made from enameled metal painted with flowers. As for the babyless baby carriers, they looked sort of like fabric-covered versions of the gold breastplates that made such an impression on the Loewe runway a year ago. It all goes back to the anthurium flower, which Anderson’s show notes described as “a product of nature that looks like an object of design and [was] treated as such.” Another major highlight: couple of tops and trousers in the pixelated squares of Minecraft glitches. They were “this odd illusion that suddenly breaks the pattern,” like avatars from the virtual world made flesh. Real fakes. Anderson keeps pushing the limits.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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City Warrior. Isabel Marant SS23

October 2, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

It’s one of those Isabel Marant collections which she might have designed with her eyes closed. And there’s nothing bad about it. This super chic, super Parisian, super effortless Marant look is eternal. For spring-summer 2023, she doubled down on that approach, with a look that was abbreviated, exuberant, and went from soft to tough – often in the same outfit. The designer clearly went back to basics, as it were, revisiting the moment when she started her label in the mid-’90s through to the dawn of the 2000s. There was a new mood in the air then, streetwise and raw, but also with a kind of world-weary, knowing charm. It was a moment when a different kind of woman – a little grunge, a little boho, a whole lot cool – made herself known. “I wanted to go back to a certain fragility of femininity, but still keeping in mind the Isabel Marant woman, who is a bit of a city warrior,” said the designer. She referenced the work of the brilliant late photographer Corinne Day, who pretty much photographed Kate Moss before anyone else, but who also, importantly, spent her sadly all too brief career photographing women as they would like to be seen themselves. You could also say that that’s quintessential Marant: a label where women can see themselves in it. The very personal era that Marant revisited was writ large in this collection. Racer cut tanks and swingy little dresses in patchwork configurations of metallic-threaded floral silk chiffon came with zippered leather minis and moto pants that had been washed and washed to get the perfect lived-in patina. Laser-cut suede jackets were as long as the shorts and fluttery skirts they were worn with. Camo looked as if it had been sun-bleached, cut into an oversized jacket or cargo pants, another from the Marant arsenal of killer trousers. And to underscore what makes Isabel Marant, the woman and the label, tick, there was a profusion of artisanal detailing, from the tiny seed pearls sprinkled across an organdy camisole, to the macramé threaded across an organza blouse.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Killer Chic. Schiaparelli SS23

October 2, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Daniel Roseberry has rounded the three-year mark at Schiaparelli. From Lady Gaga at the inauguration and Bella Hadid in Cannes to an exhibition at Musée des Arts Décoratifs, his first cycle has been a smash. “The past three years we’ve been building this reputation, this language through the couture and the red carpet,” he said. “The next three will be about building the business side of it too.” The task at hand, Roseberry acknowledged, is holding onto the excitement and exclusivity that surrounds Schiap as Surrealism goes more mainstream and the brand becomes more accessible. “I don’t want it to become a schtick,” he said. Grabbing the world’s attention is easier than keeping it, as any old hand in fashion will tell you. But Roseberry is approaching the task well fortified. The ready-to-wear’s backbone is tailoring – quite literally in the case of a jacket embellished with ribs, after a famous Elsa Schiaparelli skeleton dress suit circa 1938. Others are accessorized by the body-part baubles – eyes, noses, pierced nipples – that are Roseberry’s inventions and have become the identifying markers of the label. “The more extraordinary, the more luxurious, the more exquisite, the more people are inclined to buy,” Roseberry said of his suits. The denim hews to the same more-is-more formula; the dusting of gold sequins across the backside of a pair of jeans, designed to look like sand on the bum, was especially inspired. An evening capsule was born from a summer holiday in Italy, where Roseberry saw women sunbathing in solid-colored swimsuits and big, bold jewelry. He re-created the look here via a brown halter dress suspended from a gold neck plate with a kiss in the middle, and a hooded dress in the brightest red silk jersey. There’s a direct line from Elsa’s skeleton suit through Yves Klein’s body paintings, which once inspired Phoebe Philo at Céline, to Roseberry’s own interpretations, painted in gold on an icy blue column. No schtick here. Just (killer) chic.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Rick’s Glamour. Rick Owens SS23

October 1, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Seeing three XXL tulle dresses cascading down the Palais De Tokyo’s courtyard staircase during a Rick Owens show felt surreal. The king of dark fashion gone princess-y? But then, this was a quite natural step for a designer who like no else revisited the Old Hollywood glamour in his recent offerings. And to be truly honest, these tulle dresses had nothing to do with the ones we see on Giambattista Valli or Molly Goddard’s runways. Owens leaves no room for sweetness. “When you’re proposing more options aesthetically people open their minds in other ways too,” he said. “They become more empathetic.” Who can look askance at a proposal like that? In general, the designer’s use of materials this season was remarkable. The translucent rubbery latex look of the opening pieces? Cowhides collected from the food industry that are treated with natural glycerin to give them their suppleness and sheer quality, “like wearing gelatinous fruit roll-ups,” the show notes elucidated. The spliced stripes of the voluminous numbers at the end were actually lacquered denim. From a distance, they might have been eel. Equally as singular is what Owens did with those materials: draping sinuous dresses with vestigial sleeves like furled wings and long trailing hems, exaggerating the arches of the shoulders of jackets up to and past the chin, creating odd, yet compelling volumes. The show’s many zip-front bombers were paneled like scarab carapaces. The ancient Egyptians considered the scarab a sign of renewal and rebirth, which is relevant. Egypt is a country Owens loves lately. He named this show “Edfu“, after a temple on the west bank of the Nile. The bell-shaped frilled jackets that he repeated in solid brights and vaguely art deco-ish diamond patterns were another novel development.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Hyper-Body-Revealing. Ludovic De Saint Sernin SS23

October 1, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Ludovic De Saint Sernin‘s spring-summer 2023 fashion show was a usual affair of hyper-sensuality and hyper-body-revealing, with references ranging from Robert Mapplethorpe (the late photographer’s signature look and red anthuriums, which were his favourite, phallocentric objects to capture) to the Y2k style. De Saint Sernin’s work erases binaries and treats one and all to the same eroticizing gaze. Anok Yai wore a halter top split down the middle that exposed her midriff and a lace skirt knotted over cigarette pants. It was one of the collection’s more conservative looks. There were baby-doll dresses for all genders, yoga clothes in the form of stretch leather tanks and shorts that can also be worn to the club, and barely hanging-on crystal mesh bikinis and micro skirts. Picking up from last season, De Saint Sernin continued his push beyond partywear. Tunics and pants with a loungey feel were made from a plissé material he likened to the late Issey Miyake’s famous pleats. The stripes on a pair of low-slung jeans were achieved by pulling the denim’s threads and then patching different pieces together. The reference for the denim, he said, was Britney Spears. “When you look at my work, it’s actually very TBT; it’s very throwback to my youth where I used to admire Britney, Lindsay, and all these girls, but I couldn’t dress like that.” Going on, he said, “If I can inspire the current generation, or older or younger generations, to just listen to their hearts and be trusting that they can be unique – this is literally my mission.”