Create The Surprise. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt SS24

September 26, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is on everybody’s lips in Paris. Although considered a newcomer by the industry, she in fact was a ready-to-wear designer at Demna’s Balenciaga for a couple of seasons. Spring-summer 2024 collection comes in perfect continuity with her previous outing, deliberately designed to complement the ideas that are at core of the brand. The raw, intense, dazzling light of the summer sun at its zenith is used in a quasi-extreme vision that aims to question seasonality and obsolescence through a counterpoint and paradox. In the same spirit, Marie Adam-Leenaerdt’s garments multiply their uses, with systems of ties, fastenings and buttonholes. They can be worn as desired, far away or close to the body, and we appropriate them to create our own personal wardrobe, our own collection. Objects stripped of their initial function are adorned with dress codes, and hybridization is a given: Marie Adam-Leenaerdt’s signature. “Create the surprise“, she says. “Thus, the portable beach hut becomes, almost literally, a dress, in the same referential fabric – a conceptual garment“, the designer enigmatically says. The collection is enriched by some Margiela-isms (like at Vaquera; it seems that this Paris Fashion Week will be big on references to the Belgian designer): a trompe-l’oeil stiletto heel, pool and sand prints, and over-sized, raw denim.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Big Chic Energy. Vaquera SS24

September 26, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee opened Paris Fashion Week with a bang, delivering big chic energy with their Vaquera fashion show. The designers emerged for their bows in matching sunglasses, big eye-obscuring shields of the kind worn by A-list celebrities. They said their collection was a consideration of the ways in which stars (and the rest of us) negotiate lives mediated by a 24/7 barrage of cameras. Do you want to be seen or do you want to hide? Is there a difference in a world where everyone is wielding an iPhone? The collection had a couple of gritty Margiela references, especially all the faux fur elements and XXL silhouettes, but in case of Vaquera, it’s never about knocking off, but revisiting their fashion gurus. After opening with a gold fishnet catsuit, the breasts outlined like bullseyes, many of the “normal” looks that followed were split down the back, exposing bra straps and panties. Other looks used underwear as decoration. The pink satin briefs fixed to the front of an otherwise conventional skirt might not have registered as all that outré on the runway, but on the street it’d be a different story. Standing up along the runway, like fans crowding a police barricade at a red carpet or outside a fashion show, the crowd hooted and hollered in appreciation. There aren’t many collections in Paris that deliver Vaquera’s kind of edgy fun. Hopefully, some bold starlet will wear Vaquera’s bleached denim ball gown.

The Eye Has To Travel. Bottega Veneta SS24

September 25, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

“The eye has to travel“. Matthieu Blazy‘s sumptuous spring-summer 2024 collection for Bottega Veneta seemed to be a visual response to that phrase, coined by Diana Vreeland, the legendary fashion editor who happened to love the noisy jewellery around her employees’ necks to know where they were at all times. The collection was an audacious, charismatic and bold journey, but not inspired by specific locations or geographies. It’s a travel seen through a rather philosophical lens, as Blazy said, “it’s about what you can become after this journey as well; everything you get from a journey transforms you.” Leather wrap poncho topping a leather trench. Shaggy salt-and-pepper coat. Crocheted raffia dresses with the giant pompom embellishments. A large “straw” bag made from leather intrecciato. Those were just a couple of instances when you really want a run-of-show listing the garments’ textile information and the techniques employed to create them, like a map legend. Blazy’s aim was to “create some kind of new culture”, and he succeeded (interestingly, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons investigated the topic of “culture about clothing” this Milan Fashion Week). The Belgian designer who reinvents Bottega believes in the transportive possibilities of fashion. Wear those “banana leaf” sandals or carry the bag and “you escape.” Rachel Tashjian of Washington Post summed it up perfectly: it’s a “very Roland Barthes way of seeing as a form of social exchange, in which every passing person is a jumble of signals and symbols, and you put together a narrative in your head that’s half-reliable assumption, half-fictional fantasia“. But you can extract the backstory, and this was still an extraordinary collection, more like couture than ready-to-wear when it comes to the craftsmanship that went into individual pieces, from the cowl neck top and “bias-cut” skirt made from strips of different colored leather to the chunky woven jacquard coat that read almost like fur. “Where people call craft dusty, I think it’s the opposite,” said Blazy. “It’s a world of possibilities.”

Monte Verità. Bally SS24

September 25, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

At Bally, a quiet revolution is upon. Simone Bellotti is the new design director at the Swiss brand, replacing the brief stint of Rhuigi Villaseñor, who left abruptly in May. An experienced designer, Bellotti spent 16 years at Gucci under Frida Giannini and Alessandro Michele, and is now tasked with bringing the dusty brand into new territory. His debut is promising, and much more convincing than the other Milanese debut – Sabato De Sarno at Gucci – this season. For his spring-summer 2024, Simone mined the label’s rich archive “that holds incredible treasures of made in Switzerland craftsmanship”. Bellotti was drawn to explore a mysterious, expressive and subversive flip side of the spirit of the country’s culture. He came across the story of Monte Verità, a utopian community of free, creative souls founded in Ascona at the turn of the 20th century. A haven for spiritual regeneration and artistic and mystical practices, it was visited by famous intellectuals and artists – Carl Jung, Herman Hesse, Rudolf Steiner, Paul Klee and many others sojourned in the retreat, basking in the healing atmosphere of the alpine landscape. The collection he sent out was a fine, sensible exercise in balancing the contradictions between practicality and imagination, elegant design and subtly humorous details. The result: A.P.C., but luxe. A niche that was unfilled in Milan for years.

For both genders, outerwear was the collection’s core, cut with soft precision mostly in high-quality leather. Elongated straight-line or boxy blazers paired with matching shorts, pencil skirts or relaxed trousers were offered alongside A-line dusters and sleeveless zippered bombers and treated with a fresh, youthful approach. Eccentricity and the “out-of-control element,” as Bellotti put out, came by way of taffeta minicrinis, poufy ultra-short ballerina skirts or minuscule tutus made from swirls of rosettes and girandoles, peeking out from masculine trench hcoats in shiny black leather, or paired with a short-sleeved, square-cut office shirt in crisp Swiss poplin. Adding a note of witty homage to Swiss traditions, a strawberry print gracing both a pretty one-piece bathing suit and a small rectangular handbag recalling a kid’s miniature travel bag was drawn from a picnic tablecloth. ‘Appenzeller’ talismans in the shape of tiny cow bells were rendered into bags’ charms, hanging from the straps of trapeze crossbody bags in bright, cheerful colors. Finally, after all these years of uncertainty, Bally found its person.

Understated Eclecticism. Jil Sander SS24

September 25, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Jil Sander – the designer – is a minimalist, but Jil Sander – the contemporary brand – is minimalist no more. Backstage of their eclectic spring-summer 2024 fashion show in Milan, Lucie and Luke Meier explained that their collection was a study of shapes. The two knit dresses were examples of that with their clingy ribbed bodices blossoming below the waist into fuller skirts. Rhinestone necklaces signaled that the brand is open to a bit of opulent bling. Experiments with shapes were further translated in tailoring: the designers cut jackets as boxy as squares and paired them with sailor-collar shirts and shorts to accentuate the silhouette. Or else they elongated their lines, showing duster coats on the guys and extending the men’s jackets nearly to the knees while raising the waistband of baggy shorts well past the navel. There was a looseness to their approach to tailoring; it suggested that they feel freer to play than they did in their earlier days at the label. That freer sensibility held true of other categories too. Button-down shirts were accessorized with metal discs on their collar points, like built-in jewelry, and vests came with twin portholes on the upper chest outlined in the same polished chrome. The portholes were a little on the large side, but you appreciated the instinct. No quibbles with the giant cat face prints on a couple of tunic dresses.