Contemporary. Courrèges AW23

March 2, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Nicolas Di Felice‘s take on Courrèges is truly taking shape. In the autumn-winter 2023 fashion show, emerging from the fog, the first model stared down at the phone in her hands, her face lit up by its LED screen. The brand’s creative director has been thinking about all the time that we spend on our devices. The hoodie the model wore was hunched forward, its volume sort of flattened, and di Felice cut armhole slits into the front, for easier access. There was a leather motorcycle jacket, a tweed coat, and a vinyl caban cut the same way. Di Felice is on his phone as much as the next guy, he admitted. But watching his friends text when they’re sitting at opposite ends of a bar on a night out, rather than walking over to each other for a chat, he realized that our pocket-sized computers are changing more than our postures, they’re changing our lives. “I don’t judge,” he said, “but I question it, and I wanted to try to reflect on it.” There’s a lot of heat around Courrèges. Di Felice excels at the kind of body-baring clothes young women today respond to. Last season looked like the morning after a long night of raving, the girls carrying their sandals in their hands; this season, they’re headed to the office on the metro, in shades of black and gray, and even pinstripes, although in nothing as conventional as your standard pantsuit. Tunics with huge circular pendants suspended from portholes on the chest replaced jackets. They were cut in the same general proportions as the ’60s-ish A-line shifts that followed them. As the show progressed, the black and gray gave way to red and pink, and the straight lines to soft, sexy drapes suspended from wire necklaces, including one or two with the house logo, the collection’s only drawback. The final series of dresses came in silver or iridescent sequins accessorized by those mirrored pendants, right over the solar plexus. With the help of a spotlight, it looked like they were emanating energy, the phone’s LED replaced in the end by inner light.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Beautiful Melancholia. Dries Van Noten AW23

March 1, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

There are those Dries Van Noten collections, where the designer isn’t really into his usual vibrant flower-garden moments, and goes for something definitely more somber, melancholic. The autumn-winter 2023 collection shown in Paris today is one of those moody Dries seasons, and I love it with my whole heart. The latest offering has a dark and Antwerpian quality about it, with its velvets and antique-looking embroidered silks patchworked into turtleneck tops and jackets in a deconstructed, Martin Margiela manner. In general, the collection’s beautiful garments have that feel of being well worn, as if time has been behind the sun-bleached look of the tapestry florals or the weather-stained fringed hems of the dresses. With this line-up, Van Noten also reminds us that he’s a master colorist: the delightful palette of ochre, burgundy, maroon and lilac are here to inspire our wardrobe next autumn. There was also gold: sometimes super-polished, sometime crinkled on the waists of the coats. It was very kintsugi – the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted with powdered gold. In a world that needs lot of repairing to be done, why not wear this gorgeous Dries Van Noten collection?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Runaway Bride. Vaquera AW23

February 28, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Backstage at their Vaquera fashion show on the first day of Paris Fashion Week, Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee were talking about dreams and nightmares, and how they can become interchangeable as time goes by. “We’re excited about selling commercial things,” DiCaprio said. “But I think this season we weren’t afraid to make things that weren’t necessarily for sales, and to say that that is an integral part of our brand.” Take the fun silvery sequin dresses or the various iterations of the wedding dress. I mean, wearing Vaquera on that special day is quite a statement. Other non-commercial garments were the jeans studded with blunt-ended nails which reportedly weigh a couple of kilograms. Mixed in amongst those punkish pants were more readily wearable pieces in the form of army sweaters and nylon cargos, and a faded black leather peacoat and pants. In the early New York days of Vaquera, back when the brand had a more conceptual direction, they designed polo dresses with pointillist renderings of their designer heroes, Vivienne Westwood among them. She was present in their latest show via an updated version of her infamous “tit top” with twisted and tucked “nipple” details. She’s the proof that you can mix business and non-conformity.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Strange Encounter. Bottega Veneta AW23

February 26, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The latest Bottega Veneta collection by Matthieu Blazy is a lot. He’s a “designer” with special emphasis put on the word “design”, and that shows in every single of the over 80 looks he presented yesterday in Milan. This season, Blazy focused on “the idea of the strange encounter – people that you meet in the street and they really amaze you. It’s a place where everyone belongs,” like a parade, or Carnevale, “where there is absolutely no hierarchy.” There’s security in a single message show – many designers resort to that concept this season – but Blazy and the team “decided not to edit the collection.” Instead, they kept adding characters and occasions for which to dress them, starting with a just-stepped-out-of-bed sheer dressing gown and house shoes. What does a Bottega Veneta house shoe look like? It’s a slipper sock, only the wool upper is not wool at all but knitted leather. We saw layered dresses with sweet flower embroideries that called to mind luxury long johns, deconstructed 1950s screen star dresses, and an exceptional LBD with a swooping neckline and a front slit not quite high enough to reveal the top of over-the-knee intrecciato boots. Materials-wise, Blazy was after light, unconstrained fabrics, even though the effect rather read as unflattering and cumbersome (especially some of the women’s coats and eveningwear). The silhouettes sometimes went to uncomfortable extremes. ‘Rolled’ waistband skirts were meant to conjure the fishtail bottom half of mermaids, fantastic creatures being part of Carnevale festivities. You could go on and on about the aesthetics of Blazy’s Bottega Veneta. It’s definitely not one thing. He said of Italian style that inspires him, “I always look at how women and men here layer. It’s very sophisticated, even when it doesn’t work, you know? It’s so personal.” Officially, this show marked the end of his Italian trilogy. Where to next?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Milanese Sciura. Trussardi AW23

February 25, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

One year in at Trussardi, and it seems it’s clear what Benjamin Huseby and Serhat Isik are up to with the Italian brand. The latest collection is an ode to the Milanese style that made Trussardi prominent between the 1970s and ’90s. It all started with the puffer jacket, taken to the extreme to become XXL, like a bathrobe, padded and super soft. The leather on men’s and women’s skirts was distressed, softened, while the duchesse silk and nylon imitated the leather on classic cut blouses and less classic skirts with diagonal zippers. Everything read “sciura,” a Milanese term for the typical city lady, who only wears black, hazel, ecru and bordeaux, as in this collection, allowing herself to wear a jacquard motive that is reminiscent of the tapestries in the palaces she frequents. Isik and Huseby played with these clichés without mockery, rather using them as a key to a brand story that would otherwise be left untold. The final look was a mermaid skirt paired with a jewel belt and a sober turtleneck, completely black. It was like a contemporary version of the Trussardi look for the Teatro alla Scala premiere, an unmissable event for the typical Milanese. However, is this (quite convincing) storytelling enough to turn new clients on to buying Trussardi?