Beguiling. Chanel SS23

October 8, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Many have tried to decode director Alain Resnais’s beguiling 1961 movie, “L’Année Dernière à Marienbad“. The nouvelle vague classic features a couple who may (or may not) know each other, and who may (or may not) have been in some kind of relationship with each other. They move through a black and white dreamscape of ornate gardens and grand staircases, where time seems to have no meaning and words don’t seem to matter a whole lot either. Still, female lead Delphine Seyrig looks utterly fabulous as she exists in this semi-somnambulistic state, thanks to some of her costumes having been designed by Coco Chanel. What most definitely doesn’t need decoding, however: as Chanel’s Virginie Viard looked at the movie while she was designing spring-summer 2023, it led her to create a very charming collection. Light, nuanced, and with a palpable sense of the here and now, it was Chanel replete with every element and fragment of the house. There were the tweeds, sparkly or ribbon embroidered or adorned with ostrich feathers; the chicest suits, cardigan jackets, and short coatdresses that looked as though they magically weighed next to nothing; boyish knits and teeny tap shorts; and exquisite evening dresses without an iota of fuss. Viard sketched these out in the archetypal black and ivory as well as a heavenly array of pastels, with very few prints, save for those that featured scrolling lines akin to what you might obsessively draw while daydreaming, or black-on-black interlocking logo double-Cs, discreetly repeated over and over again on a softly rippling dress or fluid pajama pants. And to go with all of this: strands and strands of gilded or strass necklaces and drop earrings; smaller versions of the iconic bags; and get-ready-to-be-obsessed, glittery silver house-classic cap-toe slingbacks or grosgrain-bowed crystal booties, which look like the most glamorous (or glam-rock) ankle socks ever. Resnais’s classic wasn’t the only cinematic moment here. Viard had asked Inez and Vinoodh to shoot in Paris a short movie with Kristen Stewart, a kind of homage to Marienbad, as an opener for the show. Stewart leaves a movie theater, wanders the streets of Paris, ascends the famous Rue Cambon Chanel staircase, takes the metro, all the while dressed in the spring collection, including one stunner of a long, sequined rose gold dress. What else should be noted about this collection is that Viard chose to embrace the diversity of female beauty by showing this collection on a whole variety of body types. In a Paris spring show season where that approach has been sadly all but absent, it was a welcome move.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Future Vintage. Stella McCartney SS23

October 8, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

One of the best collections in Paris was delivered by Stella McCartney, who very smartly sensed the vintage world’s growing obsession with her time at Chloé and her super-hot, kitschy-chic, chaotic-good 2000s collections. The spring-summer 2023 show, presented in front of Centre Pompidou, opened with tweaked reissues of McCartney’s gold chain tops from her Chloé spring 2000 collection worn under super-sized blazers with asymmetrical skirts and net stockings. Amber Valletta didn’t wear the draped gold chain top she originally modeled with white denim hot pants in that same show (someone else did, with an added white tank top underneath), but she wear a tailored jumpsuit like the one Raquel Zimmermann had in McCartney’s eponymous spring 2009 show. The Hadids brought the noughties nostalgia full circle: Gigi in a sculpted cargo suit that echoed McCartney’s Savile Row days; Bella in a shrunken vest and low-riding trousers with rhinestone-encrusted cut-outs around the hips. While at Chloé, McCartney’s influence on the era was so vast that you might wonder why the brand’s current custodian, Gabriela Hearst, hasn’t mined those archives already. Honestly, a crime. Asked if it feels weird to see her own work revived in such a big way, McCartney sighed. “It makes me feel extremely old! My daughter, who’s 15, all she does now is go into my closet and take all my original things. And I’m like, ‘Oh, but I make similar things now.’ She’s not interested. She just wants the ’90s.” Nostalgia wasn’t, however, the driving force behind McCartney’s choice to adapt and reissue these pieces. The Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara was. She used his depictions of children as motifs on garments, and focused the collection around his slogan, “Change the History.” “I want to look back at my history and redefine where I started and where I am now and what the next Stella looks like,” said McCartney, explaining her trip down memory lane. For her, of course, that transition has everything to do with sustainability. She re-evoked the 2000s through the finest technology the 2020s have to offer: garments in regenerative bio-diverse cotton that “encourages nature”; shoes in plant-based materials like faux leather made out of grape skins; bags in mycelium mushroom leather; and rhinestone pieces created without animal glues and solvents. In a season that’s seen desperate nostalgia plunges, like Dolce & Gabbana reviving their Y2K archives with the help of Kim Kardashian, McCartney’s reenergizing of the fashion history she helped shape in such a big way felt both ethically and epically right.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Exploring Tensions. GmbH SS23

October 6, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Though launched as a menswear label six years ago, GmbH is actually more like an ecosystem. Fashion is the baseline, of course, but its network spans artists, musicians, DJs, writers, muses, and friends of every stripe who resonate with its message of “decolonizing” attitudes. The spring-summer 2023 collection, called „Ghazal”, after the ancient form of Arabic poetry, officially marked the first time the designers focused on fleshing out a woman’s wardrobe, but it played more like an exercise in continuity. Exploring the tensions between religion, morality, freedom, and sex offered ample fodder – and given that Benjamin Huseby and Serhat Isik are simultaneously easing into their new role at Trussardi in Milan, they managed to pull the whole thing off with flair. “Blurry boundaries were always kind of interesting to us,” Isik offered backstage about a collection billed as “beach to ballroom, and maybe club, opera, and ashram.”. Spirituality – specifically protection and healing – was a leitmotif. Evil eyes cropped up as buttons, and prints developed with Java-based Indonesian artist Muhammad “Rofi” Fatchurofi were inspired by the transformative properties of water. On the runway there were continent-hopping, gender-fluid ideas about tailoring: a draped skirt with a matching shirt conveyed glamour with the ease of pajamas, while a similar one slipped under a crisply constructed leather jacket fused a European construct with the lungi worn by men across Asia. Another, worn alone, was accessorized with a shell necklace by the Berlin-based designer Nhat-Vu Dang, who lent several striking pieces to the show. GmbH also revisited last season’s talisman prints in Arabic calligraphy by the Berlin-based Syrian artist Abdelrazak Shaballot, transposing the affirmations “safe from harm,” “wisdom,” and “knowledge” onto lasered denim or slip dresses in blue and white. Not so long ago, shorts in denim or vinyl worn with or without a two-pocket apron belt – or perhaps a fur stole – would have skewed more club than night at the opera. Which was the designers’ point: nowadays, anything goes.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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And Time Goes By… Givenchy SS23

October 6, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

After exiting Burberry, Riccardo Tisci should return to Givenchy. It would be a perfect homecoming, because it seems only he could understand how to direct the brand in contemporary times. Seasons come and go, and Matthew Williams still has no clue what’s Givenchy’s identity, and what’s worse, what’s his role in writing the house’s history. It’s really difficult to find the spirit of Givenchy, properly revisited, and any signs of Williams’ input in the spring-summer 2023 collection. Even Carine Roitfeld’s styling didn’t help (quite ironic – she was a key person for the brand during Tisci’s reign). The line-up was a mash-up of familiar things. We’ve got some random-looking Chanel tweeds. There’s early Demna for Balenciaga vibe. There’s Hedi Slimane’s Celine, over and over again. Hoodies worn under blazers, styled with cargo shorts, seem to be the biggest takeaway from the entire line-up, but we’ve seen that styling trick many, many times on other runways. The eveningwear had no novelty in it, as it referenced Hubert De Givenchy’s archives in form of boring „re-editions”. And it felt completely out of place after a line-up filled with denim and combats. The inconsistency of the collection was the most striking thing about it. Also, what’s the point of having an outdoor presentation in October, especially in drizzling Paris? The pouring rain made the whole event feel even more depressing and frustrating. Williams’ contract at Givenchy is coming to an end, and I doubt it will be prolonged. The brand should really consider the choice of next creative director, because with the flow of time, the brand is becoming a wreck.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Back To Basics. Valentino SS23

October 6, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Knowing Pierpaolo Piccioli‘s skills and abilities of making fashion that sparks deep emotions, the designer could do much better for spring-summer 2023 than covering his silhouettes in Valentino‘s “V” logos. At least, there’s no sight of last season’s PPPink, which from a good-looking idea turned to a curse of street style. But the opening look, a caped dress in the palest of beiges that was graphically emblazoned with the house’s logo, just didn’t feel good. The marque was over absolutely everything, including the gloved bodysuit worn under the dress. It was even painted across the model’s face. Not everything went through logomania in this line-up, but in general this was one of Piccioli’s most uninspired collections in a long while. Piccioli focused his look on mostly flowing, undulating dresses, short or long, some scissored away at the waist (inspired by the slashed canvases of artist Lucio Fontana) and soft suiting that was androgynous with or without the feathery trims, in myriad shades of ivory, beige and brown, his celebration of the beauty of every skin tone. During the course of the show, he started to introduce bright saturated colors as a contrast – electric blue, acid green, emerald green – which looked at their most dazzling when deployed for the dream-it-and-we-can-make-it technical marvel of his pleated sequin pieces, such as a shrug it on coat, or a sweeping floor-length backless evening dress. But in overall, the offering felt rather flat and repetitive, noting that there were over 90 looks.