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.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Fusion Rave. Chloé SS23

October 1, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Gabriela Hearst went for a more laid-back look for Chloé‘s spring-summer 2023 collection. Her sustainability-forward ambitions, however, aren’t taking a rest. Hearst dedicated her latest offering for the Parisian maison to the promotion of fusion: “It’s basically the energy of the stars and the universe,” she said, flanked by representatives from ITER as well as Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion – companies which are working on harnessing this benign source of energy through giant round devices known as tokamaks. They can’t be used to produce a fashion collection, but, as Hearst said, “Eventually they will, because we’ll need the energy to make clothes. Imagine that whatever is a coal plant now will be a fusion plant in the future. The future is close.” She arranged the seats of her show to mimic the circular shape of the tokamak and surrounded the structure with hoops hanging from the ceiling and laser lights that evoked an industrial rave. That feeling reverberated through a collection that served as a figurative ode to fusion power, adapting the curves of the tokamak into silhouettes and surface decoration that looked part power plant uniform and part retro warehouse party. “The most important thing you need to know is that this is a source of clean energy with very little waste. A glass of fusion fuel can power a house for approximately 800 years,” Hearst said. All that sounded promising. But what about the actual clothes? I feel like the designer still has a problem in establishing her signature Chloé look. Knitted dresses with cut-outs created from recycled cashmere and blazers constructed in linen could use some rigor in their cut. Utilitarian outfits in head-to-toe certified European leather had the trending “Motomami” vibe that felt slightly out of place in Chloé’s lexicon. There was a coat with metal fastenings, made from recycled cotton that looked like denim, fully adorned with heavy-duty eyelets. In this spectrum of ideas, the concept of “fusion” was quite visible. Hearst needs a more bold, stylist-like approach to truly make her collections appealing in the future.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Balm To The Soul. The Row Pre-Fall 2023

October 1, 2022October 1, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Seeing The Row in the middle of Paris Fashion Week schedule is like having an exquisite, delightful, and very expensive dessert – say, a Cedric Grolet pastry. The refinement and serenity of Ashley and Mary Kate Olsens’ clothes, and of their pre-fall 2023 show, was a visual balm to the soul. An ivory duchesse satin evening dress, with a gently inflated aeration of volume at the back, any hauteur swept away by how the fabric has been made to look frayed and creased, like it was just pulled out of a trunk and thrown on with a what-the-hell shrug. A timeless LBD with gently sculpted hips. A crochet slip worn over a gauzy longer slip. These garments are to die for. The Row’s latest take on serenity doesn’t equal perfection, and a good thing too, something that the Olsens played up with some styling touches, like the wrinkled hose, or a mesh tube dress squished over a white cotton shirt whose hems went floorwards. A little bit of mess to cut the precision is always good. Or you might register it as you see a loose cut black blazer walk by, with the surprise of the armholes cleverly opened so you can slide your arms out and wear it more like a vest, with a matching pair of natty Bermuda shorts. The use of sleeves was a recurring motif here; as a gestural flourish, holding a dress in place at the back, looking like an Obi sash, for instance. Much has been made of the Olsens’ propensity for beautiful fabrics for even more beautifully made clothes, and it’s true on both counts. But there’s something else going on here: A little bit of dissonance, a touch of playfulness, shading and toning their exquisite clothes. Showing in Paris definitely suits them – remember their last show? Pre-fall 2023 felt like a beautiful continuation of that story.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Hot Dystopia. Balmain SS23

September 30, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

I might not be a Balmain kind of person, but I can definitely appreciate it, when Olivier Rousteing does something intriguing with it. A lot happened on the spring-summer 2023 runway, from a haute couture capsule offering to Cher closing the event. Over-saturated with prints featuring (very naked) Renaissance painting and a heavy dose of leather weaving and jersey draping, it was clear that Rousteing was still high on his Jean Paul Gaultier collaboration we’ve seen this summer (by the way, I can’t wait to see what Haider Ackermann will cook up for the brand in a couple of months!). But what truly sparked my attention in this Balmain outing was the melancholic, even dystopian mood behind it – and also it’s sustainability aspect. “We all saw climate change this summer. We all saw fires around the world. And coming back with a show in September, thinking about whether our pants are going to be high-waisted or low-waisted – it seems a bit futile to me.” Dressed like a samurai messiah, Rousteing told the press backstage that while he could not claim this collection was 100 per cent sustainable, he’d used fabrics made of paper, of banana, and of wicker (in the couture) to be as much so as possible. He added: “I have friends who tell me they don’t want to have kids, because what will our world be tomorrow? And at the end of the day it’s not about taste. It’s not about aesthetics.” When faced with the hardest proposition – that all fashion is essentially unsustainable for its inherent ephemerality – he convincingly riposted that his ongoing project is to radicalize his supply chain for the better. So props to him.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Crescendo. Dries Van Noten SS23

September 29, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Dries Van Noten‘s spring-summer 2023 collection was a rather calm return to the womenswear runway. Opening a collection with about 20 all-black looks is quite a surprise move coming from the Belgian designer. Van Noten said he’d been thinking of Malevich’s 1915 painting The Black Square, an infinitely readable and to many terrifying abstract black vacuum. But these looks were no void: by enforcing the rigidly all-black rule we were forced to consider the texture, structure and silhouettes, all highly-designed, that passed us. These started with an oversized jacket in a technical, spongey, meshed material that was fastened with a glass-headed pin to create a furled, succulent gather. Slowly, against this structure, emerged a tentative undergrowth of decorative foliage: a ruffle bag trailing fringe, a floral brocade on a fitted dress with a tendril of ruffled jersey on the right shoulder, a ruffled shoe worn beneath a soft-shouldered jacket with a bomber jacket hem, a fringe-hemmed coat. Then an eruption of fractal, myriad, pleated ruffles encrusted like some dark barnacle on a dress, and at last the first glimpse of color in a strata of indigo paillette on a crop top. Phase two introduced color, mostly pale and washed at first, in rustling paillette pieces, and some extraordinarily embellished cotton jersey T-shirts and skirts. The third phase leading to crescendo came, inevitably by now, with the injection of floral patterns against the previously established color and structure. These patterns were drawn then redrafted from past Van Noten collections and mashed sumptuously against each other. And because of that slow build of all that had preceded it, you could appreciate the composite elements beneath the dazzling pattern. So, to recap, what was that theme again, Dries? “Optimism,” he replied: “Because life can be really beautiful.”