Groovy. The Elder Statesman Resort 2023

August 17, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

There’s only one place in Paris where you can stand over a pool of koi and under a glittering disco ball. Dragons Elysées is a Chinese restaurant that delights in kitsch – and can hold, as a nighttime The Elder Statesman presentation proved, a surprising number of revelers. Even in the brand’s thick knits on a humid Parisian day, the guests didn’t have a lick of sweat beading. Just one way Bailey Hunter, the creative director, is innovating at the Los Angeles-based label. The other way is that she is bringing the vibes back to one of fashion’s vibiest brands. Throughout the pandemic, founder Greg Chait took immense pride in the way The Elder Statesman was innovating and bringing most of its operations in-house. A new yarn-spinning technique, he said during his Paris event, would take at least a week to understand. But for all the ways the label reimagines its lightweight wovens, its groovy patterned knits, and its hand-done embroidery, crocheting, and dyeing, the special sauce of TES is its mood. That radiated during this crowded Parisian show. Chait and Hunter should stick with the idea and bring their party-presentations to more locations around the globe.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Big D Energy. Diesel Resort 2023

August 14, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

From sustainability to Julia Fox, Glenn Martens’s first 18 months at Diesel have been dedicated to aligning the 1978-founded denim disruptor with both the deeper values and shallower preoccupations of now. In this resort 2023 collection he continued that mission through a further two-pronged emphasis on the serious and the superficial, with both sides of that binary expressed via Martens’s expertly twisted aesthetic. The serious bedrock continues to be in expanding the sustainable operations of this hybrid house. A reconfigured, jersey-specific core line named Diesel Essentials will from this collection forward be made from all-organic cotton, trimmed in recycled materials, and finished with “low impact” treatments and prints. Prime examples here included a fluoro trio of ruched asymmetrical skirts worn under a hoodie, tee, and turtle. On the side, Martens expanded the recently-launched Diesel Rehab Denim capsule – made from denim off-cuts, recycled cotton, and recycled elastane – into pieces including the season’s decadently pocketed utility pants and padded jackets. He added that a for-now exclusively Italian pilot scheme to buy-back and repurpose vintage Diesel through resale or upcycling is showing promising results. This responsible practice lends Martens’s Diesel ample clear-of-conscience wiggle room to play around with the brand’s ethos, which he said is: “to have fun, enjoy life, and be successful in every situation that you are in.” Highlights for sybarites included trompe-l’oeil bumsterish cut jeans for women and men, those ornamentally utilitarian pieces, acres of (sustainable) distressed and sometimes-waterproofed denim, retro-futuristic and logo-heavy clingy metallic knit dresses, gothically scripted skintight motowear, and a surprising diversion into tailoring. With Martens at the helm, Diesel has in short order pretty much defined its new manifesto of sustainable semi-seditious sexiness.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Men’s – Motopapi. Courrèges SS23

August 10, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

The energy of the concise, item-driven modernity Nicolas di Felice brings to Courrèges is all over the spring-summer 2023 collection. “You know, back in the day, Andre [Courrèges] was speaking to the young generation. I knew from my first week that it was part of the house,” said Di Felice. “So I really want young people to be able to afford the clothes; to make it, let’s say, more accessible.” He grabbed a vintage zip-up scuba-fabric jacket which Courrèges had designed for men in the 1970s as an introduction to how he got started. “I found this in the archive, and thought, ‘This shape is amazing,’ but there’s no point in doing it again. So I wanted to mix this silhouette with a biker vibe, because I had a motorbike when I was young. I thought about how it feels to drive to the beach, or to a festival in the summer, or something,” he laughed. “I’ve been at the house for two years now, so I feel more comfortable to explore a bit more of who I am.” One thing about Di Felice is his knack for filtering lived experience into his minimal-seductive design. His collection captures all the features of young masculine body-con display that’s taken off this summer: tight-to-the torso leather jackets, twisted, cutaway T-shirts, slick moto pants in the house’s heritage-look black vinyl, gabardine polyester trousers and denims with a hint of bootcut flare. It’s his addition of the faux leather bondage straps across the front of jackets that adds a clever utilitarian twist. He demonstrated: “So what you can do is take off your jacket or poncho and hang them off your shoulder by the strap, like this. It came to me simply when I was one more time in a party, and it’s hot and there are not enough cloakrooms. I was like, ‘OK, um, so when I go in on Monday – I’m going do that in the collection!’” The lookbook shows the device in action – clothes gradually becoming cool-looking drapes toted from shoulders, until the last guy ends up naked, carrying all of his clothes. “Like he’s just come out of the water on the beach,” Di Felice grinned.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Je Ne Sais Quoi. Officine Générale SS23

August 7, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

In the courtyard of Hotel de Soubise, Officine Générale‘s spring-summer 2023 looks came out languidly, arranged in color stories that shifted slowly across the cobbles in the waning evening sunshine. This was the brand’s 10th anniversary show, and yet so many people discover it just now. It was also one of those shows where you end up playing fantasy personal shopping, because this was less an impactful fashion pop song than carefully conducted piece of apparel mood music. After this gentle show had come to its end, founder Pierre Mahéo emerged to deserved applause. Backstage, the designer pointed out that around 80% of sales are currently outside France, and was refreshingly pragmatic about the formula he’s found. He said: “I think there is an evolution in what we show today in terms of styling, and in terms of putting things together, but the base is the fit, the cut, and the fabrics… The formula is being fair by offering good material at a very decent price, manufactured in Portugal and Italy.” You can’t argue with that. Pretty much, this collection is perfect. Just take a look at all these great cotton knits, chino pants, effortless tailoring, quilted marine jackets and timeless trench coats.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

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Mix-And-Match Lady. Tory Burch Resort 2023

August 4, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Tory Burch is going through a renaissance. Her latest collections are just so, so good. “You can only control so much in your life at the moment, and one of the things you can control is the way you dress and how you look. I think that’s an incredible creative outlet. Individual creative expression is what I’m really interested in right now.” A year ago, the experience of the pandemic led Tory Burch to Claire McCardell, a post-war designer celebrated for the chic functionality of her dresses. Fast forward to 2022, Burch is leaning into more eccentric and freer style, which is still in dialogue with McCardell’s design ethos. Resort 2023 is all about details: the plastic charms fringing the waistline of cropped jackets; the parachute lining peeking from underneath a-line skirts (it’s removable); the lurex fuzz of popover knits. These are the building blocks of the Tory Burch wardrobe, but they’re not square or boring. Quite the opposite. A sense of play permeates the season, whether it’s the raffia tassels that accent the baggy cargo pants she paired with a sleeveless tweed peplum top or the two-piece dress consisting of a little wrap shirt over a yoke-waist skirt with lots of volume (padding at the hips and hem give it shape). Most experimental are a pair of party looks whose tops and skirts are cut on the round with zig-zag edges trimmed in beads. In mismatched but complementary floral prints, these outfits put the emphasis on craft and quirk. Though it’s rooted in American sportswear, with its mix-and-match possibilities, the collection wears its utility lightly. It looks like a lot of fun.