Mycelium. Alexander McQueen AW22

March 18, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Showing in New York somehow made Sarah Burton‘s Alexander McQueen feel more compelling and… fresh. Lee Alexander McQueen brought his show to New York twice, first in 1996 with Dante and again in 1999 for Eye. Sarah Burton was with him on both trips, and she was back in the Big Apple to present her autumn-winter 2022 collection for the label. “America and New York have always been so much a part of McQueen,” she said backstage. “It feels part of our creative community. It’s great to honor that.” Piles of mulch made from fallen trees gave off a peaty tang in the Brooklyn warehouse venue (it’ll be reused in plantings, she said), and birds and insects chirped on the speakers before the soundtrack settled into the groove of “A Forest” by The Cure. Backstage Burton was talking about mycelium, the underground fungal network that’s sometimes called nature’s “wood wide web,” connecting trees with one another and transferring nutrients and minerals plant-to-plant. The humble mushroom has taken on a new vogue in recent years with the mainstreaming of psychedelics, but Burton laughed off a question about microdosing. “What I really love is that the trees talk to each other and they sort of heal each other,” she began. “The thing is, they’re healing, but they’re toxic as well. There’s a danger to them.” A pair of dresses were fantastically embroidered in mushrooms whose vivid colors Burton said were lifted from real life, their mycelia represented by long skeins of silk fringe. A couple of unraveling sweaters were almost as trippy. Burton’s McQueen is a thoughtful balance of hand craft and haute tailleur. She was in New York City, after all, so she didn’t neglect to show off the label’s sartorialism. A smoking with a crystal-embellished back panel and a spangled bandeau in place of a shirt would be a glamorously restrained red carpet look for what’s likely to be a sober Oscars ceremony at the end of the month. Other sharply cut pantsuits picked up the psychedelic colors of those mushrooms – acid green and yellow, electric blue, bright red. “I wanted it to have a pace to it and an energy to it… and there to be color,” Burton said. “I wanted it to have a vibrancy.” Most notable were the suits that looked like they’d been spray-painted with the shadow of a rushing body. Burton said these were inspired by yet another archival McQueen collection, Number 13, the show in which the model Shalom Harlow and her strapless white dress were painted by a pair of robots normally used in the automotive industry in a sort of erotic dance. McQueen would’ve likely dug the mycelium theme; he was always intrigued by the elements, always finding his way back to a nature vs. machine theme. Many years on, that struggle is more real than ever. Burton brings that awareness and a woman-centered approach to what she’s doing here.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

After Hours. Tom Ford AW22

March 17, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Tom Ford‘s absence during New York Fashion Week, caused by COVID-19-related issues, was perceivable. The designer dropped a lookbook in the middle of the Paris schedule instead. Ford was a regular here during his Yves Saint Laurent days 20 years ago. The difference between then and now is that Ford’s been Californiafied – a casual element has infiltrated his collections since he moved to Los Angeles in the shape of tracksuits and other forms of athletic wear. That aside, he’s into chic, killer suits as well. Tailoring is one of the threads holding this season together, only these aren’t suits for the 9-to-5 grind. Designers have been thinking about after-hours suits, the kind women used to wear when we still went out to clubs. Ford was clearly feeling for something similar with his sumptuous velvets, satins, and faux furs, and the rich jewel tones he styled head-to-toe: sapphire velvet blazer-hoodie hybrid and sapphire velvet trousers; turquoise stockings paired with turquoise evening sandals. Or the amethyst feather chubby that was accessorized with an amethyst hood, hose, and wedge heel shoes. This was one of Ford’s more covered-up collections of late, until the end. The lookbook finishes off with a pair of Guy Bourdin-ish images of long dresses whose sexy interplay of sheer and opaque shows the young guns playing with body-con exactly how it’s done.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Love Letter. Magda Butrym AW22

March 16, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

For autumn-winter 2022, Magda Butrym delivered a collection that balances her signature, chic finesse with a few delightful nods to her Polish roots. Those references definitely include the cultural legacy of early 20th century Zakopane, where artists created a new aesthetical identity inspired by the regional art of Poland’s highland region known as Podhale. In this “Love Letter” – the collection’s title – Butrym reinterprets the timeless shearling jacket by adding flower-shaped intarsia cut-outs, while the bold red rose print makes me think of Zofia Stryjeńska‘s vibrant depictions of women dressed in traditional highland folklore. Of course, nothing is too literal about this collection, and the knitted cream ensemble with a balaclava hoodie will work both on the slopes of Tatry and Megève. This season, the designer debuts luxe, commanding coats in red patent leather and pink, extra-fluffy jackets, as well as handcrafted details seen in the crochet dress and floral-appliqué mini. Feminine, edgy, distinctly cool and full of bling, Butrym’s eveningwear pieces are unlike anything else. Find them alongside her all-time must-haves – from bustiers with rounded cups to 3D rosettes, and a gray cashmere update to her best-selling long, boxy coat.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Black Rose. Comme Des Garcons AW22

March 15, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

“For me, the dark beauty of the black rose symbolizes courage, resistance, and freedom”, Rei Kawakubo stated regarding her Comme des Garçons autumn-winter 2022 show presented a few days ago in Tokyo. The black rose in Irish culture is a symbol of resistance against British rule. It might be a bit hard to discern it in the Comme lineup – it only comes in, patterned on a sort of Victoriana brocade at the 12th of the 16 exits. It’s certain that anti-British imperialism in Ireland is what Kawakubo meant, though, because the haunting music – “a beautiful resistance song from Ireland, Roisin Dubh, the little black rose,” was recorded for the show by the Northern Irish slow flautist Ciaran Carlin. Possibly that’s the most political reference Kawkubo’s made in her work – it has no equivalence to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, except for the common factor of dangerously contested borders. But anyway: how to put words to her clothes? Was a sense of dark history, something primal, or even medieval going on? It seemed so to begin with anyway, what with Kawkubo’s use of thick, wadded, speckled-gray felt carpet underlay (or something similar) and headpieces created by Gary Card bulging with assortments of rough, rolled up fabrics. Other hand-crocheted floppy woollen hats had the air of bonnets, country-cottage style. Comme des Garçons hasn’t been showing outside Tokyo for two years, and Paris Fashion Week really misses its presence. Hopefully, Kawakubo (as well as Junya Watanabe and Noir Kei Ninomiya) returns to the French runway next season.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Britishness. Burberry AW22

March 14, 2022March 14, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

In 1856, young Thomas Burberry set out to equip local sportsmen from a small outfitter’s shop in Basingstoke, England. He made his name by inventing gabardine, a waterproof, tightly woven cotton inspired by the loose linen smocks worn by English shepherds and farmers. And by the early 1900s, business was booming in the Burberry emporium on London’s Haymarket street. The firm gained prestige by outfitting high-profile Antarctic explorers, aviators, and mountaineers. And, in addition to kitting out more humble seekers of adventure – golfers, skiers, horsemen – it soon got into the business of fine everyday outerwear, too. It’s an unmistakably British brand, and in 2022, it’s really worth digging into a brand’s heritage and redefining its codes. After seven full seasons, Riccardo Tisci is finally on (what seems to be) the right path. For the autumn-winter 2022 fashion show, presented a few days after fashion month’s finale in London’s Central Hall Westminster, guests stood massed together in the dark, shuffling back to give way to Tisci’s supermodels, friends, and artist-celebrities as they descended from somewhere high up in the wood-paneled auditorium. Clad in the spectrum of Tisci’s ideas about global, generational, and gender non-conforming realities, British tradition and, of course, Burberry checks and trenches, they climbed up to pose on tables which were set with silver and crystal, as if for a country-house dinner. “It’s a reconstructed collection of what I find in Burberry, and what I’ve been living as human in this moment in Britain too,” Tisci said before the show. “It’s a different perspective – you know, the way you feel things was a very deep different journey.” That stood as an explanation for the leveling, everyone-together breaking of catwalk convention, except that the event simultaneously managed to be a bombastic reclaiming of Burberry’s corporate position, a landmark of the British fashion business with global reach. So two collections came out – a menswear one and the women’s. For women, he ran the gamut of trench-and-check daywear through to grand ballgowns, segueing though deconstructed evening trenchcoats. He said he’d pulled it together by focusing on country waxed and quilted coats, and pulling out the symbol of the Burberry Prorsum knight on horseback. There were blanket-skirts and tartan capes, as well as old-school, fleecy twinsets. The designer reflected on how he was initially daunted by paying tribute to Britishness, but now feels much freer about applying his own instincts. “I was scared,” he admitted. “You know, as an Italian, Britain is important – it’s a such an historical country, with so much to say. So at the beginning, it was like the first kiss. It takes time, you know. And now I find my own way.”