style

Toned-Down. Ludovic De Saint Sernin AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

For autumn-winter 2022, Ludovic De Saint Sernin took a slightly different path than usual. The new season pressed current Y2K generational fashion buttons, but also signaled de Saint Sernin’s design ability to think through what might come after that. A part of the thrill for him is belonging to the all-about-me self-invention of social media. So he walked in his own show – in a brown crepe open-necked shirt and matching flares, flanked by a couple of lanky lookalikes. “Welcome to my life,” he declared beforehand. “This is what I do. It’s about owning up to being who you are, your own muse.” He loved the fact that Gigi Hadid appeared in a big shirt and white boots, channeling “the Malibu girl going out in her boyfriend’s shirt. Like all the celebs I grew up with who were being chased by tabloid paparazzi in the 2000s – like Paris and Britney. “ Bella, as the finale, wore an almost sheer black chiffon halterneck dress “a bit like a nightdress. For when you have to go on the red carpet at the end of the day, but would really rather be in bed.” De Saint Sernin is known for his overtly sexy, libertine, gender-blurring crystal mesh bras and halters – and his signature cross-laced fly jeans. All of that was there, now logo’d with a LDSS sparkly print. He extended that further into body-con dressing for boys: a black leather miniskirt; a crossover jersey crop-top. But the big surprise in his collection was a whole other thing: minimal elegance in shades of brown and taupe (which instantly reminded me of a Jacquemus collection from a couple of seasons ago). Overcoats, a long bustier column dress, a brown shirt and skirt: luxurious oversized sweaters. It stood apart, in a preternaturally accomplished way. “I wanted to push the idea of daywear,” Ludovic concluded. “Because everyone’s doing mini-mini, as I have. But I thought it would be cool to go elegant and long.” It made for an glimpse of where de Saint Sernin, and his whole generation might be headed with their fashion desires.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Jackie And Carolyn. The Row Resort 2023

| Design & Culture by Ed

After two years off the runway, Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen brought their resort 2023 collection for The Row to Paris. They weren’t doing interviews and the brand didn’t release a statement, but when American designers have swapped New York for Paris in the past they’ve typically talked about the city’s more international audience and elevated playing field. The Olsens need little help with their profiles, so let’s assume they thought they had something new to say about their fashion. As it turned out, they did, and it speaks volumes. The line-up finds them in a more playful frame of mind than we’ve come to associate with The Row. The elegance and sophistication remain, but they also dabbled in hyperbole, in the form of extra-long sleeves and neck grazing, exaggerated 1970s collars, and explored surprising retro flourishes like pillbox hats, muffs, and top handle bags in the crooks of arms. If Jackie Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy joined wardrobes, this The Row collection would be it. Some looks, including an evening dress made with a chartreuse-colored wool blanket wrapped and draped from the torso, reminded you of the Japanese designers who made their own transitions to Paris in the 1980s. Is the Olsens’ minimalist phase over? Not exactly. Most of these looks were head-to-toe monochrome or black-and-white, and there were no prints or much in the way of other distractions. The silhouette was still rooted in tailoring and the shoes were low-heeled and grounding. The difference was this collection’s looseness. Not in terms of volumes, but in terms of the fun it was willing to have. See the fine cashmere sweaters that twisted in back to reveal the white poplin shirts below them, the jabots as oversize as the pointy collars they accessorized, the back-to-front coats, and those long sleeves. Graceful fashion that makes you smile feels like the right instinct for the current moment.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

NET-A-PORTER Limited

Experience. Dries Van Noten AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Dries Van Noten still hasn’t returned to the runway format. But this season, he delivered a full experience. For autumn-winter 2022, the Belgian designer hosted a mannequin presentation at the dilapidated Hotel de Guise (in this mansion belonging to an old French family, the clock apparently stopped 50 years ago). Grouped in paneled rooms, the liveless models were staged in various scenes: as if in conversation, leaning watching over bannisters, lurking in a bathroom, glimpsed in a closet, standing on tables or suddenly, disconcertingly, seated on the attic stairs. In other words: this was Dries Van Noten in his element, curating an interior environment instead of a fashion show. It was the perfect setting for absorbing the novel shock of suddenly being able to see and touch the richly layered textures of his collection again – and to sense a distinct frisson of darkness and perversity in the air. The event was also a launch of Van Noten’s perfume and lipstick line, which in the end made even more sense. The invited editors could completely immerse in Dries’ world, from the garments to the senses. What about the new season clothes? They all looked sumptuous: the animal print coat layered over deep crimson silk-velvet trousers; glam holographic sequins with denim trousers and a wildly nubbly wool scarf; 1940s dresses dripped with lines of stones and additionally enriched with opulent, vintage-style jewelry.

Had he found himself designing more intensely, more richly, during the closed-in times? “No.” Van Noten replied. “It is always like this. You just never see it when it’s up on a runway.” He’s been one of the increasingly few hold-outs against convening physical shows this season – and one of the few who really adapted to exercising the creative possibilities of fashion filmmaking. Using the half-way house of this expressive presentation was something else, fully playing into his multiple talents as a curator of exhibitions, antique interiors aficionado, gardener (which connects with the perfumes) and being the Belgian guy with the Antwerpian memories of alternative parties in the ’70s and raves in the ’90s. He makes a very good point: “I think it’s that whole tactile moment. It’s not that I don’t want to go back to fashion shows, because I think it’s another thing, but this is really nice to experience. This way of presenting creates closeness; the fact that you can explain things, touch things, see things. You can stage it so that you can tell more stories than in a fashion show. So for me, it was a very interesting way of thinking.” So, to the “story.” Van Noten had been researching the work of Carlo Mollino, the Italian architect and photographer whose life spanned surrealism and the ’70s. “After he died, erotic Polaroids he had taken of women, nude and semi-dressed, were found in his apartment.” Look them up, and you find how Van Noten had come up with the maxi-coat shapes, the leather chokers, the ‘kinky’ lace-up boots. He also put his finger on another popular ’70s cult object – a down-padded, Charles James-like jacket with a deep tubular edge. Puffy volumes gone glamorous, circle shapes and other extreme geometries are part of the avant-garde news from Paris. Somehow, while staying within his own world, speaking to his own customers and bringing his whole character to creating his beauty/lifestyle lines, Dries Van Noten still has ways of clocking what’s happening outside.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Crash Course. Courrèges AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Nicolas di Felice discussed what sparked his latest Courrèges collection: it was the discovery, after much Googling, of a circa 1973 brand video set not in a Paris salon but in a car junkyard. Di Felice liked it for the way it challenges assumptions about Courrèges. Yes, the house founder André Courrèges was a couturier, but he was also plugged into the street. Di Felice is negotiating that divide quite fluently a little more than a year into his run at the brand. The first step was hooking a young Paris crowd on his minimal, sexy basics. These nod back to Courrèges’s Space Age stylings without being overt; it’s helped that di Felice’s arrival here coincided with the return of mini lengths. You see those minis on showgoers this season, along with his updates to the snap-front vinyl jackets that are another brand signature. Mission completed as for Courrèges’ commercial thriving. Now, having caught the industry’s attention, di Felice is playing with more experimental shapes – and here it gets a bit more difficult and demanding. There was a strapless shift dress made from two circles sewn together and a couple of others whose backs were large fake leather squares spray painted to conjure the vibes of that 1973 junkyard – body-con bi-stretch jersey in front, avant-garde in back. Jackets and coats exhibited the same inventiveness. In addition to circles and squares, he made some with large triangular sleeves, including a vinyl puffer whose proportions looked new. These were experimental cuts, but not complicated, he made a point of clarifying. “I really have an obsession with simple patterns, they start from geometric shapes.” Back to the body-con – Di Felice reproduced the geometries of John Coplans’s paintings on shiny vinyl dresses as streamlined as those triangular-sleeved coats were voluminous. The diamond-shaped cut-outs that climb up their sides could become as recognizable as the house’s curvy AC monogram. Di Felice has got the brand-building aspect of the modern creative director’s duties down and now he’s trying to make the brand not just merch, but actual fashion.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Sublime Symphony. Saint Laurent AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Anthony Vaccarello delivered one of the most beautiful, sensational and elegant moments of the entire fashion month. His autumn-winter 2022 collection for Saint Laurent was sublime, a true symphony of chic, refinement and grace that even Yves himself would applaud. What will be remembered most? Purely the sight of a woman in a long, silvery bias-cut dress, with a perfect black low-buttoned double-breasted black peacoat over it, her hands thrust into the pockets. She opened the show. And then the line-up of flawless black tuxedos and a single, narrow black tux coat which came at the end. Of course, there was a lot more in between: fake fur coats and bombers; amazing overcoats with big (not too big) shoulders; narrow leather coats; elegantly nonchalant cocoon-back profiles. Then the punctuation of something as simple as an ecru floor-length turtle neck T-shirt dress, worn with deep stacks of dark wood and silver bangles on each arm. And the high glamour of 1930s and 1980s evening jackets with big bands of faux fur running around them.

More than anything, all of this went to show how Vaccarello has got himself in charge of the Yves Saint Laurent aesthetic, relaxed into it. That’s no mean feat – the sheer magnitude and magnificence of Saint Laurent’s oeuvre is mightily intimidating. In the face of it, the temptation as a designer is either to rebel against it with super-short shorts, slit skirts, breast-exposure and everything Saint Laurent didn’t do (which Vaccarello did at one time) or to just be too reverential. What the job really calls for is someone who knows enough about the playbook of Saint Laurent to be able to honor its quality, but also has enough confidence to be nonchalant about using it. Vaccarello hit that point of maturity with this show. In his own accent, with his own taste. With, yes, maybe something of his Belgian-born sensibility coming through: vague echoes of that period of deconstructed minimalism, the monochrome colors, saving the air of being easy to wear, but then again, bringing it up to the level of the modern Parisian elegance that we all dream about. The collection was emotionally-charged, as it was a powerful tribute to Vaccarello’s father, who has passed away recently.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.