This holiday season, I will share a number of dream gift guides that might make it easier for you to go (and filter) through the festive season. Get ready for a selection of beautiful items that will spark joy and last for years. The ones that will certainly please one’s senses and deliver heavenly feelings. From globetrotting adventurers to design-forward homebodies and fashion fans with a penchant for glamour – whoever you’re shopping for, this Christmas gift guide featuring timeless classics has the perfect presents to suit all needs this holiday season. Treat your loved ones and yourself with the below choices – and shoppable links!
Shanghai is steadily becoming the new player (replacing Copenhagen) joining the Paris, Milan, London and New York constellation of fashion weeks. One brand that caught my eye and I sincerely loved this season is Samuel Guì Yang. Lead by Samuel Yang and Erik Litzén, the “East Wind” collection was as powerful and transforming as the symbolical title suggests. Airy crepe shirts and silk-linen trousers were layered on top of each other or worn under tailoring and bomber jackets, all riffing off traditional Chinese styles. A burgundy maxidress recalled the cheongsam, only it was knit in a loose gauge yarn that revealed the shape of a soaring swallow when stretched against the body. Then, Yang and Litzén made a pair of exquisite crumpled silk sheaths they hand-dyed and hemmed with tiny beads. You could see the DIY workmanship in the sometimes uneven dye, which added a charming patina to the collection. “This is how we dress, it’s how all people dress, really,” said Litzén of their incorporation of more artisanal and sometimes ancient elements, “combining something older with something new.” As they say, you need to understand the past to create the future. The one this duo is shaping looks very bright.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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On a mid-week afternoon, Phoebe Philo dropped the preview of her latest collection – “B” – that will be available in her on-line shop (and among a tight group of selected brick-and-mortar retailers) in the beginning of 2025. The newest offering is both a continuation of and a departure from her debut, which was a very thoroughly considered edit of styles that kept the industry in aesthetical chokehold throughout this entire year: from COS and H&M to Proenza Schouler and Saint Laurent, a vast number of brands, big and small, had iterations of Philo’s cargo volumes, commanding visuals and the new, rough sensuality the British designer is channeling so well. Even the biggest nay-sayers of Phoebe’s venture must admit: this designer still has a massive influence on fashion. Why? Because like no one else, she knows what contemporary women want (unlike her male counterparts like Alessandro Michele or Sabato De Sarno. Even Jonathan Anderson’s latest collection for Loewe, which I thought in the beginning of the month was truly contemporary, now feels overly decorative).
The Phoebe Philo woman doesn’t care about trends. But she’s aware of good fashion. And style. She might be a restaurateur, own a flower shop (a big one, all very organic). She isn’t entirely politically correct. She swears a lot. And she doesn’t treat clothes as something fragile or too precious: they should serve her well. And might get dirty. That’s what makes Phoebe Philo’s brand feel much more viable for the real life than The Row: you don’t have bathroom slip-ons made from silk that won’t survive a subway. But you’ve got a big, red plastic bag – a theme Philo debuted in her swan song collection for Céline, IYKYK – that will fit everything and more. And has this odd, but absolutely desirable twist that has always been Phoebe’s signature spice.
In collection “B“, there are no design after-thoughts or anything that feels superfluous: the ultra-shaggy shearling coats are total investments, just as all the super-versatile day-to-night dresses, masculine tailoring or utterly perfect shirting proposals. But the line-up has something Philo’s debut offering lacked: easier entry-points that are (hopefully) more affordable than all the outerwear, leathers or knits. Oversized t-shirts with prints of Talia Chetrit’s photos and the brand’s red logo? A guaranteed sold-out, and an item I will totally save up for. It’s also very intriguing how Philo decided to reuse the photographer’s highly-persuasive shots: there are no printed look-books, the brand’s Instagram feed is frequently erased, so in the end, a t-shirt becomes a (wearable) ephemera of the brand’s visual identity.
Philo proves that her brand isn’t cold-minimalist or soullessly stern (many had this impression with her first collection). She lets wit in with organza collars and teddy-bear-ish volumes. A sense of warmth – and glamour, as Cathy Horyn rightfully noted! – comes in vintage-inspired, bigger-than-life jewellery. What Phoebe Philo is doing feels like a much-needed mutiny towards fashion and its old ways – and its endless pursuit after the new thing. Continuity and assertive trust in your own instincts: that’s true defiance. A bit like Charli Xcx’s “Brat“, an unprecedented success of an absolutely non-commercial album. Philo’s “B” collection reminds me more of “Brat“‘s remix album: even better, even sharper, even more intense than the first.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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Once upon a time, Paris had the big three: Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton. Each season, these brands – under Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano (and later Raf Simons) and Marc Jacobs, retrospectively – dictated the tempo and rhythm of fashion. Actual dreams were made here. You wanted to be in one of these universes – or in all at the same time. Today, these three brands are even bigger, but they’ve turned into amorphous behemoths that lost the plot and zeitgeist (which doesn’t make the bags sales stumble, mind you).
Nicolas Ghesquière, once a true fashion innovator, joins the ranks of bad designers leading ridiculously big brands. His collections are puzzling not because of their conceptual effort, but because they look absolutely clumsy, dusty and hideous. Spring-summer 2025 feels like a pile of stuff that somebody tried really hard to style in a “contemporary” way. Lengthy togas, unflattering sacks, silly-looking pants with one leg shorter than the other one, bizarre cut-outs… sorry, I don’t get it. I think you must be a well-paid Louis Vuitton ambassador to actually “get it”.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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