Behind The Scenes. Molly Goddard SS24

September 17, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

This season, Molly Goddard played with the notion of a “behind the scenes” moment: what’s happening behind the surface, or closed doors or… the clothes. The spring-summer 2024 show took place at Christie’s auction house on King Street, the other occasions upon which the designer would tend to visit were during the set up of displays. She elaborated: “When there are these masterpieces just lying on the floor: it’s kind of amazing to see and very exciting, which I guess in some way is connected to the collection.” Goddard fashioned a fair few masterpieces of her own in a lineup that focused on nudging the mechanics of garments to the surface, turning them inside out in order to create a patina of production. She said she’d done her research in the National Theatre Costume Hire, examining the stitched clockwork of garments ranging in style from Regency to contemporary. Long skirts were shirred at the hip to create drape down to edged froths of pale ruffled petticoat. The trademark tulle skirts were teamed with loosely corseted tops whose sheerness exposed the geography of boning and corsetry that defined their gentle geography. A dusty pink woolen cardigan was edged with a two-inch strip of satin, like some old granny blanket left bundled in the cupboard of a spare room. Washed out red rose prints used on more skirts and knitted into another cardigan – magenta paneled at the shoulder – added to the sense of comfortable, domestic nostalgia. A precise excavation of the deeply familiar but also overlooked, this was a quietly masterful collection. Said Goddard: “What I enjoy most is when I get really stuck in to how to make clothes; the techniques and the fabrics and the fit.” That pleasure in Goddard’s process was evident in its result.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Fetishization of Pain. Mowalola SS24

September 17, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Mowalola Ogunlesi delivered a sharp start of London Fashion Week. Mowalola, the brand, is fast, furious, and at times obscene, but in a creatively vital way. Backstage of her spring-summer 2024 show, the designer, said the collection had been sparked by her first-ever viewing of David Cronenberg’s Crash. “I was really excited by the fetishization of pain through crashing,” she said. It prompted her to imagine “a whole universe that resides on the street,” filtered through a prism of ecstatic jeopardy. But Mowalola doesn’t stick to one reference. Masturbating anime girl prints; off-the-shoulder bombers with faux Highway Patrol patches; thigh-highs and micro skirts inspired by street walkers. A lot of stuff that Ogulensi’s customers will love. All that, like the excellent dirty denims, seemed to emanate a conceptual solar system adjacent to some of Glenn Martens’s work at Diesel. The pants that flashed cracks at the back and crotch hairlines were maybe subject to the influence of Alexander McQueen’s gravity. This was good company to keep: however the gartered, bisected pants and skirts, now a Mowalola signature, were all Ogunlesi’s own. The flags-of-the world theme was another highlight. This also ran into a poignant EU skirt meets Union Jack cap look. The extreme contrast of volumes in some sportswear looks made the generic appear particular.

Time For Fun. Batsheva SS24

September 15, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Batsheva Hay is in her daring, experimental era: for the past few seasons she has been pushing against the limits that delineate what her brand can be. “I have no classical fashion background, so I learned with cut-and-sew garments, and it was all handed off,” she explained. “I used to feel like I couldn’t work with the garments. I had to hand things over, then pick them up, and it was very nice for my lifestyle. Then I’d go home and nurse my baby and then hand her off, pick the clothes up, pick out the buttons or whatever.” She laughed at the familiar juggling of so many women who go home at the end of a workday for a different kind of work. “But now I find the really fun part is tearing things, shredding things, adding little bustles, pinning things onto things. And I do think that’s an important part of what distinguishes my brand from other brands; that there’s a little bit of naivete in it. It’s not quite feral, but just the amateurness of it all.” For sping-summer 2024, Batsheva went The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with all the 1950s volumes and colours, but also in the sense of humor. These “grotesque experiments,” as Hay calls them, involved her pinning a surplus of cotton placemats and oven mitts that she had lying around. “I just started safety-pinning them on my body, and I thought, Oh, it’s so sexy,” While the oven-mitt dress feels very much like oven mitts that have been safety-pinned together when you’re just “being goofy,” the experimentation did take her to some groovy places. Like the dress made from delicately embroidered cotton placemats, which has a sort of romantic quality to it, and the top made from floral-print cotton placemats, which Hay draped over a white cotton “cheerleader full-circle skirt” with turquoise godets further propped up by a hoop skirt underneath. If it all sounds a little nutty, it is, but it also feels wearable and oddly accessible. Hay expanded, elongated, or otherwise stuffed some of her go-to silhouettes, like the turquoise dress modeled by Amy Fine Collins, which is one of her bestsellers, and the high-waist, pleated skirt in turquoise with embroidered kissy prints, which she makes every season in different fabrications. The designer was also having fun at her presentation inside the BondST restaurant at Hudson Yards, where models holding little number signs walked around guests, midcentury couture show style, while Hay narrated the looks and then opened the floor for questions and comments from the audience.

Antiheroines. Elena Velez SS24

September 15, 2023September 15, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

In the sea of New York Fashion Week’s collections that deliver mediocrity mixed with business, Elena Velez is an outlier. She is here to disturb the peace. And the system. The spring-summer 2024 fashion show took place at a warehouse in Bushwick. After the finale walk, a handful of the models started a mud fight. Some guests got splattered. Velez enjoys creating such discomfort. The designer gave no interviews after the show. She wanted the spectacle to speak for itself. Instead she let her press notes do the talking. “Where are our antiheroines?” she asked, adding that the collection, titled The Longhouse, was a “ritualistic catharsis to the coddling, histrionic, and moralistic ills of oversocialization.” Maybe the mud fight was a visual representation of our online interactions, which often lack nuance and have little care for context. Velez went on to state that the show was a “creative interpretation of the reorganization of contemporary society around feminine expressions of control and behavioral modeling” and a reaction to a “climate of post-progressivism where resistance to a monolithic cultural paradigm is intensifying.” It’s hard to unpack these ideas. What was clear was Velez’s commentary on contemporary womanhood. “It feels to me like the sanitization and unilateralization of womanhood in popular culture today leaves no room for the nuance and multiplicity we deserve as architects of labyrinthine interior lives,” she wrote. In short, and in plain English, her point is that women can be good and evil, kind and angry, soft and rugged, and passive and aggressive. Velez offers them eveningwear that remains as compelling and striking as ever; a standout was an askew and elongated corset that melted onto the body with a draped skirt covered in silicone latex. But most fascinating were her commercial propositions: waffle-knit tights, zip-up bustiers, canvas jackets and shirting constructed with seams and darts inside out, layered T-shirts, and a terrific cropped bomber jacket with its bust cups slashed in half. You want to meet the woman who wears Velez’s clothes; you might fear her, but you also want to befriend her.

Forever Spring. Rosie Assoulin SS24

September 14, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Rosie Assoulin celebrates 10th anniversary of her name-sake brand this year. For that occasion, she had her “first fashion show” this New York Fashion Week, which was a joyous mise-en-scène accompanied by the euphoric sound of Vivaldi’s “Spring”. Rosie’s fashion is like forever spring: it’s always blooming, no matter the season, and feels effortless, hopeful and so joie de vivre. “Spring, in all its abundance, is a reminder that we are here to grow. In a way, it’s a memento mori, urging us to savor the fertility of the season, with the knowledge of its impermanence. As it comes in, so it goes out, and we must enjoy and celebrate in the moment,” the show notes read. Assoulin’s signature eveningwear – never constricting, always freeing and easy in wear – oozed with colors and textures, all thanks to horizontal strips of organza that created a mille-feuille effect. The collection of course had the designer’s laid-back tailoring, perfect for any occasion. Silk pajama sets looked super compelling, especially when topped with big, funky flower brooches. “We just wanted to take a moment and sit down,” Assoulin said. “We love to do what we do. We wanted to bring optimism, color, hope, and a little bit of humor.” To another 10 years!