Upside Down. Hodakova AW24

April 11, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Ellen Hodakova Larsson indulges in imperfection and inventiveness. This Swede has built a practice of finding treasure where others see trash, echoing ideas of new materialism. She crafts witty, contemporary classics using already-existing materials, many of which carry a patina that only time can impart. Bras, belts, metal trays, a constellation of buttons, waistbands, and underwires have all been through her hands, turning into artisanal garments. Through her work, which often involves turning things over (see the trouser dresses) and inside out (the garments made of lining fabrics), patchworking (this season’s argyles), and accumulating, Hodakova is turning the idea of value upside down. Her bricolage pieces – often rough at the edges and with emphasis on tactility – are related to the designer’s own values and upbringing. A former competitive equestrienne, she was raised on a working farm that, she said, made her “very aware of what things cost, what you can do, how you can grow things yourself – what you can do with nothing in general.” It’s been proven over and over how limitations foster creativity, and that’s reflected in the designer’s autumn-winter 2024 collection. Smart tufted looks referenced the chesterfield sofas the designer grew up with. The attaché case that turned into a dress belonged to her father. Beret shoulders on a top and a top made of molded-metal serving trays flirted with the romance of Paris. The designer has made it a signature to crown every collection with a dress made of one object: this time, prize ribbons replaced the viral spoons and watches of last season.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. Duran Lantink SS24

October 17, 2023October 17, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Duran Lantink’s namesake label is built around radical sustainability, and in July he won the ANDAM Special Prize for it. But for his recent fashion show in Paris, the Dutch designer somehow managed to draw attention away from the now-expected deadstock-upcycled-repurposed talking points to make a new, confident statement. “At the moment I’m really experimenting, trying to find my handwriting,” he said backstage before the show. “I started with combining clothes and pieces, and now I am really thinking about shape.” For spring-summer 2024, he sent out pneumatic, bulbous silhouettes, from a curvaceous, artificially puffed-up sheath dress (a nod to Comme Des Garçons’ legendary “Lumps and Bumps” collection from 1997) to floating necklines, itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny “bubble jeans” bottoms, and tops resembling floating devices known in France as “frites”, though the show notes called them “tubular objects d’art.” A lifejacket was cleverly worked into a forest green bomber. A 19th century silk veil was paired with a traditional Dutch bonnet to become a sundress; a vintage macramé tablecloth got a similar treatment. Both were charming. Other hybrids included a cage dress made of a sliced black T-shirt, knit deadstock and a piece of a skirt worn over a white bubble top; an experiment in three-dimensionality, the designer explained. “Speedo-jeans” were another attempt at something new. Those starred the classic men’s swim briefs spliced with vintage jeans and hand-knitted leg warmers. Lantink’s focus is solidly on questioning our relationship to traditional clothing. The final number, a black hourglass cut-out dress with hook-like shoulders, was a case in point. Even before the designer revealed, post-show, that the Met Costume Institute, the V&A and the Stedelijk museum have all acquired his work for their permanent collections, this outing gave its audience plenty to think about.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Stella’s Market. Stella McCartney SS24

October 5, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

This was a very charming Stella McCartney fashion show. Along the Avenue de Saxe in the 7th arrondissement, the designer set up a temporary shop. She created Stella’s Sustainable Market: a classic Parisian marketplace lined with stalls featuring her favourite sustainable collaborators as well as nods to parents, Paul and Linda McCartney. Meanwhile, the collection – sweetly nostalgic, tinged with the 1970s, but also and referencing Stella’s 2000s fashion moments – featured 95 per cent conscious materials, the activist designer noted. “We’ve never gone that high before.” Ballooning blouses, mini dresses and bombers were made in NONA Source repurposed silk taffetas. Lead-free crystals sparkled on waistcoats, mini dresses were made of forest friendly viscose and crochet-and-mirror knits were spun from Kelsun™️ – a seaweed-based yarn. McCartney’s models walked the marketplace runway in a shared wardrobe that represented the family feeling she wanted to convey. “This was one of the first shows we’ve ever had with women and men. It was about showing that everyone can wear it, and how you say what you are through what you wear,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what gender you are. Our brand is open to everyone.”

Power-Sensuality. Chloé SS24

September 30, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

For her finale collection for Chloé, Gabriela Hearst at last showed her sexier side of the Parisian maison. Maybe if she indulged a bit more in these smooth leathers and shorter lengths, she would thrive at the brand? The spring-sumer 2024 collection didn’t reinvent Parisian chic, but it had some much-needed sensuality that lacked throughout Hearst’s tenure. But it seemed the New York-based designer wasn’t in a sorrowful mood, as the show’s ambience was lively and bright, set outside against the Seine on a warm, sunny Parisian afternoon. Hearst leaves behind a legacy of championing socially responsible designs, and her last collection continues that theme. Per the press release, consciousness is the fourth and final ingredient to achieving climate success, which continues the ideas on clean energy, regeneration and female leadership that the designer set forth in her prior collections. For Hearst, this is best symbolized by the flower and that motif was evident from the opening look, a ruffled one shoulder dress that looked like layers of petals. Other dresses reinforced the idea, with gauzy rosette swirls adorning the hips or jutting shoulders that featured undersides stuffed with blooms. For her final look, Hearst opted for a black and white leather dress, a rather serious note given that the runway shortly segued into an all out dance party, featuring a samba band. As the models danced, it seemed that while this chapter at Chloé may have ended, Hearst was leaving it with plenty of joy.

Late Capitalism. Conner Ives SS24

September 20, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

We live in the times of late capitalism. It’s also how Conner Ives entitled his spring-summer 2024 collection, which starting point was a TikTok video he stumbled across a few months ago of a girl live-blogging her experience queuing for a fashion sample sale in New York as smoke from the Canadian wildfires bathed the city in an ominous orange glow. “As much as it felt like the end of days, there was also a dark humor to it,” Ives said at a preview. “It’s the beginning of the end of the world, and we’re waiting in line at a sample sale.” “Late Capitalism” – a collection that invitates to talk more openly about the economic realities of what keeps the fashion world moving – is “a subject that makes me uncomfortable, which made me feel like it was something worth talking about,” he said. Ives is one of a generation of designers for whom sustainability is something of a given, meaning he hasn’t telegraphed his eco-credentials all that loudly in the past (although with his signature approach of lending deadstock and upcycled vintage clothes a glamorous new life, you didn’t have to dig very deep to notice it). But he now feels a greater urgency to share the various methods by which he’s carved out his own, more responsible lane. “I think part of me didn’t want to get up on my soapbox, as I wasn’t sure if anyone really cared,” Ives said, noting that in his few years of doing production at scale, he’s repurposed nearly 15,000 T-shirts destined for scrap yards, while a new partnership with Depop will see him use the platform to source bulk raw material for production. And he’s open to talking about the fact that the system still isn’t perfect. Sure, he’s made a firm commitment to only staging a runway show once a year, but he still needs to produce lookbooks in between to allow him to sell year-round and keep his business afloat. “I’m very aware there’s an irony to the ‘Late Capitalism’ collection being an answer to getting more items into stores,” he acknowledged.

So, then, to the clothes. In his signature spirit of character-driven styling, Ives’s lookbook- photographed by Johnny Dufort, and starring the TikTok-favorite model of the moment Alex Consani – began with one of his “archetypes,” a T-shirt and skirt decorated with a swan motif as an ode to Natalie Portman’s doomed ballerina in Black Swan. Once again, there was plenty of fun to be had identifying the various figures he was paying homage to, from Charlotte York to Carmela Soprano. Ives also continued his journey of expanding out from the spliced T-shirt dresses that made his name as a fashion editor favorite, continuing to develop his tailoring and elevate his eveningwear offering. Highlights included a series of T-shirt dresses with 1930s-inspired trumpet skirts made of recycled jersey, a sheer bias-cut dress cut from baseball jersey material, and a swishy black halter gown with a mother-of-pearl shell as a belt buckle. But perhaps the most striking looks came at the end, in the form of a dazzlingly intricate dress strung together from 9,000 soda can tabs, and a slip made from cowrie shells strung together in a bias lattice. Cowrie shells, being one of the earliest forms of currency in human history as Ives pointed out, is another nod to the collection’s meditations on commerce.