Playful Derision. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt AW23

March 29, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

One of the hottest Paris Fashion Week runway debuts belonged to Marie Adam-Leenaerdt. Although considered a newcomer by the industry, she in fact was a ready-to-wear designer at Demna’s Balenciaga for a couple of seasons. The Belgian designer presented her collection in what she called a “soulless” conference room. This arguably male domain was a foil for her sophisticated women’s designs, which might have read as bougie if there weren’t something so “off” about them – like jackets with small shoulders that slanted toward the chest, strange geometric silhouettes, and the collection’s hero pieces – oats with standing lapels. Adam-Leenaerdt style is all about hints of playful derision. But there’s nothing gimmick-y about it: her garments are trendless, and appeal with the strength of the cut, the precision of the construction, and the luxury of the materials. There’s been a lot of discussion about the female gaze as it applies to “sexy” dressing; Adam-Leenaerdt seemed to be turning hers to ideas around femininity and propriety. This is a very covered-up collection that reconstructs a woman’s curves into geometries of enveloping drapes, with proportions either blown-up or shrunken. A dress that seems to have a box inside of it is tied with a couture bow, other dresses seem to have three arms. There’s a deliberate domestic aspect to Adam-Leenaerdt’s work. Women have often been relegated to the home, but she wants to transform and celebrate ordinary aspects of life – “to reveal the beauty in the ‘has-been’ elements of the daily world, to divert them, to have fun with them.” To that end Adam-Leenaerdt reimagined a folded table napkin as a white dress, and she fashioned dresses out of tablecloths. Her aim, it seems, is to make us engage with what is immediately around us, by taking something known, a code or a silhouette, and giving it a subtle strangeness that makes you stop and adjust your vision.

Follow the designer on Instagram: @marlastar

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Clothing That Has Life To It. Maryam Nassir Zadeh AW23

March 26, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Maryam Nassir Zadeh skipped New York Fashion Week this season, and instead shot her autumn-winter 2023 look-book at her parents’ house in Los Angeles. Lately, the designer enjoys revisiting places and things she loves and seeing them afresh. “We got inspired by the idea of building a core collection, which we had never done before,” the designer explained. There were not-so-basic, quintessentially MNZ pieces aplenty here, from her signature backward pants to leather bombers for all genders, greatcoats to kilts, rendered in materials like pinstripe and corduroy. These are items that the designer still finds relevant after all these years and wants her customers to be able to come back to again and again. While going through the clothing archive she stores at her childhood home, Zadeh came across her RISD portfolio and pieces from her earliest collections. The garments and textiles she made back then didn’t just look relevant to her today; they reinforced her desire to get even closer to her work. “I really want to create textiles and make clothing that has a richness of texture and life to it,” she said. Some of the pieces, like a sash dripping with beads, are whimsical one-offs made using vintage materials; others, like an embellished stretch-lace bodysuit, will go into production. It’d look great with a pair of asymmetric laced leggings that have the special off-ness that defines the brand. In a reflective mood, Zadeh set her own pace this season. Post-lockdown, she mused, we have “a new relationship with the times, and it really has to do with things being fast. I don’t think I have to do what everyone’s doing and be so fast; sometimes doing less is just so much more. That’s where I’m at.” Going forward Zadeh will present her collections publicly by choice. The nostalgic turn her work has taken is connected to her belief that what you need you can find within yourself. As she put it: “Some things are just part of you, and some things are where you start, and then even if you go far, you still arrive back to where you began.” Zadeh’s collection might be fragranced by déjà vu, but it has the potential to take you places you haven’t yet been to.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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A Certain Lifestyle. Loro Piana AW23

March 23, 2023March 23, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The fashion world seems to start catching up with Loro Piana. This Italian brand isn’t only delivering the finest cashmeres and vicunas to the Italian, as well as global, market, but also offers clothes that are synonymous with a certain lifestyle. Of course, it’s a very, very pricey lifestyle (*the Succession intro playing in the background*), but not a noisy one. There’s pretty much nothing flashy about Loro garments and accessories. You won’t find a single logo on the outside surface of their bags. Fashion trends, cores and themes don’t matter to this label’s design universe. The anonymous design team (the rumor has it that most of these designers came from Phoebe Philo’s Céline studio) keeps on refining the delightful house codes of Loro Piana, and the last couple of seasons are clear examples of that. The autumn-winter 2023 line-up is exceptionally great. This season, the brand celebrates the countries of its supply chains: Peru, Bolivia and Argentina (for vicuna) , New Zealand and Australia (for wool) and Mongolia (for cashmere). These inspirations were gently applied in pattern and tone to two collections – women’s and men’s – that worked hard to get along: adapted outerwear pieces from Loro’s more traditionally mannish canon were adapted for womenswear, while the pleated, fuller pants shape that the women’s team majored on was reflected in multiple menswear looks. An absolute harmony. Loro Piana is an inherently discreet brand that is traditionally more progressive in its technical development than its expression. This collection pointed to the shaping of a more coherent voice with which to declare its excellence.

And here’s a couple of my current Loro Piana favorites. Those are pieces you could have in your closet and actually never shop again. And pass them on as family heirlooms…

Loro Piana – Monginevro Cashmere Sweater – Brown

Loro Piana – Leather-trimmed Striped Alpaca-blend Bouclé Poncho – White

Loro Piana – Golden Hour In Dubai Suede-trimmed Printed Cashmere Throw – Orange

Loro Piana – Wintercozy Faux Shearling Slippers – Gray

Loro Piana – Sesia Happy Day Large Textured-leather Tote – Brown

Loro Piana – Cotton And Linen-blend Canvas-trimmed Leather Baseball Cap – Brown

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Looking For America. ERL AW23

March 18, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

There is no other brand like ERL. By that I mean no one dissects the codes of Americana like Eli Russell Linnetz. And nobody in fashion does theatrics like the Venice Beach-based designer. The authentic, evocative story-telling, which is a combination of ERL’s convincingly vintage-y clothes and the brand’s unique cast of models, just can’t be faked. The designer’s story for autumn-winter 2023 season follows a family that strikes it rich after traveling the Oregon trail, then falls into dysfunction and deterioration across the generations. The zine, which Linnetz titled “Greed: The American Gold Rush“, opens with “pioneer chic” dresses in drab checks and a red bandana print and ends with a Wall Street descendent living through the housing crisis of the 2020s in a football jersey with a homemade bomb strapped to his chest, planning his own demise. It’s a dystopian view of the American dream, reinforced by the use of imagery from the film Easy Rider – tagline: “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere.” But the collection isn’t as dark as the tale Linnetz tells with his photos. Though there are T-shirts printed with the words “Rent Me,” he wears his generation’s pessimism lightly. He’s too fascinated with the major and minor arcana of American life – from the stars and stripes of the flag on down to swap meet sourced vintage prints and the 1970s phenomenon that was iron-on T-shirts – to be truly negative in his outlook. A click through the images will tell you that this is actually Linnetz’s most upbeat collection yet, and not just because he devoted a chapter to the psychedelia of the 1970s, with flower children printed parkas and snowpants, and airbrushed T-shirts in cotton that feels likes it’s been loved and lived-in for years. He had fun with his Wall Street-wear too, collaging classic menswear plaids with surfboard illustrations by the legendary surfer Gerry Lopez on jackets and coats. The back of the coat is DIY’d with one of the 50-odd iron-ons in the lineup. Linnetz pointed to his experience collaborating with Kim Jones at Dior Men for his push into tailoring, and said there will be more of it in upcoming seasons.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Brave Princess. Renaissance Renaissance AW23

March 15, 2023January 6, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

I love the post-fashion month time, because it’s the right moment to look closer at collections coming from smaller brands that often deliver more substance than the usual, runway big-players. For a couple of seasons now, I’m in absolute awe with Renaissance Renaissance, created by Lebanese designer Cynthia Merhej. Last spring, Merhej told the story of runaway princess searching for a life of her own making. For autumn-winter 2023, the Renaissance Renaissance designer continued that charming story, imagining her heroine weathering the winter months in a makeshift wardrobe made of pre-existing and new materials. But as conductive as that narrative is to Merhej’s own storytelling, the most compelling story she has to tell is her own. “This season I started playing with this idea of transformational garments,” Merhej told Vogue. “I was looking again at the lifestyle of this princess, who may be too poor to buy two dresses so she makes something she can get more wear out of.” The personal side of that story, however, is that Merhej was looking to reconnect with her own sense of playfulness and independence in creating after a period of unresolvedness and evolution. The piece opening this ethereal lookbook is a deadstock pinstripe vest with a stylized cape, which unbuttons from the collar to become a bubble-hem train. This idea is replicated in a sweetheart neckline LBD, its capelet romantically tied around the neck, and on an upcycled fur stole worn as a strapless top. Merhej used mink fur from a vintage coat for some of these special pieces, paneling the material for the stole or dividing it in thin strips to use as accents in a gauzy silk skirt or wool double-breasted A-line coat. “The woman I’m designing for is very free,” Merhej said, “she doesn’t want to be tied down to anything, she’s experimental and playful.” As much as her convertible designs – most part of her Atelier program, which consists of one of a kind pieces – adhere to this ideal, it’s in her ready-to-wear that the designer is truly bridging the gap between her storytelling and her customer. A blush pink skirt and top set, as well as a khaki tailored jacket with matching skirt, are highlights.