“I want to do lightness because for me, couture always seems quite staid and heavy,” Kim Jones said regarding his Fendi spring-summer 2023 couture offering. “I wanted a floatiness. Elegant but youthful.” Jones also added that this collection was “a continuation” of his autumn couture, and a response to Fendi clients’ requests for evening dresses. What he offered was a discreetly modernized redefinion of statuesque goddess-dressing: slim silhouettes, in pale evanescent colors, 1930s style. You could barely tell that some of the silvered dresses which had overlaid printed lace-patterns, a bit like tablecloths, were leather, decorated with scanned-in prints. Or the glinting “chain-mail” gloves. “I wanted to really work with the couture techniques,” Jones said. “What they can do now is so advanced.” The concept of the swoops and drapery lightly referenced an archival Karl Lagerfeld for Fendi silk dress that Jones had studied; a glancing echo of the classical staturary of Rome, of course. Jones layered it over delicate constructs of lace-edged silk bras and slips. It’s all very pretty. But while Jones’s work blooms and evolves at Dior Men, his Fendi’s womenswear feels too reserved and steeped in comfort zone.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
This season, Pierpaolo Piccioli took Valentino haute couture to the club, leaving behind the highly elevated feeling he so succesfully conveyed in the last couple or years. His venue, at night, was a famous Paris joint under the Pont Alexandre. His point about standing for inclusivity is definitely intended to be heard by the wider world of young people. “Of course, I love it that haute couture is about the magic of impossible challenges,” he began. “Of course it’s about craft, and we talk about that all the time, but I also love it when couture feels effortless. It’s all about the feeling of having something for yourself. It’s kind of democratic in a way, in the idea of showing this freedom of being whoever you want to be.” On his inspiration board were photos of clubs in the 1980s, ranging from Studio 54 to London’s New Romantic Blitz Club, the Club For Heroes one-nighter and the Taboo, hosted by the outrageous performance artist Leigh Bowery. What all these scenes, underground or jet-set, had in common was that they were hotbeds for generating fashion and havens for what used to be called ‘gender-bending.’ “The difference was that then, it was behind closed doors. Now it’s something we have for life. It’s today’s way of freedom,” he argued. “So I love the idea of a club, but it’s a club for today. Thinking of inclusivity as welcoming people for who they are, and who they want to be. So it’s invitation to be free to be what you want ro be, mixed with the codes of Mr. Valentino in the ’80s.” Still, haute couture formalities were observed in a way – Valentino’s creatures of the night weren’t presented as a wild crowd of dancers, but as models walking on a runway, haute couture standards of solemnity preserved. What emerged from the darkness were pops of color, dark Parisian sexy black transparent lingerie dresses, and many varieties of strategic body-exposure. In 89 looks, Piccioli put forward individualism in tiny pelmet skirts or cutaway bodysuits implanted with giant bows worn with floor-trailing capes, a dress with cutout polkadot portholes, and white shirts and ties styled with micro-minis (one with a dramatic red sequin trench). In overall this wasn’t my favorite Valentino couture moment, but Piccioli definitely had some working on it.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
Oh Haider, we’ve missed you. The news of Haider Ackermann being the next guest designer for Jean Paul Gaultier‘s haute couture dialogue felt unreal. Until the first model appeared on the ice-blue carpet under the roof of Gaultier’s house. Everything came together: the sense of the haute values of design being the point of it. The models who really delivered a show and poses. Gaultier’s haute couture house ateliers who expressed it in body-sharp tailoring, and crisply-scissored drape. And of course Haider Ackermann, the designer who with his signature style and incredible artistry could lead a couple of snoozy Parisian houses (Givenchy, for instance). Ackermann is the fourth of the designers to have been tapped on the shoulder for a one-season collaboration, since Gaultier retired. He follows Olivier Rousteing of Balmain, Glenn Martens of Y/Project, and Chitose Abe of Sacai. Ackermann, the most grown-up guest thus far, was perhaps aesthetically the least likely yet to have been invited to respond to Gaultier’s storied metier. As he admitted just before the show, “I don’t have a sense of humor at all! I have my gravity, and he has his generosity and joy – we are two worlds apart. But at the same time, we have many things in common. Because we both love women, we adore women, respect women.” The convergence he found began with Gaultier’s tailoring. “To go back to the essence of his work, which was perfect. People forget how immaculate his tailoring was. His work was magical. So I tried to go back to the pure lines, to find a calmness and moment of grace. Because I believe his work was magical.” When the women began to walk out, they slowly and with a deliberate collectivity embodied the spirit of old-world couture stances, pausing to strike poses in front of photographers as if they were in an Irving Penn shoot. The pace and the intimacy of the staging meant that every single lingering silhouette and detail could be taken in close-up. The whiteness of the cuffs on immaculate black trouser suits, cut sometimes with tailcoats and conceptual plackets of frogging, sometimes reduced to pure minimal outline. One skinny-trousered two-piece came with a diagonal slash across the jacket and a hip-level obi-cummerbund – a stunning aesthetic fusion of Ackermann and Gaultier in one look. On top of that, Ackermann proved himself as a colorist and a dressmaker, draping extraordinary serpentine gowns and varieties of chic coat dresses with contrasting linings. It made it sink in how rare it is these days that outstanding drama and chic minimalism go together. Somehow, high fashion now has a need for being loud and gimmick-y. This, without turning backwards or being in the least camp, made a progressive case for the sensational powers of haute couture in the modern world. That was Ackermann’s intention: to bring the subject of haute couture back to the clothes. He did that superbly. “I knew Jean Paul liked my work, but I never thought this would come my way. I’m already a long time in business. It’s usually like, okay, give it to the younger ones,” he said. “And so, to design is one of the most wonderful feelings. I really love my job, and this made me love it even more. It’s been like a love affair between me, and the ladies in the atelier.” The arrangement with the house is for one season only. “It makes me sad to leave all this behind. But if I’ve created 10 minutes of grace when everyone can forget about their problems, and I’ve honored Monsieur, and something that’s also necessary for fashion in 2023, then I’ll be happy.”
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
The world became a sadder place without the Dame and the Queen of punk, Vivienne Westwood, who passed away just a couple of days before the New Year. Who else could create a more authentic and vivid tribute to Westwood’s work – and the entire subculture she helped create and kept leading – than John Galliano? His co-ed autumn-winter 2023 collection for Maison Margiela, one of the best ready-to-wear collections he’s done for the brand in a while, makes you believe punk isn’t dead. Galliano brought up the term ‘Rorschach test’ for the subjective seeing of different things when we look at fashion. Through these eyes, it looked very like a fierce, urgent reveling in the subcultural spirit of the 1970s and early ’80s in London – Galliano’s youth, but brought forward, mashed up for today. “You might see some familiar figures in it,” he suggested. “Jordan on the King’s Road; the fishnets; Johnny Rotten, maybe.” He’d sent out crude collaged photocopied flyers with his invitations – like fanzines and invites to underground gigs, the way kids navigated nightlife long before mobile phones. A couple of models were clutching them with their handbags as they lurched down the runway, as if in a hurry to get somewhere. In some of their hats, fancifully collaged from trash bags and scraps of tulle, were cockades made from chopped-up flyers. The plaids didn’t look like punk tartan – Westwood’s eternally favorite fabric—but then again, it almost did. And, to these eyes at least, there she was, almost personified in the girls who were dashing along in Galliano’s ingeniously wrapped pencil skirts – the sexy ’50s rocker style that Vivienne always spoke about as the first clothes she loved making for herself as a teenager. If that really was a salute to the late designer, it was also mixed up in the layers and layers of Galliano’s spins on 1950s tulle ballgowns, his huge, swinging opera coats, and chopped-up Americana. There were also Western-type jackets with Mickey Mouse plackets, Hawaiian prints, all seen through a punk, D-I-Y filter. Beautiful and emotionally moving.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
Magda Butrym‘s pre-fall 2023 collection launched at the time Kali Uchis released her new, soothing single, I Wish You Roses. “I was a rose in the garden of weeds, my petals are soft and silky as my sheets, so do not be afraid to get pricked by the thorns“. Sometimes, a feeling is captured simultaneously by both, music and fashion. The Polish designer, who dresses Hollywood’s leading women, from Natalie Portman to Margot Robbie, knows how to serve a collection that’s feminine, romantic, yet absolutely badass and empowering. The pre-fall offering sees model Erin Wasson wearing the most sexy red dress of the season, literally blooming with hand-draped roses. There’s a column-dress moment in silver lamé; a summer-perfect sun-dress made entirely from crotchet; a hooded black gown giving total red carpet glam. The floral print, so signature for the brand, goes through a Kar Wai Wong’s In The Mood For Love lens this season. The eveningwear is hot, and Butrym keeps on evolving other parts of the wardrobe as well. The red blazer with broad, 1980s shoulders is as convincing and bold as the boxy leather coat. The best-selling heels with pinned flowers now come with the chicest pearls attached. “I wish you roses, yeah, roses, roses…“
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
