Princess-Core. Renaissance Renaissance SS23

November 1, 2022January 6, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

I’m far more obsessed with Renaissance Renaissance‘s beautiful collection than with most of the spring-summer 2023 offerings coming from big names. Picture this: a rebellious princess running away from her palace by the sea. She’s traversing the desert at dusk, desperately seeking a city where she’ll meet artists, writers, poets – free spirits who will release her own and unfetter her from the rigidity of tradition. This is the story Lebanese designer Cynthia Merhej conceived of while working on her delightful spring collection. This princess is detached from European traditions – rather, she comes from Tunisia or Morocco, she’s running away to a place like Cairo, and her path is guided not by European medieval signage, but by Jinns and Arab symbols (as illustrated by a print, shown in look 12, created by a friend of the designer’s and inspired by the mythology of the Arab desert). “I wanted to go back to the root of the brand, back to my narrative roots as a storyteller. I always found it easier to express very complicated ideas in a simplified way, a simple story,” Merhej said. The complicated idea du jour? “The brand is about this tension between tradition and wanting to be a free spirit,” Merhej added, referring to her mother and herself as an example of this push and pull, but noting this dichotomy can also exist within one person.

The designer’s lineup for spring includes a recently launched category called Atelier, under which she’ll produce one-of-a-kind pieces. Each garment is made in Beirut in her atelier using couture techniques. Merhej said that now that she’s established the commercial portion of her business, she wants to make sure she continues to push herself creatively, while at the same time finding ways of nurturing the decimated fashion industry in Beirut, currently in a state of rebuilding. The pieces are also sustainable in that they’re made from deadstock materials. The first of these pieces opens the lookbook: a naturally dyed cropped cardigan knitted in a large gauge with mohair and tulle yarn by Lindsey Smith, a collaborator. “The idea was to create these kinds of knits that look like they’re degrading, the leftovers of her dress that was falling apart,” Merhej said in reference to her princess and her arduous journey. Another piece is made by hand layering pieces of lace her mother has been collecting for 25 years. The most striking item in the collection is a reversible coat as seen in looks 3, 7, and 9. One face is taffeta, and the other is covered in gathered tulle. The coats underwent a few experiments like tea dyeing or sun drying, all to give them the texture and softness of a lived-in piece. Elsewhere, in the ready-to-wear, Merhej explores her tulle fabrications, most notably on a skirt made of cotton and covered in tulle, which she also designed attached to a ribbed knit top as a dress. Other highlights include ankle-length linen skirts, a pleated button-down shirt fitted at the waist (a common focal point in Merhej’s work), and a rounded kimono-sleeve tailored jacket, which is returning from last season given its success. Again, this is a truly beautiful collection, with subtle echoes of 1990s Comme Des Garçons and Romeo Gigli.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Reference Point. Jan Chodorowicz SS23

October 23, 2022October 23, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

When I was covering Jan Chodorowicz‘s debut collection, “SOCIALI/S/TE”, I was sure this young creative is about to lead a new wave of Polish designers emerging in the fashion industry. Spring-summer 2023 is his second collection, and it was presented to buyers and editors during Paris Fashion Week in the beginning of October. The latest offering explores further the codes of work-wear, a theme which the designer has been exploring since his MA at Central Saint Martins. According to Chodorowicz, the process of re-contextualization of work-wear, its details, materials and functions, lead to their adaptation for the wardrobe of a contemporary woman. As he told Vogue Poland, “so far, my work has been characterized by deep research. This time I worked differently, inspired by the clothes, the design process itself.” That especially shows in the masterful tailoring behind the new season trench coats and cargo pants (in the designer’s signature color of deep blue). The white tank-top, a genderless building-block of any utilitarian-wardrobe, is having a moment too in the collection. Still, the subtle, cultural references are present, and the designer really knows how to interweave them into his garments without going too literal. The unexpected pop of silver, in form of a shirt-and-pants set, is the result of profound inspiration with the film “Volcano of Love” (directed by Sara Dosa), which tells the story of a 1960s couple who traveled the world and identified volcanoes. To get close to the craters, they wore silver-coated suits. “For them it was work attire,” Jan sums up. The collection affiliates with the idea of a work-uniform of artists, especially of such sculpture mavericks as Alina Szapocznikow and Barbara Hepworth. According to the designer, the uniform you wear while creating something doesn’t necessarily have to mean one, monotonous look. That’s why his spring-summer 2023 is a proposal of clothes you can easily mix-and-match during that absorbing and exciting process of creative pursuit.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Surfaces. Valentino Resort 2023

October 20, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Valentino‘s resort 2023 collection was conceived as a precursor to the spring 2023 outing which we’ve seen about two weeks ago. Stripped of the stagecraft of the show, it was representative of Pierpaolo Piccioli’s line of thought, both conceptual and visual – and it honestly felt more convincing. “Fashion shows are there to solidify the narration around your values and your identity,” Piccioli said. “Resort is the moment when fashion speaks its own language. There’s no storytelling here, just work on construction, cut, silhouettes, color. It’s just moda, fashion, in its purest self. Of course, for me, clothes are always about how real people inhabit them.” For Piccioli, there’s no moda without humanity. He named the collection “Surfaces“, emphasizing the visuals of an all-over, head-to-toe silhouette where textures and shapes were turned into a sort of minimal continuum. While Piccioli has been toying around with minimalism for quite some time as a way to highlight the individuality of the wearer – “you reduce the excess on the garment to spotlight the attention on the face,” he said – it’s actually a concept rooted in Valentino Garavani’s 1960s aesthetics, when lines were pure, volumes were close to the body, and decoration was kept to a minimum. Fluidity was an element of sensuality that didn’t detract from the purity of design. Resort was in conversation with those style fundamentals. At the spring show Piccioli indulged in fluidity and movement enhanced by an abundance of sequined shine, but here he kept the silhouette neat, slim, and very short. Trim contours and head-to-toe maximalist surfaces were in evidence, for example, in a black macramé lace slip dress paired with matching thigh-high legging-boots, or in a mini shift dress encrusted with white lace, which somehow stretched into matching stocking-boots edged with leather. A day-evening ensemble, comprised of a dramatic long drawstring circle gown in amethyst faille, cinched with a marigold sash and worn with an oversize double-breasted blazer in cinnamon taffeta, was contrasted by a pristine white cotton shirt with macramé details. It highlighted not only the designer’s eye for color – no PPPink, thanks god – but also the cool spirit of versatility, the mixing of codes, and the couture flair that he’s persistently after. Punk or bourgeois, timeless or not, it definitely sparks joy.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Pleasure Garden. Magda Butrym SS23

October 16, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

For spring-summer 2023, Magda Butrym invites us to her, as the collection’s title suggests, “Pleasure Garden“. The Polish designer, whose clothes are red carpet favorites among actors and artists like Natalie Portman, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Olivia Rodrigo, just knows what women want: a certain sort of chic that’s romantic, yet bold, mature, yet mood-boosting. The latest offerings has plenty of Butrym’s signature florals, which return in form of artful appliqués as well as in tone-on-tone embroidery across a white standout maxi and curve-hugging black set. In a dreamy sea of neutrals with pops of pale lilac and bubblegum pink, find hand-draped floral forms punctuating the necklines of slinky jersey halter tops and ultra-high side slits, and unfurling in structured ruffles trimming the ruched cocktail dresses. The designer also takes a look back at the 1970s jet-set style with a toffee suit made from finest suede, and charming denim embroidered with even more florals. Butrym doesn’t really go for straightforward themes, and that makes her vision of a woman feel so distinct and true-to-her-style every season.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Land Of Dreams. Ralph Lauren SS23

October 15, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Sometimes, we just want something stable and lasting in the world where everything changes so instantly and abruptly. That’s Ralph Lauren‘s allure, which seems to be going through a sort of renaissance in the last couple of seasons. Over the years, Lauren has shown us his New York – a show in Central Park, the café society show presented at his uptown store, the swanky supper club he erected near Wall Street and last season’s soignee affair at MoMA. While there’s no denying he’s a New Yorker through and through, nothing gets the creative juices flowing quite like a case of wanderlust. And so the designer looked farther afield for spring-summer 2023. Specifically to Southern California – shockingly, the first time he’s shown here. He could have gone anywhere he pleased, but Lauren landed on an unexpected choice – the Huntington Library, a museum and botanical garden just northeast of Los Angeles proper, founded in 1919 by an industrialist family that made their fortunes in railroads and real estate. It was against the museum’s Mediterranean Revival style facade that Lauren presented his vision to his Hollywood pals – Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, Diane Keaton, Laura Dern, John Legend, to name but a few. The cushioned loungers and twilight cocktail hour set the tone – this was California casual, done the Ralph way. “California has always been a land of dreams and contradictions – rugged coasts and red carpets,” he said in his show notes. You could sense that those contrasts fascinate him. “For the first time ever,” he continued, “I bring my dream of living here, sharing my worlds in an experience that celebrates a way of life I have always believed in – a mix of grit and glamour, energy and inspiration.” In his six-decades-long career, there’s nothing in the American psyche that Lauren hasn’t addressed in some way. And yet, the West and its mythos, has been particularly transfixing. So it’s not surprising that he found ways to wring out new insights from archetypes and codes that he’s explored before.

The show opened with a trim, wheat-colored suit worn with an oversized cowboy hat, a Western belt, and antique-style jewelry. The effect was confident and assured – a mix of the urbane and rugged, of masculine and feminine. Floral-pattern bias-cut prairie dresses fluttering atop cowboy boots followed, adding a demure touch, while fringed knits became oversized cardigans or wrap skirts, imparting gravitas. Men, meanwhile, wore dusky denim suits, evoking the hardscrabble dignity of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, or, alternately, looked like suave frontiersmen of classic Hollywood westerns, the models tipping their hats and winking at audience members as they strutted by. The show shifted through different modes, first came looks in an easy key: breezy pleated pants worn with louche white button-ups, preppy sweaters tied around the neck, tennis shorts paired with a creamy brown turtleneck, a shimmering gold safari suit, all imbued with a sense of offhanded elegance. Next, it moved into a more eclectic, youthful beat: madras patchwork mixed with tailoring, athletic gear mixed with prep, polo shirts atop ball gowns or maillots worn with billowing nylon floor length skirts. Lauren seemed to be shaking off the formality of the East Coast, embracing the outdoorsy lifestyle of Los Angeles. It was a looser, freer collection, one that was a snapshot of the breadth and variety of the American style idiom (the wonderful casting of various ages and ethnicities helped tell that story beautifully). Instead of the normal final walk, the enormous cast came out and lined the stairs as Lauren, smiling, took his bow.