Woman

There Is Hope. Acne Studios AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

This was one of Acne Studios‘ strongest collections in a while. It had some very surprising turns (eveningwear!), it had an inspiring sustainability factor, and it somehow captured what fashion can be in turbulent times. But lets start from the beginning. When Jonny Johansson was a teenager still at school he lobbied his mother to get him some Levi’s 501s. Mrs. Johansson resisted, bought Swedish, and came back with two pairs of denim pants that she’d snagged from H&M for the same price as one pair of red tags. “She said this is the best choice,” Johansson sighed backstage. At the same time, however, Mrs. J also picked up a jacket which Jonny initially was not into – but which he decided to have a go at turning into something he liked. “It needed to be shortened and then I added a belt. I went into school wearing it, not knowing if people would notice it, or notice that it was home-made – which was not cool,” he said today. None of Johansson’s schoolmates reacted either way. Well, just look at him now. This collection leaned into Acne’s denim heritage in front of an influence-loaded audience with great effect. Upcycled patched denim paperbag skirts, an upcycled patched denim crini dress, and the opening look, a wide-leg garment dyed denim skirt, all paid homage to the single medium that was chiefly responsible for this multi-hyphenate success. Against this he played denim’s natural co-conspirator, leather, via a series of double-breasted trench coats reduced to slit-skirted armless dresses, sometimes also overdyed. Other notable elements included tuft-lined and sometimes-quilted regal blanket dresses in grandma florals, crystal embedded rib-kit socks over shoes, grungily faded jersey separates, layered fringed curtain dresses, and repeated returns to the post-Talking Heads boxy blazer in overdyed leather that was another early Acne signature. As tattered and ragged in its delivery as it was complete in its conception, this was an Acne collection that seemed more comfortable with itself than some of Johansson’s previous ventures. The show was accompanied by an original live performance by musician and composer Suzanne Ciani, a pioneer of electronic music who embraced the liberating technologies of synth to transform the way we listen to music today. As a last-minute change, the finale soundtrack reminded one of a war battleground rattle. The nomadic silhouettes walking on the elevated runway with these disturbing sound sensations in the background felt like a hopeful vision: in the end, the good overcomes the evil.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Experience. Dries Van Noten AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Dries Van Noten still hasn’t returned to the runway format. But this season, he delivered a full experience. For autumn-winter 2022, the Belgian designer hosted a mannequin presentation at the dilapidated Hotel de Guise (in this mansion belonging to an old French family, the clock apparently stopped 50 years ago). Grouped in paneled rooms, the liveless models were staged in various scenes: as if in conversation, leaning watching over bannisters, lurking in a bathroom, glimpsed in a closet, standing on tables or suddenly, disconcertingly, seated on the attic stairs. In other words: this was Dries Van Noten in his element, curating an interior environment instead of a fashion show. It was the perfect setting for absorbing the novel shock of suddenly being able to see and touch the richly layered textures of his collection again – and to sense a distinct frisson of darkness and perversity in the air. The event was also a launch of Van Noten’s perfume and lipstick line, which in the end made even more sense. The invited editors could completely immerse in Dries’ world, from the garments to the senses. What about the new season clothes? They all looked sumptuous: the animal print coat layered over deep crimson silk-velvet trousers; glam holographic sequins with denim trousers and a wildly nubbly wool scarf; 1940s dresses dripped with lines of stones and additionally enriched with opulent, vintage-style jewelry.

Had he found himself designing more intensely, more richly, during the closed-in times? “No.” Van Noten replied. “It is always like this. You just never see it when it’s up on a runway.” He’s been one of the increasingly few hold-outs against convening physical shows this season – and one of the few who really adapted to exercising the creative possibilities of fashion filmmaking. Using the half-way house of this expressive presentation was something else, fully playing into his multiple talents as a curator of exhibitions, antique interiors aficionado, gardener (which connects with the perfumes) and being the Belgian guy with the Antwerpian memories of alternative parties in the ’70s and raves in the ’90s. He makes a very good point: “I think it’s that whole tactile moment. It’s not that I don’t want to go back to fashion shows, because I think it’s another thing, but this is really nice to experience. This way of presenting creates closeness; the fact that you can explain things, touch things, see things. You can stage it so that you can tell more stories than in a fashion show. So for me, it was a very interesting way of thinking.” So, to the “story.” Van Noten had been researching the work of Carlo Mollino, the Italian architect and photographer whose life spanned surrealism and the ’70s. “After he died, erotic Polaroids he had taken of women, nude and semi-dressed, were found in his apartment.” Look them up, and you find how Van Noten had come up with the maxi-coat shapes, the leather chokers, the ‘kinky’ lace-up boots. He also put his finger on another popular ’70s cult object – a down-padded, Charles James-like jacket with a deep tubular edge. Puffy volumes gone glamorous, circle shapes and other extreme geometries are part of the avant-garde news from Paris. Somehow, while staying within his own world, speaking to his own customers and bringing his whole character to creating his beauty/lifestyle lines, Dries Van Noten still has ways of clocking what’s happening outside.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Sublime Symphony. Saint Laurent AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Anthony Vaccarello delivered one of the most beautiful, sensational and elegant moments of the entire fashion month. His autumn-winter 2022 collection for Saint Laurent was sublime, a true symphony of chic, refinement and grace that even Yves himself would applaud. What will be remembered most? Purely the sight of a woman in a long, silvery bias-cut dress, with a perfect black low-buttoned double-breasted black peacoat over it, her hands thrust into the pockets. She opened the show. And then the line-up of flawless black tuxedos and a single, narrow black tux coat which came at the end. Of course, there was a lot more in between: fake fur coats and bombers; amazing overcoats with big (not too big) shoulders; narrow leather coats; elegantly nonchalant cocoon-back profiles. Then the punctuation of something as simple as an ecru floor-length turtle neck T-shirt dress, worn with deep stacks of dark wood and silver bangles on each arm. And the high glamour of 1930s and 1980s evening jackets with big bands of faux fur running around them.

More than anything, all of this went to show how Vaccarello has got himself in charge of the Yves Saint Laurent aesthetic, relaxed into it. That’s no mean feat – the sheer magnitude and magnificence of Saint Laurent’s oeuvre is mightily intimidating. In the face of it, the temptation as a designer is either to rebel against it with super-short shorts, slit skirts, breast-exposure and everything Saint Laurent didn’t do (which Vaccarello did at one time) or to just be too reverential. What the job really calls for is someone who knows enough about the playbook of Saint Laurent to be able to honor its quality, but also has enough confidence to be nonchalant about using it. Vaccarello hit that point of maturity with this show. In his own accent, with his own taste. With, yes, maybe something of his Belgian-born sensibility coming through: vague echoes of that period of deconstructed minimalism, the monochrome colors, saving the air of being easy to wear, but then again, bringing it up to the level of the modern Parisian elegance that we all dream about. The collection was emotionally-charged, as it was a powerful tribute to Vaccarello’s father, who has passed away recently.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

(New) New Bottega. Bottega Veneta AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

The new new Bottega Veneta, under Matthieu Blazy‘s creative direction, isn’t an abrupt aesthetical leap from Daniel Lee’s days, but definitely feels much sleeker, decluttered and sharper edit-wise. A smooth transition from Lee, who re-invented the Italian brand, to Blazy, who is one of industry’s unsung design heroes (and creatives who worked with the former behind Bottega), resulted in a debut filled with studied, somewhat subversive propositions that are more composed and toned-down than before. Blazy has the kind of track record that makes fashion people stand up straight: he interned at Balenciaga; worked for Raf Simons; what was then called Maison Martin Margiela; Céline under Phoebe Philo; Calvin Klein under Raf Simons. Fashion geeks would have delighted in recognising symbols and techniques tied to his time at those brands, which re-appeared in this collection, especially from Calvin Klein and Bottega Veneta. As a designer whose name hasn’t been formally credited until now, it was as if he was claiming his inventions.

The show opened with a white tank top and blue denim trouser entirely created in leather (!), the latter printed as an optical illusion. The ordinary-to-extraordinary idea of Blazy’s opening look fuelled a collection founded in the weird-ification and glam-ification of classics, from workwear and formal suits to cocktail and even ballroom dress codes. In the tradition of Lee, Blazy continued Bottega Veneta’s focus on the kind of fashion the industry recognises as cool: artsy in form language, intellectually informed, and with the “off” cutting and detailing that make the wrong feel right. On his runway, it had an added chilliness to it, which perhaps heightened the objective. Cases in point were enigmatic details like leather pom poms on cocktail dresses, the square leather closures on a blazer, the leather frill crinoline of a dance skirt, and those abstract crochet dresses. More pragmatic wardrobe proposals included peacoat suits and the men’s knitwear and leather. I wonder what direction will Blazy’s vision go in the next seasons.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Soft Elegance. Jil Sander AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

In a season when designers are desperately targeting Gen-Z, Jil Sander’s Lucie and Luke Meier made clothes for grown-ups. That kind of commitment breeds loyalty in women of a certain demographic and income bracket who feel left out of the fashion conversation (and still love Old Céline). “We were thinking about elegance,” Lucie said backstage. “We really wanted to focus on sculptural tailoring, almost couture-like, but we like this new energy, a very cropped silhouette.” The Jil Sander woman is wearing a wool skirt suit, its jacket sculpted with an hourglass volume and the skirt just peeking out from beneath its hem, or a slightly longer, flippier skirt with a cape-like jacket. Completing the silhouette are Chelsea boots with gold hardware, flat and sturdy. Dresses with the same above-the-knee proportion and flat bows at the shoulders and waist called to mind Pierre Cardin, whose death in late 2020 has precipitated new interest in his brand of 1960s minimalism. There were longer, softer lengths as well, including on a group of black dresses whose special details – a deep-v neckline, say, or voluminous bell sleeves – gave them a lot of cost-per-wear value. The Meiers have made handcrafts (like macramé and crochet) an essential part of their Jil Sander aesthetic. This season they pared that back, featuring only one print of astrological signs on drapey stretch jersey or quilted satin, choosing three-dimensional fabrics with surface appeal, like the bouclé on a pair of short dresses and the finer gauge knit of a long dress with fuzzy mohair sleeves. The exception was the guipure lace they used for a trio of long dresses, including one in a sensational shade of marigold. The white and black versions were shown with tailored single-breasted jackets, which is indeed a very elegant, very grown-up way to approach black-tie.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.