That’s Hot. Nensi Dojaka SS22

September 18, 2021 | Design & Culture by Ed

Hot Girl Summer all year long – that’s the key message from the first day of London Fashion Week. Nensi Dojaka is one of the freshest forces in womenswear for a long time to emerge from London. The creative directors of LVMH judged her to be that the other day, when they awarded her the 2021 winner of the LVMH Prize from an impressive field of global contenders. Dojaka has a lot of fans. Dua Lipa and Rita Ora are among them; like her, both have Albanian roots and have grown up in London. Dojaka has lived and studied in the city since she was 17 years old. First she learned the exacting art of lingerie technology at London College of Fashion, hence her fanatically perfectionist expertise in the minute calibrations of fitting bras and multiple, adjustable straps. She then progressed through the Central St Martins MA course, then to her first group outings with Fashion East. She had her first solo show yesterday – a collection which showed all the finesse she’s managed to evolve in dressing the female body in classily engineered nuances of reveal and conceal. Dojaka’s is a total look that’s arrived just in time to greet the pent-up longings of women who’ve spent too long in confinement and are looking for an exit from all-concealing smocks and whatever homewear descended to during lockdown. Here was her antidote: dresses topped with petal-like bras held on with minute rouleau straps to reveal plunging backs; high-waisted, super-fitted, tapered trousers and draped, twisted georgette tops. Tailored jackets, some of them detailed with separate sleeves, were tied on with slim black ribbons. Then the tights: who’s ever seen leg-wear like Dojaka’s hosiery, with a cut-out zone containing a tulle flower on one thigh, and seams running up the front? Her repertoire runs through pointy, strappy, kitten-heeled shoes, rib knit dresses, draped swimwear and bras. The fact that her business was essentially formed during the worst of the pandemic is testament to the down-to-earth realism of this hard-working young woman. She makes sophisticated, desirable, complex product that’s centered on the complex desires of her sophisticated female peers.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Club, Dance, Party, Club. Tom Ford SS22

September 16, 2021September 17, 2021 | Design & Culture by Ed

Tom Ford really delivered this season! The collection was phenomenal – I would even say it’s one of the best outings of this New York Fashion Week. For spring-summer 2022, Ford is ready for the good times to start rolling again. Though there were laidback, athleisure-y shapes, these were not clothes for staying home, or going unnoticed. Quite the opposite: racer back tanks and basketball shorts or track pants were stitched all over in neon sequins: fuchsia and orange or acid green and pool blue. To finish the look: an oversize satin blazer in another bright color and accessories in the form of a crystal studded choker and barrettes, and a towering pair of satin heels. In his thoughtful show notes, Ford observed that LA has changed him, and that Instagram has changed everybody. “Photogenic clothes today by their very nature mean that they are not at all timid… My clothes this season are simple in cut but not in impact.” Then he went on to quote the imminently quotable Diana Vreeland: “I know it’s a lot but is it enough?” No to gowns and tuxedos, but a resounding yes to sparkle, the more the better. In addition to the sequins and satin, there were jean jackets encrusted with gilt chains, leopard spot lamé tailoring, and masses of gold necklaces worn over shirts unbuttoned down to there and knotted at the navel, and lots and lots of metallic ribbed knits. “Mostly,” Ford wrote, “I think that this is a hopeful collection and at a moment when we all need hope. We need that now more than ever.” Envisioning the light at the end of the tunnel, he just amped up the glam factor.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Rituals. Vaquera SS22

September 14, 2021 | Design & Culture by Ed

Vaquera is growing up, but it keeps on being true to its core identity of one of New York’s most daring and intriguing brands. Where the label had once used real trash bags and duct tape as textile stand-ins, it is now using specially developed fabrics. And spring-summer 2022 saw the first Vaquera handbags – shaped like classical instrument cases including shrunken carriers for a violin, snare drum and flute. “It’s changed everything, as we headed into the pandemic we probably wouldn’t have been able to keep this business open without them. We owe everything to them – it’s been an incredible partnership,” Bryn Taubensee said of Dover Street Market Paris’ September 2020 pledge to help the brand’s development. “I think this brand started with a DIY spirit and now we have this structure with Comme and have come so far with sales,” Patric DiCaprio added. The designers, which recently saw their third counterpart Claire Sullivan depart to work on personal projects, said their overall mood was swayed by notions of “luck and superstition and trying to take control of a situation that’s out of control – the rituals you can do to make yourself feel powerful”. Between the lace tights, leggings with a heart cutout perfectly aligned over the buttocks and ballooning gowns tiered in the formation of a New York City sidewalk trash heap, Vaquera delivers its underground quintessence in a less amateur manner.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

New age. Rodarte SS22

September 13, 2021September 13, 2021 | Design & Culture by Ed

This wasn’t a regular Rodarte collection. Kate and Laura Mulleavy left behind romantic ruffles and horror vacui ornaments, and resorted towards something lighter, even ethereal. Over the past 18 months, the Rodarte sisters have made a promise to meet their woman where she is. Their spring-summer 2022 collection was a proper declaration of re-emergence, of spiritual glitz, and of reconnecting to nature. From the first white dress with trailing black triangles at the sleeve to the last mushroom printed bubble dress, this was a collection meant for movement. Gusts flared out their hems, made their beaded fringe dance, and blew up their circular bubble dresses to spectacular effect. The Rodarte woman, once a wallflower, was now in the height of her natural power. And then, with the speakers crackling under a vibrato of aaaaahhhhhs, came a sunset of draped dresses and barefoot models. Was it a sun salutation, an homage to cacti, or a cult offering? In the minds of the Mulleavy sisters it was gestural, turning their models into a painter’s palette to celebrate the raw beauty of the earth. It’s a personal message for them: their mother is an artist, and their father is a botanist specializing in fungi. That blossoming mushroom finale dress was hand drawn by their mother and, in a way, about their father. So much ink has been spilled about the dynamic between Kate and Laura, but their mighty artistry was clearly cultivated and nurtured by their parents. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; and the Rodarte woman will feel comforted and extra glam in the family’s beautiful new collection.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Once Upon A Time. Thom Browne SS22

September 13, 2021 | Design & Culture by Ed

No one in New York does opera-level drama like Thom Browne. At his spring 2022 presentation, which was an artistic performance and a fashion spectacle at the same time, the audience could be carried off in awe in so many directions: pegasuses rode penny-farthings, a couple of bachelors haunted a raw wood house, models turned from shrubs into statues… just wow. The presentation began with a voice-over about a couple of bachelors stuck indoors, looking out over an aging garden. Classic statuary, the tradition of carving a marble block into a contrapposto David, charted the show’s three parts: part one, twenty Platonic suiting ideals; part two, the pure marble slab as tunic and maxi, fastened with a hook-and-eye up the back; part three, a trick of the eye, a flex of artistry, full force in tulle. At the end, the show’s two bachelors chained their gates, unzipped each other’s gray wool dresses, and orbited each other, never quite touching hands. Passion thrives in the littlest gestures; Browne’s show was full of beauty to pluck your heartstrings and stoke your sartorial flame. And oh, the details! Those rainbow-color tulle dresses that made up the finale, with trompe l’oeil drapery and abs (the exact Greek statues Browne visited were in The Met), were not painted, but dozens of layers of tulle built up like a topography of the human form. Teddy Quinlivan’s long sheath had an arm sewn to the torso, and the models who walked in the show’s first passage were layered in at least four Browne tailoring separates. This show was not only awesome for its theatricality but for its scale; other designers would struggle to make a single garment to Browne’s standard. Browne made about 200. Each of those 200 shirts, pants, skirts, suits, jackets, bags, shoes, and hand-made gray flowers was, in not-so-coded language, a love letter to American fashion. Browne moved his show back to New York for one season only in support of his partner Andrew Bolton’s exhibition “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” opening at The Met this week.