Cristaseya is a Paris-based, lifestyle brand which isn’t bothered with the fashion industry’s crazy-paced schedule. Cristina Casini and Keiko Seya, the founders, both have worked for years as stylists for publications like L’Officiel, Numéro and i-D. One day they realized they don’t really see their personal style reflected in any of the clothes they go through everyday at work. In 2013, the duo decided to launch their own label with an aim to release “editions”, not collections, of around 20 items – specifically, one edition per six months. No overproduction, no hurry – just a pure, creative process which combines highest quality craftsmanship with the attitude of soft minimalism. The newest edition – #22 – is now available on their site, and the offering looks like the perfect transitioning-into-spring wardrobe. Fell in love with their voluminous collarless coat with leather piping, all the party silks, cool pajama suits and their ventures into handbags: the leather basket in different earthy shades and the fit-it-all weekend bag.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
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Y/Project‘s Glenn Martens proved this season that sometimes less can be really more. The high profile and influential designer owned the fact his brand faces financial pressures and cancelled his runway show. In response, an important discourse opened up on the internet: the current industry system isn’t really working for independent brands. “Very honestly, we had a cash flow issue,” Martens candidly said. “We did the commercial showroom during men’s week, and we actually did grow. But at a certain point you have to make a choice. It’s €450,000 for a show, or €450,000 for pre-payment for production and making sure the collection is on time on the sales floor.” That Martens chose production and the sales floor will benefit his team and his brand in the end, of course. And somehow, the autumn-winter 2024 collection benefited too from that decision, because the lookbook is brilliant. Everyone from his father to to Interview‘s Mel Ottenberg and Purple‘s Olivier Zahm to his favorite stylists Haley Wollens and Camille Bidault Waddington is captured in the line-up. For the new collection Martens said he was thinking of pleurants, the sculptures of mourners that decorated tombs in medieval times, an instinct motivated by a sudden personal loss. He also mentioned Umberto Eco’s Middle Ages murder mystery The Name of the Rose. Putting his draping chops front-and-center, he added hoods to otherwise familiar garments like button-down shirts and fleece jackets, or inset sheer panels behind a row of buttons that gave his clothes a slouchy asymmetric shape. Some pieces featured manipulable velcro pieces that let their wearers adjust their silhouettes in the same way his bendable wire has been used in the past. A coat, for example, can convert into a cape, while a painterly floral print skirt can completely change form. Other pieces were shrouded with sheer net. The veiled pant suit gave the term fashion nun new meaning.
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Phoebe Philo‘s feverishly anticipated Edit 2 – second collection under her namesake, London-based label – is the perfect detox moment after the long, long, looooong fashion month. No gimmicks, no overstyling, no oversaturation of product, no… fashion. This is an anti-fashion line-up, one that absolutely focuses on style and gives real tools for building an intelligent wardrobe. That’s the real power of Philo’s venture, visually narrated by Talia Chetrit in a low-key, yet commanding way. Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest‘s actress Sandra Hüller stars in the latest campaign, sporting the line’s turtlenecks, tailored trousers and sharp eyewear. In her notes, Philo called the actress “one of the most accomplished talents of her generation, renowned for her intimate, intelligent and fearless performances on stage and screen.” This is a collaboration that only the stars could align.
The designer characterized her brand’s latest offering – available now in her on-line shop – “from the get-go as a continuous body of work”. If you look at the store, you will notice that images from Edit 1 are still up there, mixed with the new ones. This is revolutionary: we’ve got used to the fact that brands usually wipe out their entire websites every three months for new deliveries. The latest “edit” (the brand avoids the word “collection” in its elusive communication) experiments with proportions, setting a dropped-waist leather jacket in a dark berry tone against an ultra-cropped bomber in a mastic hue. We’ve got oversized trousers, doused in “salt and pepper” colors, and upright collared shirts button tight at the neck with raised collars. Double-breasted Milanese jackets flaunt the designer’s crisp tailoring expertise. As for accessories, the popular “MUM” necklace is back. Scarves are constructed as pillows, wrapping around their wearers’ heads with an avant-garde facade; and sunglasses, including the “Peak” and “Bombé” frames, make statements with face-shielding builds. Bags are Philo’s speciality, with the Cabas, Bean Bag and Drive Bag arriving in all sorts of finishes, spanning cheetah print and plushy purple to lipstick red and strong neutrals.
Honestly, you can’t imagine a better collection to review on International Women’s Day. Women rule!
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“Every single morning, I decide if I am a 15-year old girl or a lady near death“, Miuccia Prada told Vogue in her recent profile. Looking at her latest Miu Miu collection, Miuccia definitely felt like the first, but with perspective of an experienced woman who has lived a LIFE. It seems that while being 74 years old, the designer has never felt that liberated creatively. She knows her codes. She knows what’s up. She’s loves to mess it up, and she understands exactly how to make the industry fall on its knees.
Again, Miu Miu is the winner of Paris Fashion Week, and the impact of the autumn-winter 2024 – styled by Lotta Volkova – will be perceivable in the way we interact with fashion for the next six months (or more!). Classics, uniforms and bourgeois staples are twisted and subverted, creating a collection just so multi-faceted and frivolous that you just can’t resist it. The show opened with shrunken coats in heavy wool, worn with cuffed slacks, mum’s pearls, and a roomy zip-top bag tucked under the arm. Capote’s “Swans“? Not really. The man-size gloves suggested the Miu Miu girl sees the world through a different lens. She’s on the ground with her two feet. Even while wearing her short little baby-doll shift dress sprinkled with strasse embroidery and lady-like wool suits paired with grey schoolgirl tights and black leather Mary Janes. “Everyone can choose from them, to be a child or a lady”, said the designer after the show, which included some models who were nearer to the designer’s age including Kristin Scott Thomas and Dr Qin (a Shanghai-based doctor and huge Prada collector).
This season, Miu Miu – which originally in the late 90s and early 2000s meant to be Prada’s sister line – has always been like a daughter, who sometimes hates her mother’s image, and sometimes looks up to her. By mother, I mean the Prada wardrobe. Silk 1950s skirts came in so-bad-it’s-good floral prints in the most acidic shades known to human eye. Even the family heirloom “mink” coats (they were actually dyed shearling) and the kind of chic LBD’s that Audrey Hepburn might have worn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” weren’t just classy, they were daring, they had nonchalance of a youngster. Miuccia, I love you!
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The Stella McCartney show began with a video message from Mother Earth, a manifesto read by the actor Olivia Colman. It went: “Show me you love me / It’s about fucking time“. If somebody is still skeptic about global warming, just see how early spring has sprung in Paris. McCartney, a pioneer sustainability activist in this industry, wondered this season how does a woman, especially if she’s a mother, not get depressed about it all? McCartney is preternaturally upbeat and that refusal to see the cup half empty infuses her collections. Though her tailored jackets are cut with power shoulders that could command a board meeting, she styles and sends them down the runway sans shirts or underpinnings. On the more laid-back side of things, slouchy matching knit sets are accessorized with loopy yarn boas long enough to dust the floor with. Other cases in point this season included the tailoring with cut-crystal detailing in the style of a Chloé collection McCartney designed circa spring 2000 and jeans with built-in eco-leather chaps accompanied by a tank printed with the ending refrain of the Mother Earth manifesto. That much of this had been constructed with responsibly sourced or recycled materials and vegan alternatives to animal products is another reason to feel good in McCartney’s clothes.
Here’s a couple of sustainability-conscious beauty products from Stella’s line…
