A High Moment. Dries Van Noten AW24

February 29, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Dries Van Noten‘s show was definitely a high moment of the rather “play-it-safe” first days of Paris Fashion Week, where many brands based their collections on vapid, blurry ideas and concepts. The Belgian designer titled his autumn-winter 2024 collection “The Woman Who Dares to Cut Her Own Fringe“. “This means for me audacity, but also considered… She is in one way really tender but also very strong.” This too: “it’s about style and not so much about fashion.” The Yves Saint Laurent quote – “fashion fades, style is eternal” – is forever relevant, and during fashion month you really see how neglected that wisdom is. Van Noten’s latest collection was pure style, because how else can you call a gray sweatshirt fabric with iridescent sequins, or lavender silk duchess worn with faded denim jeans?

The show started with a camel coat, double-breasted with a stand-up collar and rounded sleeves, but its neutral minimalism was more of an appetizer that prepared your taste buds for the next dishes. This was a collection of many colors, often in surprising pairings or trios, even better if Van Noten could add strange textures ranging from shaggy fur-like mohairs to tinselly metallics. “There is no process and there is especially not a system. The last thing that I want is a system because then it feels organized. These things need to happen in a very spontaneous way.” Emphasizing that sense of spontaneity, zip-up hoodies were worn with one sleeve off and wrapped around the neck like a scarf and button-downs were shown back-to-front, the collars popped under stretchy nylon shirts. The offbeat, irreverent mix was the thing, but he also made a point of saying, “every piece has to stand on its own. It’s important that it’s not just looking nice when it’s an outfit, every piece has to have its value.” See, there’s a big different between “style” and “styling“. Most shows we see today are pure styling, a combination of clothes that separately would mean nothing. With Van Noten’s clothes, you’re equipped to create style.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Construction. Marie Adam-Leenaerdt AW24

February 28, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Belgian designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is working her way through the building blocks of a woman’s wardrobe, and her third runway collection proves she has a capacity to do that. The show she put for autumn-winter 2024 is devoted to the skirt. Her idea was to test the skirt’s versatility and to explore its possibilities. There were a couple of midi skirts that she also showed as trapeze dresses, the waistband slipping asymmetrically off a bare shoulder; coats with collars that looked more like waistbands; and bags of all sizes designed with horizontal zips – remove the middle sections and guess what they look like? “Skirt skirt, dress skirt, coat skirt, bag skirt,” is how she put it on her press notes. Even the wedding dress finale was constructed simply, like a skirt with hoops that gave it its tenting volume. Adam-Leenaerdt used to work at Demna’s Balenciaga, and the designer is very assertive in making the codes she formed at the brand now her own. So no, these volumes, saturated color palettes, and cape-coats aren’t Balenciaga knock-offs. They originally were 100% Marie Adam-Leenaerdt.

Here are couple of absolutely amazing Marie Adam-Leenaerdt pieces you can shop now!

ED’s DISPATCH:

Self-Tie Silk Cape Blouse

Mange Debout Caped Midi Dress

Fitted-Back Oversized Button Down Shirt

Long Pinched Trench Coat

Reversible Wool Maxi Skirt Suit

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Sheer. Saint Laurent AW24

February 28, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Anthony Vaccarello method for Saint Laurent is about finding a distinct element from Yves’ vast archive, and blowing it up on the contemporary runway. In 1988, YSL had an obsession with billow-y, sheer fabrics that wrapped the female body, but at the same time left nothing much to imagination. Following this trope, Vaccarello presented an all-sheer collection yesterday in Paris. It did look like a statement. But there’s one burning question: with Saint Laurent’s huge platform and worldwide influence, wouldn’t it be great to cast at least a couple of models with curvier, fuller shapes? Wouldn’t that make a collection like this even more fiercer and, to some extent, grounded in reality? The transparency of all these silks seems to only embrace the thinness of Vaccarello’s models. Not even the fabulous powder puff marabou jackets that were casually draped over the arms helped conceal the Ozempic-ness of this collection.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Experimentation Mode. Jil Sander AW24

February 27, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Lucie and Luke Meier are in their experimentation mode at Jil Sander. Gone are the days when their vision of the brand orbited around the idea of minimalism in its traditional, Sander-esque sense. Trying new things is crucial in order to develop and progress your style. But I’m not entirely share the antiquated space-age aesthetic the designers went for their autumn-winter 2024 collection is necessarily a breakthrough. They leaned too much on the diamond quilting, which if overdosed can feel utterly outdated, and the chainmail details are Paco Rabanne’s territory, especially when we’re talking about 1960s sensitivity. As Cathy Horyn wrote in her review, the collection gave “tragically old lady” vibes, and its hard to disagree.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Sprezzatura. Bottega Veneta AW24

February 26, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

At Bottega Veneta, Matthieu Blazy delivered his best collection to date. The reason the autumn-winter 2024 show felt this good was not only because Blazy found a way to make his love for artisan detail finally look light and spontaneous, sprezzatura-way. The Bottega Veneta line-up delivered a sense of authentic style, a true rarity to observe during fashion month. That might have come to Blazy with a change in his creative mindset. “The initial idea was to reduce the collection to almost the function of clothes – only reduce not to the minimum, but to a maximum. I was interested in making a monument out of the everyday.” It started with the first look, a couture-ish black cocoon coat whose rounded, three-dimensional silhouette was the result of the folding in of its sides and sleeves, which were secured with big brass buttons. Unfasten them and the coat becomes more or less flat. The nonchalant, unstudied result is stunning. This season’s clothes are refreshingly stripped back: gone were the embroideries and embellishments that defined last season’s collection, but there was no shortage of impressive workmanship. Blazy said, “I wanted the technique to be in the fabric itself.” A fine example of that was the “memory” prints made from layer upon layer of passport stamps that he used for a trio of willowy looks with swooping tiers on their skirts. As we see 2024 fashion unveil, there’s a strong flux of “everyday” clothes; amid all the crises, the understandable tendency among design houses and their executives is to play it safe. As we’ve seen so far this season, that can lead to same-y fashion, indistinguishable from one runway to the next. Blazy is immune to that risk.