Unfiltered Variety. Valentino Pre-Fall 2023

May 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Scrolling through the images Valentino provided for pre-fall 2023, the impression was that of a wildly over-saturated wardrobe where luxe was given a twist of cool, in keeping with Pierpaolo Piccioli’s current direction. “The idea of a wardrobe as a vocabulary of various and diverse semantic layers has always fascinated me. Every one of us is a collector, creating a vision through selection and personal taste”, the designer summed it up. The collection has it all. At some points, even too much. Valentino’s PPPink returns, just like the monogram logo. The V-neck sweater tucked in a brocade full-circle skirt look felt sciura in a Prada way; a sweatshirt worn over an evening dress gave Jenna Lyons; some of the more bare-it-all looks made me surprisingly think of Alessandro Dell’Acqua’s early 2000s style. The nonchalant, unfiltered variety of separates is styled in the “counterintuitive way” Piccioli embraces – but this method tends to worryingly look like a collection of inspirations, rather than an actual Valentino look. However when you consider the pieces separately, they do have a polished ease about them, with no conceptual detours. Broad-shouldered masculine pantsuits introduced the monochrome palette that punctuated the evening offer. Dense pops of bright green and Valentino red added vitality to sleek long dresses with side bow-knotted cut-outs, as well as to fluid jumpsuits with wide palazzo pants. Glamorous, they exuded the charisma of haute dolce vita ingrained in the house’s codes. Quiet luxury? Never heard of her.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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The Essentials. Balenciaga Pre-Fall 2023

May 5, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Balenciaga‘s pre-fall 2023 look-book – made up of dressing room selfies – is a cleverly staged invitation for the customers to come back to the brand’s shops. And a reminder, much like Demna’s winter runway show in Paris, that the Balenciaga creative director remains one of the key architects of the look of contemporary fashion. The emphasis on exaggerated suiting, the embrace of couture-ish shapes, and the return of rave jeans – all of that is covered, just in time as the new season clothes start hitting the shops. Double-breasted black blazers were alternately puffed up with a layer of padding, or cropped at the hips, with the hems tucked under in almost makeshift fashion. A third was worn like a wrap, its buttons askew. Demna cut similar styles in glen plaids and checks. More so than the runways, Balenciaga’s pre-season collections are devoted to daily wear. And so there were oversize parkas, peacoats and trenches with more of those folded under hems, fluid velvet sweatsuit separates in surprising pastels, and denim in both raver proportions and a newer skinny cut lopped off at the knees. Standing in for the dramatic evening dresses in the March show were a couple of full-length looks in a quotidian key, one dress in a body-conscious knit and a shrunken logo hoodie and matching ankle-length skirt in what looked like stretch velvet. The accessories game is strong too: Le Cagole comes in sportier shapes, and Pantashoes are revisited in Margiela-esque fishnet overlays.

Dream of Creation. Christopher John Rogers SS24

May 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Christopher John Rogers has emerged from the pandemic at the top of New York’s young generation of designers. In his rainbow stripes and grids of colorful polka dots, he’s found strong, identifiable signatures, which is an important element of brand building that not all emerging talents understand or are capable of. The uptown, put-together polish of his clothes is another distinguishing factor. Many of his peers practice a scrappier, dirtier, more underground kind of fashion. His garments feel at ease on the red carpet. “I love being with a model and draping, or doing research, or really thinking about fit, about fabric, about texture, but I feel like only 10 to 15% of what I do is making clothes,” Rogers explained. “In some ways this collection was informed by wanting to go back to that essential feeling.” The sleeveless top and ball skirt of the first look suggested a new direction – as @londongirlinyc put it, very Carrie Bradshaw style, pre-And-Just-Like-That. To start, they were all-white, and then there was the off-kilter, undone aspect of their construction, but they were red herrings. Rogers quickly found his way back to the bright color and unbridled exuberance that are his hallmarks. The graphic stripes he’s known for were joined by similarly bold florals in the vein of Warhol’s daisies; a pair of evening dresses in black-and-white polka dots of varying sizes and overlays, both of which are definitely red carpet-bound; and going-out tops constructed like oversize birthday present bows. Rogers does a good business with knits. This season, he played with chunky yarns and thick, cozy layers, or fine gauges, though in both cases, he styled them to expose a flash of décoletté or midriff. On the opposite end of the texture spectrum were an elegant fitted button-down and matching long skirt and a pantsuit in a shiny material he likened to Glad garbage bags. “It’s this really amazing fabric that’s actually coated taffeta,” he said. To finish, there was a group of black looks, including a panniered ball skirt and a draped top with the romance of the opening outfit. Success begets success, and as Rogers’s business grows he’ll face ever more pressures and responsibilities that keep him from the design studio. The industry can be uniquely hard on promising newcomers, putting them in a box at the same time we demand they grow and evolve. But if that draped top and ball skirt can tell us anything, it’s that Rogers is as committed to the dream of creation as ever.

Fucking Fabulous. Tom Ford AW23

May 2, 2023May 2, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

We won’t get another Tom Ford by Tom Ford collection; he sold the company to Estée Lauder in a deal valued at $2.8 billion late last year. His newly-named successor, Peter Hawkings – who worked with Ford for over 25 years – will probably keep the brand in its familiar, glamorously elegant aesthetic, heavily scented with the intoxicating Fucking Fabulous fragrance. Tom opted out of a ceremonious, showy goodbye, choosing for his sign-off an Archive collection of his greatest hits instead. Clicking through them triggers many red carpet memories. There is Gwyneth Paltrow’s sensational white column gown and attached cape from the 2012 Oscars, and there is Zendaya’s hot pink molded breastplate and fluid skirt circa first-season Euphoria. The stretch sequin and mesh dress Rihanna wore on a 2016 issue of Vogue is also included. For his spring 2022 return to the runway post-pandemic, Ford considered the impact of social media on fashion. “Photogenic clothes today by their very nature mean that they are not at all timid,” he riffed at the time. That was never not true chez Tom Ford. As the worlds of fashion and Hollywood grow ever more intertwined, it seems too bad that the American designer who navigated both worlds with such control and assurance is stepping away. But if an era is ending, at least there’s the prospect of watching Ford’s cinematic vision unfold on the big screen sometime in the future.

Cosmopolitan Elegance. Chanel Pre-Fall 2017

April 25, 2023January 6, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

On Monday, May 1st, the 2023 Met Gala will take place. This year’s Costume Institute exhibition, “A Line of Beauty,” will celebrate the oeuvre and life of Karl Lagerfeld. The exhibition will see Andrew Bolton and Wendy Yu, curators in charge, examine the work of Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019). Throughout his lifetime, Lagerfeld worked at prominent fashion houses such as Balmain, Chloé, Fendi, Chanel, in addition to founding his namesake brand. More than 150 pieces will be on display in the exhibition, many of which will be accompanied by Lagerfeld’s sketches. In the following days, I will look back at my all-time favorite Chanel collections, designed by the one & only Karl. Hope some of these magnificent looks will end up on the red carpet on the first Monday in May…

“The Ritz is very gilded,” said Karl Lagerfeld, gesturing toward the decor of the newly refurbished Paris hotel as he held court on a plush velvet couch in the lobby. “Look, white with gold!” Sparkle, sequins, gold metallics, even gold-dipped feathers naturally became a festive-looking thread in the Chanel Métiers d’Art 2017 collection. Coco Chanel famously lived at the Ritz from 1937 throughout World War II, and died here in 1971. The house of Chanel is steps away from the hotel’s back door, on the Rue Cambon. Lagerfeld’s angle, though, wasn’t the life of Chanel herself, but, he emphasized, “cosmopolitan elegance and people from all over the world who’ve come to the Ritz. There were hundreds of dinners in the ’20s and ’30s, where women wore incredible things. But you cannot tell from the collection what decade it is, and I think that is modern, no?” The brilliantly chic show, which was served up in three sittings at lunch, tea, and dinnertime, sent a mixed bunch of lanky models, “daughters-of,” and Pharrell Williams winding their way around tables in the hotel lobby and a specially built “Jardin d’Hiver.” It made sense as a ready-made scene without any need for flown-in props. The Ritz is exactly where the international high-rolling couture customers billet themselves while shopping in Paris. Hair up in net veils decorated with roses, the girls pranced at a clip in midi skirts and Lurex pedal pushers, bubble-shaped capes, and square-shouldered jackets. There were skinny knit silvery dresses, a gorgeous white lace poet-sleeved blouse with a black leather cape and pants, a navy sheared mink tailored coat piped in gold leather, and tiered skirts flouncing out from narrow dropped-waist bodices. It was less a look than a cocktail menu of individual styles, really. But as Lagerfeld put it, that is the measure of the distance between Coco Chanel’s time and ours. “In those days, even to the ’60s, there were one or two designers who dictated what everyone wore. That is not the case today, when there are thousands of images of fashion available, so anyone can choose to wear what suits her.” Just as long as they belong to the Chanel glitterati, in this case.