A leather coat with the side turned up, straight trousers with the waist below the bust, a long knit cape with decorative buttons designed by Lynda Benglis, the North American artist who also created the bronze sculptures on the catwalk… a flaw in the usual structure a new expression in a common language. “It’s small details and shapes that end up having an almost totemic power,” commented Jonathan Anderson after the Loewe show, which took place this Friday morning at the imposing Chateau de Vincennes. The ancient idea of the totem translates easily into fashion as a container of classic emotions; “Desire, power, affection,” says the Irish designer of his small objects (buttons, pins, bracelets) that give symbolic meaning to traditionally simple garments. Knitted dresses that seem to be falling apart, women who undermine the meaning of the traditional male tailored suit (and therefore the stereotype of the seductive woman in men’s clothing) with the way they wear them, Bermuda shorts that are gathered until they look like sacks. ..
After several seasons in which he turned to surrealism and pushed the boundaries between dress and object (garments depicting cars, balls or flowers, shoes that mimic Duchamp’s ready-mades), Anderson has a much more commercial but equally desirable one path taken. Her entire collection for next spring/summer is functional and even versatile, but each piece has a small detail that makes it almost a totem, a cult object. It’s not easy at all, on the contrary: it’s ultimately about complicating the simple without making it stop being simple. It’s not for nothing that Loewe is the most sought-after luxury brand today, according to the data agency Lyst: it has the right amount of virality, intellectual discourse and suitability for everyday use.
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North American artist Lynda Benglis’ sculptures have graced the Loewe show at Paris Fashion Week this Friday, September 29th. CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON (EFE)
What is more valuable, designing simple clothing or visually complex garments? Without going into issues such as preparation or material (that is, catwalks), the question cannot be answered easily, especially in a season in which everyone plays with discretion and realism to increase their sales, even more so. You could say that Sabato de Sarno’s debut at Gucci in Milan last week responds to the idea of appealing to nostalgia and not taking risks to keep sales high. However, it’s not clear whether the idea of putting clothes on the runway that you might see on the street (on a street with high-income residents) is really a safe bet.
A good example of this is the Matthew Williams collection at Givenchy. The designer’s creative identity between gothic and urban fashion was diluted in a collection that, as explained in the post-show notes, appealed to “instinctive elegance” and was expressed in chiffon dresses with flowers from the house’s archives, armed jackets in earthy colors or semi-sheer blouses with straight mid-calf skirts. That is, it manifested itself in stereotypes regarding elegance that have little to do with Williams’ previous collections and much to do with the current spirit that most major luxury brands pursue. Does Givenchy’s current clientele want understated, traditionally elegant pieces? We’ll find out when they hit stores in six months, but it’s not hard to guess that if these basics don’t make a difference (and that doesn’t seem to be the case), there’s no flaw in the structure. You could get lost in the avalanche of quiet luxury that could have devastating consequences next spring.
Next season proposal from designer Matthew Williams for Givenchy, presented on September 28th during Paris Fashion Week. SARAH MEYSSONNIER (Portal)
Knowing how to make simple clothes is not easy, but in some cases it is not easy to make complex clothes either. Julien Dossena has been working in Rabanne for a decade with one of the most difficult archives to update, but in an interesting way. The idea of nostalgia for the future was the starting point of a collection in which the house’s metal mesh was draped on jackets and wide trousers or topped with peacock feathers, balancing the retrofuturism of science fiction with the images of ancient Egypt. The archaic and the technological merged in garments that were visually stunning but paradoxically simple in their presentation. Dossena’s powerful women alien to the male gaze, heirs to pharaohs and galactic heroines, masterfully simplify the complex without resorting to everyday locations (and clothing).
Three of the proposals for the spring-summer 2024 season of the Rabanne brand, presented on the catwalk in the French capital.YANNIS VLAMOS
Olivier Rousteing has found his place in nostalgia and opened a new chapter for Balmain, which began last season with a collection that looked through the couture house’s archives. This season he’s doing it again, but in a less literal and boring way, with a collection put together against the clock (most of the clothes were stolen two weeks ago). The focus is on flowers in all their shapes and materials and with a silhouette similar to Balenciaga’s but exaggerated to the ironic level of Moschino, a far cry from Balmain’s own explosive lines.
Flowers were the protagonists of the Balmain collection, presented in Paris on September 27, 2023. Giovanni Giannoni (WWD v/Getty Images)
But if there are two complex ways of understanding everyday life, they are Schiaparelli’s and Rick Owens’s. Daniel Roseberry, creative director of the first, speaks specifically of the everyday, a “simple” wool sweater from a friend of Elsa Schiaparelli, which the designer had copied by the Armenian seamstresses who made it, but with the aesthetic impression of “a primitive drawing.” . “of a child in prehistory.” This piece from 1927 was the house of surrealism’s first success and is the basis on which the Texas designer built a collection almost a year later in which the dreamlike (from trompe l’oeil to eye applications, two of the brand’s classics) is not complicated, but almost organic.
One of the collection proposals for Schiaparelli’s next season, presented at his show on September 28, 2023 at Paris Fashion Week. Estrop (Getty Images)
It’s strange to see, season after season, how Rick Owens is the only designer who attracts followers of his clothes and not the celebrities invited to the shows. A cohort of fans with impossible pedestals and pointy shoulder pads watch a parade from the sidewalk of the Palais de Tokyo in which there is always smoke as the only decoration, there is always a song on loop (this time by Diana Ross) and there is always near silence. Ritual. But it’s almost stranger to see Owens explain his galactic priestesses, his dark post-apocalyptic nomads of Dune, as an ode to optimism: “I went to a Björk concert and realized my absurd resignation in the face of her childish and infantile ways.” “Happy Spirit,” says the designer, “I always compromise with the environment, and in reality the real revolution is to bet on joy.” Something as simple can be so difficult to achieve, and something as complex as Owens ‘ inner world can be summed up in something so simple.
Several models at the Rick Owens show on September 28, 2023 at Paris Fashion Week. Victor Lochon (Gamma Rapho / Getty)
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