After the shock news came out last week that Dries Van Noten had sold his majority stake in the company to Spanish luxury group Puig, there was palpable expectation in the air before the show. The opening look breezed onto the runway in a pair of swim shorts, announcing the second shock of the week from Van Noten, his collaboration with Verner Panton. Verner Panton is considered one of the most influential designers of the twentieth century. He was renowned for his avant-garde vision and unflinching devotion to newness, defining much of the 60s design aesthetic as we know it, and in his late career he made total environments that were celebrated for their vibrant colors and textiles. Van Noten said that the optimism inherent in Panton’s work is what he wanted to express, and there was no denying that this was a collection full of positivity and newness.
As big fans of Yohji Yamamoto, with his unflinching view of fashion and dedication to a craft that he has truly mastered, it is hard to bring criticism into play. The collection today had some brilliant moments, and overall was successful in pushing the Yamamoto man forward, but some of the clothes were hard to understand. The prints were incredible, with full color geisha girls and pin-ups cavorting in floral backdrops and set off against animal prints. What could be more masculine than a floor-length silk skirt with a traditional Japanese wood-block print on a leopard jacquard — absolutely brilliant.
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The fashion world changed today, with Virgil Abloh’s first collection as Artistic Director of Menswear at Louis Vuitton. All eyes were on him, as many were still coming to terms with his shock appointment. And he knocked it out of the park.
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Raf Simons returned to Paris this season after his hiatus in New York settling in to Calvin Klein, and took us somewhere we’d never been before — Montreuil, a leafy suburb full of artists’ studios and artisanal factories that work with businesses in the city. The venue had silver mannequins hung from the ceiling, some draped with T-shirting from the collection, and gaudy frames full of black-and-white grainy images of punks. They looked like Derek Ridgers’ British punks, languishing in a lo-fi Derek Jarman set.
National-flag patterning, peace signs, and more cryptic symbols, mixed with war-painted faces and skeletal cutouts, seemed to warn against nationalistic fervor at Walter Van Beirendonck, a recurring motif with the Belgian designer...
Ahead of his Louis Vuitton men's debut, Virgil Abloh infused his Off-White collection with the sort of extreme 90s street vibe that has catapulted him to the top of his field, this time even baggier and with a nod to that iconic slacker of the decade, Bart Simpson...
Charles Jeffrey presented his spring Loverboy collection today, a nod to London clubland and its more colorful, artful, binary-defying, queer-identifying denizens...
Having long humored his clownish tendencies, Jeremy Scott went full circus for his resort 2019 collection for Moschino, which he held in the capital of make-believe, Los Angeles...
Only Comme des Garçons could hold the room in total stillness for ten minutes, with only two high-powered photography lights inches above the runway. Everyone held their breath, arching their necks to see if the lights were moving infinitesimally, or if we were, like Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s groundbreaking play Waiting for Godot, simply waiting. The second people’s attention span broke and they began to talk, the music started and the lights headed up to the ceiling.
