Wolk Morais Spring 2021 Ready-To-Wear

Brian Wolk and Claude Morais made their spring 2021 film over 26 nights in Los Angeles. They’d pull up at the model’s or actor’s or fashion consultant’s house with a garment bag and shoot without even leaving their car. The result is a testament to the charm of LA living, wildfires notwithstanding. Equally, it showcases the ingenuity of Wolk and Morais’s upcycling and the multi-generational appeal of their tailoring.

“We wanted to create a collection that was not only responsible and sustainable, but also content that tells a story about what’s going on right now,” Wolk explained over a Zoom call from a smoky Hollywood. And so you hear the model agent Omar Albertto in a herringbone tweed suit say, “I miss energies,” and other participants discuss how they’re pining for their friends and “the normality of being human.” Many designers have adjusted their offerings to this stay-at-home moment. Wolk and Morais have made a specialty of retro tailoring, and they’re standing by it. As they point out, their Spencer jackets, double-breasted waistcoats, and fabulous archival Liberty print shirts (all of fabrics were upcycled or sourced within a 12 mile radius of their studio) could just as easily be worn with jeans as with the oxford bags they styled them with. 

Because they dress young Hollywood, they didn’t neglect evening glam either. There are pajama sets in vintage brocade—the gossip around Los Angeles is that everyone’s wearing pajamas to the Emmys—and a very 1930s silver sequin bias-cut gown. For those of us who don’t have red carpets, virtual or otherwise, in our future, they’re planning on making the same dress in t-shirt jersey.

Source: Vogue

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Junya Watanabe Spring 2021 Menswear

See these dudes? Get ready for who they are: Yusuke Seguchi, a master sushi chef; Taro Osamu, samurai swordsmith; Yutaro Sugitsara, professional fly-fisherman; Takaya Maki and Akira Nakamura, automobile mechanics; Masashi Hirao, bonsai master. We haven’t yet gotten to the bottom of the list of the guys—the honored experts in their fields, all over Japan—whom Junya Watanabe approached to be photographed wearing his spring 2021 men’s collection. But you get the gist. In the necessary shift away from the Paris runway format, Watanabe turned to the heroes of highly specialist traditional and technical professions he reveres. “This collection is designed for people who pursue their work with a sincere attitude all over Japan, and all over the world,” came the explanation. “People who demonstrate a certain authenticity and humility.”

Hardworking clothes for hardworking men—it’s more than a fancy fashion trope in Watanabe’s world. In an important sense, the context of the real-guy look book returns his aesthetic to its rightful roots. For years, his own work has been carving out that ideal masculine space in which the distance between fashion and authentic utilitarian workwear is absolved. Still, while the baseline items—chore jackets, workwear denims, Carhartt khakis, carpenter coats—are durable and fit for purpose, there’s an undeniable romanticism about them. In the middle of a pandemic, with so many people stuck working on screens at home, the valorization of manual skills, of men who get under cars, forge swords, and fish rivers seems all the more vividly poignant.

In his own time of confinement, Watanbe also found room to praise the cool men who uphold social life in Japan, saluting the Kobe bar owner Agobe Osamwentin and the Harajuku DJ-producer Bryan Burton-Lewis. A subtext threaded through these portraits of modern manhood was a list of books Watanabe has on his shelves. You don’t see that overtly stated in this collection, but the print and pattern he used refers to the graphic artists (and other design creatives) whose work forms his pantheon of idols. Coded and loaded with solidarity for what matters, he called this collection a “Manual.”

Source: Vogue

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Homme Plissé Issey Miyake Spring 2021 Menswear

“For a future that is healthy, bright, and full of hope.” So read the closing caption at the end of an engagingly filmed and attractive collection from Homme Plissé Issey Miyake. That it was worth sticking around until the end of the credits to read said caption is down to the phone-shot footage of Plissé enthusiasts out and about, enjoying their clothes. Before that we saw three dancer models, one of whom was partnered with a basketball, demonstrate the ease the pieces afford by moving enthusiastically. A very nice touch was the suggestion that these were not only clothes you choose to put on in the morning, but also clothes that implore to be worn: They attracted the attention of the models by quivering on the rail with the same pent-up urgency my reproachfully unwalked dog demonstrated all day one of this digital Paris Fashion Week.

Among the highlights were a tracksuit in an irregular, multicolor, cityscape inspired check; robe-like coats in polyester printed in soft-toned bleach puckerings originally rendered on denim; and pieces in a mesh fabric developed to resemble a hologram. Plissé jackets included new three-quarter sleeves which Miyake’s typically comprehensive notes explained were designed to transition between the formal and casual. Two looks in top-to-toe stone tones, with low hemmed shirts, were perhaps a little cult member / spa employee, but evidently deeply relaxing to wear. Plissé pieces can be classed as both activewear and tools for attainment of serenity.

Source: VogueRunway

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JW Anderson Spring 2021 Menswear

Jonathan Anderson’s spring 2021 men’s and resort 2021 women’s collections will go down in memory as the show in a box. As a moment in the Lockdown Collections of 2020, this was the sweetest and most original intervention so far, a blend of digital and tactile, craft-y and clever, in a package that came to the doors of critics, and had us unwrapping it like children. Mmm...what is this?

Inside a fabric wrapping were cards printed with the photos you see here, and a little sheaf of fabric swatches to feel. Scatterings of pressed flowers dropped out between pages. There were paper masks printed with boys’ faces—the ones Anderson propped up on the mannequins in his photos. Tiny orange cards with mottoes on them slipped out: “Never compromise,” read one. “Keep looking up,” on another. And, “The future is unwritten.” Inside another little box was a set of insanely delicious brownies, topped with an edible layer of real pansies and marigolds.

Contrast how this launch of Anderson’s collection would have gone under pre-pandemic circumstances. He’d be in Paris for his men’s show, and everyone would be going through the ghastly backstage ritual that’s developed—jostling with each other in an unseemly and impatient manner, shoving smartphones in designers’ faces, shouting questions, and breathing over one another. In spite of the cataclysm that brought it about, how much more human, civilized, and thought-provoking was the sight of Anderson unpacking the box and calmly, unhurriedly explaining its contents on a video for the world to see?

“I’m surprised we even had a collection!” he said, in a one-to-one Zoom call from his studio. “It was like going back to university days, when you can’t get a model, and you have to do everything yourself, at home with a mannequin in your bedroom. And I really enjoyed it. It felt like a collection made in real time. I realized through it that I’ve never wanted to make things more, to be more creative.”

The ability to tune in to the emotion of the zeitgeist is Anderson’s incredibly accurate superpower. A long time ago, he intuited that people would be starting to relate to handmade things—and exactly how spot-on that’s proved to be. His own patchwork, knitted cardigan, as once worn by Harry Styles, has become a peak-craft-wave TikTok phenomenon across continents. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Fans, everywhere, making their own versions! It’s a hand-knit that’s no longer sold, but we’ve just given the pattern away for free,” says Anderson.

If ever there was an endorsement of the joy fashion can bring in dark times, that surely was it. “Early on,” he remembers, “I went through those defeatist weeks, when you question what you’re doing with fashion, what’s its purpose? I think everyone who’s involved in fashion has felt that. But I do believe fashion is always an important mirror of the times. It reflects the trials and tribulations of the age. So with this box that we’ve sent out, I imagined it being put on a bookshelf, and someone else picking it up years later, and these things dropping out: this record of where we were, right now.”

What historians will be studying hence in these two collections is the resurgence of playful resilience in difficult circumstances, the making the best of what already exists. Lots of patchwork coats, gigantic pockets, pom-pom trims; capes made from chopped-up trench coats and military parkas; brocades and faded wallpaper prints. In the resort collection, lovely bias-cut 1930s dresses (a carryover from his thoughts about glamour from the seasons before), with trailing trumpet sleeves and “wings.”

A line in his press notes described the poignant feeling of optimism against the odds that he wanted to put across: “A sentiment of youthful, freewheeling amusement composedly comes to the fore.” The uplifting little messages he sent out on those cards came, he said, from all the comforting things he remembers people close to him saying on calls over the past few months: “You know, talking to my parents, people saying, ‘It’ll get better soon.’” One of them read, “The end is the beginning.”

Will there ever be shows again, as they were? Maybe not. But in this limbo time, how much better does fashion feel when it’s not rushed, pressured, and hysterical? And how grateful are we to designers like Jonathan Anderson who are thinking up new ways to spark pleasure in thinking about clothes? Today, very.

Source: VogueRunway

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Giambattista Valli Fall 2020 Couture

“If they’re coming to me, they want the best of me.” That was Giambattista Valli earlier today on a Zoom call from Paris, hours before his fall 2020 haute couture collection would be unveiled via a video starring Joan Smalls. True to his word, the new collection is signature Giamba. There’s no COVID-time second-guessing of his instincts—no economizing on silk tulle or scaling back of faille and taffeta bows. If anything, the tulle tiers are frothier, the bows more voluminous. A face-covering mask could’ve been a nod to the pandemic, but in black chiffon it was more decorative than functional.

Smalls models the collection’s 18 looks in the video, and in the split-screen next to her, scenes of Paris in winter are revealed. “With or without us, nature was going on,” Valli remarked of the months we spent under lockdown. “In the horror of what we’re passing through, there was beauty blooming at the same time.” On day one of this digital couture week, nature is a recurring motif, as is the human desire to get out into it. It may be irrational exuberance on our parts, but it is exuberance which is better than its opposite, and after months of restrictions, this kind of pleasure seeking is hardly a surprise. Even before the collection made its online debut, Valli had two virtual orders. “Happy times are never going to be démodé,” he said. He also has the advantage of a very young clientele; “they’re used to buying on the web,” he added.

As his bride (see gallery above), Smalls wears a strapless dress of ruched ivory tulle decorated with a pair of black bows that match the one that accents her cathedral-length veil of polka-dot embroidered tulle. Valli was eager to highlight the couture techniques of each piece—from a sequin minidress and its many-layered point d’esprit cape to a white ballgown decorated neckline to hem in lipstick-red feathers—and he proudly announced he was able to retain all of his employees during the shutdown and the reopening that’s followed. Amidst this ongoing crisis, that really is cause for happy times.

Source: Vogue

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Hermès Spring 2021 Menswear

Locked down in le confinement, Véronique Nichanian binged on theater—watched online, of course. This sparked the start of a process that led to today’s livestreamed presentation of her spring 2021 menswear collection from the airy foyer of Les Ateliers Hermès in Pantin, on the edges of Paris. It was, said Nichanian on a call shortly afterwards, a “four-hands” operation overseen by her in partnership with Cyril Teste, an experimental director whose Collective MxM specializes in the poetic expression of live dramatic performance via streamed video.

Presented as if shot in one take—with the exception of a cut around a loving close-up of a Slim d’Hermès watch in stainless steel and Barénia calfskin—Teste’s direction here was reminiscent of that of Sam Mendes in 1917. The result was restrained in that it communicated an evocative soupçon of this collection, rather than attempting an exhaustive à la carte. It was also dynamic in its presentation, whooshing us down in an elevator with a model wearing a double-fronted tailored jacket and sash-collared shirt, and then around the light-filled atrium.

Rather than reproducing a show, this qualified more as a show-experience with footage of Nichanian and her team working backstage. There were some especially nice details of her discussing with Teste that she wanted to emphasize the leather detailing in the indentations of a rib-knit sweater as well as the belt worn below it. A close-up on the shoulders of a model wearing a striped shirt revealed a subtly opaque pattern hidden within. Other scenes revealed glimpses of layered shirting in panels of contrasting striping used in jackets, and zippered waistcoats. We zoomed across to a model called Jai wearing a minimally cut yet generously silhouetted putty suit who was told he had “two minutes” and promptly left the building to take a call, before panning to a less urgent mise-en-scène in which another model listened to Primal Scream on his headphones and we got to note his seersucker-looking jacket, also putty, tucked into his slightly darker, lovely, drawstring pants.

Before this presentation went live, Hermès delivered a care package of nibbles to my apartment. I had fully intended to watch this collection video while grazing at the kindly provided black truffle chips, olive tapenade, and lemon verbena tea, but, of course, one of the big problems with a digitally presented show is that the house cannot control the context in which the end product is seen. Crushingly, my children pinched all the food. Even worse, as I watched Nichanian’s presentation on my laptop, one of them was howling with rage across the room following a premature death on Fortnite.

What was much better than a real show about this one, however, was having the chance to get to speak properly with Nichanian—this is rarely doable at the défilé, as she is besieged by Hermès worshippers. As this unconventional show cannot be conventionally reviewed, here is some of what she had to say:

“I had never met Cyril before, but I knew his work and I jumped at the chance to do this project together in four-hands. At the beginning we met on the phone, and talked a lot, and it was like working with an old friend. He knew my clothes but he did not know the job, and this world. I explained to him what a press show is, and what is going on before in the backstage. And we decided together to work on not what is the backstage, but what is called in French ‘hors-champ,’ or ‘off-camera.’ As I told him, it was an opportunity to present exactly what I wanted people to see because when you are on the runway you might be looking at the clothes, or the shoes, or the model—I don’t know. But as a designer I know exactly what I want the audience to see…and it was very funny to do that together [with Cyril].... We all had a lot of joy working together, his team and my team.

I held a show at Pantin in the atelier once before, a long time ago, and it was my idea to come back here again where the craftsmen are, in this beautiful space with beautiful light.… Freshness, lightness, and joy were something I really concentrated on throughout lockdown and in the making of the collection. And it was strange, doing it at home on the computer.… I did the same double-lapel jacket we saw last winter, in flannel, and I played with different stripes and different blues, and there was a chaîne d’ancre printed over the shirt striping—I’m glad you saw that detail because I was not sure if the camera would show it! The print you see towards the end was from La Danse des Chevaux, a new scarf, and the third print, which was not in the show, is playing with tiny robos, robots. There is a blue leather jacket, in suede, that also has the chaîne d’ancre, although you could not see it in the movie, and the man you see walking behind the mirrors is wearing a noncolor blouson in deerskin, very beautiful, in beige. But I put just two pieces of leather in the collection...although in that knitwear you talked about, yes, we worked on putting the leather between the ribs of the knit.… Thank you, I’m glad you liked the sandals! We did this sandal that is closed, a gardener’s sandal.

The collection is bigger than what was presented to you in the film. We saw 18 looks there, but we are photographing 26, which is what we will share with you. And that is less than usual. And sometimes it was quite difficult working with the team, all on the computers, but at the end we did a good job. Because we made these pieces, real pieces.

Am I looking forward to the return of the défilé? In a way, but I like this way of working too. I like the idea of seeing the reality but also sharing the details on the computer too, and maybe we can play on that.… Everybody is trying to find the right way now, and it is open, and we can investigate.… Yes, it’s an opportunity.”

Nichanian, who has been in her position since 1988, demonstrated both the movement in her clothes and the flexibility in her attitude with this presentation for Hermès today.

Source: Vogue

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Vivienne Westwood LFW AW 20/21

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Vivienne Westwood began designing in 1971 along with her then partner Malcolm McLaren in London. At the time they used their shop at 430 Kings Road, London, to showcase their ideas and designs. With their changing ideas of fashion came the change of not only the name of the shop but also the décor. It was in 1976 when Westwood and McLaren defined the street culture of Punk with Seditionaries. 

By the end of the seventies Vivienne Westwood was already considered a symbol of the British avant-garde and for Autumn/Winter 1981 she showed her first catwalk presentation at Olympia in London. Westwood then turned to traditional Savile Row tailoring techniques, using British fabrics and 17th and 18th century art for inspiration. 

1989 was the year that Vivienne met Andreas Kronthaler, who would later become her husband and long-time design partner, as well as Creative Director of the brand. In 2004 the Victoria & Albert museum, London, hosted a Vivienne Westwood retrospective exhibition to celebrate her then 34 years in fashion – the largest exhibition ever devoted to a living British fashion designer. In 2006, her contribution to British Fashion was officially recognized when she was appointed Dame of the British Empire by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, and in 2007 was awarded the ‘Outstanding Achievement in Fashion’ at the British Fashion Awards in London. 

Vivienne Westwood is one of the last independent global fashion companies in the world. At times thought provoking, this brand is about more than producing clothes and accessories. Westwood continues to capture the imagination, and raise awareness of environmental and human rights issues. With a design record spanning over forty years, Vivienne Westwood is now recognized as a global brand and Westwood herself as one of the most influential fashion designers, and activists, in the world today. 

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