The marathon, four-weeks, 400-plus shows, international season that began in New York on February 9 ended in Paris this week. Here is our pick of the twelve best fashion moments, Deeny’s Dozen.
Willy Chavarria
Brooklyn and fashion moment might historically sound like an oxymoron, but that’s exactly what we witnessed at a great Willy Chavarria show on a cold night near New York’s East River. Latin exuberance; dynamic designs; animated inclusiveness and a sense of bold bravura that sets the pulses racing. His new bold suits, cut with wide pagoda shoulders and lapels so pointy they reach about the shoulder line; and giant multi-pleat pants, influence every teenager in New York and designers globally. Chavarria is the fashion champion of BIPOC, meaning black, indigenous and other people of color. After working for Ralph and Calvin for over a decade, Chavarria has suddenly exploded onto the New York scene. This show, which ended with Willy and his cast sitting around a Last Supper table, was his consecration.
Khaite
Without a doubt, the most agenda-setting designer in New York today is Khaite’s creative director and founder Catherine Holstein. In our dark era of destruction, as 24-hour news channels show wars in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere, her Expressionist style is a telling symbol of our times. Her latest collection – shown on an all dark set worthy of a G. W. Pabst film on a Hudson River pier, was also her most emotive. Starkly sculpted coats, jackets and dresses, as if the fabric was thrown onto the models, then dimpled and scrunched into shape. In an era when women search for greater empowerment, Khaite’s vision of New York women is one of true liberation.
Medea, Maria Callas and the sense of loss both heroines suffered from was the connective tissue in the latest opulent collection by Erdem Moralioglu. Staged with grandeur inside the British Museum, the collection echoed multiple intimate moments in Callas’ life. Models walking with hair clips, wig tape and multiple shawls suggesting a rushed moment to prepare backstage after an epic performance by the diva. Sometimes still dressed in pajamas, as if awaiting an admirer, or in huge shawl collar coats, thrown on and worn with fully exposed bras. Or festive in mega-large floral print cocktails, flared 50s style and dissected with gros grain ribbons. Diva fashion at its greatest.
Aaron Esh
A star is born moment mood at Aaron Esh, the LVMH Prize 2023 finalist who staged a remarkably poised and punchy collection before just 70 insiders in London. Impressive couture techniques allied to a sense of street chic. Bias-cut gossamer cocktails, slimline cocoon coats and micro, 12-button blazers all blessed with a UK edge. Just like the location – the Sarabande Foundation in East London.
Deconstruction has never felt more feminist than at Prada this season. Dresses and coat-dresses classical at front, but lingerie at the back, or expanded trouser legs at the side. Skirts as if made of upside-down men’s blazers but cut so well they always looked stylish. Rippling technical calico coats with funnel necks in expansive 50s shapes. All suggesting an authoritative woman in search of love.
The newest array of clothes by far in any collection was from Matthieu Blazy for Bottega Veneta. Cocoon shaped jackets or car coats with raised seams and hems; leather jerkins with bat wings, high collars and long cuffs; mega ruffled flamenco skirts or elongated cabans with low slung pockets. Everything was a little out of proportion, granting each look its allure. Devoid of print, free of embroidery, but constructed with true originality and boasting cool silhouettes anywhere.
In a season dominated by sculptural fashion, there was no greater sculptor of fabric than Nicolas Di Felice at Courrèges. Brilliant trench-dresses, that swept up in the air into funnel necks or bold coats with huge rising lapels in the house’s classic plastic covered jersey. Pocket placement at the front or around the hip of many coat dresses, sheathes and pants, imparting revolutionary shapes. Staged with brilliant Gallic panache, a white square amid wrought iron rafters of the 19th century market, at whose center rose a three meter heart beating to time.
No show anywhere is as hip today as Loewe by Jonathan Anderson, whose metaphysical set was dotted with works by naïve American artist Albert York, and whose front row was the envy of every other designer.
His leitmotif: modern-day morning dress; tailcoats, Etonian public school coats or elongated frocks. Though radically reimagined for 2025 – finished with unexpected beading or combined with gigantic silk pants in bold floral prints. The result was a highly decorative collection, where everyone seemed to be an outsider looking in on another world. Just like York, whose tiny paintings of small dogs and farm animals hung in billionaire’s homes on Park Avenue.
No set anywhere was as immersive as Demna’s for Balenciaga. Where the floors, walls and ceilings were giant video screens built in a massive giant tent in front of Napoleon’s Tomb. Bucolic Alpine screens, giant snowy mountain cliffs morphing into a gigantic mashup of Tik Tok personalities. What a backdrop for a collection that reworked Balenciaga’s canon through Demna’s artistic lens. Opening with versions of founder’s Cristobal’s dresses – in midnight blue velvet, putty plissé silk or turquoise sequins, though each revamped with a hip-aulette, Balenciaga’s creative director Demna’s term for shoulder pads sewn into the hip. Artfully thrown-together dresses made of three upside-down or askew sweatshirts; repurposed wardrobe looks with a cool street grandeur, or wildly crumpled asymmetrical cocktails. Demna at his best.
A double winning season for Miuccia Prada, whose Miu Miu had the most contemporary cool wardrobe anywhere. In recent years, Miuccia seems bent on competing with Prada where she tag teams with Raf Simons. So far, she is winning this game. This season she showed an ideal Milanese wardrobe: double breasted slate gray herring bone coats, sprinkled with crystals; suede blazers sewn with strass; superb crushed silk cocktails, worn with long gloves in alligator or suede; or perfectly cut double-breasted redingotes with wee collars. Everything worked so splendidly. So, when 48 hours later Prada announced spectacular results, it was no surprise that revenues from Miu Miu had risen 56% last year.
Nicolas Ghesquière closed out the official Paris runway season with a mammoth display before 4,000 people in the Louvre, and the largest ovation of any designer. Fully merited after this latest display of Nicolas’ athletic futurist chic – blended with remarkable artisanal finish and gutsy draping. Norfolk jackets cut as high neck blousons and worn with pocketed ruffled skirts; mega pailette sheaths and floor length dresses or hiking jackets cut as cocktails. Revolutionary fashion from the most experimental designer in any major global brand.
Never before in fashion has a designer been so open about his inspiration, techniques and imagination as John Galliano was this past week in Paris. The UK couturier created a cabinet of curiosities to display his recent couture collection in Maison Margiela’s HQ. For one week, by appointment, one could capture this unique installation, featuring detailed photos books of each look’s inspirations; X-Rays of clothes or displays of medical or freshly created corsetry. There was a Darwinian air about the dark wood, antique cabinets, clamps, skulls and apothecary glass jars containing Christian Louboutin’s wicked toeless shoes. Influences ranging from Van Donegan oils and Brassai photos of old Paris. The layers of tailoring material – triple organza, felt, wool crepe and printed tulle – used to make the marvelous Artful Dodge Ulster coats. Amid which the remarkable clothes: bouffant jackets finished in reverse stitching; Rorschach-dotted dresses; an exceptional caisetted cotton gabardine coat, that looked like cardboard. A mad scientist’s lab, and an exceptionally revelatory fashion moment.
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