PARIS — The season’s most anticipated show was surely Alessandro Michele’s runway debut as creative director of Valentino. Ultimately, Michele’s collection did not clinch the number one slot, but it landed near the top of BoF’s list.
Our editors were divided over Michele’s layered-on styling, but agreed the show was pristinely executed, deeply researched and emotionally resonant.
Milan made a particularly strong showing. We were blown away by Simone Bellotti’s unexpected interpretation of Swissness at Bally, which took the top spot, as well as the collection of otherworldly, conceptual designs shown by Lucie and Luke Meier at Jil Sander.
Fashion month was shaded by a slowdown in luxury sales and a worsening geopolitical climate that darkened the industry’s outlook. Discontent with soaring prices and an ongoing shift towards safe, ultra-commercial design also dampened excitement for the proceedings.
In this context, several of the season’s best-received collections were ones that jolted editors awake with a more challenging, experimental aesthetic. Duran Lantink showed his most confident and complete collection to date, while Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson continued his exploration of textile transformation, resulting in sculptural but ultra-light garments. Junya Watanabe’s collection of complex upcycled pieces also made the list. “I feel that abnormal clothing is necessary in our everyday life,” the designer said.
Other brands added extra punch to their shows by proposing multi-layered experiences, which fostered a dialogue with culture and the wider world. Alaïa decamped to New York to celebrate what is arguably the Guggenheim’s most powerful work: its nautilus-shaped interior by Frank Lloyd Wright. Bottega Veneta’s eclectic, craft-heavy collection was backdropped by a charming design installation and attended by a similarly eclectic and charming cast of VIPs: actresses Michelle Yeoh and Julianne Moore, boxer Imane Khelif and TikTok sensation Jools Lebron.
Miu Miu, which also made the cut, commissioned an art installation by Goshka Macuga that explored misinformation and the search for truth with videos, newspapers filled with links to digital assets, and a factory-like conveyor belt clacking broadsheets around on the ceiling. The collection twisted silhouettes informed by Miuccia Prada’s 1990s archive — sometimes literally, as in the case of a backward skirt — while holding onto the messy-girl modern energy that’s reignited the brand’s sales in recent seasons.
Deft execution took precedence over the thrill of the new at Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent, where the designer mixed louche, androgynous tailoring with a renewed embrace of colour to cinematic effect, scoring a place in our top ten.
Two honourable mentions: S.S. Daley made a polished, convincing womenswear debut that was a highlight of the London season. Meanwhile, in Paris, Balenciaga’s clever trompe-l’œil lingerie pieces and high-voltage soundtrack (an extended remix of Britney Spears’ “Gimme More”) made it a strong contender, too.
1. Bally
“A dropped shoulder, raised collar and rounded shape redefined Bally’s signature leathers. A mention of ‘decorum subverted by the avant garde’ could have been borrowed from a Dada manifesto ... Bellotti is on a mission to expand popular awareness of Switzerland beyond banks, chocolate, precision and neutrality. ‘It’s an amazing culture to explore,’ he insisted after his show.” – Tim Blanks
Read more: WOW = A World of Wonder
2. Valentino
“Michele’s Valentino debut could never match the seismic impact of his first collection for Gucci, because that brand of give-people-what-they-didn’t-know-they-wanted lightning only strikes once. Instead, we were gifted here with a collection that was phrased in Michele’s now-familiar lexicon but re-delivered with such luxurious lightness, effortlessness, exquisite technique and flat-out beauty that it still had the potency of something much missed.” – Tim Blanks
Read more: Alessandro Michele’s Valentino Debut: Lightness, Luxury and ‘Fireflies Seeking Love’
3. Alaïa
“The proceedings began 45 minutes late. It was clear we were waiting for somebody famous, who turned out to be Rihanna, sweeping in like a voluptuous sea creature swathed in sparkling Alaïa net over a too-tight corset, pearls creeping up her legs. The show itself made use of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic spiral ramps, with the models starting at the very top, looking like chic ants you could barely see. But as they grew closer the details of their outfits were revealed — palazzo pants with a clown ruffle at the waist; small swishy low-slung skirts paired with bra tops; a scrumptious salmon pink chubby jacket; a curvaceous white puffer that was an homage to the famous quilted satin evening jacket by the American couturier Charles James.” – Lynn Yaeger
Read more: Hopes and Fears at New York Fashion Week
4. Saint Laurent
“The pearl-clutching shownotes imagined Yves Saint Laurent himself declaring, ‘I am the Saint Laurent Woman.’ A Super Heroine! Vaccarello set out to illustrate that point by dressing his models in simulacra of the spectacular menswear he showed last March, which was very much based on Yves’ own precise, formal style, eyewear and all ... For the finale, he pushed out the boat with clashes of colour so sick and fabric so rich that they were enough to consolidate defiant excess as Saint Laurent’s fashion statement for the season, along with those formidable suit-clad Amazons of course.” – Tim Blanks
Read more: Amazons on the Catwalk
5. Duran Lantink
“Lantink first caught fashion’s eye with his cartoonishly exaggerated proportions. That blown-up trench coat, remember? A year ago, the mutations looked like they might be a gimmick. Now, I’m calling them a physical realisation of independent fashion thinking. And Lantink sees more people trying to do similarly independent things in fashion. ‘Quiet luxury is so boring, isn’t it,’ he muses.” – Tim Blanks
Read more: In Paris, Shapes of Things to Come
5. Loewe
“Jonathan Anderson thought of the sculpture as the analogue of a different way to look at the world, in this case, a literal bird’s eye view. It’s something he’d been considering over the last few seasons at Loewe, which he called exercises in reduction: ‘Putting out ideas, like archetypes that you believe in.’ He said that sometimes he wanted to challenge people’s viewpoints, wanted people to wonder, how you do you wear that? Or, how do you sit on it? Or, how do you deal with it.” – Tim Blanks
Read more: In Paris, the Boys Can’t Help It!
6. Bottega Veneta
“Child’s play was on Matthieu Blazy’s mind. In his show notes, he talked about childhood’s ‘adventure of the everyday.’ One of his major reference points was ‘E.T.’ which is, like many of Spielberg’s films, a coming-of-age story. One of the joys of Blazy’s show was watching him elaborate on that idea in a kind of coming and going of age, weaving backwards and forwards between a child’s view of the adult world, and a worldly adult’s rediscovery of a sense of play in dress.” – Tim Blanks
Read more: WOW = A World of Wonder
7. Junya Watanabe
“Bags are not made but ‘assembled,’ the same way Ava [in the film Ex Machina] was assembled, or Dr. Frankenstein made his monster. That’s how Junya constructed his dresses, as complex collages which remade his models. Also in the Frankenstein vein, the sepulchral strain of Goth in the collection. A pile of skulls decorated a t-shirt. Black lace looked like it had been tarred ... Imagine an opera coat constructed from backpacks, with the straps still attached. Zips, straps and buckles were significant because, as they signposted the origins of the recycled materials, they also underscored the creativity in transforming those materials.” – Tim Blanks
Read more: In Paris, Shapes of Things to Come
8. Jil Sander
“Intelligence and idiosyncrasy can combine to create something that is visually alluring on a higher plane and sensually irresistible on a gut level. There was a gorgeously sinister sleekness at work in Lucie and Luke Meier’s latest exercise. It felt necessary after last season took the Meiers’ experiments with cerebral volume to an extraterrestrial limit. This collection was firmly rooted on dark, possibly dangerous terra firma. ‘Well, obviously we’re living in a dark world,’ said Lucie. ‘So let’s say we were attracted by darkness, and we like the ambience when it changes from light to dark.’” – Tim Blanks
Read more: Milan Goes to the Movies
10. Miu Miu
“The sense of Miuccia re-engaging with her past is what made it so exciting. A suede jacket (didn’t she always say she hated suede?) paired with a vinyl pencil skirt reeked of the John Waters-style bad taste that enlivened Miu Miu’s golden era. The armlets were so bad they were good. Just like the butch belts, slung round the elasticated waists of little cotton skirts. With Miu Miu, the message was so often mixed, and Miuccia left it to us to go figure.” – Tim Blanks
Read more: Relevance: It Begins With a Blessing, and Ends With a Cur
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