In March 2006, following months of speculation after a drug scandal the previous September, Kate Moss returned to the world stage at Lee Alexander McQueen’s ‘The Widows of Culloden’ show, emerging via hologram for its finale. Dressed in a ruffled organza gown, slowly twirling her body to John Williams’ main theme from Schindler’s List, the model’s image was met with wild applause. The hologram was similarly affecting when it appeared as a standalone art piece as part of the blockbuster retrospective ‘Savage Beauty’, which opened at The Met in May 2011, just 14 months after McQueen’s death. Watching either iteration today, via grainy YouTube footage on a 13-inch laptop screen, the spell remains intact.

‘For him to choose that piece of music to accompany the hologram for Kate, only he could have come up with that,’ says John Gosling, McQueen’s friend and long-time music director. ‘I never would have thought to do that in a million years, but it was perfect.’ Williams’ score is one of 17 pieces to feature in the repertoire of ‘Unnatural Harmony: Sounds of Lee Alexander McQueen’, a new show celebrating the music that shaped McQueen’s life and work over 20 years, created by Gosling with Robert Ames of the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO).

The unique offering marries the many audio strands that inhabited McQueen’s orbit. Partnering the LCO with choreographer Holly Blakey, it is directed by Elayce Ismail and additionally features a new film by Douglas Hart and Eddie Whelan with work by the dancer and McQueen collaborator Michael Clark. The show is premiering as part of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival on 29 and 30 April 2026. ‘Hopefully it's a completely new thing,’ Gosling notes, ‘but the research I did for it was very nostalgic. There were so many shows I’d completely forgotten about.’

Gosling and McQueen first met in 1995, introduced by the former’s wife, Sam Gainsbury, who was already producing the designer’s elaborate presentations, having been brought on by the stylist Katy England. ‘He'd done a couple of shows by then, so people were talking about him,’ Gosling explains over the phone. ‘We were all a bit of a gang in those days, very collaborative. He was obviously a really talented visionary, and anyone who's got a really clear idea of what they want to do is interesting to work with.’

The pair’s initial collaboration was for the epic ‘Dante’ show in 1996. ‘It was exhilarating,’ recalls Gosling, who’d until then been privy to the fashion industry primarily via Gainsbury and their friends. DJing and producing, he was releasing music under the moniker Mekon, and had enjoyed an earlier stint playing with the singular performance artist Genesis P-Orridge in Psychic TV. ‘I could see that we could probably work together for a long time, which we did. We were on the same page; the nicest thing Lee ever said to me was “yeah, you get it”. We wanted to do something new, to shock people and have maximum impact within the 20-minute time frame of a fashion show.’

‘With Lee, they were major theatrical events that had a lot of depth, references to all sorts. It didn't seem unusual to me, but I think it was something new for a lot of people,’ he continues. ‘Every time we did a show, it was literally on a wing and a prayer, because you only had the day of the show [to rehearse]. We didn't have much money either, so we had people for a limited time. Miraculously, it always worked, but it could have easily gone the other way. Every time we pulled something off, it was special.’

Remaining faithful to the house, Gosling would meet Ames when they collaborated on a McQueen show during Sarah Burton’s premiere. ‘We enjoyed working together, and both thought there was probably something a bit more to this than just a one-off collaboration,’ he says. ‘Unnatural Harmony’, named in part as an homage to McQueen’s S/S 2009 show, ‘Natural Dis-tinction Un-natural Selection’, is the product of much back and forth, he shares, paramount to which was coming up with an edit for the orchestra’s repertoire.

‘When we started, there were ten times the amount of tracks,’ offers Gosling. ‘Rob and I sat down and just worked out what worked next to each other. It's not chronological. It's a patchwork, that hopefully hangs together.’ Indeed, ‘Paint it Black’ by The Rolling Stones, used during Gosling’s first McQueen outing in 1996 (and for several subsequent shows) neighbours Mozart and Armand van Helden, while nestled between Björk and Philip Glass is Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’, which famously helped crash the SHOWstudio site when McQueen debuted it for the finale of ‘Plato’s Atlantis’ in 2009, in what would become the designer’s last fully realised collection.

‘I wanted to make sure that the Lee side of things came through; it wasn't just an orchestra,’ adds Gosling, speaking to his approach with the new project. ‘I got Katy England involved, to give it that authentic Lee feel. And getting to work with Michael again is lovely – I’ve known him for 30-odd years, we did a show called “Deliverance” with him [S/S 2004]; he was a good friend of Lee's. The new show’s quite a long way from where we started, a lot of things are getting thrown in. I've got absolutely no idea what it's gonna sound like – the music is just sketched out as the actual tracks [currently] – it’s really exciting.’

‘Unnatural Harmony: Sounds of Lee Alexander McQueen’ is on at the Southbank Centre, London, from 29-30 April 2026.

southbankcentre.co.uk

While January might typically be a month of piety and abstinence, we have always been proponents of embracing the new year in a more celebratory fashion. Particularly when it comes to clothing – after all, in the year’s darkest months, there is still joy to be had in dressing up.

Here, taken from the January 2025 issue of Wallpaper* – a celebration of a new era of design – photographer Dham Srifuengfung and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture the best men’s and women’s looks from the Resort 2025 collections, which herald the beginning of a new year in style.

The best Resort 2025 fashion

Reflecting a wider shift in fashion, away from the quiet and the beige, the Resort 2025 collections are defined by a mood of nostalgia and eclecticism, with looks made to be mixed and matched with abandon – whether flourishes of animal print or faux fur, pussybows or neckties, or playful combinations, like a classic Dunhill tuxedo worn with MM6’s riff on the carpenter jean.

Each look comes complete with an equally sonic accessory: an assemblage of vintage music devices, from Walkmans and Discmans to dictaphones and iPods. It’s our nod to the season’s free-spirited mood: we imagine these looks as ones to pound the streets in (complete with your own soaring soundtrack) or for letting loose at your very own silent disco.

Models: Giovanna Pinho and Anick Chan at IMG, Valentin Haedecke, Raad Al Gabril and Abdallah El Farjani at Supa Management, Jamie Riselay, Kentha Kirezi and Marcello Chang at The Milk Collective, Zhou at Linden Staub. Casting: Hien Le Casting. Hair: Anna Cofone using Authentic Beauty Concept. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Surratt. Props stylist: Haleimah Darwish. Photography assistants: Emmet Banahan, Ben McManus. Fashion assistants: Lucy Proctor, Leonie Dennett. Hair assistants: Jessica Hau, Lee-Anne Willoux. Make-up assistants: Craig Hamilton, Lily Simmonds. Props assistant: Kash. Production assistants: Archie Thomson, Ady Huq.

A version of this article appears in the January 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Earlier this year, Jonathan Anderson described his S/S 2025 menswear collection as one of ‘irrational clothing’ – an embrace of the strange and the unexpected, inspired by the experimental attitude towards dressing he had witnessed among young people at Primavera Festival in Barcelona earlier that summer. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said at the time. ‘The eye has changed.... people want something that is really challenging.’

Anderson is astute with a soundbite, and the idea of ‘irrational clothing’ could equally have been applied to the womenswear collections shown this past month in New York, London, Milan and Paris. By and large, there was a marked disavowal of ‘quiet luxury’, seeing restraint thrown out the window in the pursuit of the bold and eclectic. If sometimes this led to a lack of cohesion – with designers seeming to ricochet between ideas – when it was done well, it made for some enlivening fashion moments. Such was the case at Prada, where Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a freewheeling collection that paid homage to individual style, traversing Prada eras and comprising 49 near-completely different looks filled with colour, texture and shifting silhouettes. A similarly eclectic approach provided transporting collections from Valentino, Bottega Veneta, Loewe and Louis Vuitton, which were among the highlights of the season.

Here, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss unpacks the S/S 2025 womenswear shows, from an embrace of the eclectic to a new mood in tailoring, and clothing where nothing was quite what it seemed.

The season was an homage to individual style

A Prada show is usually a barometer for the season, such is the knack that Miuccia Prada has for shifting the fashion needle, reimagining the familiar in oftentimes electrifying new ways (now, she does so alongside Raf Simons, her co-creative director and another fashion soothsayer). For S/S 2025, a radical new proposition from the pair: the decision to do away with trends or thematics entirely, choosing instead to present a freewheeling and eclectic collection that celebrated individual style. It was a riposte, said Mrs Prada backstage, to the way that the social-media algorithm smooths personal style and siloes us into social-media echo chambers. ‘We are driven by algorithms,’ she said. ‘We like things because people tell us to like them.’ As such, the pair spoke about rejecting the ‘derivative and expected’ for a stream of 49 near-entirely different looks that veered between sculptural high-shine silver skirts dotted with enormous eyelets, leather dresses with BDSM hooks and elements of trompe l’oeil (there were also feathers, bug-like sunglasses, and day-glo anoraks). It made for an enticing visual feast, ‘a Prada for each individual’. ‘We thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Simons.

Also in Milan, Matthieu Blazy struck a similar mood at Bottega Veneta, which he described as an attempt to evoke a sense of childhood wonder (as such, the animal-shaped beanbag chairs were a reference to the scene in E.T. when the title character hides amid a closet full of cuddly toys). Blazy said that the collection began by thinking about a suited businessman taking his child to school while carrying their pink cartoon rucksack or lunchbox over his shoulder. The collection was full of such juxtapositions, seeing ‘Italian sartorialism’ clashed with playful flourishes, from tasselled wigs to blown-up tailoring and animal motifs. Like at Prada, barely two looks were the same, and it was a definitive statement that luxury fashion needn’t be discreet nor restrained – rather, it should spark joy. ‘[This collection] encompasses the joy of looking, discovering and dressing,’ the designer said. ‘Last season was maybe more contemplative. But at the same time, we need beauty. We need joy. We need this moment for ourselves, and continue to play.’ In Paris, Nicolas Ghesquière felt similarly liberated – his 1980s-infused collection seemed to recall the flamboyant, individual style of the New Romantics, albeit with the designer’s always-futuristic sheen – while Alessandro Michele opened his tenure at Valentino with a musing on beauty that was as richly expansive as his collections for Gucci (he left the Italian house in 2022). Over the collection’s mammoth 85 looks were hundreds of elements, among them ruffles, feathers, polka dots, floral motifs, wide-brimmed hats, facial piercings, ladylike handbags (sometimes worn two-a-piece) and ribbon-tied pumps. Again as at Prada, it was a bold invitation to experiment with clothing – a maxim that defined the season.

Designers reimagined the everyday

Despite its more dramatic flourishes, Blazy’s latest collection for Bottega Veneta was rooted in the idea of everyday style (‘everyday adventures’, is how he described the collection’s mood). As such, objects like the plastic corner-shop bag – here recreated in heat-pressed nylon – were elevated onto the runway, alongside bunches of flowers (woven from leather), brown paper bags (more leather), and shopping baskets (also leather). Such transformations were also applied to clothing: this season, he continued to riff on everyday garments like jeans, crumpled T-shirts and corporate tailoring, albeit in luxurious style. ‘I was interested in the simple acts of fashion that happen everyday,’ said Blazy. Demna, creative director of Balenciaga, is also known for taking disparate objects – like crisp packets, toolboxes and rubbish sacks – and turning them into fashion accessories. This season, though, Demna looked towards archetypal garments, like denim jeans, and radically altered their proportions (his version sat perilously low on the waist). Elsewhere, dresses looked as if a classic trench coat had been tied around the body, while padded jackets were reshaped to recall Cristóbal Balenciaga’s ‘cocoon’ silhouette.

At Issey Miyake, models carried shopping-style bags filled with bunches of flowers, as if on a trounce to the market, while Anderson’s latest Loewe show featured feathered T-shirts handpainted with works by Vincent Van Gogh, including Irises and Sunflowers. Reflecting the designer’s idiosyncratic approach, these were not inspired by encountering the paintings in a gallery, but by the reproductions he sees on tea towels and T-shirts while driving to work each day past the tourist markets that line the River Seine. ‘We get so used to them that they become a kind of high-low culture,’ he said, placing what he called the ‘burned-out’ images in a new context as an attempt to shift the eye. ‘[They are artworks] we are always magnetically drawn to... There’s something that we want to be part of, something, even if we don't understand it.’ The same can be said for Anderson’s collections for Loewe, which continue to intrigue.

There was a tailoring redux

Backstage after that show for Loewe, Anderson touched on the evolution of tailoring at the house during his tenure. ‘Historically, tailoring was something Loewe wasn’t good at for a long time, but I think we’ve been able to do it right, and come up with a kind of signature,’ he said. ‘Tailoring is about the subtlety of the change, and it’s taken me years to understand that.’ His proposition here was a tailored jacket with long, gently flared sleeves and baggy trousers that twisted cleverly towards the waistline. The result was roomy and generous, though the silhouette – a move from a relatively narrow shoulder line towards the more voluminous weight of the trouser – was one of louche elegance. It was proof that tailoring remains fertile ground for designers, something Simon Chilvers discussed in the September Style Issue of Wallpaper*, in regards to men’s tailoring. Womenswear, if anything, allows for even more sartorial experimentation, unrestrained by the still-conservative mores of men’s suiting.

Such experiments were in evidence across the various cities: in Paris, Victoria Beckham turned blazers inside out or sliced tailored trousers down the leg to expose the pocket lining, while another trouser shape sat away from the waistline through clever use of corsetry (in New York, Tory Burch evoked a similar effect on skirts). At Dolce & Gabbana in Milan, jackets were inserted with a Jean Paul Gaultier-inspired ‘cone-bra’ (an ode to Madonna, who sat front row and inspired the collection), while at Emporio Armani, the designer revived his 1980s suit and tie for women with a multitude of iterations of the blazer, including those folded sharply along their front. At Seán McGirr’s sophomore show for McQueen, jackets were cut to evoke the feeling that they were being grasped close by their wearer to protect them against the elements. Though perhaps the most seductive proposition for this season’s tailoring was that at Saint Laurent, where Anthony Vaccarello revived the languid, broad-shouldered tailoring of his menswear collection earlier this year – which was no doubt was inspired by Mr Armani’s tailoring of the 1980s – to evoke the wardrobe of Yves Saint Laurent himself, from a fluid black tuxedo (modelled by Bella Hadid who also wore the couturier’s famous thick-rimmed glasses) to beige and grey double-breasted tailoring.

American fashion was dissected

On the final Tuesday of New York Fashion Week was the first – and perhaps only – television debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Such was the anticipation there were fears that Luar’s runway show, due to take place that evening, would be underattended (it wasn’t: Madonna even made a rare front-row appearance), while those already travelling to London for the next fashion week leg made complicated plans to watch the debate while in the air (they managed, thanks to a BBC iPlayer live stream and aeroplane wifi). Which is to say, the upcoming election loomed large in New York, prompting a dissection of American fashion and what it represents – or what it could represent. Such was the case at Willy Chavarria’s latest show, which saw the designer present an homage to America’s immigrant communities, like those he grew up around in his home city of Fresno, California (Chavarria is the child of an Irish-American mother and Mexican-American father). He did so through riffs on uniforms: hotel managers, farm workers, and employees at electronics chain Circuit City, albeit in his distinct style, which instils a mood of elegance through abundant silhouettes and references to haute couture. ‘Given the time that we’re in – around the corner from a major election – I wanted to shine a light on the people who make this country work,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘It’s about giving, showing dignity to all of these people.’ Afterwards, guests were given a sticker to remind them to vote.

Other designers looked towards the history of American fashion: Tory Burch continued to reference figures like Claire McCardell, a pioneer of American sportswear, as inspiration for her breezy summer collection, while Tommy Hilfiger drafted Wu-Tang Clan to perform at his latest show, a reminder of the longtime synergy between his namesake label and hip hop music (the show took place on a former Staten Island ferry owned by the comedians Pete Davidson and Colin Jost). Sometimes it took an outsider’s eye: against the backdrop of the gleaming New York skyline in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Off-White creative director Ib Kamara staged his debut show in the city, in part an ode to founder Virgil Abloh’s American heritage. It made for a vivid, continent-swapping collection from the Sierre Leone-born designer, which celebrated America as a cultural melting pot. ‘I have vivid memories of what America, and New York in particular, represented in the collective imagination of Africans: a dreamland of utopias made real, a place of opportunities,’ he said. Also making his debut in New York was Belgian designer Pieter Mulier, who showed his latest collection for Alaïa in the dramatic spiralling atrium of the Guggenheim Museum, swapping from Paris for the season. Conjuring the easy glamour of figures like Charles James, Adrian and Halston, as well as McCardell, it was an exemplary collection that showed the rich potential American fashion history still holds for contemporary designers (it was a show that felt like it had been percolating since his exit from American powerhouse Calvin Klein, where he worked alongside Raf Simons, in 2018). ‘[This collection] is a celebration of an American ideology of dress, and through that of a spirit that can unite New York and Paris – of the body in motion, liberated,’ Mulier said. ‘As Alaïa always has been.’

Sometimes things weren’t what they seemed

Balenciaga’s S/S 2025 show began with what appeared to be lingerie, though on closer inspection was actually a series of nude bodysuits embroidered with bras, knickers and stockings for a playful visual trick. It captured a mood of disorientation which ran through the season, reflecting the menswear shows earlier this year. Back then, Anderson spoke about ‘things not being what they seem’ in his JW Anderson collection (inspired by the experience of hypnotherapy dredging up past memories), while at Prada the designers spoke about the idea of ‘truth and pretence, the real and the unreal’, a response, they said, to a world where these categories feel increasingly blurred. As such, the technique of trompe l’oeil – the illusion of one garment imprinted onto another – continued to be evoked by designers across women’s fashion month, from JW Anderson’s mini dresses decorated with faux buttons and zips, to printed fur collars and belts in-set into trousers at Prada. Meanwhile, at Moschino, simple white-cotton garments adorned with childlike impressions of trench coats and sailor’s scarves. A similarly illusory mood was conjured in pieces that appeared to have a life of their own – or, indeed lived a life already – whether purposely creased garments at Ferragamo, Bottega Veneta or Victoria Beckham, or dresses at Prada constructed with twisting wired seams. Set into skewiff proportions, they appeared to be leaping off the models’ bodies.

Revisit our coverage of New York, London, Milan and Paris fashion weeks.

A mood of escape and discovery infused the S/S 2024 womenswear collections, with designers taking a round-the-world odyssey – both real and imagined – to create a series of striking, craft-rich looks which offer a dramatic and colourful riposte to the banality of the everyday.

Here, as seen in the March 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on newsstands worldwide now), photographer Nicolas Kern, Wallpaper* fashion and style director Jason Hughes and Dutch model Bente Oort take a trip to the otherwordly landscapes of the Canary Islands, capturing the season’s best looks amid the archipelago’s unique vistas and volcanic black-sand beaches. 

From Matthieu Blazy’s pom-pom-adorned dress for Bottega Veneta – which appears on the limited-edition cover of the March 2024 Style Issue – to the cocoon-like wrapped forms of Issey Miyake, or the intricate embellishments that adorn looks from Isabel Marant, Feben and Carven, it makes for a series of electrifying ensembles which capture the mood of offbeat elegance set to define the S/S 2024 season ahead. Enjoy the trip. 

S/S 2024 womenswear looks for escape and discovery

Model: Bente Oort at Platform Agency. Casting: Ikki Casting at The Art Board. Hair: Daniele Falzone at Blend Management using Davines. Make-up: Jimmy Owen Jones at Julian Watson Agency. Photography assistants: Francesco Colombo, David Gimenez. Fashion assistant: Kris Bergfeldt. Post-production: Ink. Local production: Studio Volca.

A version of this article appears in the March 2024 Style Issue of Wallpaper* available on international newsstands in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

January marks the beginning not only of a new year, but a new season in style – gone are the winter collections of last year, in are the S/S 2024 collections, and with them the promise of brighter days ahead.

As part of Wallpaper’s Design Awards 2024 issue, we select the winning men’s and womenswear collections of S/S 2024 – and their standout looks – which will define a season of dressing ahead. These span Sabato de Sarno’s sensual new vision for Gucci (the designer called it a ’story of richness and lust... of sweat, dancing and singing’, and is pictured top left), the eclectic oppositions of Dries Van Noten’s womenswear, and Maximilian Davis’ expertly reduced Ferragamo tailoring. 

Winning collections came too from Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons at Prada, where they reckoned with beauty and craft, the sinuous lines of Kim Jones’ Fendi, or Matthieu Blazy’s extraordinary riffs on the quotidien at Bottega Veneta (here encapsulated his version of a working man’s tie, recrafted in leather). Or Lucie and Luke Meier’s gently oversized men’s Jil Sander tailoring, adorned with glimmering crystal broaches (pictured top right). 

The various looks are captured by London-based photographer Daisy Walker, and styled by Wallpaper* fashion and style director Jason Hughes. 

The standout looks of S/S 2024, selected by Wallpaper*

Courrèges

Dolce & Gabbana

Dries Van Noten

Acne Studios

Hermès

Wooyoungmi

Ferragamo

Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello

Givenchy

Alexander McQueen

Carven

Isabel Marant

Bottega Veneta

Miu Miu

Paul Smith

Fendi

Dior

Prada

Balenciaga

Marni

Valentino

Loewe 

Models: Kerolyn Soares at IMG, Aaron Shandel at Wilhelmina. Casting: Ikki Casting at The Art Board. Hair: Adam Garland using Authentic Beauty Concept. Make-up: Jo Banach using Chanel Les Beiges Winter Glow and No.1 de Chanel Red Camellia Exfoliating Mask. Interiors: Olly Mason. Set build: London Art Makers. Photography assistants: Chloe Yates, Zillah Rauter. Fashion assistants: Kris Bergfeldt, Samela Gjozi. Hair assistant: Annabella Hudgell. Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson. Post-production: Lasso Studio. 

A version of this article appears in the February 2024 issue of Wallpaper* – dedicated to the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024 – available in print from 4 January, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

While even the most fastidious of forecasters could not predict with any certainty the ins and outs of the coming year in style – and the clothing we’ll be desiring when the year is out – there remains plenty we do already know about fashion in 2024, whether the usual roll-call of designer moves and debuts, the arrival of a star-studded Apple TV+ drama on Christian Dior and his mid-century milieu, or an intriguing, century-spanning theme for this year’s Met Gala.  

On the cusp of a new year, everything to look forward to in fashion in 2024 (so far).

Fashion in 2024: what to look forward to (so far)

A roll-call of designers will make their debuts

Fashion’s merry-go-round continued in 2023 with a slew of designer exits, among them Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen, Gabriela Hearst at Chloé, and earlier this month, Matthew M Williams, who said goodbye to Givenchy. 

As such – although the latter’s successor is so far unnamed – there will be a roll-call of designers making their debut at major houses in 2024. Watch out for Seán McGirr at Alexander McQueen (the northern Irish designer was formerly head of menswear at JW Anderson), Chemena Kamali at Chloé (she returns to the house where she started her career after working at Saint Laurent), and former Tod’s creative director Walter Chiapponi who will begin his tenure at Blumarine (while at Tod’s, he is succeeded by Matteo Tamburini, most recently of Bottega Veneta). 

A number of these debuts – particularly McGirr’s – will likely spark conversation from both those inside and outside of the fashion ranks after the designer’s appointment raised questions about the continued prevalence of white, male creative directors (an Instagram post from a London-based publication on the subject by 1 Granary, posted just after McGirr’s appointment, went viral on the subject). Recruiters at Givenchy will no doubt have this on their minds when selecting Williams’ successor. 

The Met Gala theme is all about sleeping beauties

Following 2023’s ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ – a blockbuster exhibition on the inimitable German designer’s expansive oeuvre, from Chloé to Chanel – this year’s annual Costume Institute exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is altogether more abstract. Titled ’Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ (May 10 – September 2, 2024), it will comprise 250 garments – spanning designers, centuries and countries – promising a reexamination of ‘masterworks’ from the museum’s collection using cutting-edge technology, from X-ray to AI. 

Meanwhile, the sensory elements of the various items – and the eras in which they originated – will be highlighted in immersive ‘activations’ conveying ‘the smells, sounds, textures, and motions of garments that can no longer directly interact with the body’. Loewe will be the year’s fashion sponsor, with Jonathan Anderson’s ghostly Gerhard Richter-inspired dresses from the house’s A/W 2023 show – simple silk shifts printed with the ‘memories’ of previous garments – will feature in the exhibition. On the red carpet, meanwhile – the exhibition is celebrated by the accompanying Met Gala on the first Monday in May – the somewhat indeterminate theme, will no doubt provide some interesting (and outré) looks from the phalanx of celebrities who attend each year. 

Christian Dior’s life will be explored in new Apple TV+ show

Dramatisations and biopics of fashion designer’s lives have been somewhat patchy – perhaps the best in recent years, A Phantom Thread, was entirely fictionalised – though an upcoming television series on Apple TV+ has a promising pedigree. Titled ‘The New Look’, the Todd A. Kessler-created show – a director and screenwriter
who worked on The Sopranos and Damages, earning a slew of Emmys – will explore the lives of Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and several other of the era’s designers in the wake of World War II and the occupation of France. The title refers to Dior’s ‘New Look’ – epitomised by his narrow-waisted bar jacket and full, abundant skirt – a riposte to the restraint of the war era and a silhouette which would define mid-century fashion.

An award-winning cast – first revealed this past November – will take on the well-known roster of characters, including Emmy winner Ben Mendelsohn as Christian Dior, Academy Award winner Juliette Binoche as Coco Chanel, Maisie Williams as Catherine Dior, the couturier’s sister, and John Malkovich as French couturier Lucien Lelong. Meanwhile, an ‘immersive and contemporary’ soundtrack is created by Grammy Award winner Jack Antonoff, the producer behind albums by Lana del Rey, Taylor Swift and Lorde.

So far, so intriguing – the series will premiere on February 14, 2024 on Apple TV+, just in time for fashion month (expect it to be a front-row talking point). 

At Pitti, two guest designers who explore queer life and class

Though the centrepiece of Pitti Uomo is the vast exhibition centre in the 14th-century Fortezza da Basso – which sees brands from around the world pitch up to display their latest collections – it is the Florentine menswear fair’s ‘guest designers’ which provide its most intriguing moments. Previous editions have hosted shows from the likes of Raf Simons, Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner, Jonathan Anderson and Craig Green alongside fashion houses Givenchy, Jil Sander and Fendi. 

This season, two young designers – from Italy and the UK respectively – will show their latest collections as guests of the fair. The first is Bologna-born Luca Magliano, whose eponymous label Magliano has won plaudits – including the LVMH Prize’s Karl Lagerfeld Prize – for its skewed, irreverent plays on classic Italian dress codes, deeply rooted in his beloved hometown where he continues to live and work (’provincia’ is the word he uses to describe his fascination with regional eccentricities). Bologna’s history of protest – particularly among the large student and working-class community – also informs his liberatory collections, as does growing up within the city’s queer and subcultural scenes. He will show at the Nelson Mandela Forum, a stadium to the east of Florence. 

Steven Stokey-Daley – founder of S.S. Daley – also explores class and sexuality through theatrical collections which are informed by his observations of the British upper classes, both real and imagined (while at university in London, his campus would look out on the playing fields of public school Harrow; Stokey-Daley describes himself as ‘a working class boy’). Collections have riffed on the upstairs-downstairs archetype in Britsh culture and literature, with figures like Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville West and Evelyn Waugh inspiring his collections. He has chosen the perennial Florence landmark Palazzo Vecchio to show his A/W 2024 collection.

Two UK exhibitions will celebrate the greats of British fashion

A duo of exhibitions, opening in March and June respectively, will tell the stories behind some of Britain’s most widely-known fashion names. The first, which takes place at the historic Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, is titled ‘Icons of British Style’ (23 March – 30 June, 2024) and will see garments from a wide-ranging array of designers and brands – from Vivienne Westwood and Stephen Jones to Stella McCartney and Barbour – alongside an accompanying array of archival materials, drawings, photography and pattern pieces. Though the draw is undoubtedly the surroundings, with the exhibition winding through Blenheim’s great hall and through the palace, which has a longtime link to fashion – in 1954, Christian Dior hosted a couture show in the home for style-conscious members of Britain’s aristocracy (in a nod to its heritage, Jones’ millinery for Dior will feature).

The second, at London’s V&A Museum, takes Naomi Campbell as its subject, promising an unprecedented glimpse into the British supermodel’s life and wardrobe as she celebrates four decades in fashion (born in Lambeth, she was discovered by Pennington Models aged just 15). Titled ‘Naomi’ (22 June – 6 April 2025), the no-doubt high-octane exhibition will be a glamourous walk-through her career, promising cameos from the seminal designers who shaped her as a model – among them Gianni Versace, Azzedine Alaïa and Yves Saint Laurent, whose clothes will also feature in the exhibition. A vast array of photography, curated by former British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful, will appear alongside, while footage of her legendary runway walk, will no doubt feature.

While in Milan, a seminal fashion store will be reborn

10 Corso Como is one of Milan’s – indeed, fashion’s – most well-known addresses, the site of Carla Sozzani’s 1980-founded store-café-cum-hotel-cum-cultural outpost of the same name. In 2024, the store will get a makeover of sorts in a project titled ‘Rethinking 10 Corso Como’ which promises to create a ‘wunderkammer’ or cabinet of curiosities in the space, alongside a thriving program of events (these will include exhibitions curated by art critic Alessandro Rabottini and fashion lecturer and curator Alessio de’ Navasques). 

The heavy architectural lifting, meanwhile, will be done by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli – a former OMA partner and president of the international jury at the 2023 Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition – who will renovate the space through a series of ‘micro-interactions’ which will allow visits to seamlessly transition between the various zones. The work began in November 2023, with the new 10 Corso Como being revealed in stages beginning in spring 2024. Watch this space. 

Sculpted silhouettes, warped weaves, razor-sharp cuts – men’s tailoring is imbued with a spirit of subversion this season, as designers and brands seek to rework and reimagine the suit. Their spoils arrive at the beginning of a season filled with potential for dressing up; here, as taken from the December 2023 Entertaining Issue of Wallpaper* – photographed by Daniel Riera Fashion with fashion by David St John – a selection of that tailoring ready to make an impression over the celebratory winter months ahead.

Razor-sharp men’s tailoring to make an impression this winter

Take the unexpected proportions of Gucci’s elongated double-breasted blazer and wide-legged tailored shorts (top left), a playful top-heavy silhouette nonetheless conjuring the Italian elegance at the heart of the label. Or from Fendi, an immaculate single-breasted suit whereby the trousers are overlaid with a diaphanous apron-like skirt (below); when it was first shown in Milan, creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi said she was inspired by the outré dress codes of infamous New York nightspot Studio 54. 

Others riff on classic tailoring archetypes, like Dolce & Gabbana’s take on the white tuxedo – here cut with a narrow sculpted waist – or the shrunken two-tone lapel of a double-breasted suit by Maximillian Davis at Ferragamo which recalls military uniforms, here reimagined with a minimal rigour. 

Model: Przemek Szubert at Riches Mgm. Casting: Ikki Casting at The Art Board. Grooming: Chris Sweeney at One Represents using Hair Rituel by Sisley. Digi tech: Marc de Miguel. Fashion assistant: Molly Swatman. Retouching: La Cápsula Fotográfica. 

A version of this story appeared in the December 2023 Entertaining Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print from 9 November, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!

In 1993, the UK was in the depths of a brutal recession. Unemployment was high, the economy was stagnant, and the city’s creative institutions were suffering. With London Fashion Week reduced to a smattering of shows that year, the British Fashion Council decided to throw the city’s young designers a lifeline: inviting them to present their collections on clothing rails at The Ritz. One of these designers was Lee Alexander McQueen, whose subversive collection ‘Taxi Driver’ was crafted from fabric bought with dole money out of his council flat in Tooting Bec, where he lived with printmaker Simon Ungless. Taking inspiration from the clubs, pubs, energy and exploits in the city as a young gay man, his display marked the arrival of an affrontingly rebellious talent that would impact London fashion forever. ‘If you leave without emotion, then I’m not doing my job properly,’ McQueen once said of his visceral shows. ‘I want you to leave repulsed or exhilarated: as long as it’s an emotion.’

Inside ‘Rebel: 30 Years of London Fashion’ at the Design Museum

Three decades later, and that informal event at The Ritz has evolved to become the behemoth that is the BFC’s Newgen programme, a fashion incubator that has helped forge the careers of over 300 designers in Britain, from McQueen himself to Kim Jones, Grace Wales Bonner to Christopher Kane. Curated by Sarah Mower and sponsored by Alexander McQueen, a sprawling new exhibition at the Design Museum, titled ‘Rebel: 30 Years of London Fashion’, celebrates the initiative’s anniversary and the fearless creative forces that it has nurtured. 

A vast collection of designs, video footage and ephemera is thoughtfully grouped in its rooms, which tell the stories of the young minds who have transformed contemporary British fashion through raw explorations of identity, calls for social change and sustainable innovation. As the exhibition notes state, these are makers who have ‘predicted new ways to dress, and new ways to be’.

Rather than unfolding chronologically, ‘Rebel’ presents an immersion into the places from which this creativity has sprung, taking visitors on a journey through the capital’s fashion schools to sweaty dance floors and the runway itself. ‘There are so many memories and powerful fashion moments from the last 30 years scattered throughout this exhibition,’ Caroline Rush, chief executive of the BFC, says of the show, which includes culturally significant pieces such as McQueen’s provocative 1990s ‘bumster’ trousers, the infamous swan dress Björk wore to the 2001 Oscars, by Marjan Pejoski, and a floral gown from the collection Richard Quinn presented in front of Queen Elizabeth II in 2018. 

‘It transports me back to the 1990s when I was 20 years old, blagging my way into a Lee McQueen show without a ticket. I am truly blown away by the incredible craftsmanship, diversity, culture and creativity on display – it is a true testament to UK fashion, and I encourage everyone to go see it for themselves,’ adds Rush.

Beyond headline-grabbing designs, ‘Rebel’ also shines a light on moments of quiet resistance and personal discovery. Molly Goddard’s shockingly blue, seven-tiered tulle dress floats proudly above the ‘Art School’ section, under which the designer looks back at her days as a student: ‘I remember my tutor Sarah Gresty saying, “Just go bigger, explore!” It was very much fun, realising there was no kind of limit.’

Elsewhere, the show displays a look from a Craig Green collection which reduced an entire audience to tears; a specially commissioned film directed by Priya Ahluwalia that documents how five designers grew their brands from bedrooms into businesses; and a booming club room in which archival footage from parties and underground raves plays on loop, recognising the immense influence of music and nightlife on London fashion. 

‘Being a part of Newgen was such a whirlwind experience,’ designer Bianca Saunders tells Wallpaper*. ‘Seeing the exhibition made me look back on how far I’ve come.’ An array of the designer’s works appears in the exhibit, including a moving documentary film investigating Black masculinity shot during her MA at the Royal College of Art, and her standout A/W 2020 collection inspired by Jamaican dancehall, which ignored the typically static presentation format to see models dancing in partitioned booths. 

‘I wanted them to dance like they were enjoying themselves in their own spaces. It was very sexy, and it captured the feeling of the clothes. It was at 9am, and I remember Sarah Mower being a little bit shocked – but in a good way, because she remembers it so well. She wanted it to be in the exhibition.’

Newgen was founded in dire economic times not too dissimilar to those we are living through now. Darkness, it seems, always sparks new light in creativity and acts of rebellion, pushing ideas forward for a better future. The cohort that makes up 2023’s Newgen programme is testament to this grit and ingenuity, from Sinead O’Dwyer’s celebration of body shapes rarely seen on the runway, to British-Yemeni designer Kazna Asker’s pioneering marriage of sportswear shapes and hijabi dress. 

‘The more you show who you are, the more interesting the work becomes,’ Saunders says, reflecting on what makes London such a special place for emerging talent. ‘People from all over come here and want to tell a story about where they came from, who they are as people, and I think that's very important.’

‘Rebel: 30 Years of London Fashion’ at London’s Design Museum, sponsored by Alexander McQueen, runs from 6 September 2023 – 11 February 2024.

designmuseum.org

Rose perfumes have traditionally been characterised as the olfactory equivalent to pop music – guaranteed crowdpleasers, easily accessible. Recently, however, a host of niche perfumers and big-name brands have been experimenting with rose fragrances, taking the ubiquity of the scent as a challenge to create perfumes that subvert exceptions and offer a new perspective on an old classic.

Here, we sniff out the best of these experimental rose scents.  

Café Rose by Tom Ford

Tom Ford’s newest rose fragrance, Café Rose, leans heavily into its ingredients’ gourmand factor. Put together as an unlikely yet complementary combination of coffee and rose, the scent conveys an untamed sensuality that pairs refined Turkish rose essence with that of dark coffee. Opening with a floral accord, which also includes rose Bulgaria and ylang ylang, the scent gives way to a spicier heart of coriander, cardamom and patchouli, and ends in hints of incense resin and sandalwood. The perfume’s unexpected character carries through to its flaçon, a semi-transparent fluted pink bottle with a rose pink top and plaque.  

tomford.com

Rose by Perfumer H

Perfumer H's Rose perfume is masterfully composed to smell exactly like its namesake. A high concentration of rose oil and absolute are combined with camomile Romaine, raspberry, geranium Egypt and a hint of iris and musk to create a luscious fragrance.  Spraying it on your skin is probably the closest you can ever come to actually wearing roses. 

perfumerh.com

Elisabethan Rose

Leave it to the quintessential English perfume brand, Penhaligion's, to create an exceptional rose fragrance inspired by the flower of England— the Tudor rose. Inspired by the union of the houses York and Lancaster, Elizabethan Rose blends its central fragrance with Red Lily, Hazelnut Leaf, and Vetiver. It’s a light and airy floral perfect for those who prefer delicate fragrances. 

penhaligons.com

Rosa Carnivora and Raving Rose by Dries Van Noten

Dries Van Noten’s newly launched beauty line (which debuted in Wallpaper* earlier this month) includes two rose perfumes that embody  the Belgian designer’s penchant for ‘impossible combinations.’ 

Rosa Carnivora, by perfumer Daphné Bugey, is a creamy blend of rose, vetiver, and patchouli, while Raving Rose, by perfumer Louise Turner, is a spicy take on the flower with a near startling infusion of pepper. The two fragrances ‘are kind of a kick in your face’, according to Van Noten with Rosa Carnivora a good match for those who prefer a more classically elegant rose fragrance and Raving Rose a good option for those who like more punchier, masculine scents.  

driesvannoten.com

Odeur Du Théâtre Du Châtelet by Comme des Garçons

Conceptualism has always been at the heart of Comme des Garçons’ fragrances, with scents designed to evoke the ink of a calligrapher’s studio, lime soda, and ‘grilled cigarettes teamed with town gas’. With Odeur Du Théâtre Du Châtelet – inspired by the Paris theatre – the brand once again presents an ‘anti-perfume’ that challenges common notions of what makes a smell pleasurable. 



The rose perfume was composed by perfumer Caroline Dumur in collaboration with Comme des Garçons’ founder Rei Kawakubo, and the Théâtre Du Châtelet’s then-artistic director Ruth Mackenzie (she left the theatre in August 2020). The aim of the project was to create a scent that captured the historic character of the theatre while hinting at its modern incarnation. The result blends the intensely rich, musky-floral notes of ambrette absolute with rose oxyd, black pepper oil, and coffee accord. 

It’s a curiously appealing fragrance, designed to evoke the theatre’s velvet seats, infused with the powdery, floral perfumes of its 19th-century audience layered with the modern, spicy fragrances favoured by modern theatregoers. Like all Comme des Garçons creations, it’s equal parts unexpected and beguiling.

comme-des-garcons-parfum.com

Eau de Parfum Eau Rose by Diptyque 

Newly reformatted Eau Rose perfume features two of perfumery’s mainstay roses – damascena and centifolia – alongside the fiard, an unusual third rose, in the form of an upcycled extract made from damascena rosewater discarded during the distillation process. More unexpected still is the inclusion of chamomile, artichoke and litchi, making for a bright, juicy rose perfume. 

spacenk.com

Rose 31 by Le Labo 

Le Labo’s Rose 31 perfume aims to transform the traditionally feminine Grasse Rose into an ‘assertively virile’ fragrance by blending it with warm and spicy notes of cumin, cedar and amber. Most interesting is the inclusion of musty cistus which gives Rose 31 a distinctly animal note. It’s an appealing alternative to Le Labo’s iconic Santal 33 with a warmer, and much less ubiquitous, aroma. 

harrods.com

Georgette by Vyrao

Wearing Vyrao's Georgette perfume is the olfactory equivalent of diving into a pool of rose petals. The fragrance is weighty with Turkish rose accords, violet leaf, sandalwood and patchouli, with grounding base notes of pink pepper and black tobacco. 

What makes this perfume really stand out, however, is its use of Herkimer diamond crystals and integrative quantum medicine to take the healing principals of aromatherapy to a new level. The brand has ‘energetically charged’ each fragrance with the help of healer Louise Mita, whose practice combines Traditional Chinese Medicine techniques, Qi Gong, anatomical studies, and quantum theory to ‘unblock’ bad energies. While rose oil is meant to inspire enlightenment, violet leaf encourags self-expression, and guaiac wood clears energy.  

selfridges.com

Young Rose by Byredo 

Young Rose is the latest fragrance launch from Byredo. When creating the scent, Byredo’s founder, Ben Gorham, was inspired by the work of young creatives working in China today, including photographer Leslie Zhang who shot the Young Rose campaign images. 

The fragrance blends piquant notes of Sichuan pepper with Damask rose and Orris for a spicy take on a classic floral. ‘The next generation always has an emotional obligation to rework the traditions of their predecessors,’ says Gorham. ‘It’s their role to take that fearless dive into the unknown; to discover and develop what’s next. Young Rose salutes that spirit.’ 

cultbeauty.com

Doll by Mondo Mondo 

Mondo Mondo is perhaps best known for its gold and gem jewellery that looks ornate enough to belong on a Renaissance noblemen but with enough hearts and rhinestones that it appeals to a modern, cheeky sensibility. That baroque and playful spirit is on full display in the brand’s line of perfumes as well. 

Doll is a rose perfume that combines Bulgarian rose and rose de mai with saffron and musk to create a scent that verges on the overwhelming. It is a fragrance best suited to those who like to make a statement, ‘a hot, sweaty, electric rose,’ in the brands words. One that ‘will conjure an undeniable nostalgia for being a little brat.’ 

mondo-mondo.com

L'Heure Osée by Cartier

Cartier’s master perfumer, Mathilde Laurent, once again shows off her knack for artistry and innovation with L'Heure Osée. Laurent has spoken openly about her dislike of roses, what she calls ‘an emblem of femininity withered before it blooms,’ and so it is no surprise that her creation for Cartier is the antithesis of a typical rose perfume. 

A heavy dose of citrus notes gives L'Heure Osée a powerful punch, while notes of musk and hints of wood create a heady undertone. It is, in the brand’s words, a distinctly ‘un-cute’ rose fragrance. 

net-a-porter.com

L’Homme À La Rose by Maison Francis Kurkdjian

Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s L’Homme À La Rose is a is a masculine take on a scent traditionally typecast as one of the most feminine in perfumery. As such, it is a fascinating examination of the construct of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ in fragrance.  

As Kurkdjian told Wallpaper* last year, what makes a scent ‘masculine’ is ultimately a question of timing. ‘What is masculine today may not have been masculine a decade ago and it may not be masculine two or three decades from now. The idea of masculinity and femininity, they are conventions and they are concepts that evolve with society.’ 

To create the essence of modern masculinity in this scent, Kurkdjian blends rose with citrusy grapefruit accord, heady amber woods, and fresh sage.  

franciskurkdjian.com

Rose & Cuir by Frederic Malle

Rose & Cuir is the handiwork of Jean-Claude Ellena, the former in-house perfumer for Hermès and a longtime Frederic Malle collaborator. With his characteristic ingenuity, Ellena has created a rose fragrance that is on the surface a unique, but not altogether revolutionary, interpretation of the floral that blends rose essence with pepper and cassis.

Give it time, however, and the scent eventually takes on an earthy, almost leathery quality, thanks to the use of vetiver and cedar. Most exceptional of all is its incorporation of IsoButyl Quinoline, an intensely bitter molecule that has been little used since its heyday in the 1920s.

libertylondon.com

Unrequited by Bel Rebel 

Ever wonder what those garish plastic roses sold on city sidewalks would smell like if they actually had a fragrance? Probably not, but if your curiosity is now piqued, pick up a bottle of Bel Rebel’s Unrequited. 

The scent has top notes of overtly synthetic-smelling rose oxide, and aldehydes, a chemical compound frequently used in perfumery. These are mixed with base notes of saffron and musks to create a smell that balances between plasticine and musky. 

belrebel.com

Celtic Rose by Alexander McQueen 

Leave it to the radical house of Alexander McQueen to design a rose perfume that eschews the classic simplicity of its counterparts. Celtic Rose draws its name from a traditional Celtic pattern, which weaves together multiple geometric forms to create a unified, perfectly symmetrical rose shape.

Both the pattern and the fragrance owe their allure to the complexity of their design. McQueen’s Celtic Rose takes a classic, delicate rose fragrance and adds a punch of black pepper to create a spicy floral.

harrods.com

‘New York is an exciting city, a creative city, a fast city and I wanted the collection to have a pace and energy to it, to have a precision to the tailoring, for there to be colour and vibrancy,’ Sarah Burton told Wallpaper* on the occasion of her A/W 2022 runway show for Alexander McQueen, held last night (15 March 2022) in the city’s Brooklyn neighbourhood.

‘New York has always been so supportive to us as a house, and feels like part of our creative community, we wanted to honour that and come and show in New York,’ she elaborated, post-show. The house has previously shown twice in the city, both under Lee McQueen, first in 1996 with his ‘Dante’ collection – originally shown in a church in Spitalfields, London – and then in 1999 with ‘Eye’. By the latter, Burton had joined the team and would be head of womenswear a year later.

Backdropped by vast piles of cedar-scented mulch, the collection drew inspiration from the ancient natural world – specifically, the power of mycelium, a fungus with roots that stretch far underground. In recent studies, they have been found to be able to communicate with one another, and help each other heal when in need – a profound and humbling discovery. The bright blues and acid greens in the collection were taken from images of mushrooms Burton had pinned to her mood board: ‘They are all real colours, borrowed from the natural world, that represent danger as well as healing.’

Alexander McQueen A/W 2022 show in New York

And, although mycelium was pitched as the key inspiration for the show, Burton only mentioned as a side-note backstage that the brand is working with mycelium leather and other alternative leathers, and that, impressively, 85 per cent of the fabrics used in the collection were recycled. It felt like a natural evolution of her S/S 2022 show, held several storeys up in London’s East End in October 2021, which also looked to nature – then, the unpredictability and great power of the sky – at a time when climate disasters had been generating headlines. 

Elsewhere, Burton also made an explicit nod to the house’s archive. What appeared to be a graffiti-inspired print was in fact the abstracted shadow of someone in the atelier and paid homage to ‘the Shalom Harlow dress’, she said (referring to the S/S 1999 dress worn by model Harlow and spray-painted by robots as a show finale). The house’s namesake was there throughout in ‘slashed’ and ‘deconstructed’ garments, Burton noting that cut lacquered lace was a specific ‘nod to Lee’s early collections’ – ‘these characters of the old and the new that exist together’. A certain New York toughness emerged in unravelling mohair knitwear, sliced bandage dresses, and shoes with pin-thin heels and steel toe-caps.

Now the show is done, Burton says she’s looking forward to taking in the city. ‘The light in New York is like nowhere else. I’d like to take a walk around, I’d like to see the light.’

INFORMATION

alexandermcqueen.com

The Sarabande Foundation has just released Bound, a limited-edition run of hand-bound paper artworks made by 36 of the more-than 130 artists who have been supported by the foundation since it was established in 2007. 

Talk of creating a Sarabande book (a misnomer for what the project would become, but more on that later) began as the foundation edged closer to accepting 100 artists within its studio programme and, more poignantly, as it got closer to the tenth anniversary of the death of fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen. McQueen established the foundation and it became the major beneficiary of his estate after his death in 2010. 

Since then, the foundation’s base, a converted Victorian stable block in east London, has become a bastion for emerging artists, offering scholarships and studio spaces, alongside workshops and lectures from fellow creatives.

Sarabande rarely emphasises its connection to the late designer, focusing more on ‘the future of creativity and where that can take us’, in the words of its director, Trino Verkade. 

Yet, Verkade acknowledges that McQueen’s singular ethos is inscribed deep within the pages of Bound. ‘It's like when Lee would do something that made no sense. If you’d said in the beginning, “We’re going to do this project and every book is going to be unique”, it [wouldn’t have] made sense. But it kind of does because the whole point is that you go as far as you can with it. [Lee] taught me never to compromise. We’ve not had to compromise with this project.’ 

Inside the pages of Bound

Indeed, Bound is, despite its title, an exuberantly unrestrained expression of creativity. The project features artworks made from GF Smith paper that has been sculpted, cut, embossed, perforated, hand-painted, embroidered and dyed. With creations by 36 Sarabande artists working across disciplines – from jewellery designers to filmmakers, fashion designers to milliners, painters to performance artists. No single edition of Bound is the same, with 20 of the artists contributing ten original artworks that are distributed across the 100 copies of the book (two per copy). 

The books have been wrapped in the traditional Japanese furoshiki style, with linen hand-embroidered by artisans from Uttar Pradesh that are supported by the Kalhath Institute. The cover comes in 18 colours, with one of four different logos designed by Sarabande artists for the project. 

Within all this variety, there is one unifying factor: all of the works have been made on paper, which, as Verkade points out, is the most democratic artistic material there is. 

‘Almost all creatives start off with paper. Even if you’re a filmmaker, your storyboard is on paper, if you’re a fashion designer you use paper, if you’re an artist you use paper.’ Asking everyone to work in this material was, ‘very Sarabande’, Verkade says. ‘We always think about [the fact that] everybody is under one roof, everyone is the same. It doesn’t matter what discipline you do. Everyone is a creative in that space and everyone is of equal value as a creative.’

While everyone within Sarabande and Bound is treated with equal value, the individual qualities of each artist radiate from the book’s pages. Highlights include Emma Witter, whose transparent windows trap crushed bone, flowers and pearls; paper artist Alice von Maltzahn’s painstakingly detailed cut-outs; a paper hat by milliner Jo Miller; and paper shoes by Jimmy Junichi Sugiura. 

The book contains a number of surprises. Asking creatives to translate their practice into paper was akin to an artistic Rorschach test, with each of their interpretations revealing the narrative threads that have always run through their work. For instance, jeweller Christopher Thompson Royds is best known for his delicate metal sculptures of the humblest flowers – frail weeds and wildflowers that peep from between pavement cracks or shards of grass (see an example among our pick of wedding tiaras). For his Bound project, Thompson Royds made paper weeds that pop up through the binding of the book – reminders of the small beauties we often overlook. 

Or take Elena-Andreea Teleaga, a multimedia artist whose work is rooted in photography and often investigates the workings of memory. For Bound, Teleaga selected a special sandpaper – paper that will gradually erode the two photos on either side of it – so that eventually the images will only exist in the memory of those who saw them before they disappeared.  

Ultimately, Bound is a kaleidoscopic landmark, gathering different fragments together to create one prismatic vision. In this way, it is like the Sarabande Foundation itself and, more expansively, like art itself. 

‘Art has always marked points in history,’ Verkade says. 'But it never reflects one reaction because everybody always reacts differently to things.’ Artworks are dynamic documents, windows into the past, mirrors of our present, and sometimes even looking glasses into the future. They afford us, the viewers, new perspectives on certain moments in time. 

‘You can always look at [a work of art] and say, “That’s what we took from that time, that's what we felt at that time.” Sometimes we might forget it and move on, but the art very often leaves that mark there which we can go back to.’

Bound does just that, offering those lucky enough to see it a unique look into the Sarabande Foundation and a poignant document of creativity in our strange era.

INFORMATION

Bound, £2,500, sarabandefoundation.org; exclusivly retailed at doverstreetmarket.com

Alexander McQueen has long been a proponent of the creative arts, and the young talent it incubates and generates. The British label has adopted a variety of schemes and initiatives to support those with a creative flair. The top floor space of its Smiljan Radic-designed boutique in London's Mayfair operates as an exhibition space-cum-workshop, where students and fashion fans alike can absorb the brand’s final designs, toiles and samples.

Alexander McQueen and A Team Arts Education: supporting young creative talent in east London

In 2019, the house also began donating surplus fabric, from womenswear taffeta to menswear tailoring cloth, to more than 20 institutions and fashion education community projects throughout the UK, allowing aspiring designers to dip into an archive of luxurious, artisanally crafted fabrics. British menswear wunderkind SS Daley was a recipient of these donations; his upcycled, whimsical approach to design has won him a legion of A-list fans.

Now, Alexander McQueen has announced its support of A Team Arts Education, a community organisation based in Tower Hamlets in London’s east End – where the brand’s founder Lee McQueen grew up – that encourages young people to enter the arts. Many schools throughout Tower Hamlets have removed art-leaning curriculum options in favour of STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Team Arts Education works to foster creative engagement with subjects that may no longer be available at school – operating on Saturdays and during holidays – among one of the fastest-growing, youngest and most diverse populations in the UK. 

‘At a time when schools and local authorities are reducing their arts budgets and provision, we still need the arts to help bring about a positive recovery and come together after the Covid-19 pandemic. Working with Alexander McQueen will provide inspiration, hope and opportunities to an area that has links to the fashion and textiles industries that are now hidden through layers of history and a changing urban landscape. The collaboration will help the arts to flourish in a positive way for young people and the wider community of east London,' says Sarbjit Natt, director, A Team Arts Education.

Through 2022, Alexander McQueen will not only support A Team Arts Education financially, but also offer a roster of workshops and classes, which it piloted in 2020. These include live experiences with the fashion brand's design, textile and embroidery teams, structured as part of ‘The Explore Programme’ in A Team Arts Education's fashion, textiles and art and design pathways. 

INFORMATION

alexandermcqueen.com

Londoners who cast their eyes across the Wapping skyline yesterday lunchtime, would have been struck by a transparent dome perched atop a ten-storey car park in Tobacco Dock; a bulbous cupola resembling a greenhouse or a biohazard bubble.

The structure was in fact the sky-high setting of the Alexander McQueen S/S 2022 show, a nature-celebrating creation designed by the brand's regular collaborator Smiljan Radic, the Chilean architect behind the organic forms of the label’s Old Bond Street London flagship, and whose shell-like 2014 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion was inspired by ancient Japanese temples and the concept of a fake ruin.

Alexander McQueen S/S 2022: step into Smiljan Radic’s sky-high show set

Radic’s bulging bubble, lined with concentric circles of chairs, reflected the influence that the London metropolis played in Burton's vision for the Alexander McQueen S/S 2022 collection. While the brand's S/S 2021 womenswear offering looked to mudlarking in the Thames, here Burton cast her eyes upwards to the sky of the brand's home city. ‘We moved from water... to the sky and the ever-changing, all-encompassing magnificence that represents,' she explained, referencing the magnificent views the rooftop of the label's studio offers, spanning from Saint Paul's Cathedral to the London Eye. This led Burton to consider the concept of storm chasing, as she watched the weather formations above the brand's headquarters, clusters of clouds accumulating, the changing of the skies from serene to sinister.

In the ethereal Alexander McQueen S/S 2022 offering, strapless dresses plumed like soft clouds around the body, abstract cloud prints swathed full skirts, fringed sequins cascaded like falling water, and shimmering crystal embellishments resembled light-illuminated rain.

Restriction and freedom, the city and the natural world, interior and exterior existence, antithetical elements amassed within Radic’s bubble-like show set, simultaneously shutting off and exposing its guests to the outside world, encouraging them to reach out and touch the crisp city skyline. ‘Storm chasing is not only about the beauty of the views but also a sense of mystery and excitement – about embracing the fact that we can’t ever be sure of what might happen next,' Burton explained. ‘To give up control and be directly in touch with the unpredictable is to be part of nature, to see and feel it at its most intense – to be at one with a world that is bigger and more powerful than we are.' 

INFORMATION

alexandermcqueen.com

Fashion has flirted with bag shapes both spectacularly sizable and ludicrously Lilliputian. But if recent lifestyle changes have taught us anything, it’s that our accessories should be easy to use. As a result, we’re banishing styles that have Mary Poppins-inspired dimensions or surface areas too miniscule to contain a credit card, and embracing chandbag brands that propose classic silhouettes proportioned to perfection.

We’re sizing up handbag brands creating styles with a streamlined persuasion, which nestle ergonomically under the shoulder. Some, like the Chanel ‘11.12’ bag and the Gucci ‘Jackie’, are updated brand signatures, while others, including the U-shaped Prada ‘Cleo’ and the boxy Hermès ‘Mors de Brides’ are new silhouettes. The ‘Cleo’ nods to minimalist 1990s silhouettes in the Milan label’s archive, while the horsebit-inspired closure of the ‘Mors de Brides’ nods to the Parisian maison’s equestrian heritage.

Classic bags: Cleo bag, by Prada

Nineties fans rejoice! Prada's ‘Cleo’ bag reinterprets a curved shape style from the decade of style that keeps on giving.

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Mors de Brides bag, by Hermès

The striking hardware clasp of the Parisian brand’s ‘Mors de Bride’ bag draws on its iconic equestrian heritage.

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Caro bag, by Dior

The French label’s signature Cannage quilting complements its iconic ‘CD’ clasp in this tactile and classic creation.

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Le 5 A 7 Hobo bag, by Saint Laurent

The Parisian label’s ‘YSL’ logo is an iconic motif designed in 1961 by Cassandre. Let it nestle snugly under your shoulder.

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Triomphe bag, by Celine

The Parisian maison’s label draws on bourgeois motifs, incorporating its signature Triomphe logo within its striking clasp.

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Roman Stud bag, by Valentino Garavani

Roman label Valentino Garavani has sized up the stud details synonymous with its accessories to striking effect.

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Moonlight bag, by Fendi

There’s a bohemian leaning behind Fendi’s crescent-shaped shoulder bag, accentuated with tortoiseshell details and striking stitching.

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Shoulder bag, by Salvatore Ferragamo

All hail the pared-back classic shoulder bag silhouette, demonstrated sublimely here by Florentine brand Salvatore Ferragamo.

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Curve bag, by Alexander McQueen

The London brand’s curvaceous bucket bag style features an eye-catching debossed seal detail. §

alexandermcqueen.com

We’ve always erred towards classic dress codes, but, for A/W 2020, our failsafe silhouettes have had an experimental uplift. The catwalks saw something of a tux redux, with brands offering new takes on the eveningwear essential.

At Prada, an oversized blazer came festooned with flapper girl fringing, acting as an androgynous upgrade on Jazz Age embellishment, while at Dolce & Gabbana, a cropped tuxedo took on a softer silhouette, with a bow detail that fluidly draped across the body. Versace spliced and diced the style, piercing cut-outs with punky metal hoops, while Alexander McQueen dabbled in deconstruction, with a tuxedo resembling a doubled-up jacket.

For those that prefer androgony over ostentation and fine form over frou, the tuxedo offers a precise take on party wear - whether your attending an event in IRL or toasting the end of 2020 via Zoom. For your male counterparts, we also suggest you direct them to our guide on shopping for a sensational smart jacket. You'll be sure to take A/W 2020's timeless dressing with a twist into 2021.

INFORMATION
This article originally appeared in the December 2020 issue of Wallpaper* (W*260) – available for free download here

British photographer and Wallpaper* contributor Jason Lloyd Evans has been shooting behind-the-scenes backstage snapshots from the runway shows of the world’s most creative, luxurious and boundary-pushing brands, since the early 2000s. During today's downtime, he’s delved into his enormous photographic archive, which spans cities, creative directors and aesthetic shifts, and spotlit his favourite backstage images from brands including Balenciaga, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Prada. Here we reveal these sublime snapshots, which will allow you to indulge in a little sartorial escapism.

Miu Miu S/S 2004

‘This image marks a very different time, when backstage was a much less structured environment.  It represents an unguarded moment and a different perspective to today'. – JLE

Christian Dior Haute Couture A/W 2004

‘Because the backstage area was so small, there was no ‘First Looks' option to shoot the ready-to-wear images.  A few of us were outside and realised the models had to go outside and walk effectively the length of the catwalk out of sight from the guests to get to the backstage ‘line up’. I got my first Sunday Times Style cover from this show by stopping two models for just five seconds.' – JLE

Chloé S/S 2005

‘There was a really great cast of models around this time, always with such a fresh energy, like Daria Werbowy and Gemma Ward. At this time, Chloé was headed up by Phoebe Philo, before she joined Celine.' – JLE

Yves Saint Laurent S/S 2006

‘This image reminds me of how fashion is ever evolving. Stefano Pilati was at the creative helm of the house then, and I had the pleasure of shooting Pilati’s new label Random Identities at Pitti Uomo in January. It was a very hot morning the day of this show at Paris Fashion Week. This first backstage shot as always been one of my favourites.’ – JLE

Balenciaga S/S 2007

‘Nicolas Ghesquière’s shows were always great to shoot. At this time, Balenciaga's venues were always very small and the backstage area was tiny so we never knew what we were going to get to shoot. It was a period when things were much freer and less controlled.' – JLE

Marc Jacobs S/S 2008

‘Marc Jacobs really ruled NYFW during this time. His shows were always the most exciting. This may have been the one that started two hours late!’ – JLE

Alexander McQueen S/S 2009

‘Everyone knows about the intensity and energy of Alexander McQueen and it was always such a buzz to be in his fashion show environment. The amazing storytelling, total theatricality and the commitment of everyone involved in the process was so moving. Everyone was going that extra mile for creating a McQueen's vision and the intensity at those shows was unparalleled.' – JLE

Louis Vuitton A/W 2009

‘Vuitton was a show that was very difficult to get into for backstage imagery, and that time and I never knew if I would get access or not. Here, flash was not allowed but the light was perfect without.' – JLE

Prada A/W 2010

‘Every Prada show is special to shoot. This shot ended up being a cover on Harper Bazaar Australia’s Fashion special. It was really well received and the magazine went on to do the same supplement for a couple of years. They produced a post season magazine which was full of my backstage and beauty shots and was a great record of my month of shows.' – JLE

Jil Sander S/S 2011

‘Working for Jil Sander at this time was amazing. Its then-creative director Raf Simons was really seen as number one and the brand's shows were always so special. This showspace was tiny and I was the only person allowed backstage. It was so special to capture these collections.' – JLE 

Stay tuned for the next installment, covering 2012 – 2020

INFORMATION

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Mood board: A research trip to Wales informed Sarah Burton’s folkloric and craft-focused collection, designed to embody both female fragility and strength, and featuring sharp, protective tailoring, and ethereal gowns festooned with poetic symbols. A cornflower blue poet sleeve dress with a bow detail at its back, was inspired the romantic muse of a Dylan Thomas poem, a quilted flannel suit, patchworked with doves, a panther, a horse and leeks, was inspired by an allegorical tailor’s quilt at St Fagans National Museum of History, duchess satin suiting was rendered in red, a striking tone believed to possess healing properties, a black tulle dress with swirling jet embroidery, nodded to naturalistic motifs in medieval Welsh tales.

Finishing touches: In Welsh tradition, carved love spoons are presented as a gift of romantic intent, and the earliest dated version from Wales, in the St Fagans National History Museum near Cardiff, is from 1667. They were a romantic, repeated motif in the collection, with 3D love spoons embellished with metal lace work, embroidered on dresses or imagined in delicate lace and tessellated over a leather single-breasted coat.

Best in show: Protection has been a pertinent theme on the A/W 2020 runways, only heightened by the threat of Coronavirus. Burton looked to Welsh shawls in her research process, worn by men and women for warmth and for carrying children, and a series of beautiful bustier dresses were spliced with check blankets. They spoke of both sensuality and shelter.

Moodboard: The Orangerie du Sénat in the Jardin du Luxembourg – Alexander McQueen’s official show venue for the last few seasons – was sparsely decorated last night. No ornaments or wow-effect set designs, just a raw wooden catwalk that echoed under every model’s step and had the effect of making us direct all our attention to the clothes which, in themselves, carried the whole narrative of the show.

Clad in intricate, extra long fishtail braids interspersed with golden thread details, piled-up copper-toned jewellery in the shape of chains and hoops, and the kind of flushed, dewy glow of outdoor dwellers, they seemed to pay hommage to Grace O’Malley, the Irish pirate that achieved legend status in the 16th century. It was all there: a slew of references to historical garments, a swashbuckling, adventurous spirit – in the flat boots and the jersey and linen dresses slashed then ‘stitched’ back together with overblown leather lacing – undeniable power – ingrained in the pleated suit jackets and in those leather bodice dresses – but also grace, as lace peppered the collection.

A minimal score composed by Isobel Waller-Bridge (sister of Phoebe and in charge of the Fleabag soundtrack) performed live by members of the London Contemporary orchestra completed the affair.

Best in show: In a season where the term ‘sustainability’ has been worked into seemingly every single show and collection (at best with what seemed like genuine effort, at worst exploitatively, often in what seemed as part of a well-rounded marketing strategy), Sarah Burton’s collection came timely as a masterclass.

If the word itself was nowhere to be seen (not on show notes, not in interviews), the concept itself was weaved into the collection to the point of being its very basis. Burton and her team went to Northern Ireland to learn about flax-grown linen, working with a female-owned farm which manufactures it following the traditional techniques of sun-bleaching and beetling, a process in which the fabric is covered in potato starch, then pounded on a wooden machine.

Linen was the backbone of the collection, worked into suits, coats and dresses, which were complete with repurposed lace from previous collections, mohair sourced at a Northern England mill, and vegetable tanned leather. This was not about using sustainability as a buzzword, but about the true value, worth and luxury of artisanal clothes. At the end of the day, it doesn’t get more sustainable than that.

Soundbite: Burton’s collection summary was crystal clear: ‘Each look tells its own story. The connection between the clothes is the time it took to make them. I was interested in clarity and paring things down, in the essence of garments – stripping back to the toile. I love the idea of people having the time to make things together, the time to meet and talk together, the time to reconnect with the world.’ A statement simple enough yet, in this day and age, extraordinary.

At the end of the show, the designer took her bow accompanied by her whole staff. Not just studio members, but everyone at Alexander McQueen had contributed to the collection with their own hands, embroidering with silk thread over the drawings of Central Saint Martins students created during a drawing class a few months ago. It was a celebration of togetherness and of being truly present (again, without using ‘mindfulness’ as a buzzword) which was unconsciously mirrored by the show guests when, at the end, no one rushed out of the venue as usual, but rather everyone took their time to digest and discuss what they had just seen. And that was the ultimate proof of how much Burton’s philosophy resonates with her audience… and with fashion in 2019.

Tod's: Set in the grounds of the grand Villa Necchi Campiglio, Tod's presented a collection of fine menswear staples, giving each a luxury makeover. The collection was titled 'The Ride' and consisted of pieces fit for a man who travels but also likes the exhilarating high driving a classic sports car gives when hitting top speed. A classic biker came in super soft tan leather with contesting racing stripes racing down its front, while a field jacket and vest came with multiple pockets making them perfect utility travel companion. Elsewhere, a tech fabric printed with graphic geological map lines was used for windbreakers and board shorts, and a car coat cane in lightweight suede. As always footwear was key – the classic Gommino was updated with an espadrille sole and sneakers appeared with suped-up soles reminiscent of the sleek lines of a sports car.

Versace: The alerting refrain to The Prodigy’s Firestarter announced the start of Donatella Versace’s tribute to Keith Flint, the band's eccentric frontman who died this year. Models aggressively strode around a black rotating sports car covered in flowers by artist Andy Dixon in classic Versace ensembles. The opening section paid homage to the codes Gianni dabbled with in the early 1990s – fringed biker jackets were worn over T-shirts printed with vintage Versace fragrance ads, while narrow leather trousers came with laces up their sides. Elsewhere, sharply cut blazers were spliced together – one side black, the other great, and lurex track pants looked fierce in leopard. The tempo revved up further in a series of pieces that featured a car motif printed on denim jackets and outlined in crystal on shirts.

Bally: The brand took us on a fashionable hike this season, tapping into its Swiss heritage. A neat boxy cut jacket was printed with motifs from the Bally archive, while a silk shirt bloomed with mountain flora and fauna. Elsewhere, a minimalistic navy trench came with suede belt fastening cuffs and bright orange bomber carried multiple 3-D pockets reminiscent of a foraging vest. An innovative pleated leather technique developed by the brand was used to startling effect on an overcoat, tee and pair of shorts.

Church’s: Stepping out at Church's this season is an update of the brand's classic ‘Shannon’, this time appearing in a vintage guise with an artistically worn toe. Elsewhere, a women’s leather cross strap sandal was reworked for men with tiny silvers studs outlining the sole. These were shown alongside debut styles including a retro sneaker in nylon and suede, a British military inspired boot in canvas and leather deck shoe.

Alexander McQueen: Sarah Burton was in a reflective mood for S/S 2020, reminiscing on the frequent trips the team, lead by the late Lee McQueen, made to Japan in the Nineties. She was also thinking of how to translate the reconstructed, cut up and pieced together technique used in her women's A/W 2019 collection to menswear. Magnified flowers blossomed over sharply tailored suits, while crystal and metal embroidered birds sat regally on jacket fronts. Mystical dragon printed silk back panels added an exoticism. Elsewhere, a beige cotton gabardine trench appeared with silk bomber sleeves, and a frock coats lower half entirely constructed from shredded strips of insider fabrics from previous seasons.

Valextra: In an ongoing series of yearly interior overhauls, Valextra's Milan flagship store has been reimagined by architect John Pawson for its third incarnation. A pristine concrete space made up of graphic lines showcasing the brand's kaleidoscopic bag range. S/S 2020 sees a new collaboration with Moncler on a collection of three bag styles – a boxy utility satchel on a nylon fluffy pillow strap, a weekend bag and an oversized tote. Finally, a new customising service will launch allowing customers to have their initials made into a repeated pattern that can then be printed onto a bag base.

Canali / Black Edition: This season sees the debut of Black Edition, a 31 look apparel collection that will run alongside the tailoring-focused main brand. Relaxed cut jersey blazers were teamed with matching track pants, while zip up anoraks in tech fabrics and fine gauge knitted polos continued the sportswear theme. For the main collection suits in lightweight fabrics exuded an easy elegance.

Brunello Cucinelli: Spending time with Silicone Valley’s tech giants, Cucinelli was struck by their casual, laid back style. The designer is known for his smart, elegant clothes but for S/S 2020 the codes were relaxed and less formal. The collection was based on comfort, inspired by men who do not wear suits to get big business done. Suiting was more deconstructed in linen fabrications, trousers had a sportier fit, lightweight nylon jackets were cut with a lapel. The classic Cucinelli camel cable knit worn underneath suit jackets was swapped for a ‘Be courageous’ logo Tee.

Santoni: The Italian accessories label has never followed presentation convention and this season was no exception, with the brand holding an exclusive Cineclub in the grand setting of Palazzo Gallarati Scotti. Guests were invited to sit back and watch four short films, each of which had inspired the collection. Derby and loafer styles came in soft nubuck, while desert boots appeared in unlined suede. Elsewhere, deck shoes with an ultra-light sole, cross strap sandals and espadrilles carried handmade details and the brand's trademark double buckle. A new retro sneaker style with a gum sole completed the collection.

CP Company: For S/S20, the brand is looking back to look forward. Downstairs in the recently opened Milan flagship, archival styles including a rare battered tan suede down jacket from 1979 are on display alongside a mini lab, which hosts a special custom dyeing process. The season marks the start of an ongoing project with Too Hot Limited; customers can bring in their own pieces to be valued and swapped for credit to spend on something new. Urban sportswear with no nonsense and high-performance.

Etro: An X-wing starfighter was casually parked at the entrance to Etro’s S/S20 show. Framed by a set of the Italian house’s iconic patterned luggage, it marked the arrival of an exclusive collaboration with Walt Disney Pictures’ Lucasfilm. In anticipation of the ninth episode of the Star Wars saga, The Rise of Skywalker, motifs taken from the films’ history were printed onto the front of genderless staples. Hoodies, sweatshirts and a bomber featured graphics from 1977’s A New Hope. Blue striped shirting popped with familiar pictures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and R2D2. A Star Wars logo t-shirt was worn beneath an exquisite bejewelled paisley blazer in an otherwise quintessentially elegant, nomadic collection.

Brioni: The Brioni S/S20 collection explored off-duty formality. Design director Norbert Stumpfl ushered in a down-time, relaxed attitude but still with impeccable style. ‘I wanted our guy to go on a rendezvous, a dinner,’ he said. ‘He’s out of the office.’ We know the Brioni man in the office, but what about other scenarios? The look was effortless, easy and expertly finished. A grey, washed silk trench was trimmed with leather. ‘If this is normally in the hands of somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing it’ll look like a hot mess,’ he said. Track pants were in tailoring fabrics, t-shirts finished with aloe-vera. Double face blazers had the lightness of pocket square. ‘It’s like air,’ Stumpfl smiled.

Ralph Lauren Purple Label: Ralph Lauren took to the sea in a nautical inspired collection for S/S 2020. Seafaring troupes were updated in bold, graphic colour combinations – a wind sheeter came emblazoned with spliced together yacht flags inspired by an archive scarf print, while a lightweight intarsia knit jumper carried the motif of a lighthouse and ship. Eveningwear suits appeared in a riot of vibrant hues cut from decedent silk shantung, contrasting fine-gauge turtlenecks offered an air of ease. The seasonal ‘Ralph Suit’, inspired directly by the designers personal take on tailoring – a broad shouldered double-breasted jacket with neat waistline fastening at the bottom button – looked Italian Riviera ready in pale grey.

Giuseppe Zanotti: The distinctive blabber sneaker morphed into fresh iterations for S/S 20 – starting from minimalist black and taupe suede (with a clear rubber sole) all the way up to bright metallic gold. It came studded and in pearlescent leather too, for that extra Zanotti flourish. New for the season was a tie-dye story; Chelsea boots, moccasins and low-top sneakers in patterned canvas.

Trussardi Archive + Now3: Now in its third instalment, Trussardi's project Archive + Now invites creatives to reinterpret and evolve the brand's house codes in a seasonal collection. This time round designer Giorgio Di Salvo of streetwear brand United Standard was in the driving seat. Trousers and shirts were cut in butter soft leather giving a fluid feel, while a waistcoat was given multiple pockets. Elsewhere, sweatshirts and t-shirts were adorned with the brand's synonymous greyhound motif. Images and a film by cult artist Cali Thornhill DeWitt showcased the collection.

Serapian: For S/S 2020 Italian leather specialist Serapian launch its special 'Mosaico - Signed by our Artisans' collection of bags. Each item uses a unique technique developed by the brand's founder, Stefano Serapian, that involves braiding soft nappa stripes by hand to create geometric patterns reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics and Japanese origami. Oversized totes, compact crossbody and clutch bags find there signature monochromatic surfaces interrupted by coloured stripes woven in by the brand's master artisans.

Tom Ford: Tom Ford took a more minimalist approach this season in a pared down collection that played with classic silhouettes in subversive fabric combinations. Sharply tailored jackets were teamed with torso skimming shirts and fine gauge roll necks, while oversized coats where nonchalantly thrown over lean cut suits to emphasise the slim silhouette. Black leather was key – a neat biker and longer length blazer embossed in alligator added a touch of danger, while a classic sportswear zip up and track pants were given a luxurious makeover in perforated leather. Elsewhere, a series of pop coloured evening wear jackets came in a glistening leopard and zebra jacquard fabric. Bags in exotic skins came with concealed zips and robust hardware, angular sunglasses and a new square toed ankle boot expanded Ford's accessories range.

Soundbite: ‘I went home for this collection, back to where I grew up in the North of England, surrounded by mill towns and wild countryside. I took my team to those mills, to a landscape that I remember from my childhood. The heart of the collection is inspired by the bolts we saw woven both by man and machine.’ This time around, Sarah Burton inserted more of herself into an  Alexander McQueen collection than she ever has before. She travelled with her team to Macclesfield, one of the industrial towns outside of Manchester where mills still produce textiles for men’s suits. It was on rolls of those very textiles (used in her collection too) that guests were invited to sit on at the Lycée Carnot, immediately setting a mood that combined with all things Northern, from the woollen fabrics to the local Rose Queen festival traditions, the Brontë sisters, the punk aesthetics and the heyday of Factory Records. The collection was a brilliant summary of all this.

Best in show: Models walked the catwalk to an orchestral version of Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control, clad in menswear-inspired grey suits, their fitted jackets complete with draped sashes of raw-edge fabric. Those were combined with the kind of clean-cut trousers McQueen himself was always known for. But Burton’s own personality shone mostly through the dresses, some of them in white poplin (an homage to Northern suffragettes?), some asymmetrically pleated and featuring rose motifs in coral, fuchsia and royal blue, some in laser-cut leather. Using enormous amounts of fabric draped over itself, taffeta dresses turned into giant roses themselves, and, of course, the collection also featured couture-like evening gowns, fully embroidered with silvery metal.

Finishing Touches: As usual, accessories played an important part: every goth-at-heart fashion editor at the venue was transfixed by the boots, which came in all sizes and details, a sort of Doc Martens-inspired design that was in turns high or low, flat or heeled, then studded, embroidered or glossed. Brogue-like shoes featured galosh-like details and a rubber sole somewhere between a sneaker and a combat boot. Elsewhere, jewellery heavily borrowed from punk imagery, featuring thick metallic chokers and stacked earrings in crystal-encrusted gold and silver.

Scene setting: For A/W 2019, creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri enlisted the octogenarian Italian artist and writer Bianca Pucciarelli Menna to design Dior’s show set. Menna works under the male pseudonym Tomaso Binga, an alter ego she adopted to highlight the privilege awarded to male artists. Her works include the 1976 Alfabetiere Murale, a typographical alphabet with letters formed from nude portraits of Binga herself. For the maison’s show, these letters were tessellated across the interior of the Musée Rodin (where Dior returned to after a S/S 2019 stint at the Hippodrome de Longchamp). Chiuri is the first woman to take the creative helm of Dior, and her collaboration with Menna, whose male alter ego draws attention to patriarchal hierarchy, was a poignant partnership.

Mood board: London’s V&A museum is currently showcasing a Dior retrospective which highlights its couturier founder’s affection for Britain. Princess Margaret was a fan of M. Dior, and chose to usurp British tradition, and wear one of his designs for a Cecil Beaton-lensed 21st birthday portrait in 1951. Chiuri used this milestone to explore 1950s Britain as a style decade, drawing on the aesthetic of Teddy Girls, who favoured androgynous quiffs, a silk scarf (very A/W 2019), an Edwardian men’s jacket and a rolled up trouser. Her modern take on that rebellious rock ’n’ roll trend? Quilted boiler suits, vinyl trenchcoats with a Bar-silhouette cinched waist, swathes of Buffalo check (emblazoned on shirts, full skirts, bucket hats and even cagoules), and bow-detail sweaters. Silhouettes were unusually sporty, and these offset the more feminine gauzy skirts and bustier dresses in the collection.

Best in show: Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams features a retrospective of the creative directors that have worked for the maison, since M. Dior’s death in 1957. A 21-year-old Yves Saint Laurent took the reins straight after, presenting his first collection for the house in 1958. His last collection for Dior in July 1960, featured a long black coat called ‘Le Blouson Noir’ a reference to the name given to Paris’ Teddy Boy and Girl equivalents. Chiuri reimagined this style for A/W 2019, her own signature evoking the design alphabet of Dior leaders before her.

It’s a well noted irony that while a fashion show is over in a matter of minutes, the creative endeavour behind it is a painstaking process of research, experimentation and refinement, that lasts a matter of months. Now, in celebration of the behind-the-scenes activities that contribute to a final runway collection, Alexander McQueen has launched ‘Unlocking Stories’, an exhibition on the top floor of its newly opened Old Bond Street flagship in London, showcasing the tales, teamwork and materials behind its S/S 2019 collection.

The British label enlisted Chilean architect Smiljan Radic, the mastermind behind the translucent shell-like 2014 Serpentine Pavilion, to design its latest Mayfair space. Natural forms – also idiosyncratic of the brand – feature in the boutique which is swathed in wood, oak and walnut, and boasts curving lines, echoing the contours of the body, or the lineation of the natural landscape.

‘Unlocking Stories’ can be found after climbing a series of enclosed spiral staircases, almost like ascending through a smoothed hollow of a tree. The floor is also populated with distinct glass cylinders which offer glimpses into the floor below. The boutique's top level is a treasure trove of toiles, mood boards, fabric swatches, books and photographs, which all echo the extensive studio process needed to design an emotive, narrative-laden and masterfully designed Alexander McQueen collection. Be it the paganism-inspired and empowering S/S 2019 women’s offering, or a menswear ode to artist Francis Bacon and the photographer John Deakin.

The showcase is just one exhibition aimed at inspiring students. The store's top-floor location is set to act as a long-term experiential space hosting more exhibitions, talks and events. After ‘Unlocking Stories’, we can’t wait for the next tale to unfold.

INFORMATION
‘Unlocking Stories’ is on view until April. For more information, visit the Alexander McQueen website

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Scene setting: After a couple of seasons trying her hand at showing in different venues (last season’s show took place in the Carreau du Temple at the heart of the Marais), Sarah Burton was back this time to her beloved Orangerie in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Turns out the tall-ceilinged greenhouse building, surrounded by the park’s greenery, was the perfect setting for the designer’s latest outing. Inside, guests discovered a monolith reproduction of the Neolithic Avebury henge. Less known – and less touristy – than Stonehenge, the Wiltshire circle, with its shorter, rounder stones, is widely thought by archaeologists to reference femininity. It is also considered a place of religious importance by contemporary pagans. It was there that Sarah Burton’s inspiration for her latest collection began.

Soundbite: ‘I was thinking about sisterhood, about traditional women’s milestones and rituals: births, christenings, weddings, funerals. It’s about being strong and emotional, but also saying it’s ok to show your vulnerability; not to have to put a brave face on it,' explained Sarah Burton backstage after the show. In a week when – while designers were celebrating the feminine form in Paris –- the Kavanaugh hearings have been the main talking point in the news and among the fashion pack, one would not be blamed for wondering whether the #MeToo movement was, after all, of any real consequence. Burton’s reminder of the power of the feminine mystique could not have come at a better time.

Best in show: The clothes explored the theme through a historical lens: Burton and her team got out of the studio and into vintage markets to purchase a selection of Victorian wedding gowns and christening tunics, reimagining their broderie anglaise on asymmetrical dresses worn over buster trousers. They were combined with consistent leather pieces in black, white and red, sometimes embroidered with roses. Flowers were actually powerfully present all throughout the collection as prints – inspired, of course, by English gardens – and to counterpoint them was the simple grey and black tailoring. The most magical-infused looks, though, came towards the end: the evening gowns including chiffon, golden lace and leather corsets gave the models undeniable druidess vibes… and managed to somewhat restore our faith in the feminine mystic.

Mood board: Sarah Burton’s oeuvre is always centred on tailoring. For S/S 2019 she showed an exquisite collection alive with the spirit of painter Francis Bacon and photographer John Deakin. Such strong, complicated, artistic men who inhabited the drinking dens of Soho dressed with a blasé formality. Burton’s focus was on hybridised classics ripped apart at the seams and redone. She proposed razor sharp tailoring, beautiful embroideries and hard masculine silhouettes. 

Best in show: Much is said about the deconstruction of archetypal menswear – Dries Van Noten added optic prints to military shapes, Raf Simons cut away the innards of fine Crombie coats to reveal their lining. Virgil Abloh made sportswear sartorial at Louis Vuitton. We have seen a breaking down of rules, the blending of worlds and of garments. Here that idea was rigorously executed with a tailor’s eye. Sleeves on coats were slashed open, shirt cuffs sliced away. The line of the models was long and taut. Jackets in wool silk were slashed and then pieced together with military coats. 

Soundbite: ‘I wanted it to be very male,’ Burton said backstage. ‘We were looking at Bacon and his relationship with George Dyer… I wanted it to be powerfully male. There is a sense of vulnerability but also a sense of strength, confidence and danger.’ Tailoring is the backbone. Jackets with strong shoulders. Deakin’s insouciant photographs of Bacon’s inner circle guided the mood. Double breasted styles are slashed at the waist – a colossal cavalry twill trench is belted with cut sleeves as if to create a kimono. Trousers are wide. Cotton silk jacquards and embroidered in silver gunmetal draw on the works of Deakin. Standout are the fine thread paint brush swooshes that appear over the front of evening suits, the threads running loose like the artist’s imagination.§

‘We met in our mid-twenties in late 1996 in Paris at Givenchy,’ says Ann Ray of her first encounter with the late Alexander McQueen, who that year was made chief designer of the couture maison. The French photographer formed a long-lasting relationship with the renowned London-born designer, and during the course of their creative tenure, captured over 35,000 analogue photographs of him at work; be it a 1998 candid backstage portrait of McQueen alongside model Jaime King, or a line up of spectral sea monster-like models waiting to take to the catwalk at his eponymous ‘Plato’s Atlantis’ 2009 show. 

Next month, ‘The Unfinished Lee McQueen,’ an exhibition of Ray’s images of the designer’s career goes on display at Rencontres d’Arles photography festival in France. ‘What mattered when curating this exhibition was to be true, to Lee and to myself; to draw a honest portrait of the man I knew, through his life and work’ Ray explains. ‘The exhibition is filled with portraits; of Lee, of his close collaborators, and the women [models] he had chosen to work with.’

As she prepares for the opening of this expansive show, Wallpaper* caught up with Ray to delve further into an intimate creative relationship that lasted until 2010, the year of McQueen’s passing.

Wallpaper*: What was your first impression of McQueen?
Ann Ray: It was one that remained over the years: a lovely man, big-hearted, sensitive and loyal, incredibly talented, reserved and intimidating. Trust would not be given easily, but if it was, it would last for a very long time, or forever.

W* The course of your creative relationship ran for 13 years and you took over 35,000 analogue photographs. McQueen must have become such an important part of your life?
AR: People like Lee McQueen are rare and precious. They have a massive impact on whoever has the privilege to get close to them. If I have one talent, it’s to recognise talent when I see it. I enjoy ‘serving’ these artists with my art. Nowadays McQueen has become a legend and everybody calls him a ‘genius’, but in the late Nineties it was very different. Lots of editors were writing bad things about him, year after year.

The 13 years I spent photographing Lee were an act of devotion; personally and artistically. I have always been aware of the privilege it embodied. Lee was probably aware of that too. It was about trust, and art, obviously. I like to remember the simplicity, of the beginnings: ‘give me photos, I’ll give you clothes’, he said. As simple as a friends’ trade. When money is not involved, you find a way. I still do trades with close people, it’s a joy, forged in mutual respect. I love that. ‘Give me what you do best, and I’ll do the same for you’. Perfection.

W*: Your photographs capture incredibly candid moments of McQueen at work, and the ethereal beauty of his catwalk designs. How would you describe your creative chemistry?
AR: I felt extremely connected to Lee. I had the feeling I was understanding everything he was expressing in his art, and tried hard to translate what I was seeing in the most faithful way. He appeared to me as an artist, or a poet from day one. Fashion was just the medium.

Recently a close friend said to me : ‘these women [in McQueen’s shows] have never been as beautiful as in your images.’ I found this interesting and although I appreciated the compliment, beyond it I believe it’s true. These women are beautiful in a very special way, and I think this is the outcome of the creative chemistry. All the people working closely with Lee were part of this. We all went together in ‘terra incognita’ around him, we were part of the adventure in his universe. We all gave our best, and beyond. The result was a sum of joy, fear, links, connections, exchanges, unspoken secrets, in a way, leading to a climax as seen by an audience for 15 minutes.

W*: What was it like being around McQueen? 
AR: His bright side was immense, and it was contagious to anybody working with him… It’s a shame there is such a dichotomy nowadays between the man a few people knew, and the dark legend. But that’s how it is, I guess the truth is that you have to embrace the fact that a close friend is very distinct from the myth.

It happens to Lee as it happens all the time for so-called ‘genius’ or famous people. I heard that it was dark and sinister to be around Lee, that is so wrong. It was bright and joyful and fiercely crazy and exciting, however it was of course tough and difficult and heavy too – but because of myself never because of Lee. 

W*: Why did you choose to shoot your photographs in analogue?
AR: For it’s timeless beauty. For the difficulty, and the challenges it involves. You have to use your imagination, and your faith, to do analogue photography in a hectic, dark, difficult context. You have to put one intention in one image. You have to stop breathing. 

W* How many portraits did you take of McQueen?
AR: I did countless portraits, I realised it recently, strangely enough, when working on the exhibition. Hundreds, I guess, I haven’t counted. It was such a natural process that I didn’t imagine I had so many of him. Some face to face, real photographic portrait sessions, especially from 1997 to early 2001, when I was living in London; and so many at work, behind the scenes, or in the studio.

Lee never realised how beautiful he was. We all have insecurities about our appearance. It’s probably one of the reasons why his appearance changed so much in 13 years. It’s also like wearing a mask. A mask is a good thing because it gives you a break from truth. It’s a protection.

To paraphrase Richard Avedon, when you’re really connected to the person you photograph, a portrait is a mix between what they want to show, what you know they are hiding, what part you decide to reveal, with full respect and their silent consent. It’s alchemy.

W* Did you experience any new revelations about your images in your organisation of the exhibition?
AR: I received a great help from my curator – Sam Stourdzé, director of the Rencontres d’Arles – and from my producer Myriam Blundell Phillips. Both were struck by two things: first, how Lee changed his appearance, and second, how numerous the portraits of women were I took over the years. With, or without clothes. Like ‘character studies’, since these women were indeed characters. It occurred to me that Lee would chose the women for his shows as a movie director would chose his actresses; he would even explain the intention and the body language. There were no dialogues or words, of course – these were useless. Lee had so much to say without words. 

W*: It’s eight years since McQueen died. As time has passed, have you come to view the images with a different perspective?
AR: Photography and movies have always been very important in my life. I built my first lab with my brother – an amateur but super-skilled photographer, with a fabulous eye – when I was nine. My first portraits were photographing my little sister, endlessly, whereas my brother was doing the same: photographing me. We would run by the ocean to photograph it very often, especially if there was a storm. Then I used my father’s 8mm camera – bought in Japan by my Dad – for years.

The first editing I did with a movie, was physical: I was cutting and pasting, mechanically. How you use Photoshop nowadays, I did it with my hands. It was very simple to understand, even for a little girl – you don’t want it, you cut it. You just keep the best... I had to get older to fully understand and embrace the magic, power and mystery of images… I know the answers, all is almost clear now. 

Photography apparently deals with death, but my photographs don’t deal with death, at all, just the opposite. They deal with life, and the celebration of life. On a very blurry time scale.

INFORMATION 

‘The Unfinished Lee McQueen,’ is on view from 2 July to 23 September. For more information visit the Rencontres d'Arles website; Ann Ray website

ADDRESS 

Rencontres d’Arles - Atelier des Forges, Parc des Ateliers

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Four years ago, when curator Edwina Ehrman started thinking about the Victoria & Albert Museum’s latest exhibition, ‘Fashioned From Nature’, she envisaged exploring how fashion designers had been inspired by the natural world over time – how, for example, they incorporated floral motifs into their clothing. When she started working on the show more seriously, she had a realisation: ‘I thought, "I can’t do that – it’s no longer appropriate". It had to be [mainly] about the impact of the fashion industry on the environment.’

The result is a sweeping survey of the industry’s relationship with nature over the past 400 years, exploring both our fascination with and exploitation of animals, birds, plants and natural resources. It has the air of a campaign about it. ‘We’re asking two questions,’ Ehrman says. ‘What can we learn from the past? And how can we design a more sustainable future?’

The first of these is addressed chronologically: outfits from the V&A’s historical collection are paired with materials such as raw wool and silk-worm cocoons, as well as photos of live animals (beavers next to a fur hat, for example) to reminder visitors of the origins of these items. Displays explore the use of products from endangered creatures, such as ivory, turtle shell, mother of pearl and whalebone. A soundscape of birdsong is slowly interwoven with the noise of humans seizing nature’s offerings – water wheels, looms, machetes – as the story shifts from the era of handmade and natural energy to industrialisation, fossil fuels and mass fashion.

The section spanning from 1600-1900, focused mainly on Britain, reveals that our relationship with nature has always been anthropocentric – from enclosing the countryside, to farming, taming and hunting animals, we have long viewed nature in utilitarian terms. During this time, imperialism and the expansion of trade brought new, exotic items into British wardrobes and demographic changes led to the scaling up of production. A single dress from the 1760s made with precious metals from Peru, dyes from the Caribbean, furs from North America and Russia and silk from Europe and Middle East, is a reminder that fashion was, even then, global.

The later years – the 20th century and beyond – show the growing environmental impact of the industry, and a greater awareness of the damage it was causing. While exciting manmade fabrics were introduced, many of these were made from toxic materials, petroleum and using harmful pesticides. Recently, designers have consciously highlighted environmental concerns – Alexander McQueen’s S/S 2010 show ‘Plato’s Atlantis’ referenced the melting of the ice caps, while Giles Deacon’s 2016 ‘Fabergé’ silk georgette printed imperial gown, elevated bird’s eggs to the level of the revered gold and jewelled ones. Nearby, is a display of protest material from the 1970s onwards, and a film that depicts oil spills, deforestation and polluted rivers.

The protests shown here are relatively recent, but it’s clear throughout that our concerns about the environment are not new: we’ve always wreaked havoc on the natural world globally, and there have always been those who have sought to protect it. What is different today is the sheer scale on which the fashion industry operates, and our technological capabilities. This complexity, Ehrman argues, demands nuanced solutions: a thorough consideration of how and where an item and its materials are sourced, processed and distributed, rather than a simplistic division between natural as good and manmade as bad.

The last section looks to the future, with a series of proposals for a more sustainable future. Some demonstrate an interest in traditional ideas (materials such as flax and hemp and the aesthetic of mending) while others suggest more innovative solutions (materials that weave themselves and biodegradable outfits).

The exhibition falls at a fortuitous time. In the last year, a host of luxury, high street and sports brands have announced they will be operating from a more environmental and ethical standpoint:  American label Theory has launched a sustainable ‘Good Wool’ capsule collection, burgeoning Swiss-born label Germanier uses recycled fabrics to create dazzling couture-like creations, Adidas has started upcycling plastic waste to create sock-like trainers, and H&M has collaborated with Control Union on a digital service which allows brands to monitor every step of its supply chains. In the last six months too, houses including Gucci, DKNY, Versace and John Galliano have pledged to go fur-free.

Finally, a series of interactive displays suggest that it is us – everyday consumers – who can shape the industry through our choices and demands. As Ehrman says: ‘When people talk about sustainability being a modern luxury, I don’t like that – it has to become the norm.’

INFORMATION

’Fashioned From Nature’ is on view from 21 April until 27 January 2019. For more information, visit the V&A website

ADDRESS

Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
London
SW7 2RL

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Mood board: Our 2018 Wallpaper* Design Awards jury recently awarded the Best Men’s Fashion Collection to Sarah Burton’s lean, romantic offering for A/W 2017. Every season the McQueen label channels the same poetic punkish attitude, adding to it a new embellishment or weaving into it a new story. A/W 2018 captures a certain modern-day dandyish elegance; research went from the genteel metier of Savile Row to the seasoned sports separates worn by Ireland’s pony kids in the series of photographs taken by British photographer Perry Ogden in the nineties. This criss-crossing between archetypes of men’s dress means that the McQueen muse is always, at first glance, tailored and underpinned by a raffish ambience.

Finishing touches: the season offers classic tailoring in traditional fabrics yet proportions are rebellious. Shoulders are blown up and an hourglass waist is added to jackets. A slim flared trouser counters the prevailing trend for wide leg cropped pants seen everywhere else. There is a restrained, regal romanticism throughout – the models each wore a single gold pearl and precious stone drop earring.

Best in show: Burton’s shows always culminate with a parting opulence. The sombre opening set the tone: a grey chalk pinstripe suit worn with a deep V-neck knit, white shirt and tie. The show ended with the same model wearing a wide-shouldered black tuxedo jacket with white vest and patchwork black floral jacquard trench, tied around the waist. McQueen’s signature majesty comes in the form of hand-painted English roses scattered across silk tailoring, tapestry carpet coats and jet beading. Standout were the macro embroidered paisleys adorning big cashmere overcoats and a monochrome paisley jacquard suit. 

The Dutch, given their tenuous topography, have a special relationship with nature. As Daan Roosegaarde points out: ‘Who lives below sea level? We must be a little crazy for that.’ The nation lives with the constant threat from water, but this has also encouraged a unique capacity for engineering nature. ‘Without design, we would all drown,’ Roosegaarde says, and that proactive relationship with nature is central to his work, a kind of environmental art, often massive in scale.

Last year, he finished one of the most significant projects of his career, the Icoon Afsluitdijk, commissioned by the Dutch government. This three-part design project, part of a restoration programme for the 32km dike built in the 1930s, celebrates the nation’s leading role in hydraulic engineering works while looking ahead at more advanced and energy-efficient technologies.

To Roosegaarde, design should be genuinely life-enhancing. In 2016, his studio brought the Smog Free Tower to China. The 7m-tall smog vacuum cleaner, as much provocation as practical pollution killer, caught the attention of young, progressive Chinese entrepreneurs. Together with Ofo, the leading Chinese bike sharing programme, he developed the Smog Free Bicycle, which is now being tested on the ground – the bike inhales and filters polluted air and returns it clean to the cyclist. Large-scale usage would create a large-scale impact and Roosegaarde insists that smog-free cities are not a distant dream but achievable in the near future.

The ‘Gates of Light’ is a series of historic floodgates painted by Roosegaarde with a new retroreflective material that glows in the headlights of oncoming cars. See the winners of our Judges’ Awards here

His picks for this year’s Judges’ Awards were informed by his own modus operandi. And perhaps a certain jealousy of other people’s MOs. Outlining what he was looking for in the fashion category, he says, ‘I love experiments, the notion of play, but it has to be pragmatic as well, it needs to enhance a certain character, sophisticated without being too much. When I do a project it takes years, and the speed at which fashion houses keep on producing and delivering fascinates me. I envy their speed, but maybe they envy my time for research.’

For the Best Men’s Fashion Collection A/W17, Roosegaarde voted for Alexander McQueen. ‘It’s fascinating that his spirit is still seen and he is still alive in a way, in some of the sketches and final pieces which are out there. But at the same time, the current studio knows how to update and not only rely on the past. The collection is very ornamental, which could have a tendency to go kitsch, but every time McQueen does it, it feels powerful yet very elegant, I think these are collectors’ items,’ he says. ‘And I am a happy buyer!’

Max Núñez’s Ghat House in Cachagua, Chile, conveys the harmony Roosegaarde searches for between artificial and natural landscapes. He voted it as the Best New Private House of the year, as he finds it ‘intriguing, special’.

‘It’s a completely ungeneric space,’ he says. ‘Those pillars, the staircases – some difficult choices were made, which is always good. There is a story there which needs to be told. I am not sure what it is yet – and it is exactly what makes it so beautiful.’

A version of this article originally appeared in the February 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*227)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Studio Roosegaarde website

In 20 quick years, The Rug Company has blazed the trail for tasteful, contemporary rugs with its blend of traditional craftsmanship and modern aesthetics, so much so that many have come to expect nothing less. Not only has The Rug Company championed the use of fine raw materials and the quality of Nepalese weaving, it’s also pioneered the recruitment of designers outside of the interiors world to try their hand at creating rug patterns – a move that has garnered much success.

To celebrate this monumental birthday, The Rug Company is launching a celebratory capsule collection of five new designs from some of its most lauded collaborators. Alexander McQueen, Kelly Wearstler, Paul Smith, Vivienne Westwood and The Rug Company co-founder Suzanne Sharp are the creatives behind the new works. Debuted during London Design Festival and now exhibited in New York, the ‘TRC20’ collection will tour the company’s showrooms worldwide.

Like the company’s comprehensive offering, the ‘TRC20’ collection showcases an array of styles. From Kelly Wearstler’s expressive brushstrokes that have been translated in copper-toned silk on Tibetan wool, and Paul Smith’s recognisable stripes that feature an array of colours which seamlessly blend into each other, to Alexander McQueen’s photographic floral still-life design that has been produced in a limited edition of 40; each rug is a testament to the caliber of the company’s artisans who turn each concept into a reality.

Vivienne Westwood’s magnified tartan, which features her custom created 2007 ‘Gold Label’ pattern that’s been oversized for graphic appeal, and Suzanne Sharp’s geometric ‘Bonavita’ design – inspired by the tiles of an old Maltese church – are no different with their crisp sharpness and invigorating colour palettes. 

The collection’s significance has been captured through the lens of photographer Mary McCartney, who shot each designer in their studio space and filmed them behind the scenes, for an extra special look at the creative process. Filled with candid divulgements and peeks into rarely-seen worlds, the images celebrate the personal and the artistic, as The Rug Company continues to be.

INFORMATION

The 'TRC20' exhibition continues until 22 October. For more information, visit The Rug Company website

ADDRESS

The Rug Company
88 Wooster Street
10012
New York

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Scene setting: In today’s fashion landscape, it’s hard to think of a more quintessentially British designer than Sarah Burton. In the most classic sense of the word, she never fails to capture all that makes British fashion – and Britain – truly unique, which is why she is such a perfect match for Alexander McQueen. The brand’s show yesterday was a perfect combination of that. As guests arrived at the Orangerie du Sénat – a sort of oversized conservatory in the heart of the Jardin du Luxembourg – they were surprised by a set made up of red English bricks and wooden pergolas, with tulle ceilings embroidered with hundreds of multicolour fabric flowers. Clearly, something ‘très anglais’ was cooking in this Parisian show.

Mood board: The gardens of Great Dixter – that was the inspiration behind both the set and the collection. Backstage before the show, Burton spoke of ‘uncontrived floral planting, meandering borders and tangles of vibrant, exuberately coloured blooms drenched in rain and warmed by sunlight’. These meandering blooms all showed within the collection, starting with the brocade trenchcoats that opened the show and the beaten-down Barbour-inspired jackets (do anyone but English aristocrats really wear their clothes to decay?) But it was not all about daily strolls through the British countryside and cosy gardening: the second part of the show was all about ball gowns... and what ball gowns! With a New Look silhouette, sporting ultra structured bodices – corsets, almost – and entirely embroidered with the lushest blooms, they were fit for a princess, or a rock ‘n‘ roll queen. Because they felt wonderfully modern. And, let‘s face it, not everyone who can create a ball gown with a truly contemporary feel.

Finishing touches: ‘She has embellished her wardrobe with keepsakes from her grandmother's jewellery box’ is how Burton described the McQueen woman’s use of costume jewellery this season. Trinkets were everywhere, not only seen in silver and gold chokers, bracelets, cuffs and earrings, finished with charms in crystal and pearls, but also embroidered in quilted, patent-leather bags and, most impressively, trapped inside the clear PVC heels of the biker boots. There’s no doubt about it, a new best-seller is born. 

‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, is nothing shy of monumental. Spanning nearly 3,000 sq m of prime space, it first unfolds as a rich, thematic journey throughout the two floors of permanent fashion galleries. Then, as though the second of two acts, visitors proceed towards the museum’s vast nave where the story begins anew, starting with the iconic bar suit from spring 1947, continuing as a chronological focus on the maison’s six designers, and ending with a magically staged ball attended by seven decades of show-stopping gowns.

Not since 1987 has there been a Christian Dior retrospective in Paris. Thirty years later, to mark the maison’s 70th anniversary, this one ranks as the largest yet. Curated by the museum’s director Olivier Gabet, and Florence Müller, who is based at the Denver Art Museum as the Avenir Foundation curator of textile art and fashion, it features upwards of 300 haute couture gowns, many from the museum’s own collection. But arguably even more staggering are all the peripheral objects: the loaned artworks from major institutions, a vast trove of archive materials from the brand’s Dior Heritage department, 700 accessories sorted as a meandering rainbow wall (dubbed ‘Colorama’), plus scores of magazine covers and editorial spreads that testify to how widely and consistently the Dior image has been diffused (Maison Christian Dior was involved in the show beyond financial support).

Rather than forcing one point of view above others, what becomes clear is that the designer’s original vision has been so incredibly respected, preserved and mythologised since his death just ten years after founding his label. Visitors need only glance at the three-storey wall filled silhouettes conceived by all the subsequent creative directors in addition to Dries Van Noten, Alber Elbaz, Comme des Garçons, Alexander McQueen, Pierre Cardin, Yohji Yamamoto and others to sense that his influence and artistic spirit has been kept alive.

Within the exhibition’s biographical gallery, just down from a striking portrait of the designer by artist Bernard Buffet, he appears on a Time magazine cover dated March 4,1957 holding a giant pair of scissors. In his book, Christian Dior and I, he referred to ‘a small bloodless revolution – made by the scissors rather than the sword – whose reverberations extend to all corners of the world.’ Now consider last year’s must-have ‘Dio(r)evolution’ t-shirt, which Müller happened to be wearing four days before the opening when she and Gabet met for our interview.

’His intention was not to be a revolutionary; he was seeing himself more as a reactionary. It was a reaction against the fashion of the war,’ she explained. ‘It was a reaction that became a revolution. But it was not his intention; I think he was more subtle than this.’

Is the show subtle? Not to the extent that the exceptional scenography, overseen by Nathalie Crinière, presents a steady stream of visually stimulating backdrops, from the illuminated outlines of the 30 Avenue Montaigne façade projected onto the museum walls (don’t miss the upper oval medallion with its highlight reel of runway shows), to the thousands of white flowers suspended from the ceiling in the room exploring the maison’s myriad floral-inspired dresses.

The ambiance in the nave becomes something of a dreamscape thanks to projections of the baroque paintings from the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles, a simulated starry sky, and sparkling gold dust (Jean Cocteau famously noted how Mr Dior’s name was a near homophone with d’or, or gold). Here, in the presence of his glistening Junon and Venus gowns – along with at least two dozen others from Yves Saint Laurent through to Maria Grazia Chiuri – such overwhelming beauty successfully perpetuates the fashion fairytale.

But then to hear Gabet describe the selection process for the roughly 100 works of art placed throughout the exhibition is to also detect connections, surprises, and yes, subtleties that give the show added subtance. For while the paintings by Sterling Ruby and Agnes Martin adjacent to dresses by Raf Simons are obvious complements given his affinity for both artists; a torso of Nefertiti from the Louvre’s Egyptian department was only later discovered to exist as a photo in Galliano’s notebook. ‘It’s always when you are respectful to the artwork in the context of fashion that these beautiful and poetic things happen,’ Gabet suggested. ‘The point was not to be automatic but to always find the right and legitimate way.’

Mr Dior, after all, was a gallerist and art dealer before he became a designer; he revolved in creative circles with the likes of Salvador Dalí and Christian Bérard and mounted a surrealist show with his partner, Pierre Colle, in 1923. Chances are, he would have derived pleasure from seeing the modern maiden painted by Romaine Brooks in 1912, and a Fantin-Latour still life as juxtapositions to the floral dresses. Like other intimate vignettes in the show, it felt immune from any imposition of Dior, the mega-brand.

And it would be easy to declare the Colorama fixture the most apparent aspect of this with all the shoes, bags, hats, jewellery and perfume bottles. But Gabet sees it another way, rightfully pointing out how many of the objects represent collaborations with Stephen Jones, Roger Vivier, Swarovski (which developed the Aurora Borealis crystal for Mr Dior in 1956). ‘We are showing all the possibilities of the métiers d’art and craftsmanship technical virtuosity of the house of Dior.’

Incidentally, the exhibition includes an alcove where actual artisans will be stationed on a weekly basis to show off the savoir-faire before visitors’ eyes. That the show has debuted two days after Chiuri’s autumn/winter collection on Monday, is proof that the Dior story, for the first time filtered through a feminine voice, continues to play out beyond the museum walls in real time.

Gabet and Müller both pointed out that with this level of couture, the dresses didn’t simply slip onto the mannequins; they go through a meticulous process called mannequinage. ‘It’s a little industry by itself for the scale this show,’ said Gabet. Müller summed it up best: ‘You have to remember, he’s like a monument,’ she said. ‘You’ve entered into a legend.’

INFORMATION

‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ is on view until 7 January 2018. For more information, visit the Les Arts Décoratifs website

ADDRESS

Les Arts Décoratifs
107 rue de Rivoli
75001 Paris

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Mood board: Sarah Burton’s S/S 2018 menswear collection shared its mood and, in some cases, its textile – the distressed jacquard evening coats made from carpet, for instance – with the women’s collections shown in March. For that she looked at Cornish and Icelandic folklore. For menswear, she built on the poetic nomadic history of these magical places with a collection full of texture and tale. The pacing of the show played a big part in the storytelling, beginning with austere, tailored jackets in double-dye wool and bonded leather, slowly building to patchwork Prince of Wales checks. The closing looks were two evening jackets embroidered with a bugle and glass bead Tree of Life.

Best in show: The collection was said to reference explorers, storytellers and collectors, so each of the models wore tarnished whistles, rock crystal, horn pendants and Labradorite stone jewellery; their souvenirs of time spent on forgotten lands. Burton offered a modern take on the tuxedo as a double-breasted jacket worn with a leather bib-front shirt and slim fit trousers with a thick leather stripe down the side. Best in show was a long bibbed broderie anglaise shirt worn with matching cropped trousers. Its lightness was breathtaking amid the washed leather suits, multi-zip biker jackets and smart wool coats. Elsewhere, selvedge Japanese denim was marked with the graphic lines of contour maps and the handwritten diary entries of a fictitious explorer. Passages taken from Rudyard Kipling’s 1898 poem The Explorer were printed and embroidered across the collection too.

Finishing touches: The invitation for the show was a large sheaf of handmade paper letter-pressed with an abstract of lines from James Thomson’s 1728 poem Spring. Thomson was a Scottish author who published a series of four poems entitled The Seasons, written as odes to time’s influence on nature and man. 'With innocence and meditation joined; 'while softer gales succeed…'. Thomson’s ethereal mildness prefaced the brutal poesy of Burton’s collection.

Scene setting: For A/W 2017, Sarah Burton harked back to the paganism of Celtic England, erecting a series of hanging silk tapestries on the catwalk, in a cacophony of blues and oranges. The colours resembled flaming medieval pyres burning into the night sky and before the show began, Burton’s team lined the runway and hoisted the hangings, like rows of flying flags or sails on a ship embarking on an Arthurian adventure. Burton took particular influence from ancient creative communities in Cornwall, and her coastal preoccupation was echoed in a show soundtrack that started and finished with the sound of rushing water, with models walking on a shimmering blue gravel catwalk, that crunched like sand underfoot.

Mood board: Burton took inspiration from ancient pilgrimages, including the concept behind ‘cloutie trees’, where trees next to wells are tied with strips of coloured fabrics as a form of votive offering to nature. This image was echoed in knitted dresses and leather coats interlaced with flowing threads, chunky and colourful tweeds with raw edges and large clutch bags with rows of eyelets, tied with trailing threads in blue, white, pink and red.

Best in show: Images from pagan rituals were also presented alongside those from more domestic traditions, like a series of raw hemmed dresses and asymmetric tops embroidered with colourful cross-stitching, inspired by 16th and 17th century needlework.

In 2006, Hackney institution Bistrotheque launched The Reindeer, billed at time as London's first pop-up restaurant. Housed in The Truman Brewery, the so-called 'guerilla restaurant' served an astounding 23,000 people in a whirlwind three weeks leading up to Christmas. A forerunner of experiential eating, The Reindeer's theatric feasting raised the expectations of London's design-savvy diners.

Bistrotheque co-founders David Waddington and Pablo Flack swore they'd never attempt such a colossal undertaking again. Flack said, to the disappointment of the city's drama-starved food critics, 'Only very special circumstances would call The Reindeer back to town.'

The late fashion icon Lee Alexander McQueen's charitable foundation Sarabande provided the necessary boost. This Christmas, The Reindeer will return, taking place at the Sarabande HQ in Haggerston. The converted warehouse provides free studios and mentorship for hand selected graduates – including menswear designer Craig Green – helping them take defining steps in their chosen creative field. The dining event will double as an open house, allowing guests unique access into the designers' workspaces, and all proceeds from the event will be fed back into the foundation.

Flack and his team have kept things a little more exclusive this time around. 'It's only for two nights and one lunch with just 400 people getting to experience The Reindeer [this year],' he explains. Each event will centre on Tord Boontje's fang-shaped Ketel One Bar, created for Sarabande in August. From here, guests will be served a Citroen-based cocktail designed by Ketel One – a founding partner of Sarabande – before entering an immersive winter wonderland to enjoy a warming six course meal devised by Bistrotheque head chef, Blaine Duffy. Christmassy chestnut notes appear throughout, bracketed by smoked salmon skin canapés to start, and a fermented apple sorbet desert closing the show.

The beef main course will be served on Boontje's reissued 'Deer In Forest' plate designs, created in a limited edition run of 90 especially for the event. The London-based designer is no stranger to festive design activity. He somehow manages to avoid the traps of Christmas gaudiness, balancing class with just a sprinkling of playful kitsch. He's therefore the perfect designer to partner up with The Reindeer – renowned for making Christmas dining cool back in 2006.

The new iteration of The Reindeer is topped off an atmospheric ceiling installation created by one of Sarabande's supported designers, Esna Su. Central to the immersive display, this installation proudly showcases the inventive work being created within the foundation's walls; an apt reminder that the young designers are Sarabande's raison d'etre.

INFORMATION

The Reindeer is open 2–3 December for lunch and dinner, see the menu and book tickets here. For more information, visit the Sarabande Foundation website

ADDRESS

Sarabande Foundation
22 Hertford Road
London N1 5SH

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Mood board: Sarah Burton looked toward Scotland’s Shetland Islands – a rough and tough yet exquisitely beautiful landscape – for her spring collection at Alexander McQueen. That same duality – hard and soft, brutal yet beautiful – was on display in her clothes that mixed the romanticism of softly tiered laced dresses with the gritty edge of black leather and savage-looking carpets of jagged silver studs.

Best in show: Her gossamer thin lace was lovely on maiden gowns, but things heated up when Burton morphed the look from plain pearly white to intricate multi-colored crochets on flip-skirt cocktail dresses.

Finishing touches: The clothes may have been at the pinnacle of refinement but the extras were all hard as nails. The models all wore combat boots, motorcycle boots or riding boots, all flat, all black, all covered with hard metal studs and shiny cap toes. Thick gladiator belts came jingling with studs, while enormous chandelier earrings gave the whole urban look a dressed up flair.

INFORMATION

Photography: Courtesy of Alexander McQueen

When Christian Dior presented his first collection to the press nearly seven decades ago, it was his New Look designs that had the fashion world buzzing for their radical (if not scandalous) forms. From his flower-strewn salon on 30 Montaigne Avenue – a ‘decorated but not decorative’, classically elegant space – the 42-year-old designer made fashion history.

These days, in a world where social media rules, fashion brands are devoting the same painstaking craftsmanship into increasingly ambitious show sets as they do their collections – with budgets to match. Shows have become an essential extension of brands, with dazzling installations, bespoke soundtracks, and multi-sensory experiences deemed the new standard. From orchestras to neon basketball courts, fashion houses are embroiled in a game of one-upmanship designed to cater to a global tech-centric audience.

A new book, The Fashion Set: The Art of the Fashion Show, celebrates the supercharged evolution of the modern runway, featuring over 100 images from the world’s foremost fashion houses including Louis Vuitton, Prada, Givenchy, Saint Laurent, Chanel and Fendi. Edited by prolific fashion commentator Federico Poletti, and with essays by Diane Pernet and Colin McDowell, the book offers a compelling overview of recent fashion shows.

Sets are now defined by how photogenic – or rather, Instagrammable – they are, with brands plotting bigger and bolder ways to bank those likes. Karl Lagerfeld has conjured spectacular mise-en-scènes including a supermarket and even an airport terminal for Chanel. Dries Van Noten presented a fairy-tale spectacle, laying his models down on a moss-like carpet by Argentinean artist Alexandra Kehayoglou in lieu of a runway.

Other fashion houses have commandeered architectural icons where the spectacle is the location itself. Raf Simons recently opted for a sojourn in sunny Cannes where Pierre Cardin’s inimitable Bubble House formed the otherworldly backdrop to the Dior’s 2016 Cruise collection. Elsewhere that same season, Louis Vuitton’s then-creative director Nicolas Ghesquière whisked us away to Palm Springs, moving into the John Lautner-designed Bob and Dolores Hope Estate.

In the fleeting world of fashion, the long-time creative coupling of Prada and Rem Koolhaas’ research and design studio AMO has been a reassuring constant each season. In one especially memorable menswear outing, Miuccia Prada turned to golf for inspiration (even though it was, by her own admission, a sport she hated). Cue AMO’s coolly calculated interpretation of an indoor golf course, setting the stage with green Astroturf while guests perched on rows of sky-blue cubes.

Likewise, intriguing sets are often born from designers taking a conceptual turn. Creative duo Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez eschewed the conventional fashion show for Proenza Schouler’s pre-spring showing in Florence, collaborating with three artists to create a video, an installation and a live performance. Donatella Versace said of the space age setting for her autumn/winter 2016 menswear show: ‘I’m thinking of the future. This is the ultimate expression of the future: space.’

Fashion, though, is a fickle creature by its very nature, restlessly searching for new ways to reinvent itself. Designers may very well soon eschew thrilling theatrics for more austere performances (Vionnet’s entrancingly austere S/S15 ballet-inspired set comes to mind). And with the growing popularity of augmented reality and technological innovations such as Oculus Rift, runways now have the potential to evolve beyond the physical realm.

We have already witnessed holograms at Alexander McQueen and the first 4D fashion show care of Ralph Lauren Polo. Most recently, Tommy Hilfiger populated his front row with social media stars for his first see-now, buy-now show, as consumers look for instant gratification both on and off the catwalk. Facebook, meanwhile, has been forging a new path with its recently launched 360 photo and video technology, a thought-stirring taster of things to come as it applies this innovation to fashion shows. The once far-fetched prospect of a fashion house connecting its audience through a flawlessly crafted virtual reality now seems plausible, even imminent. One thing is for certain: the future of fashion set design is limitless.

INFORMATION

The Fashion Set: The Art of the Fashion Show is published by ROADS Publishing, £40. For more information, visit the website

Roberto Vedovotto likes to think of Kering Eyewear as a startup, a lean, mean entrepreneurial upstart bringing innovation and disruption to a business dominated by a few too-powerful players. But if this is a startup, it’s an unusually smart one. No Ikea trestle-tables and sticker-plastered laptops here, none of the scruffy urgency of Silicon Valley or Shoreditch.

Vedovotto’s startup is backed – to what percentage has not been disclosed – by luxury goods giant Kering Group (formerly known as Gucci Group) with a 20-strong brand stable that includes Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney. And its new inside-but-outside eyewear division has suitably glamorous quarters in Villa Zaguri, a smartly restored Renaissance pile just outside Padua.

Less than half an hour’s drive west of Venice, this is the heartland of Italy’s high-end, high-skill manufacturing base. And the local skill set includes eyewear. Safilo, the world’s second largest eyewear company after Luxottica – and the company that, until recently, made eyewear under licence for a number of Kering brands – is based here.

Vedovotto, a former Safilo CEO, formed Kering Eyewear in September 2014 with the clear intention of challenging the established order and pushing a new business model for the industry. A report by Exane BNP Paribas called the launch an ‘eyewear revolution’.

The luxury goods industry has long licensed out its fragrance, eyewear and beauty businesses, even though these are the real money-spinners. They are also ‘entry products’, the point where younger customers especially get their first ‘experience’ of a brand and hopefully develop a taste for more.

This arrangement can seem counter-intuitive, particularly when it comes to eyewear. The premium fashion segment of the eyewear market could now be worth as much as $12.5bn. It is also an area with massive growth potential. Licensing arrangements then mean not only a loss of creative control, but also a loss of pure profit. The brands pull in huge royalty payments, but they are only a percentage of the possible returns. At the time of the launch of Kering Eyewear, Vedovotto said the Kering Group’s eyewear business was worth €350m, generating royalties of €50m.

However, while the luxury goods giants have been buying back licences in other categories, most have considered producing and distributing eyewear too far out of their comfort zone. ‘Eyewear is a very technical product,’ says Vedovotto. ‘It also has a completely distinct distribution model.’ Supplying thousands of independent opticians around the world is definitely not part of the luxury goods group's skill set. Still, with a number of Kering licences coming up for renewal, Vedovotto and Kering Group CEO François-Henri Pinault thought it was time to take a risk. The rewards were simply too great to ignore.

Kering Eyewear is based around what Vedovotto calls a mixed-model. Essentially, it has taken back control of design and product development, working with the creative teams of each brand, marketing and brand management, logistics and distribution. The only link of the ‘value chain’ that it hasn’t ‘internalised’ is manufacturing. But instead of being locked into deals with the licensed manufacturers, it is now free to deal with a whole range of specialist makers. This new model means that Kering Eyewear can ‘create products that are fully aligned with the brands’ DNA’, as Vedovotto puts it. It will also look at upping quality without ramping up prices and undermining the ranges’ entry product promise.

The man charged with making all this happen is Kering Eyewear’s creative director Massimo Zuccarelli, also formerly of Safilo. He heads up a 25-strong team in Padua, which managed to put out nine eyewear collections less than a year after Kering Eyewear was launched (and while their renaissance villa was still being decorated and without Wi-Fi. ‘It was kind of a nightmare, but the energy was incredible,’ says Zuccarelli).

These launch ranges included a debut eyewear collection for the Milan-based jewellery brand Pomellato. Since then, collections by Tomas Maier and Christopher Kane have also been added. The creative relationship with the brands varies, says Zuccarelli: ‘Some teams come up with a very full briefing with shapes, designs, technical drawings and materials. Others present more of a vision. We don’t have a rule. We have the right support for anyone.’ Kane seems to support that. ‘I showed them my crappy sketches and they made them a reality,’ he says, only half-joking.

What seems to most excite Zuccarelli, though, is the range of manufacturers – and thus finishes, materials and effects – he can now show the brands. He seems particularly excited about the Japanese makers that Kering is now working with, even if costs mean he has to use them sparingly. ‘There are a lot of niche eyewear brands in Japan and we are the first people to use those makers for other brands. The finishing of the Japanese makers is different because they are so obsessed with vintage; the galvanic treatment, the polishing, the raw materials they use, the acetates, it really recalls vintage eyewear.’

The group now works with over 30 different suppliers. But, as Vedovotto says, this is not just fancy and indulgence on their part. This wealth of materials and finishes means they can produce ranges with distinct looks and identities. With 11 brands already up and running, Gucci on the way and long term plans to launch more, cannibalisation of sales is an obvious risk. ‘I don’t want to do the same thing as everyone else,’ says Kane. ‘They are constantly bringing these new techniques and technologies to the table so everyone has options and can do something different.’

Inevitably, perhaps, it is with the debut eyewear ranges that Zuccarelli has had the most freedom and pure fun. For Tomas Maier, he has developed a small range of contemporary aviators with flat lenses and other reworkings of American classics.

With Pomellato, the job was to create a range that somehow built on the brand identity without doing the obvious. ‘We wanted to do something different from just putting jewels or stones on the glasses,’ says Zuccarelli. ‘The idea was to replicate the feeling and the craftsmanship. And it wasn’t easy. We worked on the acetates to replicate the colour of the stones and the polishing and the finishing to replicate the feeling of the stones. The result is incredible.’ Sometimes these vivid acetates in different colours are melded in one frame, to startling effect. As Pomellato creative director Vincenzo Castaldo says, the Kering Eyewear team has also managed to do something smart and playful with a key part of the Pomellato design language. ‘Traditionally, a griffe was just a functional element to keep a stone in place,’ says Castaldo. ‘But in the early 1990s, Pomellato transformed it into something decorative in its own right, part of the overall aesthetics.’ The griffe reappears on the eyewear collection, transformed into a hinge.

With other brands there were different challenges. For Stella McCartney, the team worked with acetate specialists Mazzuchelli to develop a sustainable bio-acetate. And Zuccarelli is determined to use sustainable materials across all ranges within a few years. Material development is key, he says, and he is keen on using new and unique materials, when economies of scale allow. Zuccarelli is more than conscious that the venture will fail if he can’t bring all this novelty and innovation in under a certain price, or produce ranges with a ‘price architecture' that fits the brand and the market.

‘The prototypes we show the brands are exactly as they will be in the final production,’ he says. ‘Every problem, every detail has been worked out. We understand how it can be industrialised and how much it will cost. And for every prototype, there are alternatives, fully costed in the same way. It is very difficult because there is this balance between creativity and industrial design. And we are in the middle. We want to create proper collections based on market needs.’

There are still those, though, who think that however in tune they are with market needs, Kering Eyewear will struggle, at least at first. Startup costs have been significant. A renaissance villa full of the right kind of talent doesn’t come cheap. And when Kering Eyewear was launched, its prize licence, Gucci, still had four years to run. It had to pay Safilo €90m to terminate the licence two years early (Safilo will continue to produce the collection, at least for the next four years). Gucci will become Kering Eyewear property at the end of 2016, and the success of the first Gucci collection is essential.

What Luxottica and Safilo offered, apart from manufacturing know-how, is a huge distribution network and sales force. An Exane BNP Paribas’ report on the launch of Kering Eyewear identified getting to grips with distribution as probably its biggest challenge. And two years on, Luca Solca, head of luxury goods at Exane BNP Paribas, remains unconvinced that the new operation will deliver better returns than the previous licensing deals. ‘Kering Eyewear is an interesting experiment, but it looks like an over-ambitious business proposition to me.’

Vedovotto thinks he can prove them wrong. Distribution will be handled by a dedicated sales team, rather than agents on commission, which is how the licence holders handle it. And though the opticians, department stores and airport outlets won’t be neglected, there will be more accent on Kering’s directly-operated boutiques.

The Kering model is not something Safilo and Luxottica will want to see prosper, especially Safilo, which is far more reliant on its licence deals, but Vedovotto insists that the market is big enough to allow for happy commercial co-habitation. Nor does he see other groups and brands rushing to follow the Kering Eyewear example. ‘The business model we have decided to go for is not for everyone. There are only a few groups that can potentially afford an initiative like this.’

Kering Eyewear is not the only revolutionary in the market though. Warby Parker, for example, has developed from a cult online brand to a serious player that’s now opening its own stores. Vedovotto feels he shares a kinship with Warby Parker in terms of a startup’s flexibility and derring-do. And, ultimately, he believes this is what will get them through. ‘All the people here have the entrepreneurial spirit that is key to this initiative,’ he says. ‘This is the most difficult thing that any of us has done in our lives. But that’s the interesting part. It’s a challenge and a huge opportunity.’

As originally featured in the September 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*210)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Kering Eyewear website

Photography: Albrecht Fuchs

Magic realism is one of the many strengths of the famed fashion house of Alexander McQueen, and at this year's Salone del Mobile that symbolism was brought to life by leading set designer Shona Heath.

Created to celebrate this year's edition of the world's foremost furniture fair, the 'Bloom at Night' window installation featured hand-crafted, night blooming flowers, hummingbirds, bees and butterflies, all suspended in mid-air as if charmed or bewitched, with a background of similarly enchanted, climbing tree branches and vines.

Under the spell of McQueen's new eponymous parfum – exclusively launched in Italy on 14 April – the fragrance is as beguiling as the installation which it inspired. ‘I wanted this fragrance to come from night flowers, the kind that exude an eternal freshness once the day is gone,’ explains McQueen creative director Sarah Burton. And that it does. Sambac jasmine, tuberose and ylang-ylang essences meld together to create a scent that is at once powerful and delicate, sweet and sultry, and yet decidedly dark and powerful; cues made perfectly clear by Heath's entrancing display.

As is now tradition, Wallpaper* partnered with McQueen and gathered Salone del Mobile's most fashionable guests at the via Pietro Verri boutique to celebrate the creative display with a few drinks, before disappearing into the night, like Heath's fantastical set threatens to do.

Mood board: Alexander McQueen’s much loved symbolism of feathers, flowers, butterflies and birds were the foundation of this collection, which Sarah Burton elevated to more ethereally feminine heights. The additional motif of a pocketwatch, embroidered on coats in the very first looks added a sense of suspense and mystery.

Best in show: Towards the finale, glamourous dresses that are sure to reappear on the red carpet were dramatic and daring in their sensual sheerness. Gold lamé paneling, floral embroidery and the many tiny golden particles scattered all over, placed this collection near the realm of haute couture.

Finishing touches: Silver and gold floral hairpieces combined with chunky chains placed between messy wisps of hair continued the bejewelled theme in a way we’ve gotten used to from Burton, mixing the delicate and refined with the severe. 

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans

Mood board: Military jackets, antique silver sequin embroidery and oversized painterly floral prints continued the trusted Alexander McQueen attitude to youthful tailoring, while pinstripe suits and clean white shirts under jumpers showed the brand’s connection to tradition is never far away.

Scene setting: Staged at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Sarah Burton chose an impressive architectural venue that combined grandeur with straightforward construction.

Finishing touches: Rebellious and controversial piercings through cheeks and Huguenot crosses on lapels added a harshness that seemed to mimic the venue’s metal and glass ceiling framework.

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans

The world of Alexander McQueen is one which is based on dualities; fragility and strength, tradition and modernity, subversion and luxury. And all of these complex partnerships are on display within the brand’s newly opened Paris flagship, designed in collaboration with McQueen creative director Sarah Burton and David Collins Studio.

Located on rue Saint Honoré, the light strewn boutique is housed within a 1717 building and spreads across two floors. Here, customers are invited to shop the brand's current men’s and women’s collections in addition to iconic pieces from the masion's archive.

The ground floor, which unites women’s ready-to-wear and accessories, introduces the store's dusty pink carpeting and illustrative wallpaper alongside black lacquered parquet flooring and white plaster panelling. Large wall niches are similarly lined in pink and white onyx to display the house's formidable accessory remit.

The lower ground floor, which accomodates menswear and eveningwear, has a more dramatic, masculine feel and is dominated by two large black and gold brocade rugs from McQueen’s collaboration with The Rug Company. These two floors are connected by a spectacular staircase, fashioned from a monolithic block of Nero Marquina marble, with white onyx handrails and polished brass detailing. Other design highlights include fitting rooms upholstered in nova-suede, flora, fauna and skulls moulded in plaster and furniture gems from Giò Ponti and Jacques Duval-Brasseur.

INFORMATION

Alexander McQueen
372 Rue Saint Honoré
75001 Paris

Mood board: Tussled, torn, and at times tattered, Sarah Burton sent out a collection seeped in the patina of beautiful old age. Victorian-like frills, sharp shoulders and elongated lines characterised the collection, but were softened in feminine shades of blush and pink. Amongst all the ruching and tiers of fluttering chiffon, Burton also threw in some sporty tailored pieces, wide legged trousers and street-chain regalia.

Best in show: Wizardly workmanship continues to define the house under Burton’s watch. This season saw a flurry of very cool net body suit dresses with white yard stitching and cream frock coats and flounced dresses made from Indian-like textiles that glimmered with tiny mirror disc embroideries. Also noteworthy? The intricately encrusted denim wear and fantasy peacock lace gowns followed by tattered tulle.

Finishing touches: The footwear this season took a flight of fancy on wooden sandal platforms inlaid with shiny silver metal and vamps made from embroidered canvas. Every once in a while, things went down to the ground with the new urban vibe, including the new sneaker soled slip-on shoe. A girl’s gotta walk, after all.

INFORMATION

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans

Prada: Miuccia Prada’s alluring S/S 2016 invitation comprised a trio of acetate sheets that created a lens effect when moved over each other. Ensuring their safe arrival was a black plastic envelope with a press effect

Dior Homme: M/M (Paris) quoted Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung – ‘in all disorder a secret order’ – on its illustrated poster-sized invitation

Paul Smith: Sir Paul Smith championed an ‘independent mind’ for S/S, with this mantra adorning a luxurious, black cashmere handkerchief

Yohji Yamamoto: The designer set the tone for his Paris show with a brown paper bag invitation. On one side, a sketch of a near-naked man clad in hot pants declared ‘I’m for rent’, with show details on the reverse

Louis Vuitton: Louis Vuitton delivered its spring/summer show details on a grey mountboard, debossed with its signature monogram pattern, and names elegantly scribed overleaf in navy blue ink. Kim Jones also enclosd a second invitation – letter-pressed with a blue rope motif and edged in blue - that summoned us to Paris boutique Colette to view the house’s A/W 2015  collection drop in store

Saint Laurent: The work of American artist and sculptor Billy Al Bengston was the latest to grace the next edition in Hedi Slimane’s sleek series of booklet invitations. The 81-year-old artist - best known for his soft-focus, geometric paintings and association with surfing subculture - offered up the perfect visual prelude to Slimane’s southern Californian soujourn

Wooyoungmi: Woo Youngmi and Katie Chung joined a number of designers looking upwards to the final frontier for inspiration this season. Their invitation, printed on textured card, depicted the moon in different phases

Kenzo: A mirror-effect duplex mountboard alluded to Carol Lim and Humberto Leon’s interplanetary space race. Housed in a taupe envelope with the house’s name printed in a pleasing, mint-green foil, the invitation was our one-way ticket to the cosmos. We have lift-off!

Alexander McQueen: The prologue to Alexander McQueen's S/S 2016 show was the vintage, black-and-white portrait of a tattooed man on the front of each invitation – later referenced on the runway through silk scarves in a tattoo print and complimenting cuffs. Printed on textured card with a UV-varnish, the invitation arrived in a ghostly tissue paper envelope

Coach: Stuart Vevers opted for a heavy, mountboard invitation, edged in purple, to announce his debut LC:M show. An abstract graphic – clouds billowing over a rocky texture – hinted at the psychedelic medley of textures and hues that were to come

Oliver Spencer: The London menswear brand has us seeing shapes – shapes drawn from the oeuvre of American minimalist sculptor Richard Serra to be precise. Its invitation riffed on Serra’s large-scale sheet metal works, featuring a medley of red, interlocking circles and triangles on off-white card

Richard James: Heralding the Savile Row tailor’s trek to Las Pozas – the pseudo 'ancient ruin' created by eccentric English poet and surrealist Edward James – was a triplex card, illustrating the silhouette of one of Las Pozas’ concrete structures emerging from the rainforest

Junya Watanabe Man: The Japanese designer’s theme this season was ‘Faraway’ – more specifically Africa. To wit, a poster invitation transported us there pre-show through an image featuring a figure standing tall over the lush, exotic landscape

Raf Simons: Mr Simons’ simply elegant invitation – a subtle, white card with names handwritten and the show details printed overleaf – gave nothing away. Who would have guessed he had a blitzing techno-rave in store for us this season?

Issey Miyake: This season, Issey Miyake’s menswear designer Yusuke Takahashi was enamored by photographer Yoshinori Mizutani’s series Tokyo Parrots. Alluding to the collection's theme of urban nature, the invitation featured one of Mizutani’s vibrant images

Studio Wieki Somers and Kvadrat took up residence at Alexander McQueen's Milan boutique during Salone del Mobile with a mystical installation. 

Titled 'Blossom Rain', it was inspired by McQueen's Spring/Summer 2015 collection and featured three geisha warriors holding a series of lamps against a bloom-like, hazy backdrop of laser cut Kvadrat textiles.

Along with the compelling window dressings, the Via Verri home of McQueen also played host to the magic realism of Studio Wieki Somers, including their famous 'Mitate' and 'Frozen in Time' pieces, as well as more recent works like 'Time Flies', 'Sprout' and 'Magic Mirror'.

Comprising Wieki Somers and Dylan van den Berg, the Rotterdam-based design duo is known for its whimsical designs, always anchored in history, immaculately engineered and with a natural way of introducing a touch of fantasy to the otherwise mundane. Paired with the distinctive garments of the famous fashion house, the effect was overall quixotic.

To celebrate the partnership, the Wallpaper* team hosted a party, inviting some of the most fashionable guests of Salone del Mobile to wander around the Milanese boutique and take in the sights, along with a glass or two champagne. 

'You've got to know the rules to break them,' Alexander McQueen once said, 'That's what I'm here for; to demolish the rules but to keep tradition.' Designer, influencer, visionary, trendsetter, sometime anarchist, McQueen was a showman like no other. His fashion week presentations doubled as theatre; raw, gritty, thematic, sometimes disturbing, but always thought-provoking, and his retrospective 'Savage Beauty' at London's V&A is spun from the same golden thread.

The show expands upon New York's Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's initial exhibition of the same name, and now includes 240 ensembles lent by private collectors including Katy England, Annabelle Neilson and the Isabella Blow Collection.

In addition to showcasing McQueen's tremendous skill and expertise within the fashion realm of pattern-making and drape, it also chronicles his collection's narratives as a platform to re-examine history and debate current affairs. From the Stanley Kubrick-inspired 'The Shining' runway snowstorm of 1999's to 2006's 'The Widows of Culloden' which famously saw Kate Moss floating above the audience like a ghostly hologram.

The son of an East End taxi driver, McQueen was first and foremost a champion of London. His creativity in cut and construction derived from his early training on London's Savile Row as a tailor's apprentice from the age of 15, followed by tuition at Central Saint Martins; his draping and dressmaking skills developed during his tenure as creative director at Givenchy in Paris.

Just as his shows began in gritty industrial locations on shoestring budgets, so too does this exhibition, the design itself conceived by his former production company Gainsbury and Whiting. It opens amidst humble concrete rendered surrounds, which house examples of his early tailoring, slashed lace and shredded leather. The next room, by contrast, is dominated by gilt gold frames that mount his darker Victorian dramatics and focus on metamorphic female forms through his black swan gown. Next up: a bone-clad cave which unearths his romantic primitivism - tapping into his fascination with tribalism and ancient African civilisations. A regal, wood panelled chamber furthermore hosts his queenly works, championing royal regalia and his ode to the Scottish kilt.

Then it's onto the exhibition's cabinet of curiosities, which focuses on McQueen's fetishes including collaborations with Philip Treacy for millinery and Shaun Leane's thematic jewellery. Another career highlight captured here is S/S 1999's 'No 13' finale that saw Shalom Harlow standing on a turntable dressed in a buckled white dress being sprayed with paint by two robot arms.

Some of his most haute gowns are later housed within wooden and glass vitrines, before we enter the white tiled set of Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance' clip. McQueen's 'Plato's Atlantis' 2010 show debuted the track via live streaming, and this offering draws together his glittering Swarovski crystal mini-crini dresses and those iconic armadillo heels.

'I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting, so that when I'm dead and gone people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.' This show sets that statement in stone.

The exhibition's fitting denouement is McQueen's 'Asylum' collection that was staged inside a two-way mirrored box whereby the audience was reflected in the glass before the show began, but once it started, the caged models could not see out. 'It was about trying to trap something that wasn't conventionally beautiful to show that beauty comes from within,' reverberates his quote, immortalised on a nearby wall.

The exhibition's denouement is McQueen's 'Asylum' collection that was staged inside a two-way mirrored box whereby the audience was reflected in the glass before the show began, but once it started, the caged models could not see out. 'It was about trying to trap something that wasn't conventionally beautiful to show that beauty comes from within,' reverberates his quote, immortalised on a wall nearby. Courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum London

ADDRESS

V&A
Cromwell Road
London, SW7 2RL

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Mood board: Eschewing her hard-edged, cinched-up women of late, Sarah Burton delivered an Alexander McQueen show seeped in romanticism and swirling around a vortex of 19th century trimmings.

Best in show: Thanks to Burton's stewardship, the torch of wizardly workmanship continues to flicker at McQueen on such masterpieces as a blood red dress whose skirt whirled around the legs like blooming roses made from paper-thin sheets of chiffon and tulle.

Finishing touches: Along with the reddish eyeshadow and hair teased up into bird nest dimensions, the ladies wore sock-booties made from lace or trimmed in ruched silk tulle.

Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans

Mood Board: Count on Sarah Burton to imbue Alexander McQueen’s A/W 2015 collection with wartime references, a subject largely side-stepped by LC:M designers, however timely. Sombre stripes, military khaki and melancholy brocade florals dominated, bar for a pop of varying tones of blue at the end.

Best in show: The motto 'all men are equal in the face of duty, sharing equal honour, valour and truth', called forth the mentality of the Regency era, a time of war but also of an elegant Prince Regent. Those three powerful concepts, emblazoned across the opening pieces, were reminders of humankind’s ideal principles.

Finishing touches: Silver-tone and black medals placed on rigid uniforms added glamour to an otherwise moody show, as did the embellished and patent leather footwear.