Haute Couture Week represents the rarified pinnacle of the fashion calendar, taking place each year in January and June or July in Paris. To be considered a couture house – and show as part of the official schedule – you must adhere to a series of rules set by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM). Notably, garments must be made to order for clients using a dedicated couture atelier of over 15 staff and 20 technical workers, with participants showing more than 50 designs twice a year (several of fashion’s biggest names, including Chanel, Dior and Armani, have couture arms, and present during the week). The FHCM also chooses a series of guest designers to show each season, while off-schedule events take place across the city – including the presentation of high jewellery collections in showrooms in and around Place Vendôme.

Held this season from 6-9 July, the A/W 2026 edition of Haute Couture Week looks set to be defined by a pervading newness: Pierpaolo Piccioli and Duran Lantink will show their first couture collections for Balenciaga and Jean Paul Gaultier respectively, while Olivier Theyskens – formerly of Rochas, Nina Ricci and Theory – will debut his new label, Boloria. Meanwhile at Chanel and Dior, Matthieu Blazy and Jonathan Anderson, respectively, will host their sophomore haute couture collections, after lauded debuts earlier this year. Rounding out the schedule are shows from Schiaparelli, Armani Privé, Viktor & Rolf, as well as a debut on the schedule from London-based label Standing Ground.

In anticipation, we break down all the moments to look out for at Haute Couture Week A/W 2026.

There will be debuts at Balenciaga and Jean Paul Gaultier

On Wednesday 8 July, there will be a duo of debuts at two of haute couture’s major houses: Balenciaga and Jean Paul Gaultier. At the former, Pierpaolo Piccioli will show his first couture collection for Balenciaga, taking the mantle from Demna, who reinstated the house’s haute couture arm in 2021 (the Georgian designer’s couture collections were critically acclaimed in their subversion of the historic medium, with memorable moments comprising haute couture ‘jeans’ and runway appearances from Kim Kardashian, Nicole Kidman and Dua Lipa). Piccioli is no rookie when it comes to haute couture, though: his memorable collections for Valentino were some of the most lauded of recent times.

At Jean Paul Gaultier, Dutch designer Duran Lantink will host his first haute couture show at the house, having presented two ready-to-wear collections at Paris Fashion Week in recent seasons. Expect the unexpected from the boundary-pushing designer: his debut was a polarising take on the French house’s codes, featuring bodysuits printed with the naked body. ‘I’m trying to break free of what’s considered good taste,’ he told Wallpaper* in our March 2026 Style Issue.

As well as sophomore shows at Chanel and Dior

Last season was marked by its blockbuster debuts: there was something of a fashion arms race as Matthieu Blazy at Chanel and Jonathan Anderson at Dior showed their first couture collections (both for the houses, and personally, having previously worked at Bottega Veneta and Loewe respectively, which do not have couture offerings). Both presented different – but equally beguiling – debut collections, with Blazy striving for impossible lightness (memorably, a pair of ‘jeans’ were cut from featherweight organza) and Anderson conjuring a series of bold sculptural forms, inspired by the contours of Magdalene Odundo’s ceramics, which bloomed with floral adornment. ‘You realise that that's why we love clothing – it's this idea of the make,’ Anderson said of his first experience in the medium. ‘Couture is really a dying craft; it’s nearly instinct. There are only a few houses doing it. So in a weird way, it’s about protecting that.’

London label Standing Ground will join the schedule

The acclaimed Irish designer Michael Stewart, who started his label Standing Ground in 2022 after graduating from the Royal Academy of Art, has never been one to stick to the typical fashion schedule. In fact, he hasn’t shown on the runway since 2024, preferring instead to either present via cinematic lookbooks or simply work directly with the clients who purchase his designs. This season, Stewart will show as a guest of Haute Couture Week on the evening of Monday 6 July, a decision that tracks with the designer’s vision: his elongated, columnar silhouettes are painstakingly constructed by hand and to the wearer’s body, in an echo of the couture atelier. Winning the Savoir Faire award at the 2024 LVMH Prize, expect a continuation of his distinctive aesthetic, which marries the graceful forms of ancient standing stones with a more futuristic sensibility, where body-clinging contours and ectomorph-like protrusions have an HR Giger-esque bent.

Fendi will show in Rome

Maria Grazia Chiuri will host her first haute couture show for Fendi not in Paris – where the house has shown traditionally, and did so under previous creative director Kim Jones – but in Rome, the home city of both the designer and the house. Taking place on 9 July (many editors will fly straight from Paris to Rome for the show), it will unfold at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea – a nod to both Chiuri’s longtime collaboration with the art world, and the location of a new exhibition, ‘After, a Creative Journey. Fendi / Karl Lagerfeld 1985’. Marking just her second outing for Fendi, after a debut ready-to-wear show in Milan in February, the event will see guests move straight from show to exhibition preview, ahead of the latter’s opening to the public the next day, on 10 July.

Olivier Theyskens will reveal his new label, Boloria

The Belgian designer Olivier Theyskens, who began his eponymous label in the mid-1990s before roles at Rochas, Nina Ricci and Theory, is often seen as one of fashion’s most prodigious talents, forging a darkly romantic aesthetic that borrowed from historical costuming with an industrial edge (Madonna was an early fan, wearing a memorable corseted yellow dress for the VH1 Fashion Awards in 1998). On the eve of Haute Couture Week, 5 July, Theyskens will make his return, debuting Boloria, a new label led by the designer. Fellow Belgian Willy Vanderperre shot the teaser images for the brand, which is based in Antwerp and intriguingly funded by Weareone.world, a Belgian company that runs the Tomorrowland music festivals. What to expect? ‘[The] distinctly Belgian values – sensitivity, integrity, emotional resonance – that have always inspired Theyskens’ work and approach to fashion,’ said a statement when the news was revealed earlier this year.

A landmark Maison Martin Margiela auction will take place

For the wealthy few, Haute Couture Week is one for shopping: fashion house’s top-spending clients attend to shows to select the looks that they will purchase over a given season (they are then remade to the exact measurements of their body, and oftentimes in an edition of one). But, for those after something even rarer – or, at least, a definitive piece of fashion history – an unprecedented auction will take place on 9 July at 2pm in Paris, featuring 200 pieces from legendary Belgian designer Martin Margiela’s personal collection (known for staying entirely anonymous, he founded his highly influential eponymous house, Maison Martin Margiela in 1988, before leaving in 2009). Held in collaboration between Paris’ Maurice Auction and London’s Kerry Taylor Auctions, it will span clothing, photography and ephemera. ‘These objects are like holy relics of fashion; they’re part of a great mythology, which is a real dream for an auctioneer,’ Kerry Taylor Auctions’ Alex Baddeley told Wallpaper*.

READ: This auction sees Martin Margiela’s personal archive go on sale for the first time: ‘These are the holy relics of fashion’

This evening (16 June 2026), guests will gather in the cloisters of Florence’s Santa Maria Novella Church for a dinner hosted by the Umbrian designer Brunello Cucinelli – a twice-yearly tradition that marks the opening of Pitti Uomo, the historic Florentine menswear fair. And with it, the beginning of Men’s Fashion Month: after Florence, there are stops in Milan and Paris across a 12-day schedule which will see S/S 2027 menswear offerings from fashion’s biggest houses – among them Prada, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent – as well as a raft of newer names. By the time Paris wraps up on 28 June 2026, we will have the blueprint of how menswear might look a year from now, and no doubt plenty to mull over: this looks to be a season of consolidation and world-building as relatively new creative directors settle into their tenures and others steady the ship amid the backdrop of a global luxury slowdown.

And, while the schedule is certainly lighter than its womenswear counterpart (the S/S 2027 women’s shows will take place in September, and traditionally have a busier line-up), plenty of intriguing moments remain – from Simone Rocha’s first dedicated menswear show (she will be a guest designer at Pitti Uomo, showing in the historic Teatro Della Pergola), to calendar shift-ups, designer returns and (a small handful) of debuts. We've picked the eight moments to look out for this Men’s Fashion Month S/S 2027 below.

Simone Rocha will be Pitti Uomo’s guest star

Historic menswear fair Pitti Uomo, taking place in Florence twice-yearly, marks the start of Men’s Fashion Month each season, centring around the 14th-century Fortezza da Basso. But alongside the main fair – where you will find stands from Brunello Cucinelli, Herno and the like – organisers invite a number of guest designers to show each season in locations around the city (previous guests have included Raf Simons, Martine Rose and Grace Wales Bonner, alongside numerous fashion houses). This time, it is the turn of Irish designer Simone Rocha, who will host her first dedicated menswear show on Thursday 18 June at the 17th-century Teatro Della Pergola, an opera house and theatre that is one of the oldest in Italy (previously she has presented menswear as part of her womenswear show, or via lookbook). ‘I would like to thank Pitti Uomo for their generous invitation to present my first independent menswear show on the men's calendar,’ she said when the news was announced, elucidating that she will use the moment to show ‘the length and breadth of [her] menswear proposition... [and] a new chapter in my work and world.’

Two menswear greats will return to Milan

Milan is well known for its sartorial prowess – particularly when it comes to men’s tailoring – something that has drawn two legendary international designers back to Milan Fashion Week Men’s this season. They are Paul Smith, who has shown in the city for a handful of seasons now, and Ralph Lauren, who returned to the Milan schedule in January of this year, marking the American designer’s first Italian menswear show in two decades. Both will show in their headquarters in the city: the former on Viale Umbria, the latter at Palazzo Ralph Lauren, which resides in an imposing 1941 Mino Fiocchi-designed building formerly known as Casa Campanini-Bonomi. Both will likely be celebratory affairs: particularly for Smith, who will turn 80 in July and use the latter half of the year to celebrate the landmark, including the release of an autobiography, Threads: My Life in Style, in September.

While Thom Browne will make his Milan Fashion Week Men’s debut

American designer Thom Browne has adopted something of a travelling schedule for his runway shows in recent seasons, showing between Paris and his native New York, as well as a one-off show in San Francisco earlier this year to coincide with the Super Bowl (Browne’s tailoring is a favourite among American athletes, and NFL players DeAndre Hopkins, Justin Jefferson and Steeler Marcus Allen walked the show). This season, though, he is breaking new ground: a runway show in Milan on Monday 22 June will mark his debut in the Italian city. Apart from the venue, the neoclassical Palazzo Serbelloni, little has been revealed about the show – though, if his previous outings are any indication, expect his usual eye for fantasy and play (his last menswear show, in Paris, for example, featured enormous glittering alien heads, worn by the models as masks).

Saint Laurent is back to opening Paris Fashion Week Men’s

Last June, Saint Laurent opened Men’s Fashion Week with a S/S 2026 collection that transported guests from ‘Paris to Fire Island’ amid a serene installation by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection (it comprised a circular pool on which a series of bowls floated across its glimmering blue surface). This season, the house will return to its first-day slot (for A/W 2026, in January, it ended proceedings) with a menswear show that is expected to take place in the contemporary art gallery. It will be followed that evening by another blockbuster show: the latest Louis Vuitton menswear collection by Pharrell Williams, which will take place at 9pm in an as-yet-undisclosed location.

All eyes will be on Jonathan Anderson’s Dior Men

Three seasons in, Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson has succeeded in making Dior one of fashion’s most talked-about houses: case in point, a Hollywood-inspired Cruise 2027 in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in May, which alongside a starry front row (Sabrina Carpenter, Miley Cyrus and Al Pacino were all in attendance), featured collaborations with artist Ed Ruscha and milliner Philip Treacy (fittingly, one of the headpieces spelt out ‘Buzz’ in feathers). On Wednesday 24 June, he will return to Dior’s home city for his S/S 2027 menswear show – arguably the most anticipated on the Paris Fashion Week Men’s schedule, following an acclaimed A/W 2026 show that drew inspiration from the outré stylings of couturier Paul Poiret and his infamous Belle Époque dinner parties.

Sarah Burton will reveal her vision for Givenchy menswear

Sarah Burton has shown three womenswear collections on the runway since the beginning of her tenure at Givenchy (she came to the house from Alexander McQueen, where she succeeded the eponymous designer as creative director); this season, in Paris, she will begin to expand her Givenchy universe with her first dedicated menswear presentation. Because, despite overseeing commercial collections – as well as dressing figures like Timothée Chalamet for the red carpet – she is yet to formerly introduce her menswear vision for the Parisian house. What to expect? Some great tailoring, no doubt – Burton is adept when it comes to a pin-sharp suit – alongside the bold flourishes of colour and print which defined her critically lauded A/W 2026 womenswear show last season.

At Celine, Michael Rider will host a dedicated menswear show

An intimate presentation of Michael Rider’s first dedicated menswear collection for Celine – presented earlier this year in the brand’s headquarters – was one of the highlights of the A/W 2026 season, despite a lack of models and runway (the clothing was instead staged in a series of playful tableaus, while guests snacked on Celine-branded popcorn). For S/S 2027, the American designer – formerly of Polo Ralph Lauren, as well as Celine during Phoebe Philo’s tenure – will host a dedicated menswear show on the final Sunday of Paris Fashion Week. Expect the infusion of Parisian insouciance and Ivy League stylings that have become his signature – and won him a devoted legion of fans, as well as thousands more aping the look in Instagram GRWMs, from colourful sweaters slung around the waist to rugby shirts and sliced-away ties.

London label Studio Nicholson will make its runway debut

This menswear season is suprisingly light on debuts, either from fledgling labels or major houses welcoming a new creative director. Studio Nicholson is an exception, though it also doesn’t fit into either camp: founded in 2010 by Nick Wakeman, the London-based label has already established itself as a cult destination for those who favour a simplicity of design and high-quality fabrications. But, while the brand has undertaken high-profile collaborations with the likes of Zara, it has never hosted a traditional runway show, something that will change this season: Wakeman has opted to present a collection during Paris Fashion Week Men‘s. Taking place on Friday 26 June at Hotel d’Evreux in Place Vendôme. Comprising her men’s and women’s collections for S/S 2027, it is a new addition to the Paris Fashion Week Men’s schedule – others include Meryll Rogge’s first menswear presentation, 2025 LVMH Prize winner Soshiotsuki and Australian brand Song for the Mute.

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

There is something in the air this spring when it comes to exhibiting fashion. In London, the V&A hosts the UK’s first major retrospective of the work of Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli, framed in large part around her connection and complicity with the avant-garde art scene of the mid-20th century. The first Monday in May will see the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s ‘Costume Art’, with a gala event themed ‘Fashion is Art’. And at Lisbon’s Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, a new exhibition, curated by Eloy Martínez de la Pera Celada and very much in this same spirit, opened its doors last week.

In the Portuguese capital, the simply titled ‘Art & Fashion’, takes some of the most notable items in the museum’s collection, acquired by its namesake during his lifetime, as its starting point, and positions them alongside garments ranging from a peplumed coat from 1740 to an embroidered wedding dress from Sarah Burton’s debut at Givenchy for the A/W 2025 season. The exhibition’s conceit is simple, too: that the boundaries between the disciplines of fashion design and fine art are, essentially, moot.

‘Art & Fashion’ at Lisbon’s Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

The show opens with an introduction to Calouste Gulbenkian himself, a dandyish Armenian oil tycoon with a penchant for bespoke Savile Row tailoring, and, metaphorically at least, very deep pockets. His insatiable, voracious appetite for beautiful things was founded upon Ruskian principles: of beauty as a moral imperative, something that purifies, that makes us better. Whether or not this vast collection of beautiful objects – some 6,000 pieces in total – was enough to purify a man whose wealth was built on the exploitation of Middle Eastern petroleum reserves is debatable, but what is without question is the quality of his taste. ‘Art & Fashion’ is almost singular in its scope, for the reason that at its fingertips is an unparalleled array of works, from the ancient world to the Impressionists. The opportunity to position a Lacroix A/W 1992 look next to a Rembrandt oil painting is one that very few institutions can easily capitalise on, and it is instances like this that make the exhibition particularly impressive.

Grouped largely by the artworks’ regional provenance, the exhibition route is conceived to honour the way the museum usually displays its permanent collection, which is temporarily closed to the public while renovation works to the purpose-built Brutalist building are underway. An ebony funerary statue from the Thebes region of Egypt, depicting a man dressed in a shendyt and sculpted sometime between 2000 and 1990 BCE, takes its place next to a Yohji Yamamoto menswear look of a poplin shirt and pleated wool taffeta wrap skirt. Three 14th-century plates painted in blue and white find their echo in an exquisitely embroidered, sleeveless Dries Van Noten gown. Carpaccio’s Holy Family with Donors (1505) hangs behind pieces from Charles Frederick Worth, Mariano Fortuny, and Balenciaga, which mirror the clothes worn by the painting’s four central figures.

These are some of the more literal examples of art’s influence on fashion, of which there are many, and it is these that lend the show its most joyful moments. It’s impossible not to smile at the cute comparison between the splayed body of a hunted swan in a 1708 still life by Jan Weenix, and Manuel Pertegaz’s voluminous 1960 goose feather dress. Or the Virgin and child scene reimagined in oils by Renaissance painter Jan Gossaert, and then again in hand-painted silk by Alexander McQueen for Givenchy. But its best and most thought-provoking moments are where the comparisons move beyond aesthetic to something more conceptual – most particularly in the pairing of Yves Saint Laurent’s 1968 Saharienne jacket with various works by the French Impressionists. Both defiantly transgressive. Both radically changed the course of history in their respective disciplines.

The exhibition makes a persuasive argument for treating fashion and art as equals, but it does so in part by purposefully neglecting to establish a rulebook for what it means by fashion, and what it means by art. One is dealt with in very narrow terms, the other in very broad. Fashion is represented almost wholly by luxury ready-to-wear or haute couture – Guo Pei, Romeo Gigli, Versace, Madame Grès, Alaïa – with only one small nod to what we might call ‘popular fashion’, in the form of a shawl with traditional Nisa embroidery. Conversely, one of the first large-scale pieces on show from the permanent collection is, fittingly, a wardrobe, an incredible wardrobe – one attributed to André-Charles Boulle circa 1700, and rich with tortoiseshell and bronze marquetry – but a wardrobe nonetheless. The fashion is fashion of the highest form, the art is not just fine art, but applied and decorative too – functional pieces, craftwork, textiles, furniture, a picnic set, a hat-stand. By this logic, all beauty is art.

So bold a statement is worthy of Ruskin himself. The exhibition ends with another of his disciples: Edward Burne-Jones, whose The Mirror of Venus (1875) is mirrored again by a series of draping neo-classical gowns hung on mannequins in a frieze-like composition. It’s a dazzling finale, and a convincing case for the defence, in a debate that will doubtless continue well past this 2026 slew of exhibitions on the matter are over.

‘Art & Fashion’ at Calouste Gulbenkian Museum runs until 21 June 2026.

gulbenkian.pt

Each year for Milan Design Week, Stone Island stages a presentation that references its history of technical innovation while also keeping its gaze firmly towards the future. As the 2026 edition kicks off, this year is no different for the Italian brand: taking over a disused swimming pool within Capsule Plaza, Stone Island has collaborated with Milanese design studio NM3 to create an immersive, interactive space that prioritises culture and community.

The installation pays homage to ‘No Seasons’, a concept first introduced by Stone Island’s founder Massimo Osti in the late 1980s, that ran until 1994 and championed timelessness and technicality. Marking a new chapter of ‘No Seasons’, the space centres on one jacket, constructed in six different iterations of Stone Island’s storied fabrications: Tela Resinata, a resin-treated cotton canvas; Nylon Prismatico-TC, a high-shine nylon; Raso Gommato, a high-strength cotton-satin weave; David-TC, a technical Japanese polyester; Crinkle Reps NY, a textured recycled nylon; and Panno, a wool and nylon blend. Each garment is the same colour – ‘piombo’, a dark grey – allowing the differences in materiality and technical innovation to stand out.

The furnishings that surround the six jackets – which are shown in a series of vitrines at the back of the space – are the work of NM3, the studio founded in 2020 by architects Francesco Zorzi and Nicolò Ornaghi and photographer Delfino Sisto Legnani. Of this collaboration, Zorzi and Ornaghi say: ‘This was for us a great honour, as we have appreciated and worn Stone Island since we were very young. We have followed the evolution of the brand and are big fans.’

Visitors can sit on generous benches next to the ‘No Seasons’ jackets, the seats of which are upholstered in sections of the same six fabrics. ‘All the people who will participate in the installation can lay down on the sofa benches, touch and feel the different textiles with the garments looking on,’ Zorzi and Ornaghi explain. Looking up, an LED-screen ceiling will be showing artwork by Vittorio Maria Dal Maso of studio 700x100. The immersive experience is soundtracked by Friendly Pressure speakers – a continuation of Stone Island’s 2025 Milan Design Week presentation, which saw this specially designed sound system unveiled. This year, the same system is ‘renovated and reissued for 2026, featuring a patinated metal horn and faceplate, and retuned for enhanced clarity and emotional depth,’ NM3 explains. A week-long programme of cultural events, including live performances and talks, allows for ‘a strong focus on music and community within the space’.

For NM3, this collaboration made sense thanks to an affinity with Stone Island’s approach: ‘There is a mutual attention to detail in design, along with a shared commitment to research, particularly in the exploration of materials and finishes.’ Robert Triefus, Stone Island’s CEO and president, echoes this sentiment: ‘Milan Design Week offers us a different lens – one that allows Stone Island to step beyond the language of seasons and speak purely through material and process. On this occasion, our “No Seasons” installation distills this idea: an immersive, sensorial environment, where timeless materiality, form, and function are celebrated.’

Stone Island ‘No Seasons’ runs from 20-26 April 2026 at Capsule Plaza, Via Achille Maiocchu 8, Milan.

stoneisland.com

Follow our Milan Design Week live blog for more updates from Wallpaper* editors at the fair

The café is part of Milanese culture, from first thing in the morning (the traditional counter-top espresso) until apertivo hour at night (spritzes and negronis, alongside the requisite platter of accompanying snacks). In between, it serves as a stop-off for sandwiches, pastries and chatter – the perfect distillation of the rituals and rhythms of Milanese life.

For Milan Design Week 2026, which arrives in the city later this month, Italian fashion house Marni will take over one of these institutions for a three-month-long pop-up staged in collaboration with RedDuo Studio, a Milan-based interiors studio. The café in question is Pasticceria Cucchi, which was founded in 1936 by Luigi and Vittorina Cucchi and attracted a fashionable coterie of guests – from poets to artists and socialites – with jazz music and live performances. Now, it is being re-established as a gathering spot once again, by the Monti family, heirs to the late Giacomo Bulleri, one of Milan’s best-known gastronomic names.

Titled Marni x Cucchi, the takeover is a celebration of the café as a ‘stage for gestures and habits’, something captured in the event’s sceneography, which centres on a series of co-branded ephemera and objects – from sugar packets and takeaway coffee cups to plates, milk jugs and textiles, even staff uniforms (the cappuccino and coffee cups will be available from Marni’s Via Montenapoleone boutique). Bold, graphic motifs, reminiscent of midcentury design, are set to run throughout – from stripes to polka dots – while a joint logo features both Marni and Pasticceria Cucchi’s distinctive branding.

Throughout the three months, the café is set to become a stylish watering hole. While it will be open from 7.30am for morning coffee, through to 9.30pm, aperitivo hour is set to be the focus, with a special ‘Spritz Menu’ curated by Martini (Bianco and Bitter Spritzes promise ‘a contemporary expression of Italy’s aperitivo culture’). Meanwhile, a line-up of live musical performances each Thursday evening will nod to Pasticceria Cucchi’s origins as a caffé-concerto.

This project will also mark the first Design Week happening from Marni under current creative director Meryll Rogge, who showed her first collection for the house earlier this year at Milan Fashion Week. It’s clear that forging connections with the design world will be a big part of her tenure: her first show, for A/W 2026, comprised a set by research-based design agency Formafantasma (Wallpaper* Designers of the Year in 2021, and the creators of the 2026 Design Awards trophy).

The ‘familiar yer unsettled’ set – which recalled the anonymous entranceway to an office or apartment block, with paintings of quotidien objects decorating the space – served as a reflection of the Belgian designer’s approach to Marni. ‘I have a very personal connection to Marni. It’s a brand that shaped my design sensibility during my formative years, and through the show I wanted to acknowledge that sense of familiarity,’ she told Wallpaper* at the time. ‘Something real, unpretentious, open – but without suggesting a specific place.’

Marni x Cucchi runs from 20 April – 15 July 2026, 7.30am – 9.30pm, at Pasticceria Cucchi, Milan

It wasn’t Roland Penrose, nor was it Herbert Read. It wasn’t André Breton, nor even Peggy Guggenheim. No, it was Elsa Schiaparelli who first brought surrealism to London – three years before the landmark London ‘International Surrealist Exhibition’ opened in 1936. When the Italian fashion designer introduced her extraordinary designs to Britain via her Mayfair store, it became the first surrealist space in the country. It is hard to imagine how the sight of this very foreign incarnation of flamboyance and glamour would have appeared to Depression-era Londoners, but, of course, Schiaparelli lived to shock.

This revelation, of the designer’s immeasurable impact on British art and cultural history, is brought to the fore at V&A South Kensington’s excellent ‘Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art’, which opens on 28 March 2026. The first of its kind in the UK, the show comprises over 200 objects, including garments, accessories, jewellery, paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture and perfumes, from the 1920s to the present day – with a particular emphasis on the reciprocal relationship that Schiap, as she was known, had with the avant-garde art scene of interwar Europe.

‘Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art’ at the V&A

‘It started,’ we are told, ‘with a sweater.’ In 1927, Schiap debuted her famous tromp l’oeil sweater, a black-and-white knit with a bow effect in pour le sport style, by wearing it herself to a party. It was an instant hit, and the ‘things are not as they seem’ approach to design remained a hallmark of her creations for the rest of her life. In fact, Schiap’s cultural fluency, which put her totally in step with the modernist zeitgeist, was already being cultivated pre-sweater. Born to an erudite, aristocratic family in Rome’s Palazzo Corsini, today a Baroque art museum, Schiap was exposed to modern art from an early age, attending lectures given by Italian futurists and later moving in bohemian circles following a move to New York City during her short-lived marriage. It was here she was introduced by her friends Gaby and Francis Picabia to some of the key players in the nascent surrealist movement – relationships that would shape the direction of her work for years to come.

What did this influence look like? Unlike some of the other artists in Breton’s surrealist orbit, Schiap wasn’t utilising techniques such as automatic drawing or harnessing the subconscious to unlock creative potential, yet her preoccupation with quintessential surrealist themes and motifs – the uncanny, the fragmented, the animalistic – placed her firmly within their world. A silk dress from the 1938 ‘Circus’ collection is printed to look like fabric being torn away to expose pink negative space beneath; the inspiration for the silhouette is taken from Salvador Dalí’s Necrophiliac Spring (1936), but the tromp l’oeil is pure René Magritte. An evening coat designed in collaboration with the artist, poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau features the double image of two faces in profile and a vase of roses in bloom atop a plinth. A sculptural evening coat from circa 1937, made from bulbous gilt braid, sits somewhere between scarecrow and papal cassock. Virtually every fastening, whether zip or button, is an opportunity for intrigue: a smart wool suit is finished with discreet buttons featuring Commedia dell'arte masks, a sleeveless, body-contouring dress of ruched silk jersey features a suggestive front zip from hem to belly button.

‘I think it's interesting how Schiaparelli's fashion kind of flips a surrealist interest, particularly in accessories,’ Dr Rosalind McKever, the V&A’s curator of paintings and drawings, tells Wallpaper*. ‘Gloves, hats, shoes are all fetishised objects which were of real interest to the surrealists because of their ability to stand in for fragmented body parts. And so Schiaparelli takes those images, and kind of flips them back on themselves.’ If it feels as though design is fundamentally at odds with surrealist methodology, then objects such as these say otherwise.

Like others in the movement, Schiap was an enthusiastic collaborator. The exhibition is peppered with examples of works created in conjunction with her artistic contemporaries, from the iconic bust-shaped perfume bottle for ‘Shocking’, designed by Argentinian artist Leonor Fini, to the A-line dress with Dalí’s phallic painted-lobster printed onto its skirt, worn by Wallis Simpson before her marriage to Edward VIII, or a painted screen and Garden of Earthly Delights-esque collage by Marcel Vertès.

Daniel Roseberry, creative director for the house since 2019, following its resurrection five years prior, explains the importance of these exchanges. ‘There was a distance between culture and most French couture houses back then,’ he tells Wallpaper*. ‘Elsa’s focus wasn't just on good taste or lifestyle or even beauty, it was more cerebral than that. It was about how the expression of the surreal can create a more intimate connection between art, pop culture and fashion and between the designer and client.’

Roseberry’s contemporary take on Schiap’s original propositions also plays a role in the show – and presents a very clear picture of just how culture has changed in the years since her death, in 1973. Where Schiap’s designs are full of subtle witticisms and cheeky visual puns, Roseberry’s tenure at the brand reads more like a nuclear bomb – bold, and unmissable. What was shocking or outrageous then just won’t cut it in the attention economy, and so the solution for Roseberry is to go bigger. ‘I think that this age will be remembered less for global conflict and more for the rise of social media, alternate realities and the lack of connection that we have with each other,’ he says. ‘The language that Elsa used to address her political reality, we're using to address our digital reality.

‘My mission now is to pierce that digital veil and create moments of lasting connection. Fashion is ancient, it’s pre-biblical,’ he continues. ‘People are always going to want to decorate, adorn, and express, but we've never lived in a more performative era. Designing a link between expression and genuine connection is something that feels urgent.’

‘Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art’ runs at the V&A from 28 March 2026

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‘Looking at Helmut Lang’s store architecture, it became obvious: his stores were all about directing the gaze. This is also what exhibitions need to do, but here it was essential. A photo wouldn’t suffice; you have to experience it,’ says Marlies Wirth, curator of ‘Helmut Lang: Séance de Travail 1986-2005’, the first retrospective of the Austrian designer’s oeuvre, now open at Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK).

It is a statement that encapsulates the extraordinary precision and intelligence behind Helmut Lang, who shaped the look of modern fashion in the 1990s with his cool, razor-sharp minimalism and continues to influence today (he is one of contemporary fashion’s most oft-referenced designers, alongside Martin Margiela). In MAK, every detail of the space has been choreographed to immerse visitors in his world: even the floor itself maps the layout and name tags of front-row guests – from Isabella Blow to Edward Enninful – of a runway show, or ‘Séance de Travail’, as Lang liked to call them.

‘Here is another European designer who literally brought the water to the well… of course I had an out-of-body experience at a Helmut Lang show,’ says the late Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley in an archival interview, discussing Lang’s A/W 2002 collection, that plays in one exhibition room. Another is filled with screens showing rare runway footage, backstage fittings, and further interviews, including with Lang himself. It is clear from the display that identity, for him, was a gradient: a man could wear a transparent shirt; a woman could wear sharply tailored, clean-cut, menswear-inspired jackets. There is an almost architectural discipline to the work: lean, aerodynamic lines run throughout, and silhouettes feel sliced in a single decisive gesture.

‘He didn’t formally study fashion,’ Wirth continues. ‘He grew up in the countryside; his grandfather was a shoemaker. He was exposed early on to workwear and utility wear, and said in interviews that he was fascinated by how things make sense when you understand their purpose. If a shoe looks a certain way because it needs to function, you understand the logic.’

This is clear from some of the garments in the archive, like the ‘Astro Biker Jacket’ from the A/W 1999 collection, which combines elements of classic motorcycle gear with references to astronautics and aeronautical engineering. Its metallic finish feels almost extraterrestrial, while concealed straps and a foldaway harness – meant to be worn on the back when the jacket isn’t being worn – give it Lang’s signature mix of futurism and functionality. Alongside his practical designs, he drew on images, such as Robert Mapplethorpe’s stark, coded photography – a perennial reference. Even his branding was memorably minimal: in two vitrines in the exhibition are objects from his famous late 1990s campaigns, which saw New York cabs emblazoned with ‘Helmut Lang’, no clothes on show. The brand spoke for itself.

But Lang’s minimalism was anything but muted. From lacquered eel skin to sheer, cut-out mesh tops, his mostly monochrome lines were punctuated with flashes of texture and fluorescent colour. Strips of leather became dresses on the body; light-wash jeans bore splashes of white paint; while stingray skirts paired with diaphanous tops, and latex-lace dresses, balanced fetish and fragility. Even bursts of cerulean or citron interrupted his mostly monochrome palette. Though some of these garments are displayed in the exhibition as physical objects, they are largely captured through runway film, ephemera and campaigns.

Instead, Lang’s conviction that clothing and space are inseparable provides the throughline of the exhibition. Sections of his Paris and New York flagships are recreated as sculptural environments, with sleek black cube dividers by Richard Gluckman sitting alongside Jenny Holzer LED texts (Lang undertook numerous collaborations with artists during his career in fashion; since exiting his label, he is now an artist himself). ‘How do I communicate to visitors how special these stores were? Not just because they sometimes casually housed incredible artworks, including Louise Bourgeois’ metal spider sculptures, but because their architecture made you look a certain way,’ Wirth says, speaking about the exhibition design.

‘It was clear there needed to be a section devoted to backstage,’ she continues. ‘And backstage not only in the literal sense, with footage from the Paris shows, but as a lens on work-in-progress and process.’ Life-size video installations allow visitors to experience the original ‘Séance de Travail’ presentations with their original soundtracks, while lookbooks, Polaroids and fittings also feature. ‘From 1993, his collaboration with Juergen Teller brought new intensity. Immediacy, fragility, and fragmentary perspectives replaced the externally constructed visual aesthetic typical of fashion photography and gave backstage photography increased public visibility.’

Lang and Teller established a new model of visual communication that not only reshaped the image culture of the 1990s but has become a defining component of contemporary fashion and advertising photography. Fashion commentator Simon Doonan famously observed that Lang ‘casts his shows like a Fassbinder movie’. Cinematic and precise, the runways often mixed Viennese friends, like photographer Elfie Semotan, with models who defined 1990s minimalism: Stella Tennant, Amber Valletta, and even Kate Moss, at the height of her fame, appeared for a look. Among the vitrines displaying Lang’s archive are staff notes, including one from December 2004 that reads: ‘Sent Bill Murray, who seems to be getting quite a bit of press lately, some clothes for the cover of Time magazine. Maybe he has decided to get a publicist.’

Collaborations punctuate the exhibition, underscoring Lang’s interdisciplinary practice. Holzer’s LED and scent installations, his close friendship and work with Bourgeois, and Mapplethorpe’s disciplined lens converge with Lang’s preoccupations of materiality, memory, and surface, creating a networked practice where fashion, art, and architecture intersect. The exhibition’s title, ‘Séance de Travail’, embodies Lang’s philosophy: creation is iterative, continuous, and interconnected.

The exhibition also makes one thing clear: today’s designers rarely enjoy such autonomy. Making certain choices, including to show in New York instead of Paris and structuring a collection around concept rather than commerce, are nearly impossible today. Yet Lang’s precision, tension and spatial intelligence continue to inspire young creators, offering fertile ground for thinking critically about clothes. Even details like his carefully curated soundtracks, including classical music fused with synth-pop and folk, speak to a holistic approach. The exhibition captures a designer who is quiet, precise, uncompromising – a blueprint for creative autonomy, and proof that one person, a small team, and a singular vision can still change the way the world sees fashion.

It feels particularly charged that the first retrospective of Lang’s oeuvre opens not in Paris, London, or New York, but in Vienna, the city where he was raised and where he first began reimagining what clothes could be. MAK holds the only official public archive of his work, a 10,000-piece compendium he donated in 2011. Bringing it into public view now feels like both a revelation and a return. In an era saturated with spectacle, ‘Séance de Travail’ reminds us why Helmut Lang’s radical understatement endures.

‘Helmut Lang: Séance de Travail 1986-2005’, is now open at Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), until 3 May 2025.

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Like many good stories, Antony Price and Marco Capaldo’s tale begins at a party. It was 2019, and legendary octogenarian fashion designer Price – famed for shaping the visual identities of Roxy Music and Duran Duran – approached the 16Arlington designer and his late partner in life and work, Federica ‘Kikka’ Cavenati, to share a few warm words of encouragement. ‘We had just started,’ remembers Capaldo, taking a long drag of a Vogue cigarette in his east London studio. ‘He shared his love for the ideas of sex and glamour we had explored in those few seasons, and just kind of said, “Keep at it”.’

In the years since, 16Arlington has become one of London’s most distinctive independent brands, its after-dark sensuality embodied by the it-girls and creatives who clad themselves in its sultry shapes on red carpets and in nightclubs. Never forgetting their first meeting, Capaldo got back in touch with Price just over a year ago, after discovering a vintage gown made by the designer that had belonged to Cavanti. She had sourced the piece to wear as maid of honour at her best friend’s wedding just before passing away (the designer died in 2021, aged just 28). ‘I reached out to Antony and said, “I would love to connect”,’ he says. ‘He emailed me back and said, “Call me tonight at 8pm.” And that was it. That first night, we were on the phone till four in the morning.’

While generations apart, the two designers’ connection makes perfect sense. Both have built careers around ideas of glamour, excess and beauty. A designer’s designer – deeply respected within the industry but less widely known outside it – Price’s career is the stuff of star-strewn legend. He dressed David Bowie and Duran Duran, collaborated closely with Philip Treacy, and became so instrumental to the aesthetic of Roxy Music that he was coined the band’s ‘invisible member’. His unrestrained work anticipated the louche, shoulder-padded, corseted silhouettes that would come to define the 1980s, and today Price stands as one of the era’s great architects of glamour. Decades later, Capaldo’s work at 16Arlington similarly impresses its own ideas of meticulously crafted, nocturnal dressing, with its own community of figures at the heart of its universe, from Adwoa Aboah to Lara Stone.

Yesterday evening (17 November 2025), the pair unveiled the product of their unlikely inter-generational friendship, a special collection they have been working on together over the past 12 months. The intimate one-off display was held within 16Arlington’s Hoxton studio, and was brought to life by 16 personalities in Capaldo’s orbit, including Lily Allen, Aboah and Lila Moss. Unfolding less like a traditional runway and more like a woozy 1970s salon, it was everything one would imagine from the blending of their worlds. Allowing guests to take in the designs up close, their ‘models’ slunk through the room in a sequence of evening gowns cut in midnight black velvet, chiffon, kink-leaning leather, and trompe-l’oeil animalier, rendered with an opulent attention to craft – crystal-encrusted, feather-strewn and exquisitely sculpted to the body. It was, of course, a study of glamour – treating it as more than a feeling, but a force that defies time, beguiles onlookers, and allows the wearer to become their most magnetic self.

The pair started by delving into Price’s archives alongside the help of writer and collector Alexander Fury. Among pleated lamé gowns worn by Paula Yates, Swarovski-covered sculpted busts made for Philip Treacy, and a jacket for Bryan Ferry crafted from women’s underwear, a theme among these treasures was Price’s gift for construction. ‘Something that really stuck out in the process with Antony is the way he references the body,’ says Capaldo. ‘He talks a lot about creating the heavenly body through clothing. If you were to take the linings out of some of these pieces, just seeing the detail and the padding that has gone into the inners of these garments is really incredible – they are like sculptures. To kind of be up close and personal with those pieces was amazing. The fact that they are still here and in perfect condition is a testament to Antony's work.’

When it came to designing the new collection, the process unfolded collaboratively over the months, with silhouettes coming into focus one by one. ‘We really focused on sculpting the body, whether that's with the jackets or the dresses,’ says Capaldo. ‘We have a few coats, which are really incredible because they have dress waist measurements on a piece of outerwear. Antony's really allowed me to go with it in the sense of trusting what I feel is right for today, whilst allowing us to fully explore his penmanship and apply that to the collection. There are pieces of his that I've reinterpreted. There are pieces of mine that he's reinterpreted. I say this with hand on heart, there hasn’t been a single moment we’ve butted heads. It’s been amazing.’

Capaldo knew he wanted to do something special for the show. It's something he’s gained a flair for now, after stepping away from the fashion week calendar in favour of more personal events (for A/W 2025, he hosted a candlelit dinner at Almine Rech gallery, which was transformed for the evening with an exhibition of 1980s-reminiscent studio photographs by Ethan James Green). Last night’s presentation, however, felt personal in a deeper way – not least of all because it was staged in the brand’s own studio, where the team work each day. ‘We wanted this show to be a really intimate affair,’ says Capaldo. ‘For people to be able to see the clothes up close, to experience them in the walls that they were made in. Bringing it into the space adds that level of grit, which is something that's so present in both mine and Antony's work.’

Worn by a cast of characters who have inspired Capaldo personally and creatively, the effect was as intended – a celebration of their shared ideas of beauty, individuality and craft. ‘Both Antony and I have been surrounded by these incredible individuals, people that stand for things and have a voice, who have naturally shaped and inspired our careers,’ says Capaldo. ‘Jerry Hall was somebody that was very close to Antony and his journey. My version of Jerry is somebody like Adwoa. I've really relied on my community and my friends to bring the show together and bring this collection to life.’

It was also, of course, a heartwarming celebration of their friendship – and of fashion as a language powerful enough to bridge generations. ‘I speak to Antony every day and I have for the past year, for hours on end,‘ says Capaldo at the end of our call. ‘He's a wonderful man, so talented, so unapologetically opinionated, who loves nothing more than bringing glamour to life and transforming people through clothes.’ Working on the collection with Price, the designer adds, has been one of the most rewarding efforts of his career. ‘I personally felt Antony never really received his flowers,’ he says. ‘To have been able to witness such a legend at work has probably been one of the most incredible and pivotal moments in my career. It's been really magical.’

If fashion and art were once reticent bedfellows, the past two decades have seen the two mediums enter symbiosis through a near-endless slew of collaborations, exhibition sponsorships, artist-designed runway sets and art-filled boutiques. It is unsurprising, then, that when it comes to the arrival of Frieze Week – whether the fair’s New York, London, Los Angeles or Seoul iterations – a line-up of fashion activations follows.

Such is the case for Frieze London 2025, which opens for previews today (15 October), with numerous fashion brands hosting events across the week. And, while a number of these might seem opportunist grabs for the art world’s cultural heft, an equal number show the potential spoils of the partnership – whether Stone Island’s sponsorship of Frieze Focus (the scheme supports emerging galleries), Dunhill’s always-illuminating Frieze Masters talks, or the arrival of Prada Mode in London, the Italian fashion house’s roving programme of cultural events. For this edition, the house hands the reins to Berlin-based duo Elmgreen & Dragset, who have created a surreal cinema that will host a curated programme of talks, lectures and screenings over the coming days.

Here, Wallpaper* selects the best fashion happenings to add to your Frieze London 2025 schedule.

Dunhill will host its annual Frieze Masters talks

The relative calm of Frieze Masters provides a welcome respite from the frenetic main fair, where low-lit booths and hushed chatter surround an always intriguing display – from ancient antiquity to mid-century masterworks, and all that came in between (the cut-off year to be displayed at Frieze Masters is the year 2000, with the oldest objects dating back millenia). It makes the perfect setting for Dunhill’s tranquil ‘Frieze Masters Talks’, which sees the British heritage house invite a line-up of artistic luminaries – from those with works displayed in Frieze Masters to curators, writers and collectors – to take part in a series of talks across the week, giving visitors a well-earned moment of quiet contemplation amid the noise elsewhere.

Always illuminating, this year’s schedule is curated by director of Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi Arturo Galansino and includes conversations between Tracey Emin and director of the British Museum Nicholas Cullinan (‘Confessions in the Museum’ is the title of their talk), artist Edward George and author Matthew Harle (they will discuss George’s ‘Black Atlas’ project), and artist Anthony Gormley who will discuss ‘Sculpting a New Humanism’ alongside Galansino himself (a full schedule is available on Frieze Masters’ website). Always impeccably staged, the intimate talks and enveloping interiors have the feel of an exclusive member’s club – not unlike Dunhill’s sanctuary-like Bourdon House in Mayfair, the former residence of the Hugh Grosvenor, the 2nd Duke of Westminster.

Discover the full programme here.

Prada Mode arrives in London

Prada Mode is the Italian fashion house’s immersive arts-led programme, which has taken place in a series of locations around the world – the last edition took place in Abu Dhabi earlier this year, seeing American artist Theaster Gates curate a schedule of talks and events in a site-specific space in the city’s MiZa district. After previously taking place in London back in 2019 (the house took over the subterranean basement of 180 Strand, turning it into a surreal jazz bar), the 2025 edition sees Prada Mode return to London, curated by Berlin-based duo Elmgreen & Dragset.

They have created a special installation for the event titled ‘The Audience’ in Town Hall, a recently opened cultural centre close to King’s Cross station, comprising a simulacrum of a cinema populated by a series of their hyper-realistic figures (on the screen, a purposefully blurred movie plays). Running for previews from today (15 October) until 19 October, participants include the artists themselves, as well as Shona Heath, Elizabeth Diller, James Massiah, Kirsty Sedgman, James Price and more, with a series of talks, events and screenings unfolding in the surreal cinema space.

Register for Prada Mode here.

Stone Island continues its support of Frieze Focus

Part of its global Frieze partnership, Italian technical-wear brand Stone Island will support this year’s edition of Frieze Focus, an offshoot of the fair which gives exhibition space to emerging galleries and the artists that they represent. This year, the eclectic line-up spans 35 international galleries, from London’s Nicoletti, which will show works by Texas-born, London-based artist Gray Weilebinski, to institutions in Beirut, Cairo, Shanghai, Warsaw, Seoul and Athens (among many others).

‘This year marks the third consecutive year of our sponsorship of Frieze Focus, a partnership that celebrates the influence of contemporary art within Stone Island’s global community,’ says Robert Triefus, Stone Island’s CEO. ‘We are delighted to continue our support of the Focus section at Frieze, championing emerging gallerists and the artists they represent’

Dover Street Market celebrates Frieze 2025

For each edition of Frieze London, Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe’s Dover Street Market hosts a buzzy evening in the Haymarket concept store, inviting artists and fashion designers alike to set up shop. Taking place on Thursday evening – with further activations happening across the weekend – the eclectic line-up includes a window display featuring pieces by Georgia O’Keefe (Kawakubo has curated the line-up), a showing of work by British artist Sonia Boyce, as well as installations from Air Jordan by Assouline and Stone Island Denim Research. For fashion fans, the event also heralds the arrival of Saint Laurent in the store – the Parisian house will be unveiling their new dedicated space as part of the festivities – and there will be an opportunity to shop a series of special launches, including a series of portable ‘seats’ by Craig Green, revealed by the designer today on Instagram.

Rick Owens displays his furniture at Carpenters Workshop Gallery

Multi-hyphenate fashion designer Rick Owens has chosen Frieze week to open a new exhibition at west London’s Carpenters Workshop Gallery, displaying a series of furniture created alongside his wife Michèle Lamy (she also serves as the exhibition’s curator). Titled ‘Rust Never Sleeps’, the various creations – each in Owens’ signature monolithic style – are largely crafted from patinated metal inspired by London’s long tradition of Brutalist architecture. We got a special walkthrough from Lamy last week, with memorable highlights including an enormous elm bed complete with antler horns, a rusted steel and crocodile leather day bed, and an enormous marble urn, rendered in Owens’ moody, visually arresting style. ‘Taking its title from Neil Young’s 1979 anthem – the exhibition transforms the phrase into a manifesto for artistic endurance: it is better to burn out than to fade away,’ read the lyrical press notes.

Rick Owens: Rust Never Sleeps runs at the Carpenters Workshop London until 14 February 2026.

Phoebe Philo supports Peter Doig’s new exhibition, ‘House of Music’

Phoebe Philo, the former Celine and Chloé designer who now helms an eponymous London label, serves as the principal sponsor of Peter Doig’s new exhibition – a testament to her own long-standing link with the art world. Titled ‘House of Music’, the exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries invites visitors to ‘sit, linger, take a nap’ in the space, which sees the British artist’s paintings displayed amid midcentury furnishings and backdropped by a sound system featuring a bespoke soundtrack comprising over 300 records. ‘The idea of having furniture and chairs here is that some people feel like they can linger, they may even want to have a nap,’ he told Wallpaper*, noting that it was a rare opportunity to see works that are in private hands made public. ‘The paintings often end up in private hands, and the people who get to see them are very few. So, it's making all aspects public.’

READ: ‘Sit, linger, take a nap’: Peter Doig welcomes visitors to his Serpentine exhibition

Virgil Abloh’s story is fabled. From designing T-shirts for a Chicago print shop in the mid-2000s to making history as the first Black creative director at a Parisian house a decade and a half later, the self-taught American designer reached a level of fame that stretched far beyond fashion. Part of a group of designers responsible for shifting the connotations of streetwear at his own brand Off-White and, later, at Louis Vuitton men’s, his work would go on to provide a fantastical vision of contemporary style, bridging the worlds of design, popular culture, music and celebrity in the process.

And, while certain aspects of his approach were scrutinised – such as his three per cent rule, where if you marginally change a design you make it new – these acts of defiance against the status quo helped Abloh redefine the remits of creativity, power and influence in the industry and beyond. The legacy he left after his death in 2021 (following a private battle with cancer) is perhaps best surmised in his widely circulated quote: ‘You can do it too.’

Inside ‘Virgil Abloh: The Codes’ exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris

This week at the Grand Palais in Paris, a new exhibition opens the doors of Abloh’s archive, telling the story of his singular career through 1,000 objects and designs. Brought to life by Nike and the Virgil Abloh Archive, it assembles many of his most significant works, spanning two decades (as well as posthumous projects, such as a one-off McIntosh amplifier in vivid orange) and the late designer’s prismatic interests (fashion, footwear, architecture, music, industrial design, painting, sculpture, printed matter, and advertising). The display opened on 30 September – the designer’s birthday, when he would have turned 45 – and runs until 9 October 2025.

Many of his most important designs for Nike feature in the exhibition, which is titled ‘Virgil Abloh: The Codes’, such as the plastic-tagged and quote-mark emblazoned trainers that were highly desirable in the 2010s. Elsewhere, Abloh’s T-shirt ballgowns sit beside treasures designed by others that he accumulated over decades, gathered alongside an archive of sketches and essays he started collecting when he was just a teenager.

In the years after his death, the Virgil Abloh Archive has continued to preserve artefacts more formally, with this display marking the first time its contents have been presented in Europe. Curated by Chloe Sultan and Mahfuz Sultan, the exhibition expands on a display shown in Miami in 2022.

‘Since Virgil's passing, we've been privately working to build the Virgil Abloh Archive, a collection of objects that serve as a living record of his work and worldview,’ says the late designer’s wife, Shannon Abloh. ‘I could only imagine debuting this in Paris, Virgil's second home. A city whose creative energy perfectly lends to the spirit of “The Codes” and a true celebration of Virgil's vision and ethos. This offers an invitation to the world to engage and to build upon his ideas.’

The Paris exhibition runs alongside a series of events, workshops, DJ sets and screenings hosted by voices from Abloh’s broader creative community. There will also be a book released that further details the contents of Abloh’s archive, and includes several of the designer’s most significant collaborations and magazine covers, including one he created for Wallpaper in 2020. The limited-edition issue was matt white and featured a ‘cut’ line inviting readers to slice the magazine in two – a typical provocation from the designer.

‘Cutting the physical object makes the magazine come alive and reinforces the concept that the magazine’s media may be physical, but it also occupies a space figuratively and literally,’ he said at time of the design (a number of copies were signed by Abloh, benefitting his “Post Modern” Scholarship Fund).

It feels fitting that the exhibition unfolds over fashion week in Paris, where Abloh showed many of his most influential collections. With the display, Nike and The Virgil Abloh Archive hope to celebrate his legacy in a city where his presence still reverberates, offering others a rare insight into his boundary-collapsing world. ‘Sharing his personal collection, unfinished work and magnum opuses with the world is a powerful way we honour Virgil’s deep belief in access and collaboration,’ says Shannon Abloh. ‘Through the Virgil Abloh Archive, his vision continues to inspire and guide the next generation.’

‘Virgil Abloh: The Codes’ in partnership with Nike is on view at the Grand Palais until 9 October 2025.

Craft, concentration and curiosity: these are some of the codes embedded in Chanel’s DNA, and the same applies to the workshops that help create the house’s collections. A new exhibition in Tokyo sees le19M – the Parisian hub that brings together the house’s craft métiers and their workshops under one roof – travel to the city, creating a dialogue between Parisian savoir-faire and traditional Japanese craft.

Amid increasing moves in the fashion industry to outsource production, le19M is doing the opposite. Since 1985, Chanel has integrated its maisons d’art – workshops and companies producing fabrics, embroidery, buttons, and accessories, some with histories dating back to 1853 – under its umbrella, securing production in-house. ‘To ensure that the maisons d’art innovate and perpetuate their crafts, and to usher them to work with as many clients as possible, in a way for their creativity to be challenged, [as well as] to foster dialogue between different crafts to nurture new ideas,’ Bruno Pavlovsky, president of Chanel SAS and president of le19M, tells Wallpaper* of the importance of bringing these craftpeople into the fold.

Chanel’s le19M lands in Tokyo with new exhibition

Today, a network of approximately 60 manufacturers, including maisons d’art, forms Chanel’s ecosystem of savoir-faire. Within this, 11 workshops specialising in tweed, embroidery, featherwork and other crafts have become resident at le19M: the cultural complex founded by Chanel in northeast Paris in 2021. Amid challenging conditions for craftsmanship, such as the mechanisation of production and an ageing artisan population, le19M aims to preserve traditional crafts while enabling their evolution. Currently, around 700 embroiderers, feather workers, goldsmiths, pleaters, bootmakers, hatmakers, and milliners work in the building. The name le19M derives from its location in Paris' 19th arrondissement, as well as the day of house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel's birth, while the letter M represents ‘mode, mains, maison, manufactures, and métiers d’art‘.

This month, le19M has temporarily relocated to Tokyo. The purpose is to exhibit creations developed in collaboration with Japanese artisans and other creatives. In the light of the works of le19M's artisans – characterised by an inherent intricacy, caution, and perseverance – there is a resonance with Japan's own meticulous dedication to craftsmanship. The collaboration between the two was natural.

The Tokyo exhibition, ‘Chanel presents la Galerie du 19M Tokyo’ – staged on the 52nd floor of the 53-storey Mori Tower, offering 360-degree views of Tokyo – unfolds in three sections. The first section, ‘Le Festival’, introduces the specialised techniques of each of le19M’s 11 workshops, conveying the richness and breadth of their craftsmanship through an immersive installation. Objects that are distinct to each workshop – wooden hat moulds, pleating templates, embroidery components – hang suspended from the ceiling, creating an atmosphere reminiscent of wandering into the ateliers of le19M. Tools used daily by the craftspeople in their respective workshops and fabric samples are displayed, allowing visitors to observe up close how the raw materials gradually metamorphose into works of art.

The highlight of the exhibition is the second section, ‘Beyond Our Horizons’, which showcases collaborations between le19M's craftspeople and nearly 30 creators and artisans from Japan and around the world, curated by five editorial members: film director and writer Momoko Ando; Casa Brutus magazine editor Yoichi Nishio; Shinichiro Ogata, founder and creative director of multidisciplinary design studio Simplicity; curator Kayo Tokuda; and Aska Yamashita, artistic director of Chanel-owned embroiderer Montex. Its scenography, much like le19M in Paris, evokes the image of a creative village – a gathering place for numerous craftspeople – and is inspired by natural elements such as wind, water, fire, and earth. This resonates with Japan's traditional craftsmanship, which has long embraced the local natural environment, creating works in harmony with their individual locales.

Don't expect typical fashion here. The collaborations between le19M and the various artists and artisans push the boundaries of their craft, opening up new horizons. For instance, a hat becomes a chochin Japanese paper lantern, a collaboration between Kojima Shoten, which has crafted lanterns in Kyoto for over 200 years, and le19M's hat workshop, Maison Michel. ‘The hat moulds are elliptical, not perfectly circular, making it challenging. We had to devise solutions like connecting bamboo rods with both curved and straight sections,’ says Ryo Kojima, head of Kojima Shoten’s tenth generation, which has produced countless diverse lanterns over its centuries in operation.

A noren curtain – a Japanese textile divider – on display is also a collaborative work, seeing Akiko Ishigaki, a dyeing and weaving artisan from Iriomote Island in Okinawa, unite with maison d’art Lesage, known for its embroidery and tweed. For over 40 years in Okinawa, Ishigaki has cultivated bashofu, a fabric made from fibres of the Japanese banana plant basho. Her process begins with growing the plant, peeling its trunk bark, boiling it in lye to extract the fibres, and then splitting these fibres by hand into fine strands, making the textile from the material itself. Ishigaki sent her bashofu thread to Lesage, where it was woven into the noren. Here, Lesage tweed became a noren curtain.

A take on traditional sukiya-style architecture is also on display, evoking traditional Japanese townhouses that feature tatami mats, shōji screens, and transoms. Created in collaboration between Kamisoe, which crafts karakami Japanese paper in Kyoto, and Lemarié, workshops for corsage, feather work and haute couture tailoring, a series of paper corsages are applied over sukiya-style interior walls – just like applying corsage over the clothes. Elsewhere, artisans at the bronze workshop Desrues created the fusuma sliding door handles, while jewellery workshop Goossens crafted the traditional shoe-removing platform. While it may defy the rules of what constitutes sukiya-style architecture, such radical challenges are precisely how you innovate tradition to open the door to the future. These posed a challenge for the Japanese artisans, who had to devise new methods different from their usual practices.

So what can we expect from this cross-continental collaboration? ‘The immateriality of the collaboration is what makes the project beautiful and magical, [and that is] significant,’ says Pavlovsky.

The final, third section of the exhibition traces the century-long history of embroidery workshop Lesage – probably the most well known of le19M’s maisons d’art – during which it has underpinned fashion history. The exhibition conveys how Lesage’s history, beginning in 1924, has integrated embroidery into fashion not as an add-on or embellishment but interwoven into the designs, while also using their skills on interior design projects, stage costumes, and textiles for historical furniture. Like this rest of the display, it demonstrates le19M’s effusive approach to craft – one seductive enough to make you want to become an artisan yourself.

‘La Galerie du 19M Tokyo’ runs from 30 September to 20 October 2025 at Mori Tower 52nd, Tokyo, Japan, then travels to la Galerie du 19M in Paris early in 2026.

la Galerie du 19M — le19M

The 120 objects on display at the Barbican’s latest show are all immaculately out of place. From dresses that have been buried in the banks of the River Thames to a collection of separates that have emerged from a bog, ‘Dirty Looks’ asks us to resee fashion as an interdisciplinary artistic practice. This is not fashion as art, but rather fashion approached with artful thinking.

Its curators, Karen Van Godtsenhoven and Jon Astbury, posit that dirt and decay have been used by designers since the 1970s to antagonise the mass-production cycle of industrial fashion. Titillatingly, they also gather a number of younger makers, offering them a space to crunch and pick at the norms of glassy digital perfection.

‘This show is about fashion as a deeply material practice,’ Astbury says, gesturing to the central gallery walls swagged in raw, unbleached calico. ‘So many of the ways in which it is currently consumed are about image and surface. It's all very glossy and machine-like. This is a reminder of the material craft that goes into all of it.’

The poetic works of Hussein Chalayan were an obvious starting point. Seven looks from the designer’s collections between 1993 and 2002 set the scene for thinking around time, archaeology and transformation. The practice of burial is often associated with Chalayan’s Central Saint Martins graduate collection from 1993, titled ‘The Tangent Flows’, for which the process of interring and exhuming clothes, often with metal filings, was central. It is a technique Chalayan often revisited over a ten-year period, folding it into themes about excavation and travel.

In Astbury’s mind a very early working title for the show was ‘Nostalgia of Mud’, a phrase coined in the 18th century by French playwright Émile Augier. ‘This is a sensibility of being drawn back to a more rural role that Malcolm McLaren and Alexander McQueen referred to as a primitive form of existence. It’s demonstrated through clothing with motifs of wornness or even sometimes just through colour palette and, sometimes, literally muddy landscapes,’ he says.

The design of ‘Dirty Looks’ is captivatingly spare. Throughout, Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck conceptualised the nicks and cracks that counter the smooth perfection of the archetypal white cube. Plinths become gradually more and more destroyed, walls have spidering fissures and hunks of plaster have gone amiss, emulating the laborious nature of tromp l’oeil decay. There are no works attached to the walls, and hardly any screens. The staging is a provocation towards a close reading of the objects on display. ‘It’s about wanting to believe in something again, about really engaging with the material in a way that I think a lot of people feel quite detached from,’ Van Godtsenhoven says.

A floral lace dress from McQueen’s controversial ‘Highland Rape’ collection for A/W 1995 lies in a glass vitrine. It is today too fragile to be mounted to a mannequin due to its DIY materials. It is a fascinating, quiet moment in the show; a brittle object of fashion lore decontextualised from its catwalk photograph and out of sorts.

‘This in-built decay creates a different situation for the conservators too, because oftentimes the garments are extra fragile. Many of the works here could just flake apart. There is a sense with some of the pieces that this is about a kind of archaeology or recapturing,’ Van Godtsenhoven says. ‘With the Chalayan pieces, for example, they are so delicate. The nature of the burial essentially petrifies the cloth, so it becomes incredibly rigid, but also the dirt is dirt. It just brushes off.’

In the lower part of the gallery are six newly commissioned works from young designers. One – by biomaterial specialist and artist Alice Potts – explores the notions of shame and propriety that govern so much of the clothes we are shown, even within the context of an institutional museum exhibition. ‘A number of archives have a large collection of Madam Grès gowns that are never publicly presented because they are stained with wine or sweat – they were worn at parties!’ Van Godtsenhoven explains. ‘The work that Alice is perhaps best known for is with the crystallisation of human sweat; we gave her a Grès gown which she then treated in a solution created by harvesting her own perspiration,’ she says. ‘Her work is as much about the beauty that can be found through materials like this as it is about trying to remove some of the shame around body fluids.’

In the centre of the downstairs galleries, Solitude Studios takes its most recent Copenhagen Fashion Week collection, entitled ‘Before The Orgy’ and reimagines it as a vast orgasmic spectacle of bog-drenched clothes shaped to ghostly forms with scattered heeled shoes, and evening bags hovering mid-air. ‘There’s a philosophical story behind it tied to [sociologist and philosopher] Jean Baudrillard, who talks about the orgy as being a moment of mass consumerist culture, but there's the question of after the orgy; what do we value when we can have everything whenever we want it?’ Astbury says. ‘One thing that unites a lot of these designers is that they don't think about what they do as fashion design just for the selling of clothes.’

Paolo Carzana has created a display of looks from a sequence of three collections that have never been presented together before. Piled up, they form an altar of crinkled cloth in shades of rhubarb, ochre and soil. ‘Paolo’s aesthetic of what you might call decay and dishevelment is not about trying to make something look worn. It springs from ideas of strength and fragility, with a conscious use of natural materials and dyes. It’s incredibly romantic,’ Astbury says.

This band of younger talents is looking for a path of regeneration, Van Godtsenhoven says: ‘They’re seeking a way forward that is not pretending that everything is fine, but they are still seeing a beauty in transformation. There’s this idea of a darker place that we must go through to revitalise the status quo. What we want to stress with these installations is that creativity and new artistic practices can come out of decay.’

‘Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion’ runs from 25 September 2025 – 25 January 2026, barbican.org.uk

‘It was absolutely intentional,’ says Tyler Mitchell, clarifying his decision to show works from ‘Portrait of the Modern Dandy’ at Gagosian’s Burlington Arcade gallery. Indeed, Britain’s first department store, as it was initially intended, separates, by a few roads either side, the sartorial landmarks of Savile Row and Jermyn Street; just a short walk away is a statue of Beau Brummell. ‘The arcade itself was built as a kind of promenade for leisure and display,’ the American photographer continues, ‘which echoes the very values of dandyism. Figures like Olaudah Equiano and Julius Soubise were already moving through these streets centuries ago, using style to claim freedom, to self-fashion, and to push against social hierarchies.’

The photographs were originally conceived as part of a visual essay for the catalogue of the Met’s spring 2025 Costume Institute exhibition, ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ – curated by Monica L Miller, the show was primarily informed by her 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. That they are being exhibited publicly for the first time in London, in an area charged with style-coded history, is particularly satisfying for Mitchell. ‘It’s about deliberately placing contemporary images of Black Dandy presence back into a lineage that, in many ways, began in England,’ he concurs.

Tyler Mitchell ‘Portrait of the Modern Dandy’ at Gagosian Burlington Arcade

Placing them here asks us to both review our understanding of dandy aesthetics and the context in which they exist, and in many ways tethers the images to other recent surveys of menswear and Black style in the city – thinking about Ekow Eshun’s ‘Made You Look: Dandyism and Black Masculinity’ for example, which opened at The Photographers’ Gallery in 2016, and the V&A’s 2022 exhibition, ‘Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear’. More streamlined by its very essence, Mitchell’s series is shaped by his own interpretation of the dandy and the intersection of style, race, society and culture.

‘I was definitely sensitive to dandyism before the project commenced,’ the photographer says. ‘I hadn't yet read Monica's book, but I understood the Black Dandy to be an archetype of masculinity that cleverly twisted conventions of male dress on its head. I always liked that idea, as growing up in Atlanta, I was always looking for alternative ways to express the way I felt in touch with my own male identity, which of course was intertwined with my Blackness.’

Widely celebrated for his world-building and considered scenes of a Black utopia that prioritises leisure as a tender pursuit – ideas showcased in his second monograph, Wish This Was Real, published by Aperture in tandem with the Burlington Arcade show – Mitchell typically uses fashion as a tool for storytelling. Moreover, his close collaborators include the designers Jonathan Anderson and Grace Wales Bonner (at the Met Gala in May, he wore a bespoke Wales Bonner look inspired by Larry Neal’s 1974 collection of poems, Hoodoo Hollerin’ Bebop Ghosts), while his 2018 American Vogue shoot with Beyoncé, lauded for its history-making (aged 23, he became the first Black photographer to shoot the magazine’s cover in its then 126-year history), was additionally notable for its presence in the September issue: a bona fide heavyweight in fashion media’s calendar.

In the Gagosian show, his protagonists are smartly dressed in varying suit styles and accessories; some wear looks from the Met exhibition, others are self-styled in vintage or wear pieces from their own wardrobe. In one image, The Dinner Party, a group of nine sit around a subtly dressed table, their sharp black suits adorned with top hats and bow ties; in Harlem Stoop, a cast of eight gather outside a Brownstone in a nod to the Harlem Renaissance – one gentleman wears a heavy tweed coat over a matching suit, another ties a jumper over his shoulders.

‘Monica understood from the outset that this Costume Institute project was unique: photography of Black dandies has often been the source material for how we understand dandyism,’ says Mitchell, reflecting on the project’s backstory. ‘She gave me a lot of room to play, but we were aligned in wanting to balance historical reference with a distinctly modern sensibility, while also imagining the future.’ Research meant immersing himself in her writing and revisiting other books and films, such as Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston.

‘One moment that really stuck with me was finding an early portrait of Colman Domingo in Shantrelle P Lewis’s Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style,’ he recalls. ‘It reminded me how layered and unexpected these histories can be: dandyism can be evoked through almost anything, as long as the attitude and wit are there.’

‘I approach all my work thinking of the pictures as fragments of a larger story, or even a film,’ he continues, speaking to the framework of his broader practice. ‘The work leans into beauty, but it also accepts that not every image has to be a singular masterpiece. There's meant to be fluidity.’ With ‘Portrait of the Modern Dandy’, he viewed the image-making as operating in dialogue with other photographers, entering a conversation with predecessors like James Van Der Zee, Carl Van Vechten, Seydou Keïta, and Malick Sidibé, he says. In London, he references contemporary figures Yinka Shonibare, Isaac Julien, Grace Wales Bonner, and Rotimi Fani-Kayode.

‘For me, the Black Dandy is a beacon of possibility, a way of imagining what else masculinity could look like.’

‘Portrait of The Modern Dandy’ is on view at Gagosian, Burlington Arcade, London until 3 October 2025. ‘Tyler Mitchell: Wish This Was Real’ opens at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), Paris, on 15 October 2025.

It felt like there was an injection of energy to New York Fashion Week (NYFW) this season after some sleepy recent editions that have caused some commentators to advocate for a once-a-year approach, or a reduced schedule centred around a handful of venues. A large part of this momentum is down to the return of Calvin Klein to the schedule last season under new creative director Veronica Leoni – prior to the show, the brand hadn’t held a runway show since the departure of Raf Simons in 2018. If the collection wasn’t a comprehensive home run, Leoni’s debut was a confident opening gambit, one which mined the minimal sensibility of the brand’s 1990s heyday (indeed, Mr Klein himself gave his seal of approval from the front row). She showed her sophomore collection on Friday (12 September), exploring the ‘tension between a deep sense of intimacy and the taste for exposure’ – read our review below. Other big-hitters of the week were Michael Kors, Tory Burch, Coach, Off-White and COS, the latter returning to the city after showing in Brooklyn last September.

Elsewhere, excitement built around the city’s emerging talent: Zankov hosted its first show after the presentations of previous years (founder Henry Zankov is known for his inventive knitwear, gaining traction earlier this year after a collaboration with Troye Sivan’s lifestyle line Tsu Lange Yor), while Rachel Scott of Diotima held her own first show (the designer, who honed her craft at Costume National in Milan, has also recently been named the new creative director of Proenza Schouler). Other highlights included Eckhaus Latta, Luar and Area, where new creative director Nicholas Aburn came to the brand with a strong pedigree – his last role was at Balenciaga, working on the house’s lauded couture lines under Demna during the Georgian designer’s tenure.

Here, reported from New York, Wallpaper* picks NYFW’s standout shows – as they happened.

Tory Burch

Tory Burch said that her S/S 2026 collection was one of joy and optimism, a colour-saturated response to the ‘dark times we are all experiencing’. Continuing the free-wheeling approach to collection-making which has defined recent seasons – after stepping down as CEO in 2019 she has devoted all her time to the creative process – her latest outing began by thinking about the idea of a well-loved item of clothing, figured in purposely creased and crumpled fabrics, knitwear which was frayed at the edges, or references to vintage pieces that mean something to her personally (a piped-edge blazer was inspired by a jacket worn by her father).

Elsewhere, she continued to put a twist on American classics: button-up knits were folded at the collar and worn away at the cuff, pointed pumps adorned with barbed-wire metal hardware, while pleated skirts were dropped at the waistline and cinched with belts (a series of flapper-style dresses, appearing at the close of the show, had a similar silhouette). ‘With this dark time we are all experiencing I wanted to feel joy in optimism, but also with a realness to things,’ she said after the show. ‘I think with each season it’s more of a dialogue, we’re learning more about what women are craving and what they want. So hopefully these pieces have longevity, where people take them and make them their own. That’s the best thing about our collections – I love seeing people make it theirs.’

READ: ‘I want to feel optimism’: Tory Burch hopes her latest collection sparks joy

Diotima

Backstage after showing her first runway show for Diotima – previously, the New York-based label has shown via a series of intimate presentations – founder and creative director Rachel Scott said that the collection was about channelling her anger at the state of America in new ways. ‘I'm still extremely angry, but I think that the manifestation of this anger is different this time, it's coming through in a much more rebellious way,’ she elucidated, looking towards the subversive spirit of carnival – from Brazil to Notting Hill and her native Caribbean – for inspiration.

‘I was really thinking [about] how carnival [came from] resistance against oppression, but it’s also very subversive, sensual – it’s undefinable,’ she said, noting that carnival emerged as a response to ‘colonial domination… [it is] an anti-imperialist act, conjuring freedom where none was granted’. In the collection – a standout of the week so far – this spirit was channelled in a liberatory use of colour (‘lime’, ‘magenta’, ‘grenadine’, ‘guava’ were some of the shades she name-checked), while artist Peter Minshall’s ‘ghost-like’ sketches of his carnival costumes informed the season’s silhouettes. Texture was also eclectic: skirts were macramé or shredded, giving the illusion of ruffles, while crystal-adorned mesh knits were cut into body- and swimsuits.

It made for a buzzy runway debut, all the more so as the Jamaica-born, New York-based designer was earlier this month named creative director of Proenza Schouler after the departure of Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez for Loewe (her first full collection will be shown in February at New York Fashion Week). After the show, she insisted Diotima would continue despite the new role: ‘It will absolutely continue – it’s something for life,’ she smiled.

Coach

Despite admitting backstage that he’s ‘not a morning person’, British designer Stuart Vevers – who was recently awarded an OBE – began his S/S 2026 collection for Coach thinking about dawn breaking across New York City. ‘I like the idea of something that was looking forward, like a new day,’ he said of the collection, which had a feeling of lightness in its colour palette – monochrome white looks featured throughout – and textures, which included a series of sheer tulle dresses decorated with balloons, clouds and stars. Indeed, these also suggested a mood of romance, one also captured in prints of vintage postcards of places Vevers had visited across America (among them Seattle, Las Vegas and Phoenix) and the soundtrack, a manipulated version of Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ (‘I wanted to capture this feeling of emotion’, he said). The idea of wear also featured throughout the collection, in torn or scuffed garments, or those constructed from Coach deadstock, something he said he linked with the contrasting ‘grit and polish’ of New York, as well as the way he will often see someone walking around the city carrying a battered Coach bag from decades before. ‘I'm definitely of the opinion that things don't have to be new and perfect to be desirable,’ he said. ‘I see people walking around with Coach bags that just happen to be 50 or 60 years old, and I think they're beautiful.’

COS

After showing its S/S 2025 collection in an Athens marble quarry earlier this year, London-based label COS returned to New York this season, taking over the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse in Brooklyn and transforming its industrial interior into a vast white box (‘a spectacle of modernist elegance,’ said the brand). Watched on by a starry guest list that included Naomi Watts, Jodie Turner-Smith and Lauryn Hill – a testament to the investment that COS has put into these twice-yearly runway shows – clothing channelled a mood of restrained glamour, with creative director Karin Gustafsson saying she looked towards Christian Dior’s New Look for inspiration (in the collection, this was referenced in the narrow sculpted waistline and wide neckline which ran throughout). Other silhouettes suggested a feeling of protection in their enveloping silhouettes – robe-like overcoats and shaggy faux fur jackets were a reminder this was an A/W 2025 collection, as opposed to the S/S 2026 collections being shown elsewhere in New York – while layers of diaphanous tulle provided a feeling of juxtaposition (‘a study in contrast, materiality and craftsmanship,’ the collection notes described). It made for a desirable, wear-off-the-runway collection – something (nearly) possible, with several pieces from the show available from COS’ website directly after the show.

Khaite

Cate Holstein said that this season she was thinking about the idea of naivety: the teenage impulse to tear and deconstruct, to destroy something to make it new. It lent the collection a feeling of rawness: ladylike dresses were sliced across the chest to reveal layers of tulle trapped beneath, while flourishes of handcraft – from chunky woven dresses and skirts to floral embroidery – embraced the idea of imperfection. ‘I used to cut things up all the time when I was a teenager and wear them a certain way, and I wanted to go back to that,’ she said after the show, saying that the collection was about embracing a feeling of risk. Indeed, an undercurrent of danger ran through the collection (Holstein said David Lynch continued to be an influence, while the dark ‘underbelly’ of American society was another inspiration point), encapsulated by the monolithic show set – a jet-black pool of water dotted with jagged glaciers that hissed and steamed as the show began (the set was a collaboration with Holstein’s husband, the architectural designer Griffin Frazen). Tough leather jackets, wide across the shoulder or with asymmetric slanted fastenings, captured a similarly cinematic mood, while an atmospheric soundtrack spanned Blur, Pulp, Roy Orbison, Alan Vega and Chopin’s Nocturnes.

Eckhaus Latta

Recent seasons have seen Eckhaus Latta discover new clarity, stripping back the extraneous towards cleverly edited collections which are made for the realities of city life. Designers Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta continued this line of thinking for Spring/Summer, albeit with a newfound feeling of elegance – particularly in the all-black opening looks, which presented their take on eveningwear. For men, this comprised languid tailoring and featherweight knits, accessorised with pouches on the waistband and worn with leather slides; for women, sinuous dresses in tulle or dotted with sequins (in typical Eckhaus Latta style, there was still a mood of dishevelment in raw-cut edges and trailing pieces of fabric). Moving on from black, the collection shifted towards eruptions of colour – a layered T-shirt and vest came in vivid-hued tangerine, floating tulle trousers in canary yellow, and a pair of carpenter jeans, cinched with a studded belt, in bright ‘poppy’ red – with elements of play coming in T-shirts with square-shaped cut-outs, revealing the male models’ bare chests beneath.
As ever, the Eckhaus Latta community remains tightly knit – friends of the label, like the artist Martine Syms and the writer Natasha Stagg, walked the show, with the usual coterie of well-wishers out front – but outside of the showspace, this was an astute, desirable collection which has wide appeal.

Calvin Klein Collection

Veronica Leoni staged her sophomore outing for Calvin Klein at the Brant Foundation in the East Village, its bare brick walls an apt backdrop for a collection which was – save for some playful flourishes, like pairs of giant bouncing pom poms – an exercise in reduction. Cue look one, a sharp pinafore dress, bare at the back and held up with minuscule spaghetti straps – a garment which appeared straight from Calvin Klein’s 1990s playbook (Leoni has continually talked about returning to the sensually charged minimalism of the namesake designer’s heyday). The Italian designer, formerly of The Row, said that this season she was thinking about the ‘tension between a deep sense of intimacy and the taste for exposure’ – a thematic thread which in the collection was explored through the idea of underwear. After all, what is more famous than than the exposed waistband of a pair of Calvin Klein boxer shorts? Here, that signature elastic waistband was woven into a prim, ladylike dress, while décolletage-bearing tailoring showed the tiniest a sliver of bra top beneath. As for intimacy, overcoats were cut like robes and wrapped around the body – like that worn by Mariacarla Boscono, which appeared like cotton but was actually constructed from trompe l’oeil leather. Other intriguing plays with fabrication added new layers to her vision – materials were purposely creased and crinkled, or constructed from sharply sliced streamers of leather – though occasionally these more experimental flourishes seemed to stray from the idea of street-level reality that Leoni seeks (in her parlance, a ‘magnified normality’). That said, you could picture the multitude of accessories worn by anyone in attendance – whether the supersoft slouchy loafers, thong flip-flops adorned with gobstopper jewels, or pouch-like handbags, playfully decorated with streamers of leather and sets of keys, a nod to on-the-go New York City life.

Area

There was a celebratory mood before you even walked through the door of Nicholas Aburn’s debut runway show for Area: the invite was a scratchcard complete with a coin to reveal your potential fortune (in his world, everyone’s a winner). Besides that, the American designer comes to the young New York label after the departure of co-founder Piotrek Panszczyk with plenty of goodwill: a graduate of London’s Central Saint Martins, he’s worked at numerous fashion houses as part of the design team, most recently at Balenciaga’s couture studio under Demna.

Mining the party-girl attitude the 2016-founded label was built on – and indeed named after, with Area a reference to the cult 1980s New York nightspot – Aburn presented a riotous collection that the designer said was about ‘having a good time’, figured through bombastic undulating forms constructed from blown-up twists of metallic streamers, Borrowers-sized sequins and plenty of crystals (a longtime Area signature). Even in their sense of play, these sculptural pieces demonstrated plenty of technical skill, while more ‘everyday’ garments were interspersed – from dresses constructed from pieced-together basketball jerseys (albeit adorned with more sequins) to pedal-pusher cargo shorts inspired by Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw (one of the season’s references after a recent rewatch). In its sense of irreverence and similarly twisted party-girl archetypes, there felt an affinity with August Barron (formerly All-In), a no-holds-barred label that is based in Paris. Its founders, Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbøhas, recently nominated for the LVMH Prize, have built a cult following on that formula – in New York, this energy has been much needed. With this spirited debut, Aburn looks the person to bring it.

Michael Kors

Last season, Michael Kors drew inspiration from the polished interiors of his Madison Avenue store; this season, in a new time slot at the start of the week, it was out of the city and towards the ’earthy elegance’ of his beach house (albeit a simulacrum constructed in Terminal Warehouse in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood, complete with wind-weathered wood panelling, cacti and paper lanterns). Kors said the collection was in part inspired by legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland’s assertion that ‘the eye has to travel’ in order to find inspiration, as well as his own recent trips to Norway, Morocco and across the United States.

‘The simple truth is that escapism helps us tremendously,’ Kors asserted post-show, echoing a thematic thread which ran through the menswear collections earlier this year, from Prada to Emporio Armani. ‘So many of us live urban lives, and when you travel, you learn about yourself, you learn about other people, you learn about life. It’s nature that always knocks us out, but balanced with elegance and sophistication – that’s everything I want this collection to convey.’ He did so mostly through the collection’s hues, which spanned deep, earthy browns and warm ecru, to those evocative of sunrises and sunsets. Silhouettes, meanwhile, captured Kors’ brand of easy glamour, from breezy kaftan shirts and slouchy, safari-tinged tailoring to handkerchief dresses constructed from stitched-together silk scarves, as if collected over a summer of travel.

Ralph Lauren

After last September’s takeover of the Hamptons, Ralph Lauren opted for an altogether more intimate – though no less starry – affair for his spring 2026 runway show, staged in the American megabrand’s Madison Avenue headquarters on the eve of fashion week. Watched by his usual coterie of celebrity fans – the guest list included Oprah Winfrey, Laura Dern and Priyanka Chopra – the collection that followed was Ralph Lauren 101, presenting a glossy vision of American style that feels current (the preppy look has appeared everywhere from Dior to Celine in recent seasons; Mr Lauren has long been synonymous with the style). ‘Strength and sensuality,’ said the designer in his collection notes, a thematic focus that led to a crisp, at points even minimal, showing from the designer: graphic tailoring game in optic white and bold red, layered looks came in cohesive monochrome hues, while gowns had a simplicity of silhouette (whether flared and voluminous, with narrow spaghetti straps, or wrapped around the body, Grecian style). Meanwhile, ties, striped shirts and pleated shorts – straddling masculine and feminine – were a nod to Ralph Lauren signatures. With a recent CFDA nomination for womenswear designer of the year being announced – if he wins, it will be his tenth such award – it was an argument for doing what you do best: at the end of the financial year in March 2025, the brand posted a seven per cent rise in revenue, bucking the difficulties faced by American brands elsewhere. As he took his final bow – clad in a battered brown leather bomber and signature aviators alongside his wife, Ricky Lauren – he was every bit worthy of the jubilant applause.

Proenza Schouler

Shown via a presentation held the day prior to New York Fashion Week’s start, Proenza Schouler marked the first debut of the month – though it came with an asterisk. The S/S 2026 collection was made ‘in collaboration’ between the New York-based label’s studio team and Rachel Scott, the Brooklyn-based designer who was made creative director of the brand earlier this month after the departure of founders Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who have headed to Loewe (she will show her ‘full creative debut’ next February). At her own New York-based label Diotima – which will host its debut runway show in Brooklyn later in the week – Scott is known for sinuous, body-clinging silhouettes combined with moments of beading, crochet and embellishment inspired by her home country of Jamaica; here, hints of her tenure came in chunky-knit dresses in intriguing bouclé yarns, bright solar prints, and colourful accessories, from bags adorned with fronds of raffia to shoes sprouting with flowers. Scott described the collection as a ‘soft undoing’ – a mood captured in edges left purposely raw, or knits unravelling – which embraced the satisfying eclectism that has long defined the label. It made for a strong opening act, leaving us intrigued to see her vision unfold.

Stay tuned for more from New York Fashion Week S/S 2026.

Fashion weeks often celebrate the future. Showgoers speculate on upcoming trends while brands present fresh collections. History may be woven into the narrative – fashion, with its cyclical nature, inevitably revisits the past – but the commercial aim is clear: to inspire the industry’s decision-makers to focus on the new. Copenhagen is no exception, especially since the launch of the CPHFW NewTalent scheme in 2022, designed to nurture and promote emerging designers on a global stage. But for 66°North, the Icelandic outerwear brand preparing for its centenary next year, fashion week is also an opportunity to address pressing topics that permeate the industry.

Inside a stark gallery space in western Copenhagen, the whir of sewing machines mingles with the low hum of conversation. Repair specialists from Iceland thread needles, carefully coaxing life back into a beloved jacket with a punctured sleeve. Visitors lean in, watching each stitch – part performance, part preservation. On the wall, skeletal remnants of cut fabric hang alongside paper pattern templates, forming a disembodied collage of past and future. In one corner, four models wear pieces from the S/S 2026 collection, highlighting the journey from creation to completion. This is 66°North’s idea of a fashion presentation: not only a preview of what’s to come, but a celebration of an enduring craft that has kept the brand and its garments built to last for (almost) one hundred years.

Helgi Óskarsson on 100 years of 66°North

Founded in 1926 by Hans Kristjansson in the fishing village of Suðureyri on the shores of Iceland’s Westfjords, 66°North was established to provide clothing that helped islanders withstand their country's coastal weather. The designs were less a style statement than a matter of survival. A fisherman’s coat wasn't a choice; it was a lifeline.

While we walk around 66°North’s fashion presentation with Helgi Óskarsson, who was appointed CEO in 2011, he points out that pragmatism remains the core of the brand’s design philosophy. Even today, in a fast-moving industry often led by visual cues and creative expression. ‘In Iceland, performance clothing isn’t only for outdoor adventures, it’s for survival every day. We design for multipurpose: a jacket you can hike in, wear to a café, or take skiing.’

Today, a 20,000-member Facebook group is dedicated solely to trading and reselling 66°North garments, proof that the brand’s authenticity and relevance prevail. ‘We’ve always aimed to be authentic, whether in old photos showing Iceland’s real weather or in store design elements like ceiling mesh that mimics gloomy skies.’

Repair as ritual

When a human injures themselves, they fix it, like a plaster over a cut. 66°North follows the same ethos when it comes to its clothes: make, repair, mend. Clothes are like a second skin, protecting against the harsh conditions of the outside world. ‘Like skin, you don’t change it all the time, and that means designing with two goals: it must function for multiple purposes and still look relevant ten years from now,’ says Óskarsson.

Long before ‘circularity’ became a marketing term, 66°North had its own version, an in-house repair service that has been running since the brand’s earliest days. In the 1920s, customers would bring their oilskins back to Suðureyri to be patched and reproofed. Today, over 4,000 garments a year pass through the company’s repair workshop in Reykjavík.

The Copenhagen presentation makes this tradition visible. Garments are mended in full view, every needle puncture and thread pull on display. Some repairs are near-invisible, an exercise in technical precision; others are intentionally conspicuous, with contrast panels that serve as a badge of honour.

‘We see repair as a collaboration between the garment, the maker, and the wearer,’ says Óskarsson. ‘It’s about adding another chapter to its story.’ In this setting, repair becomes more than maintenance; it’s a performance of values. Each stitch affirms the brand’s belief that a single jacket should replace five, and still hold its relevance after a decade of use. In the whir of the sewing machine, the centenary feels like a celebration of the past and a rehearsal for the next hundred years ahead.

The S/S 2026 collection

In celebration of the brand’s heritage and origin, next year’s centenary capsule for S/S 2026 will include one hero piece from each decade of the brand’s history, a visual archive of its evolution. Early oilskins and fishermen’s coats, search-and-rescue overalls, stormproof rainwear from the 1980s – each reinterpreted in new fabrics sourced from partners such as GORE-TEX and Polartec, while retaining their original silhouettes and intent.

‘Some of our best-selling designs are decades old,’ Óskarsson says. ‘We tweak them over time, using newly innovated, better fabrics, but keeping the core design.’ This season, hero pieces include the Hornstrandir Shell Jacket (named after the Hornstrandir Nature Reserve), Helgafell Trail Windbreaker (inspired by Iceland’s rugged trails), and the Snæfell Polartec Power Shield Pro, a multi-purpose everyday shell. Natural earthy tones permeate the collection, reflecting Iceland’s landscape and people.

What the next hundred years will look like for 66°North is anyone’s guess, but inevitably, climate, culture, and style will shift again. But Óskarsson is certain of one thing: that relevance is built on more than seasonal trends. ‘It feels amazing to be part of a brand still relevant after a century,’ he says. Repair, in his eyes, isn’t just a service but a signal, a way of keeping garments – and the craft behind them – in circulation. ‘We want people to know this service exists so clothes aren’t thrown away, and to highlight appreciation for quality and craftsmanship.’ As the sewing machines wind down and the last jacket is stitched closed, the centenary feels less like a look back and more like the quiet start of the next chapter.

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Representing the very pinnacle of Parisian fashion – a dizzying haze of gowns, celebrity attendees and theatrical presentations designed to tempt a handful of wealthy clients – Haute Couture Week arrives next Monday in the French capital with plenty of moments to look out for. Because, while haute couture remains the preserve of the ultra-rich, its focus on superlative savoir-faire and fantastical design means there are true fashion thrills to be had – ones that so often filter down into the style zeitgeist.

Notably, these include the arrival of Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela – following the highly lauded tenure of John Galliano – and the swansong of Demna at Balenciaga before he border-hops to his new role at Gucci in Italy. There will also be the final Chanel collection to be designed in-house before the arrival of Matthieu Blazy, who will debut during ready-to-wear week in September, and the reveal of ‘new beginnings’ at JW Anderson. Elsewhere, Dior will press pause on showing at haute couture week (new creative director Jonathan Anderson will make his debut in the medium next January), alongside Valentino and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Here, Wallpaper* breaks down five of Haute Couture Week A/W 2025’s expected standout moments – stay tuned for live coverage, beginning next Monday on wallpaper.com (7 July 2025).

Glenn Martens will show his first collection for Maison Margiela

Though he has big shoes to fill – predecessor John Galliano’s ten-year tenure at Maison Margiela provided some of the most memorable runway moments of recent times – Glenn Martens comes with the goodwill of the industry, after a stellar tenure at Y/Project (he also is creative director at Diesel, a role he will continue alongside Maison Margiela). With the runway show scheduled for Wednesday evening as couture week’s final act, little has been revealed about what we can expect – neither Martens nor Maison Margiela have posted any kind of teaser – though expect a focus on deconstruction (a hallmark of both Maison Margiela and Martens’ work) through a subculture-inflected lens. ‘I feel extremely honoured to join the amazing Maison Margiela, a truly unique house that has been inspiring the world for decades,’ Martens said after the appointment, which was announced in January after Galliano’s departure.

READ: Glenn Martens is headed to Maison Margiela as the house’s new creative director

A new vision for JW Anderson will be revealed

Fresh off his acclaimed debut collection for Dior – which saw him ‘decode and recode’ the house’s archive – Irish designer Jonathan Anderson is undertaking a similar act of reinvention for his own label, JW Anderson, which remains based in London. He will reveal his new vision on Monday afternoon in Paris, having teased ‘new beginnings’ on Instagram for the past weeks – including a newly refreshed store design, labels, packaging, and what looks like an edit of homeware (from jugs and chairs to JW-branded trowels). Seeming to err towards a mood of British craft and timelessness, the glimpses of clothing have followed a similar track, from woollen plaid kilts and striped polo tees to cable-knit sweaters and workwear jeans. Though a sweater collaboration with Berlin-based queer artist Dean Sameshima, reading ‘Anonymous Trade’, confirms that the frisson of subversion that has long defined Anderson’s work remains.

Demna will hold his Balenciaga swansong

It has become increasingly rare for creative directors to have the opportunity to host a ‘final show’ after their departure from a house – in recent seasons, exits have largely taken immediate effect, with the reins being handed straight over to a successor or in-house design team. For Balenciaga’s Demna, his transformative tenure at the house is being celebrated by a final haute couture show, unfolding in the original restored haute couture salon on Tuesday (this is likely because he is moving to another house in the Kering roster, Gucci, rather than one under a competitor conglomerate). Expect a typically contemporary vision of haute couture from the Georgian designer, a medium that has perhaps been the highlight of his decade at the house. ’We’ve become numb to the beauty of the world. Why don’t we see the beauty anymore?’ he told Wallpaper* of his haute couture approach. ‘We need it to survive.’

READ: ‘What is beauty?’: Balenciaga’s Demna on creating thoroughly modern haute couture

Dior will take a pause from showing

Though Anderson hosted his opening act at Dior last week – showing his inaugural menswear collection for the house on Friday afternoon – fans of the newly refreshed vision will have to wait a little longer to see his first haute couture collection, which represents the pinnacle of Dior’s oeuvre (after all, the house’s namesake Christian Dior is arguably the most famous couturier of the 20th-century). Taking a rare pause from the schedule, Anderson is expected to make his couture debut next January for S/S 2026, though Dior is not entirely without a haute couture collection – Maria Grazia Chiuri’s final Cruise show in Rome included a number of couture looks, which will likely be offered to clients this July in a series of private appointments.

The couture heavyweights will show throughout the week

Rounding out the schedule will be outings from a trio of haute couture heavyweights: Schiaparelli, Chanel and Armani Privé (Valentino will not show, having shifted to a once-a-year schedule for couture, while Jean Paul Gaultier awaits the arrival of new creative director Duran Lantink). At Schiaparelli, American designer Daniel Roseberry will continue to hone his sculptural, theatrical vision for the house – which has amassed a legion of devotees and spawned a ready-to-wear line – while at Chanel, it will be the final outing for the in-house design studio before Matthieu Blazy’s tenure begins with a debut womenswear collection in September. Meanwhile, at Armani Privé, after Giorgio Armani did not appear for his final bow at his menswear shows in Milan – a note from the house said he was recovering at home after a recent hospitalisation – guests will hope the designer will be back in full health for the presentation, which takes place on Tuesday evening.

Against a painterly Florentine sky, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake staged a one-night-only runway show in the sprawling Renaissance gardens of Villa Medicea della Petraia, a former Medici residence on Monte Morello, just outside of the Tuscan city.

The occasion was Pitti Uomo, the annual menswear fair that takes place in Florence each season, which, alongside the main event at the Fortezza da Basso, invites a handful of guest designers to stage a runway show as part of the schedule (previous designers have included Raf Simons, Grace Wales Bonner and Martine Rose).

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake S/S 2026 at Pitti Uomo in Florence

The S/S 2026 show also marked the start of a new nomadic strategy for the Japanese label, which falls under the Miyake Design Studio umbrella. Shifting from Paris – where its spot on the schedule went to IM Men (as seen in January 2025), a more recent addition to the Issey Miyake roster – Homme Plissé will now show its collections at a series of locations around the world.

Aptly, the show required a journey of its own, with guests driven from Florence to the outskirts of the city by coach, before transferring to a fleet of black cars to navigate Monte Morello’s twisting roadways. On arrival, the Villa’s dramatic main courtyard – lined with floor-to-ceiling frescoes depicting the triumphs of the Medici family – was transformed into a playful exhibition space depicting the origins of the collection.

Amid sculptural displays featuring Homme Plissé’s boldly hued garments – distinct for their heat-pressed knife pleats, which do not crease when stored – was a series of colour swatches that the team had created through a number of journeys to Italy over the past year. The swatches included ’Cinque Terre Yellow’ and ‘Zucchini Flower Orange’, each derived from the painstaking colour-matching of real-life objects using paint palettes taken on the team’s travels (as well as to Florence, the trips took them across Italy, from Liguria to Venezia).

‘The collection was inspired by not only Florence but places throughout Italy – there are many beautiful cities and landscapes,’ a spokesperson for the Homme Plissé Issey Miyake design team told Wallpaper* (the brand runs without a formal head designer). ‘This collection is built upon colours found in the urban fabric and nature of Italian cities.’

As such, the paint brush became a symbol in the collection, appearing in a plissé painter’s vest in the collection’s opening look, while a series of degradé prints was inspired by photographs of paint brushes after they had been used. Other prints featured painterly splashes and swirls – designed to evoke the brushstrokes of the design team’s research pages – while a typically vivid palette spanned hues of lemon yellow, aubergine, and bold shades of blue.

Other nods to Italy came in a ‘linen-like’ iteration of the Homme Plissé pleated fabric, cleverly manipulated to give the appearance and feel of the airy summer fabric synonymous with Italian style. Meanwhile, playful double-breasted suits and jackets – also rendered in the plissé material – nodded towards the Italian tradition of sartorialism and tailoring, one particularly celebrated at Pitti Uomo each season.

The Homme Plissé Issey Miyake design team say that this approach is designed to ‘broaden our perspective... We believe that the knowledge and experiences gained this way will be the foundation on which we further build our design and making.’ As such, the new travelling concept is called ‘Open Studio’, started with an aim to ‘connect with local communities and a global creative scene’.

As the show took place, a series of sprinklers misted the gardens, part of an installation by Andrea Faraguna and Michael Kleine – a celebration of the grandeur of the everyday routines of life. Out of the mist, and against a picture-perfect Tuscan sunset, marched models in the collection’s closing looks – a series of parka-style jackets, surreally adorned with coat hangers.

Earlier in the day, the Homme Plissé Issey Miyake design team had demonstrated the magic of these items at a press preview – when folded away in a series of origami-like actions, they transform into a garment bag, ready for the next journey onwards. Where that next destination is – or when the team will get there – remains to be seen, but with this Pitti Uomo outing, this looks like a brand on an impressive forward trajectory.

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isseymiyake.com

With ‘Donna Trope, Polaroids’, at Galerie Carole Lambert in Paris from June through 24 September 2025, the renowned beauty photographer honours the quieter section of her vast archive. Rarely-seen-before images from her collection of some 25,000 physical Polaroid prints celebrate Trope’s decades-long relationship with the instant photograph, curated in collaboration with Fany Dupêchez. ‘Polaroids used to be my rejects, and now they are my holy grail,’ Trope tells Wallpaper* in an email. ‘A way for me to work through a visual problem and get to my goal – that of the final “finished’ image – they are the unseen method of operating.’

Born in Los Angeles before relocating to London in her late teens, where she would learn to use a camera and, soon after, land her first campaign (a year-long contract with the make-up giant Max Factor), Trope spent much of the 1980s and 1990s distorting mainstream perceptions of beauty and revising the more straightforward designs of what a beauty image could look like. In the early 1990s, an editorial with stylist Katie Grand for the 14th issue of Dazed, ‘Preservation Vamp’, saw her work labelled ‘disgusting’ by a top model agent; in subsequent years, her distinctive visual language has seen Trope widely admired across the beauty industry, with several pieces acquired by institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum.

‘I was using photography to enhance what I saw to a vision of how I liked to view it,’ she says today, reflecting on how her early ideas about beauty and aesthetics informed her practice. ‘The concept of beauty is simply something visual that we personally aspire to, some more than others. To attain beauty, to own it, to become what we desire is a dream, however basic and simple, of the narcissist. It can be seen in two ways: that of damage control, and that of accentuating the good first and foremost and of camouflaging the bad: it’s an illusion, and we have the power to control illusions, thus to control beauty, now more than any time in history.’

After Max Factor, followed other heavyweights – from Revlon and Maybelline, to Aveda and Sephora, as well as publications including Vogue and The Sunday Times Magazine – and, more recently, Trope has collaborated closely with Kim Kardashian’s Skims. ‘I have always loved beauty!’ she offers, recalling her introduction to the industry’s commercial side. ‘To see a face and body, each as its own tiny world, a landscape with hills and valleys. To become the architect of a face...to alter the illusion with powder paint pulling, as well as light and angles, is what I think of as pure magic! It’s smoke and mirrors in the positive. Use them not as a lie but as a reality.’

While negotiating colour and light is a cornerstone of her practice (the cover of her cult 2001 book Beauty Shots, for example, featuring a model’s side profile as a cigarette is stubbed onto her cheek, is undoubtedly more powerful as a result of its bright palette and high shine), Trope’s Polaroids exist elsewhere. Characteristically hers, with their confronting disposition and nod to the erotic, their pull is the product of a more intimate beast. ‘We have within us at least two sides,’ considers the photographer. ‘I call it what we see and what we feel: some things we keep hidden, although we are comfortable with this vision, it's not thought out. It's instant gratification. We see, we like, we snap and we capture. But what we show, especially the world of beauty, is rarely the real thing.

‘The finished image is thought out, toyed with, stepped on, glossed over and touched up,’ she continues. ‘My Polaroids are not! They are, in fact, the real thing. I refer to these Polaroids as my alter-ego. Freud might say I'm free-associating: I'm being free, knowing that the end results in polish and paint, ie, a beauty image.’ It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that Trope’s Polaroids are already the subject of a book, published by Patrick Remy Studio in 2023. Moreover, the new exhibition, Trope’s first in France, is effectively a full circle moment: first encountering Trope’s work in a magazine in 2000, Carole Lambert eventually met the photographer at a book signing. ‘It has been a true and real collaboration,’ Trope shares of working alongside the gallerist. ‘It is a marriage of our taste and instinct combined.’

‘Polaroids by Donna Trope’, Monday-Friday, 2pm-6pm,

Galerie Carole Lambert, 81 Rue du Temple, 75003 Paris, lambert-lambert.com, @galeriecarolelambert

It was in 1959 that Valentino Garavani revealed his first collection to instant acclaim in Rome – including a dress, ‘La Fiesta’, in a bold shade of red. Some 66 years later, the singular, Pantone-recognised colour that has defined his prolific body of work ever since is being celebrated mere metres from where his career started.

‘Valentino Red’, the distinct shade of crimson owned and immortalised by Garavani, plays protagonist in the inaugural exhibition ‘Horizons/Red’ at PM23, the new cultural hub founded by the Fondazione Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti in Piazza Mignanelli, the original headquarters of the Valentino fashion brand.

Staged across six rooms in the newly restored venue, five themes – defining beauty, identity, emotional landscapes, surface treatment and, lastly, dreamlike surfaces – are explored through the presentation of 50 of Valentino’s most iconic creations, spanning his career from 1959 to 2008, when he retired, alongside 30 works by artists, also dominated by the colour red.

Fondazione Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti opens in Rome

Among the selected pieces, a tulle haute couture dress from Valentino’s groundbreaking 1959 collection looks out towards Cy Twombly’s Untitled, 2008; a backless crepe gown from S/S 2008 gazes at Clyfford Still’s 1955-D, PH-387 oil on canvas; a taffeta bubble-hem gown contemplates Francis Bacon’s 1983 Sand Dune painting; while haute couture column gowns take in Louise Bourgeois 20-frame compilation, 10am Is When You Come To Me (2006). They are joined by dozens more dialogues.

‘Seeing the dresses and artworks together sparked emotions we didn’t anticipate,’ Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino’s life and business partner, told Wallpaper* ahead of the exhibition opening on 25 May. ‘It reminded us how timeless beauty can be, and how creativity speaks across decades. It was both a professional and personal journey.’

The pair looked to former collaborator Pamela Golbin, who curated the definitive ‘Valentino: Themes and Variations’ exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2008 when Valentino retired, to curate once again.

Given free rein, Golbin selected each of the 50 gowns from the archive and had them meticulously restored to be ready for their new close-up. Faced with the challenge to celebrate Valentino’s legacy as one of the fashion world’s most important couturiers, Golbin wanted to take an approach that matches the originality of Valentino’s designs.

‘There have been so many art and fashion exhibitions in the past when you put a definition onto the dress that the designer never intended to have – so we really wanted to keep as authentic as possible,’ Golbin told Wallpaper*. ‘So while we explored red through art and fashion, it was not fashion and art dialoguing, because Mr Valentino did not dialogue with these works of art and these artists – many of whom died some years back – obviously didn’t know Mr Valentino’s work, so we didn’t want to set up an artificial dialogue.’

The alchemy that happened as a result was a happy coincidence.

‘What was stunning about having them both reply to the same themes is that something did happen between them, perhaps because all of them define one theme, and that is beauty. At the centre of this foundation is that beauty creates beauty.’

Valentino, who recently celebrated his 93rd birthday, was heavily involved in the realisation of the exhibition, said Golbin. He had paid a visit to the space the day before Wallpaper’s private tour, creating a moment for himself and Giammetti to pause for reflection.

‘It’s emotional,’ said Giammetti. ‘You don’t realise what you’ve built until you take a step back. Curating this exhibition has been a way to look at our past, not with nostalgia, but as inspiration for what comes next.’

The exhibition is the first of many at the PM23 space that will serve as a ‘centre of cultural exchange’ moving forward, said Giammetti, adding that the realisation of the space was especially significant for him and Valentino.

‘This space, in the heart of Rome, represents the culmination of a dream – to create a lasting, tangible home for the cultural mission and the activities supported by the Fondazione. It’s about opening the door to the future, offering a space for creativity, for new voices, and for a community built around culture and inspiration.’

It also embodies the pair’s hope for future generations of aspiring creatives, just like they were back when they met in 1960.

‘I hope they stay curious, authentic, and fearless. The world has changed, but the need for vision and courage remains the same. Art and fashion are not only industries. they are ways of telling stories. I hope the next generation feels empowered to tell theirs. If we can inspire even one young person to pursue a path of beauty and purpose, our efforts will have been worthwhile.’

Horizons/Red opens at PM23 on Piazza Mignanelli on 25 May 2025, with free admission until June 11, 2025.

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‘Haute couture is fashion when it becomes art,’ Giorgio Armani told Wallpaper* earlier this year, having hosted a triumphant Armani Privé show at the newly inaugurated Palazzo Armani in Paris, an opulent French outpost on Rue François Premier which will house the Privé couture atelier and design studio.

The show, which took place in one of the palazzo’s salon-style upper rooms, had a celebratory air: this year, Armani Privé – the haute couture arm of the Italian fashion empire – celebrates 20 years in business. First shown in Paris in January 2005, Mr Armani chose the name Privé to evoke ‘rarity and uniqueness... a personal aesthetic pleasure’ – a nod to the way that, in the tradition of haute couture, each garment is made to the exact proportions of a client’s body.

Giorgio Armani Privé 2005-2025, Twenty Years of Haute Couture exhibition

‘Haute couture allows me to step into a realm of captivating fantasy and experimentation,’ says Mr Armani. ‘It is both a dream and a service – it’s not about creating clothes for beautiful photos or memorable editorials but designing for a real clientele.’

Opening today, back in his home city of Milan, Mr Armani continues the festivities with a new exhibition at Armani/Silos, a monolithic exhibition space designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, a longtime collaborator. Titled ‘Giorgio Armani Privé 2005-2025, Twenty Years of Haute Couture’, it marks the first time that Mr Armani’s Privé garments will be on display in Milan, with a focus placed on the extraordinary handcraft that goes into each piece (the designer is particularly known for rich surface embellishment).

The exhibition is curated by Mr Armani himself – an expression of the his seemingly boundless energy, even as he looks ahead to his 91st birthday this July (a special show in New York last year marked his 90th year). ‘Pure form and precious fabrics,’ describes Mr Armani of the exhibition’s organising themes, which centre around a pursuit of contemporary beauty – a throughline of his style empire, from ready-to-wear to home furnishings.

As for how he would describe Armani Privé, he chooses ‘linear, elegant and rareified’ – part of the reason for the label’s ubiquity on the red carpet (stars from Lady Gaga to Demi Moore have worn custom Armani Privé, the latter to collect her recent Golden Globe for Best Actress in The Substance earlier this year). A strapless gown adorned with pearlescent paillettes and Swarovski crystals, worn by Anne Hathaway to the 2009 Oscars, will feature in the exhibition.

In true Armani style, the exhibition is designed for full immersion: a special soundtrack for the display has been created by L’Antidote (a trio of experimental musicians comprising Redi Hasa, Rami Khalifé and Bijan Chemirani, with influences from Albania, Lebanon and Iran), while Bois d’Encens, a scent from the Armani/Privé Haute Couture Fragrance line will be misted into the space (the incense-inspired scent is inspired by memories of Italian church services).

‘20 years of Giorgio Armani Privé have been an extraordinary, liberating journey,’ says Mr Armani. ‘Now, I want to share it with a wider audience, inviting them into this dream of mine, a dream of dresses woven from imagination and grace. A very special world that takes on new meaning in this exhibition.’

Giorgio Armani Privé 2005-2025, Twenty Years of Haute Couture runs from today (21 May) to 28 December 2025.

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There’s a guy polishing his shoes, and another in his pants dancing on the street outside. For their first collaboration, Martine Rose and Sharna Osborne made a short film inspired by Robert Mapplethorpe and Mark E Smith: a colour-drenched erotica soundtracked by 70s band Smokey, released to premiere Rose’s A/W 2016 collection (at least one of the men is wearing the very recognisable ring top). ‘It’s definitely a favourite of mine,’ the celebrated menswear designer says today, reflecting on her work with Osborne. Introduced by a mutual friend, the photographer and filmmaker has since become a familiar presence across Rose’s brand, lending her distinctive lo-fi aesthetic to various multimedia projects.

Sometime in the months that followed that initial short, in 2016 the pair conceived of a more personal piece, this time inviting the iconic Bronski Beat frontman Jimmy Somerville to participate; nine years later, the resulting film, ‘Everything Must Change’, is on show at Sadie Coles HQ, presented as an installation at the gallery’s Davies Street location until 24 February 2025 (as such it coincides with the arrival of London Fashion Week in the city). A three-channel video that plays across a wall of mammoth-sized LED screens, it’s maybe unexpected how soothing – and wholly absorbing – the experience is to enter the white box space and pull up a child-sized plastic chair from the stacked pile. Which is kind of the point.

Everything Must Change: A film by Martine Rose and Sharna Osborne at Sadie Coles HQ

Produced in Osborne’s VHS-coded style, a fuzzy mix of colours stream across the monitors, from glaring Demon Headmaster green and white stripes, to softer, homely tones, and spotlight black. There’s another man, standing on a plinth outfitted in that familiar Rose silhouette of oversized trousers and zip-up sports top, as well as starlings, pieces of fruit, and a casual domestic set-up. And then there’s Somerville, dressed in a sparkling full-body suit, his rendition of ‘Everything Must Change’, originally performed by Bernard Ighner on Quincy Jones’s 1974 album ‘Body Heat’ (and recorded by Nina Simone in 1978), floating from the speakers.

‘I went to see Men in Motion at Sadler’s Wells, which was a series of short ballets, celebrating men in dance,’ offers Rose, by way of explanation for the phenomenal sequin look. ‘There was one dancer wearing a sequined suit under a spotlight, dancing to “Sinnerman” by Nina Simone. It was incredibly moving; the combination was amazing.’

Below, she tells Wallpaper* how ‘Everything Must Change’ happened.

Wallpaper*: How did this project initially come about?

Martine Rose: After seeing The Infinite Mix at the Hayward Gallery, we were really inspired to make a film that made you feel something. I knew the easiest way was through music and it sort of just came to me: Jimmy Somerville’s voice. It was a mission to use our networks to get in touch with him, but we met for a coffee in Soho and it started from there. I still can’t believe he agreed to do it.

W*: Can you recall your introduction to Somerville and his work?

MR: Jimmy Somerville is a British icon; I’ve grown up with his music. Pop charts at the time I was introduced to Jimmy Somerville’s voice were dominated by gay musicians: Erasure, Bronski Beat, Marc Almond. Mainstream pop by out and proud gay men making serious, respected pop music – not tokenistic – which can never be replicated. It was a radical time for music, all about individuality, no stylists, all genuine expression. Who the group is comes before the music now, which is not how it was back then.

W*: And what was it like, collaborating with him on this project?

MR: There was no resistance to anything, it felt really normal and natural. Looking back, I can’t believe he trusted us so much, having no reason to do so. We didn’t have any backstory of film or working with musicians at that point, and created with a very low budget. There was a vague promise of something at the end, but it was for the art of it. They say you should never meet your heroes, but on this occasion, I’d have to disagree.

W*: Do you remember the first time you heard ‘Everything Must Change’?

MR: Jimmy really led on the choice of song and the rearranging of it. We discussed Nina Simone, we are both big fans, and it felt right. I had never heard the song before Jimmy suggested it, but we were all struck by how much he committed to the project; blown away with the seriousness and attention to detail he showed. The sound was beautiful, beyond our wildest dreams.

W*: This is the first time you’ve worked with a gallery in this capacity. What has it meant to you, bringing your practice into this space?

MR: It’s an unbelievable privilege to be able to work on what felt like a personal project, and then almost a decade later for it to be taken seriously by such a credible gallery like Sadie Coles.

W*: You’ve previously referenced, in the press notes that accompany the show, this idea of an emotional surprise, as a response to hearing music in an unfamiliar context. Can you speak on how this manifests in your own life, and how, or if, this project has reshaped your perspective?

MR: Generally, a gallery space encourages some sort of introspection, some sort of consideration, a pause. It requires a certain amount of concentration, that is almost a momentary break from reality, allowing people to dream for a moment. Bringing music into a space is an easy gateway to break from reality. To contemplate. It allows me to dream. My perspective hasn’t changed, it’s just been reinforced. Contemporary culture forces us to see everything through lenses or screens. I hope this is an enveloping feeling that invites you into something real.

Everything Must Change: A film by Martine Rose and Sharna Osborne runs until 24 February 2025 at Sadie Coles HQ, Davies Street, London.

sadiecoles.com

The Met Gala, which takes place each year on the first Monday of May, has long been a glittering highlight of the fashion calendar (so much so, it is often called ‘The Oscars of Fashion’). The gala, officially called the Costume Institute Benefit, is a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. But it’s also one of the most anticipated red carpets around, with attendees dressing to a theme and turning out looks that routinely turn into viral sensations.

With just a few days to go, Wallpaper* has compiled all of the details surrounding the event – consider this your Met Gala cheat sheet. Read on for everything we know bout this year’s gala, from the theme and dress code to the co-chairs and where you can watch the spectacle unfold.

The date: Monday 5 May 2025

Tradition dictates that the Met Gala takes place on the first Monday of May, which this year falls on 5 May. The event is held at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The concurrent Costume Institute exhibition, ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’, which dictates the theme of the event (more on this later), will be open to the public from 6 May – 26 October 2025.

The theme: ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’

The theme of the Met Gala reflects the year’s Costume Institute exhibition, which the gala also inaugurates. This year’s is called ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’, and is based on the 18th-century looks explored in Monica Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. In it, Miller considers how Black people have used fashion to ‘imagine new ways of embodying political and social responsibilities’.

The theme, therefore, focuses on the role of sartorial style in the forming of Black identities, with a focus on the ‘Black dandy’, defined as a Black man who ‘paid distinct and sometimes excessive attention to dress’. ‘Superfine’ will redefine the notion of a dandy while celebrating Black fashion through the ages.

Composed of clothing, photographs, art, texts and artefacts, this will be the first Costume Institute exhibition to focus exclusively on menswear for more than 20 years (since 2003’s 'Men in Skirts' theme). The exhibition will be arranged by 12 characteristics of Black dandyism, informed by a 1934 essay by writer Zora Neale Hurston. Additionally, Torkwase Dyson will be curating the scenography for ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’; look out for Wallpaper's exclusive interview with the artist.

The dress code: ‘Tailored for You’

While the theme of the Met Gala is ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’, the dress code presents attendees with a looser assignment – the gala says that its dress code is ‘purposefully designed to provide guidance and invite creative interpretation’. This year’s is ‘Tailored for You’, which, we can safely assume, will invite attendees to focus on suiting more generally.

Expect diverse renditions of classic tailoring, inspired takes on tuxedos and lapels, and a smattering of hats, ties, canes, brooches and pocket squares. Designers like Willy Chavarria, Thom Browne and Grace Wales Bonner will likely relish the assignment – each is known for their distinct riffs on sartorial classics.

While the dress code is ripe for inspiration, some Met Gala fans have voiced concern that it might serve as a licence for men to turn up in a ‘boring’ suit – a phenomenon frowned upon in previous years. Here’s hoping that such concerns prove empty.

Recently, Burberry announced that it would be working with image architect Law Roach as a partner and consultant on the creative expression of the Met Gala theme, as well as for the curation of the Burberry Met Gala table.

The co-chairs: Pharrell Williams, Colman Domingo, A$AP Rocky and Lewis Hamilton

The Met Gala appoints co-chairs for each event. Although their role is ambassadorial, it’s rumoured that the panel also takes an active role planning the Met’s dress code, dinner and performances.

2025’s honourary chair will be sporting legend LeBron James. Co-chairs will be Pharrell Williams, Colman Domingo, A$AP Rocky, Lewis Hamilton and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who has been the driving force behind the Met Gala since 1995.

The Costume Institute has also announced that it will be reviving the tradition of having a ‘host committee’. This features a slew of Black luminaries including André 3000, Grace Wales Bonner, Simone Biles, Doechii, Ayo Edebiri, Usher, Janelle Monáe, Spike Lee, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edward Enninful, Olivier Rousteing, Dapper Dan, Regina King, Sha’Carri Richardson and Tyla.

Attendees might look to the co-chairs, many of whom have a track record of bringing top-tier menswear to the red carpet, for inspiration: Domingo made headlines when he appeared in mustard yellow haute couture at the 2024 Critics Choice Awards. Hamilton is the king of F1 paddock fashion, showing up to his final race with Mercedes in a red Rick Owens look. A$AP Rocky, meanwhile, is a menswear stalwart, boasting standout Met looks ranging from a custom Gucci outfit in 2023 to the vintage quilt he donned in 2021.

Where can I watch?

Vogue, which organises the event, will be live-streaming the red carpet on all of its digital platforms, including YouTube, with singer and actor Teyana Taylor; actor and producer La La Anthony; and actor and comedian Ego Nwodim hosting.

What happens inside the gala, however, is kept strictly under wraps, with guests required to abide by a no phone or social media policy.

‘A monumental marriage between art and business,’ is how the designer Marc Jacobs, then the creative director of Louis Vuitton’s womenswear line, would describe the collaboration between the behemoth of Parisian luxury and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Debuting as part of Jacobs’ S/S 2003 collection for the house, Murakami’s multi-coloured reimagining of the Louis Vuitton monogrammed handbag – most memorably on white canvas – would become the it-bag for the it-girls du jour (and has had something of a renaissance in recent years on resale sites due to fashion’s fascination with all things 2000s).

A slew of Murakami collabs would follow – his playful cherry and flower motifs would appear across the house’s leather goods throughout the 2000s – running until 2015, a year after Jacobs exited the label, replaced by current artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière. The influence of the partnership was immense: not only did it rack up hundreds of thousands of handbag sales for Louis Vuitton, it would also spawn the phenomenon of the art-fashion collaboration, one which shows no signs of abating today (at Louis Vuitton alone, since 2003 the house has collaborated with Richard Prince, Yayoi Kusama, Cindy Sherman, Marc Newson and Jeff Koons, among others).

Inside the Louis Vuitton x Murakami London-pop up

Late in December, Louis Vuitton announced that it would be reinvigorating its collaboration with Murakami with a ‘re-edition’ collection which will be revealed in chapters throughout 2025 (a splashy ad campaign, featuring house muse Zendaya, accompanied the news). Something of a greatest hits, ‘Chapter 1’ will celebrate the ‘Monogram Multicolore’ – Murakami’s original motif for the house – seeing numerous versions of the house’s ‘City Bag’, ‘Malle Wardrobe’ trunks, caps, silk carré scarves, belts and even skateboards adorned in the print, which is made up of 33 different colours. Meanwhile the ‘Supersoft Panda’, a typically Murakami-esque rendering of the animal, appears on necklaces and bag charms. ‘Chapter 2’ will launch in March 2025 with Murakami’s ‘Cherry Blossom’ pattern appearing across a similarly extensive product list.

To celebrate the launch, Louis Vuitton has inaugurated a number of colourful pop-ups in world cities; in London, a new two-storey space opens today (9 January 2025) on Brewer Street Soho. It promises a colourful immersion into the Louis Vuitton x Murakami universe, from fluffy flower cushions and tables adorned with ‘Monogram Multicolore’, to futuristic, chamber-like ‘modules’ filled with pieces from the collection (a note should also given to the staff uniform, a kind of space-age kimono pyjama with an LV pin at the chest). Archival pieces are also on display in the store, which Louis Vuitton says takes design cues from traditional modular Tokyo hotels.

Though arguably the Soho space’s biggest draw is the one-of-a-kind Louis Vuitton x Murakami café on the upper floor, housed in a ‘dedicated sphere module’, where cakes, pastries and drinks will be served from Murakami-branded cups or napkins (it will be the only such café in Europe). Meanwhile a vending machine, which can be played after shoppers purchase something from the collection and receive a special token, sees various Louis Vuitton x Murakami novelties, from stickers to trading cards, encased in plastic spheres ready to be won by the already-queueing aficionados.

Louis Vuitton x Murakami pop-up is open now at 39 Brewer Street, London, W1F 9UD. Until 9 February 2025.

louisvuitton.com

Outerwear label Tatras, which takes its name from a snow-peaked stretch of mountains between Slovakia and Poland, was born between continents. Founded by Japanese designer Sakao Masanaka in Milan, Italy in 2007, it describes its approach as combining ‘Japanese innovation and Italian craftsmanship’ across its expansive cold-weather wardrobe (though remains best-known for its signature goose-down padded jackets).

And, while Tatras remains relatively anonymous in Europe, the label looks set to be in the midst of a creative evolution – this month, it marks a new collaboration with the multidisciplinary Italian artist Giovanni Leonardo Bassan, heralding the launch of an expansive new store in Ginza, Tokyo.

Inside Tatras’ new outpost in Ginza, Tokyo

A protégé of Michèle Lamy and a longtime collaborator with Rick Owens (he has been head of furniture at the label since 2018), Bassan has created a special MA1 bomber jacket for the brand, which reverses to reveal one of his artworks – an oil painting of bodies intertwined (a special technique has been used to replicate the original texture). With sustainability in mind, it is crafted from a blend of wool and Spiber's Brewed Protein™, a low-environmental-impact material made through fermentation.

‘[The] first time wearing one of my paintings,’ read the caption of a recent Instagram post by Bassan, showing the artist in the jacket amid some of his monolithic furniture designs.

The store itself, which is located in the upscale Ginza neighbourhood, is an expansive, multi-level space which is largely based around the idea of ‘beauty in contrast’ (it is a brand mantra which emerges from the label’s Japan-meets-Italy codes). As such, the airy spaces combine natural elements – like smooth stone and wooden furnishings – with sleek concrete and stainless steel. ‘The design is inspired by the fusion of Italian and Japanese influences that define Tatras,’ the brand describes.

The store will also act like something of a rolling gallery space, featuring both local artists and those from further afield. For the opening, ceramics by Asahiyaki, a traditional pottery producer based in the Uji region of Kyoto Prefecture, are interspersed throughout, placed in conversation with Tatras’ distinctly shaped puffer jackets. The aim of such ‘installations’, says Tatras, is to recall contemporary sculpture.

Tatras Ginza, V88 Building, 2-chōme-5-11 Ginza, Chuo City, Tokyo 104-0061, Japan.

tatras-official.com

’Total freedom’ is how Japanese designer Yoshiyuki Miyamae describes the approach he and his team take to A-POC ABLE Issey Miyake, the innovative, lab-like offshoot of the Miyake Design Studio that was first introduced in 2021. Unbound from the ‘seasonal constraints’ of the other brands in the Issey Miyake roster, A-POC ABLE is defined by creative and technical ingenuity – an ode, says Miyamae, to the boundless imagination of house founder Issey Miyake, who died in August 2022.

This week, A-POC ABLE lands in London (launching 26 April 2024), marking a rare opportunity to purchase pieces from the brand outside of its native Japan. APOC itself stands for 'A Piece of Cloth’, a concept that was introduced in 1998 by Miyake whereby computer programming is used to create pieces of fabric with a single piece of thread, the surface imprinted with pattern pieces and instructions allowing the wearer to cut out the garment themselves.

A-POC Able Issey Miyake arrives in London

A-POC ABLE marks a continuation of Miyake’s original idea, comprising not only an array of innovative clothing production techniques – from tube-shaped garments which can be cut to size by their wearer to ’Steam Stretch’ whereby intricate pleated designs are achieved with fabric which reacts to heat – but also collaborations with an array of creatives, from artists to musicians, as well as those from technological industries.

‘[A-POC ABLE is about creating] products through industrial creation that can be worn in daily life, while simultaneously engaging in multiple projects focused on long-term research and development,’ explains Miyamae to Wallpaper*. ‘Through our collaborative projects with various fields – such as art, technology, traditional culture, industry-academia and more – we aim to introduce the fascinating aspects of our craftsmanship to fields that have previously shown little interest in fashion or Issey Miyake.

‘We like to learn unknown things,’ he continues. ‘Finding new discoveries not only from within our own team but also from interactions with people from various fields, offering different approaches to enhance our design and making. Art, in particular, allows us to gain new perspectives on society and to see things from different perspectives.’

As such, to mark the arrival of A-POC ABLE in London – available exclusively at the Issey Miyake store at 10 Brook Street, Mayfair – a number of limited-edition pieces from the brand’s collaboration with Japanese photographer Sohei Nishino will be available to purchase. For the project, two of Nishino’s signature ‘Diorama Maps’ – intricate images made up of photographs taken on wanders through cities such as New York and London, which are then pasted together to recall a map – have been recreated as clothing using a jacquard weaving technique unique to A-POC ABLE.

‘Mr Nishino’s work begins with walking, taking photographs, developing them, printing them in the darkroom and cutting the enormous number of contact sheets one by one – it takes about six months to complete the process of pasting the individual sheets and finally photographing them to create a single piece of work,’ says Miyamae. ’I felt that the process of his work was like weaving a piece of cloth.’

’[At first] we had great difficulty in designing a precise weave for the photographic representation,’ he says of the pieces, which comprise a reversible collar coat and a five-pocket pant. ’[But] we were able to give form to it through a process of trial and error, making full use of our past experience and expertise. The Diorama Map series, which is representative of Mr Nishino’s [oeuvre], is a work of much process, just like our clothes making.’

As for why Issey Miyake chose London as the latest destination for A-POC ABLE, Miyamae cites the city’s enduring creative spirit. ‘London is a cultured place where people have a high level of interest and understanding of art and design,’ he says. ’I have always wanted to have these people see our creations and meet others who share our passion.’

A-POC Able Issey Miyake launches 26 April 2024 at Issey Miyake Brook Street, London.

issyemiyake.com

Since 1996, storied British shoemaker John Lobb has paid an annual ode to Saint Crépin – the patron saint of cobblers – with a limited-edition style which shows off the very heights of its artisanal workshops in Northampton, where each shoe is created using an intricate, time-honed 190-step manufacturing process.

The 2024 edition, the Henry, is celebratory in every sense: built, as is tradition for the Saint Crépin edition from the slender 7000 last – created in collaboration with the seasoned makers of John Lobb’s bespoke atelier in Paris – it is a sophisticated riff on the traditional Oxford brogue, here elevated in glazed high-shine leather with unique leather-lace wingtip detailing designed to evoke hand-stitched embroidery. 

Available in an edition of just 500 individually numbered pieces, the Henry – only available in John Lobb stores – is completed with the house’s ‘Prestige’ sole, treated with an elegant black stain. A leather lining is carefully matched to the shoe’s upper. 

Though primed for occasions, the Henry arrives at a wider shift in men’s footwear, where the once-ubiquitous sneaker is being eschewed for more classic styles – among them penny loafers, derbys, monk straps and brogues, designs that have been at the heart of John Lobb since its advent in 1849. 

John Lobb’s Henry brogues are available in a limited-edition run of 500, £1,800, from the brand’s stores and online.

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!

Cats have long prowled the corridors of Giorgio Armani’s Via Borgonuovo Milanese abode, their slinking, elegant, feline forms and aloof demeanour a seemingly apt echo of the designer’s oeuvre across an empire of fashion and design (indeed, he has been photographed clasping numerous pet cats across his five-decade-long career).

Revealed today, an unexpected collaboration between Swedish fashion label Our Legacy and Emporio Armani sees Mr Armani’s beloved animal adorn voluminous shirts and neckties – as well as in a special film animated by Gustaf Holtenäs – part of a larger collection that combines the two brands’ distinct aesthetics in a capsule wardrobe for both men and women. 

First Look: Emporio Armani Our Legacy Work Shop

The collaboration is part of Our Legacy Work Shop, an offshoot of the label that utilises deadstock and recycled garments (the brand’s co-founder Jockum Hallin describes it as ‘an experimental way of creating exciting pieces from leftover stock and fabrics, elevating something old into something new and desirable’). Titled ‘Emporio Armani Our Legacy Work Shop’, the project sees the two brands unite on the collection’s ‘inspiration, curation and execution... resulting in a merged world, blending old and new, reworked yet unmistakable silhouettes’. 

As such, pieces combine Our Legacy’s undone, vintage-inspired silhouettes – whether an oversized suede flight jacket with teddy colour, jacquard waistcoat, or slouchy plaid shirts – with hallmarks of Emporio Armani, from signature fluid tailoring to berets and sunglasses adorned with its eagle motif. Textural interest runs throughout, whether corduroy, coloured leather, denim or heavyweight jersey, while naive cat motifs appear throughout.

An accompanying campaign is photographed by British artist Mark Borthwick, seeing the collection captured in a series of sun-lit, street-shot images. Launching on 17 November 2023, the collection will be available in Our Legacy stores, ourlegacy.com, as well as in Dover Street Market outposts (London, Ginza, New York, Los Angeles and Beijing) and the retailer’s e-shop. 

ourlegacy.com
armani.com
shop.doverstreetmarket.com

It has been 100 years since Italian shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo opened his first store in Hollywood. Sitting opposite the palm-lined forecourt of Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre – which had opened a year prior in 1922, a grand picture house symbolic of cinema’s golden age – it was a mark of Ferragamo’s growing renown, having emigrated to the locale in 1915. Finding success creating footwear for the blockbusters of the era, including Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, he would go on to make shoes for a panoply of stars before returning to Florence in 1927 where he founded his eponymous house. Such was his fame, Ferragamo became known as ‘shoemaker to the stars’.

‘Salvatore Ferragamo 1898-1960’ exhibition in Florence

It is in the Tuscan city that a new exhibition celebrates the unique life of the designer, held at the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum located in Florence’s historic Palazzo Spini Feroni (Ferragamo the house continues to be based in Florence, now led by British creative director Maximilian Davis). Titled ‘Salvatore Ferragamo 1898-1960’, it leads viewers on a trip through both Ferragamo’s personal life and extraordinary archive, which continues to influence the house’s collections today. It marks a response of sorts to an earlier exhibition on the shoemaker, originally held in 1985 at Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi and subsequently touring the world, including stints at the V&A and the Los Angeles County Museum. Despite covering the same period, this new exhibition ‘offers different perspectives and content,’ says the house.

As such, the organisers have placed a greater focus on the creative and social milieu in which the various objects were created (previously, designs were simply displayed chronologically). Themes include Ferragamo’s talent as both entrepreneur and innovator, his bold use of colour (a rainbow wedge created for Judy Garland remains perhaps his most well-known design), and a lifelong commitment to artisanal craft. A section is even dedicated to his work with the anatomy of the foot, of which he would become an expert over the course of his career, while others recreate moments in his life and career. Together, the exhibition paints a portrait of a very modern designer and businessman, who was ahead of his time in astutely balancing commercial demands with creativity.

Other highlights in the exhibition include an array of unique archival objects including sketches, photographs and documents, as well as a multiplicity of shoes spanning the various decades of his career, housed in thematic rooms. These include the original shoes created for Ten Commandments at the Hollywood Boot Shop (the name of Ferragamo’s original venture), intricate raffia sandals from the 1930s, and an 18-karat gold sandal moulded by Florentine goldsmiths for one of Ferragamo’s American clients in the 1950s. The ornate style went on to inspire details in Davis’ A/W 2023 collection for the house, shown this past February in Milan – an apt example of the shoemaker’s continuing influence, and the blurred line between past and present that the new exhibition explores.

‘It’s how Ferragamo started, making shoes for films in the 1930s, and that grew into building relationships with movie stars like Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s,’ explained Davis at the time. ’I was interested in using their glamour and beauty, and their way of dressing, as a reference, but looking at how we could make it feel modern for today.’

‘Salvatore Ferragamo 1898-1960’ runs at the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum from October 27 2023 to November 4 2024.

museo.ferragamo.com

Located in a grand 19th-century Haussmann building, with interiors hewn from Grand Antique marble, Celine’s Rue Saint-Honoré store is a temple to Parisian elegance and luxury, dedicated to the feats of savoir-faire that define the house under current creative director Hedi Slimane.

Designed by Slimane, the store is punctuated with geometric mirrored walls and surfaces, a nod to France’s mouvement moderne. The ground floor is dedicated to leather goods, fine jewellery and women’s accessories, while a semi-spiral staircase, in golden brass, ascends to a salon-style mezzanine displaying the house’s ‘Haute Maroquinerie’ bags (the pinnacle of Celine’s accessories offering, each is created by hand by a single artisan). Next door, the house’s apothecary-style haute parfumerie, which opened in 2019, is now interconnected, providing a dedicated home for Slimane’s fragrance offering. ‘Pronounced classicism and dissonant sophistication,’ says the brand of the olfactory project, which, like the store, is designed to capture ‘the essence of Paris’.

Celine Saint Honoré: capturing the essence of Paris

Also populating the 137 sq m space is an array of contemporary artworks. Among them are a carved totem by New York-based Ian L C Swordy, a series of wooden sculptures by Vilnius-based Augustas Serapinas, and a specially commissioned mobile, Skylight Gems (2022), by US sculptor Virginia Overton. Paintings by Vivian Suter and Will Boone also feature, while an eclectic array of furniture and objets are selected for their ‘sculptural typology’. Each element is chosen or designed by Slimane, a continuity of the singular vision he brings to his collections.

It provides an apt setting to capture Slimane’s recent couture offering, shown as part of the house’s A/W 2023 show at The Wiltern theatre in LA last December. An honorary resident of the Californian city (Slimane lived in LA for several years before moving back to France, where he now resides close to Saint-Tropez), the collection itself melded tropes of Hollywood glamour with the designer’s eye for subculture and rebellion. First opened as a vaudeville theatre in 1931, The Wiltern’s opulent art deco interior has since become one of the city’s cult music venues, hosting the likes of Nina Simone, Prince, Patti Smith and The Rolling Stones (on the evening of the show, the after-party’s live soundtrack came courtesy of Iggy Pop, The Strokes, Interpol and The Kills).

Mixed among the ready-to-wear – for A/W 2023, Slimane estimated it made up ‘around 20 per cent of the collection’ – the couture pieces spanned everything from tailoring to evening wear, often featuring extraordinary feats of embroidery and craft. A shimmering babydoll dress was embroidered with more than 90,000 crystals and paillettes (in Slimane’s typically insouciant style, it was worn with a slouchy bag and dark sunglasses), while a series of liquefied metallic gowns at the end of the show were stitched, entirely by hand, with thousands of rhinestones, sequins and beads.

This closing milieu was backdropped by an enormous version of the house’s Triomphe monogram – a symbol revitalised during Slimane’s tenure and inspired by the architecture of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe – here illuminated, Hollywood-style, in lights.

Celine, 384 Rue Saint-Honoré, Paris 1e, celine.com

Model: Felixia Ekila Loleka at Ford Models. Casting: Spela Kasal. Hair: Michal Bielecki. Make-up: Tiziana Raimondo at Home Agency. Photography assistant: Sebastien Issartelle. Producer: Anya Hassett

A version of this article appears in the September 2023 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, on sale now available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Emerging in the early 20th century and comprising writers, artists and intellectuals, the Bloomsbury Group – named after the London neighbourhood in which they would gather – is best known for the liberated, rebellious lifestyles of its distinct personalities (among them Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant) and its vast cultural legacy, which ushered in a new era of modernism.

A new exhibition, ‘Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and Fashion’ – set to open this September in Lewes on Britain’s south coast – provides a fresh perspective on the group, honing in on the group's use of clothing and exploring its influence on a slew of contemporary fashion designers and houses. Curated by writer Charlie Porter, supported by Dior and organised by Charleston – the modernist home and studio of Bell and Grant, which is also located in East Sussex – its name is taken from a letter Woolf sent to T.S. Eliot in 1920, inviting him to stay. ‘Please bring no clothes: we live in a state of utmost simplicity,’ she wrote. 

Held in Charleston’s new gallery space in Lewes, the exhibition will focus on six ‘protagonists’, among them Woolf, Bell and Grant, alongside author E.M. Forster, economist John Maynard Keynes and aristocrat and artistic patron Lady Ottoline Morrell. Objects will span original garments, historical ephemera, paintings, photography and writings, each capturing the Bloomsbury Group’s ‘liberated sexuality, feminism, queerness and pacifism, [which helped] to set the foundations for how we dress today’.

New Charleston exhibition explores the Bloomsbury Group through fashion

Alongside, a series of contemporary garments will also feature; namely, those by Kim Jones during his tenures at Fendi and Dior. It has been a prescient influence to Jones, who is an avid personal collector of original Bloomsbury Group objects. His first Fendi couture show looked to Bell and Woolf for inspiration, while his S/S 2023 menswear show for Dior was backdropped by a recreation of Charleston and featured motifs from Grant’s work. Other pieces include designs by Erdem, Christopher Bailey for Burberry, and Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons.

’The Bloomsbury Group engaged with fashion in dynamic ways, from philosophical thinking to radical dressing,’ says Porter, whose coinciding book Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion will be published by Particular Books in September 2023. ‘[This exhibition] uses garments to shed new light on their lives, as well as bring insight into how we dress today. By mixing together the past with the present, I hope the show will encourage visitors to reconsider their future relationship with fashion.’

Another exhibition held by Charleston in the new Lewes space will run alongside ‘Bring No Clothes’, focussing on the works of Jonathan Baldock. The immersive exhibition will be the first UK survey show of the contemporary British artist and coincides with his show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. ‘Growing up between Kent and East Sussex, I’ve always felt as if Charleston and the Bloomsbury group are part of my DNA,’ he says. ‘I’ve visited Lewes and Charleston so many times, as a child and through to adulthood, and could even see Sissinghurst Castle, the home of Vita Sackville-West, from my bedroom window. So, the opportunity to show my work in connection with a place that has influenced me feels incredibly magical.’

‘It is exciting to launch Charleston’s new building in central Lewes with two very different exhibitions,’ adds Nathaniel Hepburn, director at Charleston. ‘In “Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and Fashion“, Charlie Porter takes a fresh angle that is bringing us new stories on the extraordinary lives of the Bloomsbury group members, showing again the continued relevance of their ideas to contemporary culture. Jonathan Baldock’s bold installation brings his colourful, sensory world to our spaces, and is indicative of the scale of contemporary exhibition the new building will enable for Charleston.’

‘Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and Fashion’ and ‘Jonathan Baldock: through the joy of the senses’ will run from 13 September 2023 – 7 January 2024 at Charleston in Lewes.

charleston.org.uk
dior.com

Whether a stylish Celine pétanque set, colourful Saint Laurent pool inflatables, or wooden ‘throwing pins’ from Dior – one of house founder Christian Dior’s favourite pursuits – discover a luxurious selection of summer games and toys from the world’s best-known brands, ready to amuse all season long. 

Summer games and toys for stylish amusement

Pétanque set by Celine by Hedi Slimane

Pétanque is one of France’s most popular summertime pursuits; this version, designed by Hedi Slimane for Celine, comes with distinctive Celine-branded balls and jack (no chance of being mistaken for lesser sets when in competition). Perhaps most appealing, though, is the triangular leather carry bag, crafted from the house’s Triomphe monogram-adorned canvas and calfskin. 

Celine by Hedi Slimane pétanque set, £1,050, available from celine.com and in selected stores. 

Large boat float by Saint Laurent Rive Droite

Part of Saint Laurent Rive Droite’s summertime 37.2 collection – which also comprises surfboards, drinks cups, waterproof speakers, towels and more – this colourful inflatable is a stylish adornment to any swimming pool. Available in large or regular sizes and complete with pump, it is perhaps this summer’s most enviable – and unexpected – vacation accessory. 

Saint Laurent Rive Droite large boat float, £1,135, available at saintlaurent.com and in selected stores.

Throwing pins game by Dior Maison

These throwing pins are a celebration of house founder Christian Dior’s love of games, says Dior Maison. Crafted from light wood and adorned with a grey star – Monsieur Dior’s lucky symbol – the pins come with a summery pink-and-grey carry bag, ready for transporting to beach or garden. 

Dior Maison throwing pins game, £900, available from dior.com and in selected stores.

Belharra beach bats by Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton creates an array of toys and games – from monogrammed kites to puzzles and golf sets – though the house’s beach bats are primed for summertime escapes. Crafted from beech wood and adorned with the house monogram, with wave-shape handles (a nod to Belharra, a surf beach near Saint-Jean-de-Luz), the bats come complete with matching ball and carry pouch. 

Louis Vuitton Belharra beach bats, £1,180, available at louisvuitton.com and in selected stores.

Cheval de Fête poker playing cards by Hermès

Decorated with the French house’s Cheval de Fête motif – a design by Jan Bajtlik inspired by posters of the Polish School from the 1950s to the 1970s – these colourful poker playing cards will fill summertime evenings (or amuse on unexpected rainy days). Comprising two sets of playing cards, they are delivered in the signature orange Hermès box. 

Hermès Cheval de Fête poker playing cards, £140, available from hermes.com and in selected stores.

In partnership with Canada Goose

‘Keeping the planet cold and the people on it warm’ – so goes the mission statement for Canada Goose, the Toronto-founded brand best known for the enveloping down-filled parka jackets it has been producing since 1957. 

It’s also the driving force behind the brand’s new London exhibition, ‘Keeping the Planet Cold’, which opens today (17 February 2023) in London to coincide with the arrival of fashion week in the city. Hosted in partnership with Central Saint Martins, it will see the famed art school’s Lethaby Gallery in Granary Square transformed with a series of immersive displays celebrating a new generation of changemakers for ‘a story of how we can shape the world through creative action’, according to the brand. 

‘Keeping the Planet Cold’: a new exhibition from Canada Goose and Central Saint Martins

The exhibition continues a partnership between Canada Goose and Central Saint Martins which began in 2022, with the brand inviting students on the university’s prestigious BA Fashion Communication, BA Fashion and MA Fashion courses to create unique pieces with a focus on sustainability and purpose-driven design. BA students were tasked with working in groups to create unique design objects utilising Canada Goose deadstock and warranty product, while MA students were asked to create capsule collections inspired by outfits worn by research scientists at Polar Bears International (PBI), a non-profit based in Churchill, Manitoba which focuses on polar bear conservation (PBI has been a long-term partner of Canada Goose since 2007, working closely on projects including an ongoing dedicated collection with proceeds going to the non-profit).

Among the many pieces on display at the exhibition, the capsule collections by MA students Arianna Ablondi Pedretti, Chie Kaya and Jacob Yakubu Stapleton will all feature, having been judged as exceptional by a panel in 2022. Each of their designs reflected a deep understanding of the project’s aims and the utilitarian necessities of PBI scientists working in extreme polar environments. 

Japan-born Kaya focused on female researchers, with elegant, ladylike riffs on Canada Goose’s quilted garments featuring a number of modular elements. ‘I tried to imagine myself as one of the researchers, and how I want to feel and wear as a woman,’ she tells Wallpaper*. ‘As simple as it is, I hoped that I could be looking good and professional on and off duty, and under the extreme weather conditions.’

Pedretti’s capsule collection also concentrated on women researchers, drawing inspiration from pioneering – and oftentimes overlooked – female scientists. The Italian designer included a number of elements relating to the needs of women. ‘I made trousers and a catsuit with a crotch opening to make women be able to go to the bathroom without undressing themselves completely, for example, or pockets made specifically for women – I asked my female friends what they would need them for – and padding to the hips and butt in order to be protected from the cold when sitting on icy surfaces,’ she explains. ‘I thought a lot about how, for women, functionality in clothes has been traditionally ignored.’

Stapleton, meanwhile, created playful layered forms which evoked the physical shapes of polar bears, his initial designs drawing from the dramatic limestone pillars in Stone City, Russia. ‘A sculptural approach,’ described the British designer of the way he addressed the project, which he said was energised by a trip to Perm, Russia in sub-zero temperatures several years ago. ‘If it wasn’t for that trip I think grasping the level of protection needed would have been difficult for me.’ 

Pieces from the BA students in the exhibition, meanwhile, will include a quilt, a swimwear collection and ‘Nuna’, a ‘multifunctional earth creature and bag’.

‘I’m delighted with the fantastic outcome of the project with Canada Goose,’ says Fabio Piras, course director, MA Fashion at Central Saint Martins. ‘The students of BA and MA Fashion and BA Fashion Communication have responded with creative provocation, debate and potential solutions across garments, media and objects that are as challenging as they are beautiful.’

‘Keeping the Planet Cold’ – which is free to visit and runs from 17-21 February 2023 – is part of Canada Goose’s ‘purpose platform’ HUMANATURE, which unites the brand’s numerous sustainably minded and value-based initiatives. Part of this is to commit to net-zero emissions by 2025, while the brand also went fur-free at the end of 2022. Such innovations are led by its Sustainable Impact Strategy.

‘This exhibition is a true source of inspiration and a ray of hope for the future. There is so much potential this generation have to offer, not only in terms of creative talent but also their unwavering commitment to join us in helping to transform the industry to tackle climate change and protect our planet,’ says Penny Brook, chief marketing and experience officer at Canada Goose.

‘We are dedicated to keeping the planet cold and the people warm,’ she continues. ‘We have the passion and resources to set new standards, to take responsibility, to create impact beyond our organisation and we are passionate about teaming up with like-minded partners like Central Saint Martins to help shape tomorrow.’

‘Keeping the Planet Cold’ runs from 17-21 February 2023 in London’s Lethaby Gallery, Granary Square.

canadagoose.com

Arriving before the year is out, a new collaboration sees irreverent skate brand Palace unite with cult Italian sportswear label CP Company on a limited-edition collection which represents a coming together of two streetwear juggernauts. 

Revealed today and available from 16 December 2022, the limited-edition collection began with Palace mining CP Company’s vast archive – much of which centres around its unique history of garment-dye innovation under founder Massimo Osti who opened the brand in 1971 – for inspiration. 

Palace x CP Company

‘The Osti family basically invented everything I like to wear,’ says Lev Tanju, the founder of Palace. ‘Working with CP Company is a big deal for me personally. I've been a massive lifelong fan of what [it] has done for not just my wardrobe but menswear and sportswear in general. They are the innovators that changed everything.’

The various pieces include a riff on CP Company’s ‘Montgomery’ duffle (its striped design originally inspired by army blankets), a ‘Palace CP Company’-emblazoned lambswool sweater, and a technical utility shirt, as well a balaclava with in-set goggles (a staple CP Company design). Innovative garment-dyed fabrics are utilised throughout.

‘I’ve been in love with Palace since I discovered the brand years ago: I love its attitude, irreverent but humble, ironic but with a lot to say,’ adds Lorenzo Osti, CP Company president. ‘When I met Gareth [Skewis, Palace co-founder] and Lev, I had the confirmation that great brands come from great people. Working with them has been easy and fun, but more than everything a great honour.’ 

Palace x CP Company will be available from Palace and CP Company’s websites and physical stores from 16 December 2022. 

palaceskateboards.com
cpcompany.com

Alessandro Michele is set to leave Gucci, the Italian house confirmed yesterday evening (23 November 2022). The Rome-born designer, who took over from forebear Frida Giannini in 2015, has transformed Gucci in his seven-year tenure with eclectic, transporting collections that cross eras, continents and cultural touchpoints in their inspirations. Outside of clothing, his imaginative approach has influenced all areas of the house, from the introduction of Gucci beauty to homeware and high jewellery. François-Henri Pinault, chair and chief executive of Kering – the luxury goods conglomerate that owns Gucci – thanked Michele in a statement. ‘His passion, his imagination, his ingenuity and his culture put Gucci centre stage, where its place is.’

‘Today an extraordinary journey ends for me, lasting more than 20 years, within a company to which I have tirelessly dedicated all my love and creative passion,’ said Michele in his own statement on Instagram. ‘During this long period Gucci has been my home, my adopted family. To this extended family, to all the individuals, who have looked after and supported it, I send my most sincere thanks, my biggest and most heartfelt embrace.

Alessandro Michele to exit Gucci after seven-year tenure

‘Together with them I have wished, dreamed, imagined. Without them, none of what I have built would have been possible. To them goes my most [sincere] wish: may you continue to cultivate your dreams, the subtle and intangible matter that makes life worth living. May you continue to nourish yourselves with poetic and inclusive imagery, remaining faithful to your values. May you always live by your passions, propelled by the wind of freedom.’

Michele was originally hired by Tom Ford two decades ago to focus on accessories; a longtime member of the Gucci team, his appointment in 2015 came as a surprise to the industry. But a languid, romantic first collection – an A/W 2015 menswear collection created in just five days – set the blueprint for his approach, blurring lines of gender with 1970s-inspired silhouettes (a silk pussy-bow blouse, fur-lined open-back loafers, and use of lace would all become signatures). Just a year later, in its October 2016 issue, Wallpaper* highlighted Michele as a ‘Game-Changer’.

The collections that followed drew from increasingly expansive inspiration points – from neoclassical Rome to the Golden Age of Hollywood – in dramatic runway presentations that have taken place in cities around the world, including Milan, Paris, Los Angeles and the designer’s native Rome. A raft of celebrities and cultural figures have adopted the brand under his tenure, perhaps most notably the musician Harry Styles, who recently collaborated with Michele on Ha Ha Ha, a capsule collection of clothing. Michele’s last runway show, during Milan Fashion Week S/S 2023, featured 68 pairs of twins in identical looks – a gesture he dedicated to his mother, who was a twin herself.

‘I am a son of two mothers: mum Eralda and mum Giuliana. They were magically mirrored. One multiplied the other. That was my world, perfectly double and doubled,’ he said.

Michele has enjoyed a rare combination of critical and commercial success, with the revenue of the house reportedly tripling during his tenure, according to Business of Fashion. As of yet, there is no word as to who will replace Michele at Gucci. The house is scheduled to show a collection in January 2023.

Part way through the V&A’s new menswear exhibition, ‘Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear’, is a 1759 portrait of Richard Milles, a British landowner, politician and botanist by Italian artist Pompeo Batoni. In it, he wears blushing shades of pink, including Batoni’s own fur-lined cerise cape, his hand pointing to a map of Rome. It is a quintessential ‘Grand Tour’ portrait, the artistic souvenirs of the 18th-century phenomenon whereby wealthy young men of means would make their way through Italy, educating themselves in the treasures of classic antiquity. Going home, they would fill their carriages with the spoils of their travels, plaster casts or copies of ancient busts and statues, and clothing, richly fashioned in the colourful, flamboyant European style. 

It was this historical moment that provided the starting point for ‘Fashioning Masculinities’, an exhibition that explores the ‘power, artistry and diversity’ of menswear, tracing links between historical and contemporary masculine attire, and is the first of its type at the London institution. Across three galleries – ‘Undressed’, ‘Overdressed’ and ‘Redressed’ – co-curators Claire Wilcox and Rosalind McKever collate over 100 menswear looks, backdropped by a vast array of artworks across various mediums, both owned by the museum and lent from private collections (‘I think what’s unusual about this exhibition is the amount of art in it,’ Wilcox says). The space itself is created in collaboration with Jayden Ali of interdisciplinary practice JA Projects, who last month was announced as one of the designers behind the 2023 British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

‘We thought it would be interesting to begin with the Grand Tour, because that was the moment that classical ideals began to permeate into fashion,’ explains Wilcox at a preview of the exhibition. As such, ‘Fashioning Masculinities’ begins with ‘Undressed’, a gallery that explores how these ideals have been both perpetuated and pulled apart by designers in the centuries since. Watched over by the muscular, semi-clad bodies of the Apollo Belvedere and the Farnese Hermes, here in plaster-cast recreations, the curators looked towards the item of clothing most closely linked to the body – underwear. Pieces on display in this first gallery range from historical bloomers and nightshirts to lycra Spanx for men and gender-affirming chest binders by trans-owned company gc2b, alongside underwear-inspired pieces by Jean-Paul Gaultier, A-Cold-Wall* and Craig Green. A series of male nudes, by David Hockney, Zanele Muholi and Isaac Julien, among others, line the room’s walls.

‘There’s this sense of proportion to the first room,’ says Wilcox. ‘It’s about sculpture, and underwear, and how classical ideas in the 18th century idealised the male body. But we also wanted to think about diversity, to have these different shaped mannequins, reflecting the way the masculine body is under scrutiny today. Creating the exhibition, we realised that men’s bodies have been fashioned as much as fashion has been fashioned.’

This linking of past and present, the combining of clothing and artefacts from various eras in thematic blocks, is one of ‘Fashioning Masculinities’ guiding principles (Wilcox notes that her favourite of the exhibition’s cabinets sees an 18th-century frock coat sit alongside a contemporary floral Gucci suit and Orlando-inspired couture gown by Kim Jones at Fendi, worn on the runway by male model Ludwig Wilsdorff). Over a further two rooms, titled ‘Overdressed’ and ‘Redressed’ – the former interrogating the ‘elite’ masculine wardrobe through an exploration of colour and print, the latter about the language of the suit – the same approach is illuminated by contemporary conversations about masculinity in fashion, whereby a new generation of designers are blurring what ‘menswear’ means today. 

These designers’ work features throughout the exhibition. Like British-American designer Harris Reed, who graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2020, an early proponent of contemporary ‘gender-fluid’ fashion. His flamboyant creations, often featuring ruffles, pussy-bow collars and lace, have been memorably adopted by musician Harry Styles (including the crinoline and tulle gown he wore in the pages of American Vogue). A pink lamé shirt with lace bib and flared trousers by Reed feature in the ‘Overdressed’ gallery, as well as on the exhibition’s poster, and the designer will take part in the museum’s Fashion in Motion retrospective series to coincide with the show. 

Reed has previously served as muse for Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele, walking in the house’s Cruise 2019 collection and later appearing in an advertisement for Gucci’s ‘ageless, genderless’ fragrance Mémoire D'une Odeur. Works from Michele’s Gucci also feature in the exhibition – of which the Italian house is the main sponsor – including the aforementioned floral suit, part of the ‘Overdressed’ gallery, and a ruffled blue lace and tulle dress also worn by Styles in American Vogue (this time on the cover). Historical references feature in both Reed and Michele’s work, and ‘Fashioning Masculinities’ puts their clothing in conversation with the past. As a number of reviews of the exhibition have noted, the flamboyant ceremonial pink robes and plumed headdress worn by Charles Coote in a 1773 portrait, displayed in the middle of the exhibition, would not look out of place in either designer’s collection.

Michele described his first collection for Gucci, back in 2015, as having ‘a dreamy ambiguity … a point of departure that blurs the masculine-feminine divide’, a precedent that has shaped his collections since. The raft of other contemporary designers that feature in the exhibition alongside Michele – Grace Wales Bonner, Martine Rose, Priya Ahluwalia, Nicholas Daley, Craig Green and Jonathan Anderson among them – also explore this point of ambiguity in menswear, each through their own distinct cultural lens. In the exhibition, their work is grouped thematically alongside the V&A’s archival pieces in moments that invite both comparison and juxtaposition. For example, a 2014 powder-pink Wales Bonner two-set from her ‘Afrique’ graduate collection appears next to a raspberry-coloured wool coat, waistcoat and britches from the 1760s, both regal in their ambitions – a delicate thread that unites two makers, centuries apart. 

‘I think the exhibition is about looking at past and present, comparing them, and trying to understand that many of the revolutions in men’s fashion today have historical precedents,’ says Wilcox. She admits that the timing of ‘Fashioning Masculinities’ is fitting. ‘There have been moments of bravery in men’s clothing, and moments of caution. We’re very fortunate this exhibition coincides with a moment of renaissance. Menswear is now more exciting than ever.’

‘Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear’ runs at the V&A, London, until 6 November 2022. In partnership with Gucci.
vam.ac.uk/masculinities

London Fashion Week S/S 2023 came with a slew of cancellations in the wake of the Queen’s death, as various runway shows and events were cancelled due to the restrictions of national morning. As such, many designers and brands have chosen to decamp to Frieze week with a packed schedule of shows, events and happenings taking place this week (think of it as fashion week mark five). Officially called ‘Celebrating London Fashion Week’ by the British Fashion Council, the big-ticket events include shows from Alexander McQueen, Roksanda and Raf Simons, the latter two originally slated to show on the official London Fashion Week schedule last month. Here, in an ongoing round-up, the best Frieze fashion moments from the week.

The best Frieze fashion moments 2022

Raf Simons

In September, Raf Simons created costumes for Glass Handel, a contemporary opera which showed at London nightclub Printworks as part of BBC Proms 2022. On Thursday evening, he returned to the venue – housed in a former industrial forming printing plant close to Rotherhithe, south-east London – to show his own S/S 2023 collection, which also mined the theatre for inspiration. This time, Simons looked towards ballet with a collection titled ‘Corps, Coda’, backdropped with a floor-to-ceiling film of a single dancer in the designer’s clothing (a collaboration with New York City Ballet choreographer Justin Peck). ‘The energy of dance, the impact of the body… a celebration,’ said the collection’s accompanying notes, figured in the clothing through a feeling of ease and physicality – cut-off ballet tights in various shades, romper suits, sweaters which replicated the shape of an undone leotard. ‘Bare, spare, cut away, stripped back… a reduction to an essence, to essential form.’

But Simons noted that he was also thinking about the corporeal experience of being in a nightclub – compounded by a thumping soundtrack by longtime collaborator Clara 3000 – drawing from what he deemed Britain’s resilient spirit in the face of recent adversities (‘you feel London, and the country is a hurt animal, but it’s an animal ready to go out… there’s something positive within the negative,’ he told American Vogue). Indeed, his own show was meant to take place during London Fashion Week in September and was cancelled in the wake of the Queen’s death; here, it was restaged during a Frieze week which felt bigger than ever (Simons, who is an avid collector, has long attended the art fair, and the collection itself featured works by late Belgian artist Philippe Vandenberg). As such, the show had a celebratory air: as the lights dimmed, the bar – which stretched the length of the venue – transformed into the runway for a show watched on by over 1000 standing attendees, from milliner Stephen Jones and Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli to a new generation of Central Saint Martins students. At the show’s close, Simons took his runway bow and then stepped off the stage and into the crowd of revellers, ready for a party which continued long into the night. 

Roksanda

It feels natural for Roksanda Ilincic to show a collection during Frieze week; throughout her career, she has forged strong links with the art world as both collector and collaborator (last season, she collaborated with artist Eva Rothschild on the show’s colourful geometric set). For S/S 2023 – originally due to be shown during London Fashion Week – Illincic returned to Hyde Park’s Serpentine Gallery where she has shown for several seasons, choosing Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates’ ‘Black Chapel’, the 21st Serpentine Pavillion, as a backdrop. The monumental circular black building with central oculus – a place of ‘reflection, refuge and conviviality’ inspired by various architectural ‘typologies’, from Roman tempiettos to Uganda’s Kasubi Tombs in Kampala – was chosen by Ilincic for the way it ‘unleashes the unexpected yet significant emotions that come with a reflection on death’, ‘the perfect setting for Roksanda’s own meditative journey’. As such, Ilincic looked to the rose – ‘appointed at births, taken to weddings, and put on a grave’ – as a motif, here imagined in gowns that bloomed with ruffles, while the works of Pipilotti Rist (a longtime touchpoint for Ilincic) inspired the collection’s bold abstract prints. ‘Feminine yet disturbing,’ the notes described. 

Alexander McQueen

Sarah Burton chose Greenwich’s Old Royal Naval College as the location for her latest collection for Alexander McQueen, transporting the vast inflatable bubble devised by architect Smiljan Radić for the designer’s S/S 2022 collection last year to the new riverside location. Titled ‘First Sight’, the collection itself was about ‘searching for humanity and human connection’, communicated through what Burton called ‘a symbol of that humanity, a register of emotion, an expression’ – the human eye. As such, the motif reoccurred throughout a collection, printed unblinking onto abbreviated asymmetric dresses or embroidered across a bodysuit in shimmering sequins and crystals (the latter worn by model Naomi Campbell). Elsewhere, Burton sought to create clothes to empower their wearer, ‘stripped back, dissected and focused on cut, drape and silhouette’, from sliced-away tailoring and low-waist trousers – evoking Lee McQueen’s seminal ‘bumster’ silhouette – to armour-like leather bustiers and structured denim two-sets. Completing the picture was an evocation of the works of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, for a mood ‘at once dance and beautiful’.

Moncler: ‘The Extraordinary Expedition’ at 180 Strand

The celebrations for Moncler’s 70th year began with a dramatic public performance in Milan last month; this October, the label opens a new exhibition in London titled ‘The Extraordinary Expedition’ (it opened first in New York, and will travel to Seoul and Tokyo). ‘A multisensory journey into the brand’s past, present and future’ with mise-en-scène evocative of a mountain expedition – one room comes complete with a snowstorm – the open-to-the-public exhibition sees pieces from the house’s various collaborations (Pierpaolo Piccioli, Craig Green, among others) meet historic garments from Moncler’s archive. The other half of the exhibition is dedicated to a project by British portrait photographer Platon, capturing various British creatives in the house’s Moncler Maya 70 puffer jacket, a reinterpreted version of perhaps Moncler’s most recognisable design. 

Moncler ‘The Extraordinary Expedition’ runs at 180 Strand from 12-16 October 2022 at 180 Strand. Sign up here for tickets.

Matches Fashion featuring Michèle Lamy and friends

Matches Fashion’s 5 Carlos Place is holding a roster of events to coincide with Frieze, most notably a series of morning-time salons with creative polymath Michèle Lamy. Titled ‘Eggs With Hun’, the series sees Lamy personally serve breakfast to guests from a menu devised with Isis Neal (formerly of Les Deux Cafes) in the ‘Michmatch Cafe’ alongside special guests, from David Hoyle to photographer Platon. Elsewhere, Matches Fashion will host a celebration of Raf Simons’ latest collaboration with Kvadrat, a jewellery pop-up with Nadine Ghosn and a brunch with Christopher Kane and A Vibe Called Tech founder Charlene Prempeh.

For the full programme of events at 5 Carlos Place see here.

Palace launch Palace Product Descriptions: The Selected Archive

Palace’s unorthodox product descriptions – which often have little to do with the product in question – have achieved cult status, now celebrated in a new Phaidon-published book which launches during Frieze week. ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that a serious philosophical work could be written entirely of jokes: we might now add product descriptions,’ says Sam Buchan-Watts in the introduction to Palace Product Descriptions: The Selected Archive, available to purchase from October 26 2022. More than 3000 of these descriptions are collated in the book (written by Palace Skateboards founder Lev Tanju), spanning categories from ‘Anatomy’ and ‘Animals’ to ‘Philanthropy’, ‘Romance’ and ‘Travel’, while images of Palace’s most memorable products intersperse the text.

Celine supports Sotheby’s Frieze Week Sales

Celine is this year’s partner for British auction house Sotheby’s annual Frieze Week Sales, which comprises a blockbuster collection of works by artists from Gerhard Richter to Francis Bacon (it is set to be the most valuable Frieze Week sale in Sotheby’s history). In the energetic spirit of the coinciding art fair, Sotheby’s main Contemporary Evening Auction is accompanied by ‘The Now’ sale, which celebrates rising talent, from Louise Giovanelli and Jadé Fadojutimi to Lauren Quin and Charlene von Heyl. 

Stay tuned for more Wallpaper* fashion coverage from Frieze Week 2022 

Flowers, piles of mud, a cardboard grotto – an eclectic array of show sets provided a transporting backdrop for this season’s runway shows, which culminated earlier this week in Paris. Spanning fashion capitals, Wallpaper* selects the best S/S 2023 show sets and venues – from Loewe to Balenciaga.

The best S/S 2023 show sets

Loewe (top)

The invitation for Jonathan Anderson’s latest Loewe collection was a single red anthurium flower, delivered to attendees in a slim white box. On arrival at the show space – housed in the equestrian arena of La Garde Républicaine – guests were greeted with that same anthurium flower, here looming over the runway in blown-up fibreglass. ‘A product of nature that looks like an object of design, and treated as such,’ said the designer of its visual appeal. As such, it reappeared in various forms – as a corsage, sprouting from a shoe – across a collection which saw Anderson explore silhouette and form. ‘A focus on line, colour and shape,’ said Loewe. ‘The reality of clothing, in tension, with precision.’

Balenciaga

A vast mud-filled pit provided an unexpected runway for Demna’s latest Balenciaga collection, a collaboration with Spanish artist Santiago Sierra (the natural smell was enhanced with a scent by longtime collaborator Sissel Tolaas, inspired by decomposition). It set the scene for a defiant collection from the Georgian designer, who has been playing with dystopian tropes in recent seasons. This time, he said the set was a metaphor ‘for digging for the truth and being down to earth’ – part of a collection which explored the battlefield of individualism. ‘Every day becomes a battlefield to defend [your] unique identity,’ he wrote in a letter prior to the show. ‘The more you try to be yourself, the more you get punched in the face.’

Acne Studios

This season, Acne Studios celebrated ten years of showing in Paris with what creative director Jonny Johansson called a ‘twisted wedding party’. ‘The most iconic event I could come up with is the wedding. For me, it’s the kickstart to a lot of aesthetic choices – what’s the most interesting event that people are used to participating in, to celebrate something?’ he told Wallpaper*. As such, the all-pink show space – housed inside the ‘emblematic Paris institution’ Palais de Tokyo – featured beds with rumpled satin sheets and shell-encrusted candelabras created by nail artist Sylvie Macmillan. It set the scene for a collection which played with the kitsch archetypes of romantic nuptials: ‘from the tablecloth to the chandelier, the wedding-night bed sheets, the bride’s shoes, the bows, and the cute flowers,’ said Johansson.

Bottega Veneta

For his sophomore collection at Bottega Veneta, Matthieu Blazy collaborated with 82-year-old Italian designer, artist, and architect Gaetano Pesce on the set. Comprising a poured resin floor and 400 chairs – each entirely unique, featuring naive hand-drawn motifs from smiley faces to cartoonish handbags – it was an example of Pesce’s humanist style, which rallies against repetition and mass production. ‘As a designer, I make originals, not standardised series, that’s the old way – this is the new way,’ said Pesce. ‘This space is a tribute to diversity. It is about the human being; we are all different. We are all different and this is our defining quality – otherwise, we are just a copy. We are all originals, and this is one of the themes of my design.’

Gucci

Halfway through Alessandro Michele’s latest runway show for Gucci, the central wall rose up to reveal that two identical fashion shows had been happening at once – all the way down to the models, which were identical twins. Titled Twinsburg, after an Ohio town that hosts an annual gathering of twins (where most of Gucci’s models were scouted), the show space itself featured a portfolio of images by Canadian photographer Mark Peckmezian of duplicated faces in various expressions. ‘A reflection on how identity is comprehended through the presence of another,’ said Gucci of the images, which reflected the exploration of individualism that ran throughout the show and collection. ‘It’s the illusion of similitude,’ said Michele. ‘The game of illusion of a cracked symmetry. Twinsburg plays this game, providing tension in the relationship between original and copy.’

Prada

Earlier this year, Prada backdropped its menswear collection with a vast rendering of a paper house, complete with cut-out windows and doors (in its simplicity, it was reminiscent of a child’s drawing). For their womenswear show, a darker, more unsettling mood – the white paper had been inverted to black; through the windows, strange videos glowed. These short films were a collaboration with filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn – who also collaborated more generally on the show’s mise-en-scène – and captured domestic scenes, from a woman taking off her shoes to the underside of a mattress. ‘Although the collaboration is around the show, rather than the collection, we have been inspired by the collaboration, by his perspective on Prada,’ said Raf Simons, co-creative director of the house with Miuccia Prada. ‘There’s a mirror of cinema in the collection, of witnessing fragments of a larger whole. Different bodies of work, within a single body of work – shifting between disparate form languages.’ (Read more about OMA/AMO and Prada’s 25 years of extraordinary runway sets.)

Louis Vuitton

A ‘pulsating monster flower’ (as the house described) provided the backdrop for Louis Vuitton’s latest collection. Created by Algerian artist Philippe Parreno, the vast, tent-like construction featured rows of flashing light bulbs and slowly rotating mirrors – the effect something akin to a funhouse hall of mirrors. It was a reflection of the collection itself, which played with proportion and scale, from blown-up versions of the house’s monogram and hardware (zippers, eyelets and the like) to supersized accessories. ‘It’s a stylistic exercise that re-evaluates the proportions of clothing and its adjuncts, one in which the codes of femininity unsettle scale,’ read the collection notes. ‘The infinitely large and the infinitely small come together on silhouettes, inviting a second look.’ 

Miu Miu

This season, Miuccia Prada collaborated with Chinese artist Shuang Li on the show’s set, creating a darkened space lit with digital screens which played repeated short films reminiscent of computer screensavers or stock imagery (glowing wind turbines, rotating planets, a bouncing 3D shark). The work was a comment on the idea of the fallacy of the ‘wireless cloud’, which is in fact supported by ‘thousands of kilometres of undersea cabling which populates the ocean floor’ (indeed, the cylindrical black seats were reminiscent of these cable’s pipe-like design). ‘Shuang Li’s work explores this tension between the material and immaterial and the obfuscation thereof,’ said Miu Miu in a statement. ‘The messages lost in transmission do not just disappear but rather, imagined here, can take on another form, punctuating the sky.’

Chanel

The cinematic inspirations behind Virginie Viard’s latest collection for Chanel were two-fold – first, Coco Chanel’s costumes for Alain Renais’ Last Year at Marienbad (the nouvelle vague… the night, feathers, sequins, heels’). Second, contemporary actress and house muse Kristen Stewart, who Viard said ‘is the closest to Gabrielle Chanel, at least to my idea of her’. ‘She understands Chanel, its clothes. And with her, it becomes even more modern.’ The two combined in a short film by Inez & Vinoodh starring Stewart, which sees her emerge from art house Parisian cinema Champo after a screening of Last Year at Marienbad. In the vast show space – housed inside the Grand Palais Éphémère – floor-to-ceiling screens immersed guests in the film, looping around the audience in a dramatic celebration of the power of cinema. 

Hermès

This season, Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski imagined her woman for S/S 2023 at a ‘rave in the desert’ – ‘the sounds radiating from behind the hill follows the drift of the dawn: she’s never felt anything so beautiful’. The show set itself was evocative of a desert scene – albeit in typically luxurious style, with an expanse of beige carpet evocative of sand – its central point a recreation of a sand dune, around which models looped. As the show went on, it shimmered to life with trippy-coloured projections. ‘The colours from the landscape came alive and began to move,’ the collection notes described. ‘To shimmer as though liquefied.’

Dior

Maria Grazia Chiuri’s latest Dior show set saw the designer continue a tradition of collaborating with international women artists. This time, it was Eva Jospin – a French artist known for her intricate sculptures in card, which often feature elements of bas-relief – who created an intricate cardboard ‘cave’ evocative of Baroque grottos which ran down the centre of the runway. The collection itself looked towards the Baroque stylings of Florentine noblewoman Catherine de Medici who brought Burano lace, the corset, and platform heels to France through her marriage to King Henry II – elements which Chiuri reinterpreted through a 21st-century lens.

Courrèges

An annular sand-covered runway – evocative of a beach – provided the setting for Nicolas Di Felice’s latest Courrèges collection, which he said was about ‘elapsed time, looking forward, glancing backwards’ (the collection’s designs forged a link between the Belgian designer’s sensual minimalism and the futurism of the house’s eponymous founder). As such, sand streamed from the ceiling onto the runway below; the effect was something like being suspended in a giant hourglass. ‘To look at the past as we look to the idea of the future,’ read the collection’s accompanying notes. ‘As a way to create for the now.’

Designer debuts, city swaps, runway returns – this September, women’s fashion month is back in what’s already primed to be a standout season of shows. As ever, from New York to Paris, expect an eclectic mix of the world’s best-known houses and a rising creative vanguard, together defining the S/S 2023 season ahead. Here, in an ongoing report, discover everything Wallpaper* knows about the womenswear schedule so far. 

Women’s fashion week S/S 2023: all you need to know

New York Fashion Week9 – 14 September 2022

While recent seasons have seen New York Fashion Week run with a largely depleted schedule, this September sees something of a revival for fashion month’s American stopover – halting any talk of its demise. Notably, the week has attracted two blockbuster international guests, Francesco Risso’s Marni – showing in the city as part of a ‘world tour’ for the Italian label – and Fendi, who will hold a celebration of its seminal ‘Baguette’ handbag (the house, currently helmed by womenswear creative director Kim Jones, will also continue to show its S/S 2023 collection in Milan). Elsewhere, a new vanguard of home-grown American talent brings fresh creative energy to the city, among them Peter Do (nominated for both the Woolmark and ANDAM Prize this year), Area, Puppets & Puppets, Judy Turner and Luar, while New York City stalwarts Tom Ford, Michael Kors, Coach, Gabriela Hearst, Tory Burch and Proenza Schouler will all make their return to the runway, the latter opening the week on the first Friday. 

London Fashion Week16 – 20 September 2022

London Fashion Week also looks set to return with new energy; in a surprise announcement last week, it was revealed that Belgian designer Raf Simons will bring his eponymous label to the city to present his S/S 2023 collection on Friday 16 September. ‘It’s been a dream for a while to show in London – a city where fashion and creativity are omnipresent on the streets... I’m very happy to welcome the amazing people and faces that make up the London scene to my show. Can’t wait to see you and dance the night away,’ he said in a statement. Simons will be joined by Riccardo Tisci and Jonathan Anderson who both make their return to the London Fashion Week schedule with Burberry and JW Anderson respectively, while the busy five days will also amalgamate both mens- and womenswear designers, from established London names (Simone Rocha, Molly Goddard, Erdem) to a rising generation (Nensi Dojaka, SS Daley, Knwls, Chopova Lowena, Stefan Cooke). 

Milan Fashion Week20 – 26 September 2022

The biggest news of Milan Fashion Week this season is the slew of designers making their runway debuts as creative directors: among them Filippo Grazioli for Missoni (following a low-key menswear presentation this past June), Rhuigi Villaseñor for Bally, and Marco de Vincenzo for Etro. Perhaps most anticipated, though, is the arrival of young British designer Maximilian Davis at Salvatore Ferragamo, who will show his debut collection for the Florentine house on the afternoon of Saturday 24 September. Elsewhere, look out for Matthieu Blazy’s sophomore outing at Bottega Veneta, an open-to-the-public show from Glenn Martens at Diesel, and the guest appearance of London-based Matty Bovan, who is showing at Milan Fashion Week courtesy of Dolce & Gabbana. The busy week is rounded out by the city’s blockbuster houses: Gucci, Giorgio Armani, Fendi, Prada, Max Mara, Dolce & Gabbana and Versace, which remain some of Milan Fashion Week’s biggest draws. 

Paris Fashion Week26 September – 4 October 2022

The Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode has released its provisional schedule for Paris Fashion Week S/S 2023, which looks set to round out the month in high-wattage manner: expect the usual big-ticket shows from Louis Vuitton, Dior, Chanel, Saint Laurent, Loewe, Hermès, Valentino, Balenciaga, Givenchy and Miu Miu, among others. Alongside, new additions to the nine-day schedule include Victoria Beckham, in her Paris debut, while Ib Kamara – a longtime collaborator with Virgil Abloh – will reveal his vision as art and image director of Off-White on Thursday evening. Elsewhere, the contingent of Japanese designers who have shown for decades in the city – for the past two years unable to travel due to quarantine restrictions – will make their womenswear return, including Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe and Yohji Yamamato (Issey Miyake will also show its first collection since the eponymous founder’s death earlier this month). Rounding out the week are a new generation of energetic young designers from Paris and beyond: Ester Manas, Vaquera, and Weinsanto among them. 

Stay tuned for more Wallpaper* coverage from women’s fashion week S/S 2023.

Marie Lueder is a designer with an agenda. ‘I like to make fashion that is like a deep conversation; then I simplify the garment so it speaks for itself, because not everyone has the time to listen to me,’ she says from her studio in London’s Shoreditch, in an interview that’s part of a portfolio of emerging menswear designers in Wallpaper’s September 2022 Style Issue.

The Hamburg native moved to London to pursue a master’s in menswear at the Royal College of Art, honing a practice that encompasses performance art, research into sustainability, and ultimately, the creation of garments that allow the wearer to navigate both their interior selves and external realities at eponymous label Lueder. 

‘I think with my background as a tailor. I am really guided by construction,’ she says; in sartorial terms, this has resulted in explorations of archetypal garments which upend expectations, while incorporating traditional techniques from a team of tailors in Birmingham. 

This feeling of utilitarian luxury is epitomised by her ‘Civilian Hoodie’, which comes complete with a degradé spiral on its front – a motif she sees as symbolic of her label. ‘It’s a universal garment that everyone likes to wear, and it has this protection element of the hood as well. The spiral is about chaos and confusion. We are all spiralling and if people stand in the spiral shape, they would feel close to one another rather than isolated.’

New menswear: Lueder A/W 2022

In her shows and presentations, Lueder uses such visual motifs to prompt individuals to incorporate her garments in their wardrobes and lives, hoping to form a feeling of community through her work. She references an annual festival in Hamburg, which has roots in mediaeval folklore. ‘Our carnival is called Fasching. The idea was that the communal gathering is really necessary to relieve people and make them feel human, and you can go crazy as well,’ she says. To create a space for people to explore and share her work, Lueder engages external collaborators, each one diligently acknowledged on the presentation of new collections.

Co-creation also underpins her response to sustainability. Lueder recently participated in the Sustainable Leadership Programme at the University of Cambridge, which prompted her to invite clients to send in their old suits to be repurposed. ‘Fashion does this crazy thing of telling us we need newness, [but now] there is also the baggage of “oh, I am human, I am creating waste 24/7” and people feel so unable to deal with the problem.’ So, rather than ‘preaching from her digital pulpit’, Lueder is choosing to develop channels of allyship that still result in beautiful clothing. ‘What is the next suit and what does it have to do?’ Lueder asks herself. 

Lueder’s ascent has been rapid; she has enjoyed the professional triptych of critical acclaim, celebrity patronage – one side project involved working with Kanye West on merchandise for his first Donda listening event – and an impressive list of stockists since launching in 2019. But she is candid about the challenges facing an emerging brand. ‘Even though it might look like that right now, there are side jobs I do, so I still feel like I am struggling. And I am constantly thinking, “How can I sustain this? How can I plan?”‘

Even so, Lueder forges forward with a desire to create clothing that allows the wearer to feel their best self, with each garment a conduit for mental wellbeing. ‘I love exploring how a garment affects us energetically.’ 

INFORMATION

A version of this article appears in the September 2022 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!

luederluederlueder.com

Cecilie Bahnsen marks a new chapter for her independently owned brand as she moves her HQ to an expansive new home in Copenhagen. The newly renovated industrial location will operate as her atelier, office and private appointment space, underwriting the upward trajectory of her line of feminine silhouettes in technical fabrics.

Spread over two floors, the 1,200 sq m space was designed by creative agency Moon, architecture practice Stamuli, and Bahnsen herself. Bahnsen has hired Moon since her very first show to find ‘the right locations and spaces with the right mood to tell the story of the brand and the collection. It made perfect sense for them to do the same for our new home,’ says Bahnsen. Stamuli – which has completed stores for Alexander Wang, Ganni, Rains and Acne, and is known for creating environments that are typically spare yet forthcoming with colour – was enlisted on Moon’s recommendation. ‘It's really been a very easy process working with them,’ says Bahnsen. 

A new home for Cecilie Bahnsen

Exposed concrete and white walls allow the hyper-femininity and softness of Bahnsen’s clothes to remain the focus. A challenge was making the large light and airy space functional. ‘It needed to work as an everyday studio, with storage and all the things that you need in a studio,’ she says. A mirrored glass box was inserted into the middle of the space to provide a meeting room, while becoming almost invisible: the mirrored surface allows Bahnsen to see samples from all angles during fittings. ‘It's a beautiful feature that we use every day, and shows balance between aesthetics and functionality,’ she says. 

The open-plan layout encourages collaboration between departments, something Bahnsen is keen to maintain as the company grows. Nevertheless, it's not all work – she prioritised including a space where her team could meet for lunch. ‘We are 27 people now; the team has grown a fair bit. It's nice for people to have time to meet and to talk about their everyday. It all connects together. To make all the “wheels” of this business turn, we need to know each other.’ In the summer months, the courtyard garden will act as an extension of this ‘break-out’ space. ‘It’s a nice part of making it feel like home for the team,’ adds Bahnsen.

A working studio

Bahnsen came across the ‘raw and untouched’ space when shooting the campaign for her Spring/Summer 2020 collection. ‘I remember dreaming that this could be an incredible office space,’ she says. It was only later, 18 months ago, that she started looking for new office space in earnest and discovered that buildings in Copenhagen’s city centre were too small for her expanding team. ‘I really wanted to have everyone together, for the team to be able to see what each other is working on,’ she says. She started looking at larger industrial spaces further afield. ‘A colleague sent me a picture of this space and it really felt like it was meant to be our home.’

Although Bahnsen has a dedicated office, she spends 90 per cent of her time in the atelier on the top floor, perusing the pattern-cutting tables where the design and development and the seamstresses work. ‘It’s my favourite part,’ she says. ‘It's nice to have your own space and be able to have a conversation like we're having right now, but really, it's the space with the team and the collection that inspires me.

Østerbro’s creative district 

‘We are in a very creative area; we have studios next to us, architectural offices, a few artists and so on,’ she says of her new address at Vermundsgade 38C – close enough to home that she can walk or cycle to work. ‘It's an inspiring place to be part of,’ she says of the Østerbro district where the property is located. Her new HQ is in the same neighbourhood as her previous studio although worlds apart, as her former HQ in Kristianiagade was situated in a basement, albeit one with high ceilings and proximity to the sea. 

A collaboration of design

Bahnsen pulled in some friends and collaborators to help source and make furniture, lighting, and tabletop pieces: ‘objects that I love by people that I love to work with, featuring Scandinavian design’, she says. Coloured glasses and vases are crafted by glassblower Nina Nørgaard, who has previously collaborated with Bahnsen on several store concepts: ‘Her colour universe complements our colours.’ Studio X designed the soft yellow and steel office tables that raise and lower, that ‘add a warm yet super modern touch’. Magniberg’s sleek stainless steel geometric chair and side tables, Paustian’s curvilinear sofas and Artek stools repurposed from previous runway shows provide seating. 

Inspired by architecture

She has already noticed how architecture and interiors can inspire new ways of working, and enable shifts in creative output. The abundance of daylight not only lifts the spirits but enables the team to focus closely on detailed sewing and drawing work. ‘We often don't switch the lights on and work in only natural light, it's really beautiful. You can really see the textiles and the textures which are so important to me. With the creative process and also the mood, it's been really interesting to see how daylight inspires that.’ Interestingly, the studio playlist – curated by one of her design team – has also changed: ‘It really sets the tone for something new.’

Open house ethos 

Contrary to the secrecy that surrounds so much of the fashion world prior to collection releases, during Copenhagen Fashion Week, Bahnsen opened the doors to press and buyers, inviting them in to see what the team is working on for the upcoming show in Paris. ‘It’s in seven weeks,’ she shares. ‘It’s a wonderful moment: you are working on something that you haven’t quite cracked yet and it was very special to be able to talk about the sketches, how things evolve from 2D to 3D, the beading, how different elements come to life. Now we have room to do that.’ 

INFORMATION

ceciliebahnsen.com

‘I wanted it to be alive and have a sense of activity,’ says designer Margaret Howell of the original vision for her eponymous label’s 34 Wigmore Street headquarters in a voiceover for a new short film, A Working Space, released today in celebration of 20 years at the address. 

The short film, directed by Emily Richardson – whose work has previously been screened at Tate Modern, BFI London, Barbican Cinema and various international festivals – takes the viewer inside the Marylebone address that houses the brand’s offices and flagship store, and has also played host to various Margaret Howell fashion shows, exhibitions and events. The space itself, recognised for its high vaulted ceiling, was designed in collaboration with architect William Russell in 2002.

A Working Space: a new film from Margaret Howell

‘[The film] acknowledges the whole company, and the workforce involved in producing what is on display,’ says Howell. Filmed around 34 Wigmore Street, the film sees the camera linger on the various operations that take place within the building: hands wrapping up a purchase in tissue paper, employees gathered for collection meetings and fittings, a rare glimpse of the designer herself at work. Other scenes are more quotidian; towards the end of the short, Howell is shown picking up leaves in a tiny outdoor courtyard. ‘[I want it to have a] strong sense of family,’ she surmises of the brand’s home. 

A Working Space will be shown at 34 Wigmore Street and across international Margaret Howell websites from 19 August 2022. In the store itself, an exhibition will coincide with the film’s release, featuring photographs and quotes from Margaret Howell’s longest-standing customers, collaborators, and members of staff. 

Watch Margaret Howell’s short film A Working Space, below.

INFORMATION

margarethowell.co.uk

As a first-generation Vietnamese-American, Lu'u Dan designer Hung La has long been acquainted with ideas of assimilation. As a youth in the 1980s, growing up in a comfortable suburb outside Washington DC, La straddled two worlds – navigating his way in white America during the week, and then immersed in his Vietnamese community on the weekends. 

This arc continued as La pursued his career in fashion. Armed with an undergraduate degree in computer engineering, La quietly assembled a portfolio to study fashion design, completing his master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and landing a job in Paris at Nicholas Ghesquière’s Balenciaga shortly after. This was followed by a role in London at Phoebe Philo’s Celine, where La headed up the leather and fur department. Despite reaching such levels of success, La speaks openly about feeling disenfranchised in the fashion industry, when we interview him as part of a portfolio of emerging menswear designers in Wallpaper’s September 2022 Style Issue.

‘It’s difficult to talk about race [in fashion] because you feel so lucky to be in the door and you feel privileged to be working there, but you understand that you’re a minority. You understand that you have to work harder than everybody else,’ shares La, who continues to be based in London. ‘Because I got passed over for promotions many times, I questioned, “maybe I was not vocal enough, or maybe I wasn’t assertive enough”. After I left those situations, I understood better the systems at play. There were only two Asians in the studio; there were no people of African descent. Why is that? And why are the systems at play more slanted towards Caucasians?’

New menswear: Lu’u Dan A/W 2022

After leaving Celine, La established the luxury womenswear label Kwaidan Editions in 2017 with his life partner Léa Dickely, whom he met at the Royal Academy in Antwerp. Built around ideas of being an outsider, specifically Dickely’s experience of not seeing herself within existing female stereotypes, Kwaidan Editions draws from a wide array of cultural references to articulate what the duo calls ‘the uncanny’. The label repeatedly delves into the vulnerable and at times uneasy overlap of traditional binaries to draw out tension and wonder. 

The pair’s newest undertaking, a menswear label named Lu’u Dan launched in January 2022, in a similar vein. Loosely meaning ‘dangerous man’ in Vietnamese, Lu’u Dan presents an overlooked take on Asian masculinity – one steeped in defiance, provocation, vulnerability and complexity, as opposed to the usual one-dimensional tropes more commonly seen in Western media. 

‘Lu’u Dan was born out of lockdown. In that moment, where we were all stuck at home and [following the murder of] George Floyd, I [began to recognise] this internalised racism. Growing up in the 1980s in America, there weren’t any Asian role models in the media, apart from [comedian] Margaret Cho, or Mr Miyagi [from Karate Kid]. There was nobody a young male could aspire to,’ reveals La. ‘I realised that I had never used my voice or this personal aspect of my identity in my work and I wanted to take part in speaking up. In fashion, what we can control is image. We create clothing, but if we can put forward a strong enough image that speaks to people, then you can slowly change a culture. Lu’u Dan was founded on the principle that the younger generation can feel represented and identify with this imagery.’

With three collections launched in quick succession this year, Lu’u Dan has conjured up a compelling offering that transcends boundaries. Louche tailoring, oversized pyjama shirts and a healthy dose of boisterous, unabashed prints all work in unison to convey a multi-dimensional intricacy and sex appeal, both rarely associated in the portrayals of Asian men. Additional initiatives, like the brand’s City Tours series, further enables the label to morph into a platform that provides space for other Asian male creatives to showcase their work. Accessibly priced in spite of its sophistication, the brand is firmly rooted in inclusivity on all accords.

‘Lu’u Dan is a way for me to put my money where my mouth is, and speak up and try to institute systems of change,’ La concludes. ‘We always use Asian models, photographers, stylists and we always have people of colour on the team. It’s important to have those voices and to enable other Asian creatives to break through.’

INFORMATION

A version of this article appears in the September 2022 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!

luu-dan.com

Samuel Ross, the British designer behind London-based label A-Cold-Wall*, has this week announced the fourth instalment of The Samuel Ross Black British Artist Grant Programme, which awards rising Black British talent across various design and creative disciplines – from art to industrial design, fashion to architecture. 

Inaugurated in 2020, the programme first emerged in response to international civil rights protests following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police that May. ‘We need more visibility and collaboration between the arts and design institution and Black artists, the design industry must engage,’ Ross told Wallpaper* in June 2020. In the time since, 30 grants have been distributed – spanning writers, sculptors, filmmakers, furniture and fashion designers, and those working in VR – with notable recipients including furniture designer Mac Collins, photographer Ronan Mckenzie and architect Dominique Petit-Frère (of Limbo Accra). 

The programme itself comprises a number of £2,500 grants in support of the various recipients’ ongoing work; alongside, those chosen receive mentorship from Ross and an advisory board, which numbers both design luminaries and representatives from some of Britain’s leading institutions, including the Royal College of Art, V&A East, the British Fashion Council, the University of Westminster and the Design Museum.

The Samuel Ross Black British Artist Grant Programme 2022

‘We’re missing perspectives, contributions and creativity that level beyond commercial virtue placements, score sheets and influencer fees,’ Ross said in a foreword to the 2021 edition, which selected ten grant recipients last August. ‘Already a reality amongst the marginalised, barely visible – often invisible – communities that form Britain’s modern society, it seems implausible to not embed a layer of structure and coordination to begin changing this reality, step by step, year on year.’

As such, this ‘fourth chapter’ continues the expansion of the programme, inviting fellow fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner to join the advisory board as guest advisor, as well as Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, an art historian, broadcaster and director of V&A East. ‘I’m excited about seeing the level of talent we can support this year,’ says Wales Bonner in a statement. The programme aims to provide ‘tangible, material change’, giving grant winners ‘the necessary tools and strategies to propel them over the long-term’ and creating a ‘robust infrastructure, one that supports meaningful, collaborative connections between community and industry, integrating Black British talent across the creative landscape,’ as the notes describe. 

Those wishing to be considered for the programme can at apply at community.samuel-ross.com from now until 29 August 2022.

INFORMATION

community.samuel-ross.com

Sharp silhouettes, high design – a trip into the after-dark mood of the A/W 2022 collections, as featured in our the September Style Issue of Wallpaper*. 

Captured by Paris-based photographer Eva Wang and styled by Wallpaper* fashion director Jason Hughes, the defining looks of the season are thrown into sharp relief – whether the sculpted waist of a Sportmax coat, a flourish of ruffles on a Fendi leather skirt, or an array of sharp-shouldered tailoring, delivered with the panache of synth-pop’s pioneers.

The after-dark glamour of A/W 2022

INFORMATION

A version of this article appears in the September 2022 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!

The British designer Aaron Esh, a recent master’s graduate of Central Saint Martins, grew up in east London, a location which remains inscribed on his work. Subversions of traditional menswear garments – such as a bubble-hem mini skirt built onto a pair of tailored trousers, or a leather jacket with swirling protrusions emerging from its shoulders – are inspired by, and made for, his friends, most of whom gather in the east London neighbourhood of Dalston. 

‘It’s about taking something authentic, the people that I know, the clothes they wear, and mixing that with the fashion references I like,’ says Esh of his so-far concise catalogue of clothing, comprising a six-look final collection shown at the Central Saint Martins MA show in February 2022. Despite its brevity, it has already been bought in full by Ssense, a major North American e-retailer, and sees Esh feature in a portfolio of emerging menswear designers in Wallpaper’s September 2022 Style Issue. 

A feeling of control and sensuality defines Esh’s approach, reminiscent of two designers he references as inspiration – Tom Ford during his tenure at Gucci in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and Helmut Lang’s collections of the same period. ‘It’s about reimagining that reference on this east London, Dalston boy,’ says Esh. In particular, a loop of metal in lieu of a strap on a black asymmetric tank top seems to recall the abstract metal buckles across Ford’s seminal A/W 1996 collection for Gucci, though in Esh’s case, such flourishes are informed by the designer’s fascination with sculpture and form (which he credits to his mother, a sculptor and artist).

New menswear: Aaron Esh A/W 2022

This same fascination extends to the fastidious physical construction of each garment. ‘They’re for people who want to feel fit, to feel great,’ says Esh of his clothes, which he hopes accentuate their wearer’s features. To achieve this, each garment might be fitted onto a model six or seven times in order to perfect its shape (during the course of his MA, Esh even utilised full-body scanning to further refine this process). Moulded leather and twisting metalwork – both of which he calls his ‘signatures’ – add a feeling of underlying strangeness to archetypal menswear pieces (the biker jacket, the hoodie, the dress shoe, the tailored blazer).

His exploration of these building blocks of menswear might be traced back over half a century to the 1960s, when Esh’s paternal grandfather, a tailor, first moved to east London from Cyprus. Later, Esh’s aunt would run an East End clothing factory. ‘I’ve always been around clothing, and manufacturing,’ says the designer, though his own connection to this heritage only came to the fore when he switched to fashion from graphic design at the age of 25. ‘I was always interested in kids on the street wearing clothes, not this amazing couture thing, but what people wore and how they wore it. I always wanted to make a body of work, and fashion just became the medium. I was good at it.’ 

Hours before, Esh had returned from another London factory, picking up the pieces from his graduate collection produced to be sold. ‘It feels like a very personal experience to be like: OK, these clothes are now going to be for sale, because I never really designed them with that intention,’ he says – now, he is not only Aaron Esh the designer, but Aaron Esh the label. Either way, he’s steadfast in doing things his own way – a little under the radar, made for those in-the-know. 

‘For me it’s about leaning on my community; engaging with people who matter to us. You start to realise that it’s not the clicks, or likes, or followers, or the celebrities or musicians who wear it which make something great – it’s about the fashion.’

INFORMATION

A version of this article appears in the September 2022 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today!

instagram.com/aaron.esh

Italian jeweller Fabio Salini has donated more than 50 of his distinctive, innovative jewellery pieces, with an estimated value of over £2m, to UK-based charitable initiative Art of Wishes. The full proceeds from a Sotheby’s auction, ‘Jewellery Creations by Fabio Salini: a Charity Auction for Art of Wishes’, will be donated to the initiative, which unites the art community to raise funds for the Make-A-Wish charity, granting the wishes of critically ill children.

For Salini, who questioned the role of art in a crisis during the pandemic, the auction is the natural culmination of art’s ultimately humanitarian function. ‘This project is full of emotion,’ says the jewellery designer. ‘This is the fruit of the pandemic. I felt strongly that I wanted to share my fortune with less fortunate people, and give sense to something which is a luxury product. Jewellery is the last thing you buy when you have everything. And, I felt I wanted to give a more elevated sense to what I have done for a while. You start asking yourself, in this huge universe, what am I? It’s something more tangible than nice jewellery, and it’s nice to help make wishes come true.’

The jewellery Salini is donating for Art of Wishes encapsulates his innovative and extraordinary philosophy, with pieces in straw, rock crystal, leather, shagreen, titanium and carbon fibre a tribute to his unique and audacious vision.

‘It has been hugely illuminating discovering more about the vision and ideals that inform and inspire Fabio’s extraordinary artistic practice,’ says Batia Ofer, founder of The Art of Wishes. ‘His willingness to take risks, to stretch boundaries, and to draw on such a diverse range of references, both contemporary and historic, is truly breathtaking, revealing, I believe, the point where art and jewellery intersect. As well as being an extraordinary human being with a huge heart, he is also a true artist and a visionary.’

‘Each piece has a very strong meaning for me, and that’s why it has been hard,’ Salini adds. ‘I have been working on this and the psychological aspect for three years. Nevertheless, when it came to the moment of shipping the pieces, there was a lot of resistance. But they're gone and life goes on, and I cannot wait for the auction. And I hope that there will be a good result.’

Says Ofer, ‘When I first began working with Make-A-Wish a decade and a half ago, it was the children who inspired me to become more involved and eventually start Art of Wishes. I saw how a wish helped create hope and happiness, but also unique and priceless memories for the children and their families to treasure. It is my role to pass on that conviction. And there is one other important ingredient — collaboration.

‘Art of Wishes couldn’t exist on its own, and with this event, we are incredibly fortunate, not only in Fabio’s astonishing generosity and unstinting support, but also to be partnering with Sotheby’s.’

‘Jewellery Creations by Fabio Salini: a Charity Auction for Art of Wishes’ forms part of Sotheby’s Luxury Edit. It can be viewed in advance from Tuesday 16 – Tuesday 23 August 2022 at Sotheby’s Monaco exhibition space, where 31 pieces will be displayed, and then at Sotheby’s London Bond Street showrooms from Thursday 1 September until the day of the sale. The sale will be divided into two parts. An online auction will commence at 10am, Thursday 25 August and close at 3pm, Thursday 8 September. There will be a live auction for select items on Wednesday 7 September, commencing at 7pm.

Part 1 of the live auction

Part 2 of the live auction

Until Pieter Mulier was named creative director of Alaïa in February 2021, he was largely known only by fashion insiders; he was a right-hand man, the confidante and creative partner of fellow Belgian Raf Simons, whom he first worked for as an intern at the latter’s eponymous label in the early 2000s. Their partnership would continue during Simons’ tenures at Jil Sander, Dior, and finally Calvin Klein, where, in 2016, Mulier was made global creative director to Simons’ chief creative officer (there, after the presentation of each collection, they would take their bow as a pair). Two years later, they exited the American behemoth together. Mulier cited ‘fashion burnout’. ‘At some point, I started asking myself: who buys all this?’ he said at a talk last year in Antwerp.

In 2014, Frédéric Tcheng’s documentary Dior & I (see W*192) provided a glimpse into this rare and enduring creative partnership, capturing the eight-week period Simons was given to create his debut couture collection for the historic French house. Simons is mercurial, at times conflicted; Mulier is diligent, well-mannered, smoothing the link between Simons and the atelier (Mulier speaks French, Simons only a little). In one scene, each member of the atelier is asked to select a look from the collection to create – a recognition of the emotional resonance of couture, whereby each garment is forever linked to the singular hand that made it, and the singular body that it was made for.

After the show, Simons takes his runway bow in tears; Mulier, watching backstage, is equally moved. ‘I’m only doing couture now,’ he whispers with a smile to one of the atelier team.

Seven years on, in July 2021, Mulier was ready to take his own place in the spotlight, presenting his first collection for Alaïa during haute couture week in Paris. Simons was there too, but this time he sat front row in support (no less emotional, Simons was again in tears during the show’s finale). It was a special moment for Mulier, but also for the house – presented in a brief respite from pandemic restrictions, it marked the first show since the death of Azzedine Alaïa in 2017. The show was held outside, on Rue de Moussy, the narrow Marais street that runs alongside the Alaïa headquarters, a jumble of adjoining buildings around a courtyard housing a sculpture of a woman’s breast (by César Baldaccini, a longtime friend and collaborator of Alaïa). There’s a store, a three-room hotel, a vaulted showspace, and what had been the Tunisian designer’s personal residence in his lifetime. Such is the late Alaïa’s imprint, Mulier calls it ‘the cathedral’.

The show itself began with a letter – left on attendees’ chairs in lieu of traditional collection notes – providing a heartfelt address from Mulier to ‘dear Azzedine’, which paid tribute to the couturier, a ‘thank you... to express [to] you my sincere respect, and recognition for the work you did’, he wrote. ‘Four years after your final presentation, today, on the fourth of July, I feel honoured to be presenting this collection. I tried to be faithful to your creative approach. I even tried to get into your mind... but that’s impossible. I have so many questions. So many things I imagine. You. Passionate, stubborn, charming.’

It was a moment of reverence for one of fashion’s great iconoclasts, who rejected the industry’s churning desire for newness with collections that focused not on ephemeral trends but a dogged pursuit of beauty, often presented off-schedule and always on his own terms. Born in Tunis, Tunisia, in 1935, the young Alaïa attended Tunis’ School of Fine Arts before later travelling to Paris to take up a job at Christian Dior in 1957. In 1979, he started his eponymous label, having built up a network of high-profile clients across the city. He showed his first collection in 1980.

Alaïa approached design with a sculptor’s hand, using cloth as his medium; the resulting collections were defSpela Kasal ined as much by technical feats of construction – years-in-development stretch fabrics, moulded and laser-cut leather, internal corsetry, elements reminiscent of industrial design – as his innate understanding of sensuality and glamour (he is variously deemed ‘the king of cling’ and ‘the last couturier’). A 2015 exhibition of his work at Rome’s Villa Borghese placed his gowns alongside the marble statues of Bernini and Canova, but Alaïa was most delighted to see his clothing on women’s bodies, particularly those whom he loved – moving, breathing, living.

Alaïa was particularly fond of company; famously, he would host dinners around his kitchen table at Rue de Moussy, his beloved dogs alongside, for members of the atelier, friends, and luminaries of the worlds of fashion, art and music (often he would leave after the meal had finished and head back to the studio to work until the morning). ‘He used to gather people of all walks of life around him,’ says Mulier, speaking from his home in Antwerp, where he retreats each weekend to escape Paris. ‘He used to put women at the heart of creation, endlessly seeking the essence of femininity, with a benevolent eye and respect. That’s what I want to keep and protect: Alaïa’s family spirit, which makes the house so special.’

Mulier previously noted the ‘human scale’ of Alaïa as one of the reasons he was lured to the job, despite purportedly being offered roles at larger houses. He references Alaïa as a ‘small ship’, a tightly-knit team, many of whom worked under Alaïa himself, carrying with them unique – and often surprising – knowledge of construction, fabric and form. ‘I like the idea of working with a small but devoted team of highly skilled technicians and dressmakers. It’s a reminder of the purest form of fashion,’ he says. ‘It’s a big problem if you make clothes without knowing the people who will help you to build them. And also without knowing who is wearing them. The women who wear Alaïa are not static works of art, but are active in society, working, running, busy with children. I want to create clothes that carry this idea of a modern beauty, always in movement.’

When Mulier arrived at the maison, he called himself a ‘caretaker’; now, just over a year on from his appointment, he says he feels a stronger desire to ‘evolve’ Alaïa, to create a ‘modern’ Parisian house, without ever straying too far from its foundations. ‘I think Alaïa isn’t huge, and that is what makes it so special. You don’t have to make a compromise in terms of creation.’ He says he wants to make Alaïa more ‘democratic’, to open its doors to the world. ‘That’s how I want to build the future of this legendary house; I can’t change everything – and I don’t want to. But I want to try and give Alaïa to a bigger audience, to make it more inclusive.’

Mulier remains an avid student of the Alaïa archive, having spent ‘countless days and nights’ teaching himself the intricacies of the house’s unique design language in order to reinterpret them for the present day (he notes a particular focus on the years 1983-1996, ‘when the clothes invented by Azzedine were revolutionary works of art’). Richemont, the Swiss luxury goods conglomerate that owns Alaïa, gave Mulier the rare gift of time in the run-up to his announcement as creative director; for several months prior, he had been quietly honing his vision in a series of presentations to executives at Richemont and the house. During those months, he ordered various archival pieces from the internet, fascinated by the construction of each garment, much of which is hidden from view when worn. He notes that such details appeal to his architectural sensibilities – Mulier studied not fashion but architecture, at Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels. He was also struck by the enduring modernity of each piece. ‘They can still be worn today – that’s what I want to continue to create, clothes that will stand the test of time.’

If Mulier’s debut collection was one of reverence, his sophomore outing (dubbed Summer Fall 22 and presented this past January) sees the designer crystallise his own vision of the house – no full-scale revolution, to be sure, but an allowance to pursue his own conception of beauty, his obsessions and desires. He describes the collection as a dialogue, ‘between now and then, between the past of Alaïa, and its future’. Part of this was a bolder expression of sensuality from the designer; Mulier says that to him Alaïa is ‘beauty, body, sex – and it’s the only place where you can use the word sex without being vulgar. It’s sex that comes from the heart, from the inside, where beauty belongs and can be found.’

As such, the body is the core of the collection, with new proportions emphasised by the designer – he notes, in particular, a wider-cut shoulder exuding ‘confidence’ – while other garments have the illusion of floating on the body. Gowns, descending into ruffles, recall Alaïa’s 1980s Spanish dresses, here used for a play on volume, while a series of sheer-knit bodysuits sit flush to the body, demonstrating an impeccable mastery of shape and form. Tailoring – wide, oversized, worn resting on the shoulder – references a meeting between Alaïa and Greta Garbo, leading him to create a cocooning overcoat for the actress (‘big, bigger, biggest, with a collar to hide behind’, the notes described). A final artistic flourish comes in a collaboration with the Picasso Foundation, the abstract motifs on the artist’s ceramics adorning a series of dresses that rise up over the face like a mask. Mulier says these pieces provide a link between Alaïa, who was friends with the artist’s son Claude Picasso, Mulier himself, who designed the various pieces, and the ateliers, who were able to reimagine a great master’s work through craft and cloth.

‘Experimentation is essential, and can be done only with a strong connection to the ateliers. It’s what I learned when I started to work for Dior with Raf – thanks to them, you can bring a concept to life entirely by hand,’ he says. ‘These people are as creative as the creator, because you give an idea, you explain to them a little bit of what you want, or you make a sketch, and then all the rest is them putting their heart in it. This relationship between the creator and the hands of the ateliers is the soul of couture.’

You would be excused for thinking that the Instagram-ubiquitous thong swimsuit is a contemporary invention, primed for an era whereby any prudeness about exposing the body’s curves has all but dissipated. Instead, the year was 1974, the place, Los Angeles, and the designer Rudi Gernreich, a Jewish émigré from Austria who had risen to fame with his modernist collections in the 1960s, which drew comparisons with French master of futurism André Courrèges but were distinctly American in spirit (indeed, despite Gernreich’s rising renown, he steadfastly refused to show in Paris throughout his career, and would cite the ‘mother of American sportswear’ Claire McCardell as his ultimate influence). 

In July 1974, the Los Angeles council had put an end to nudity on the city’s beaches, making naked sunbathing and swimming a misdemeanor (‘Los Angeles bans nudes at beaches’ ran The New York Times headline on 24 July 1974). The thong swimsuit – made for both men and women – was Gernreich’s playful response, its barely-there shape inspired by sumo wrestlers’ singlets and the miniscule ‘loin cloths’ which men in his native Vienna would craft themselves for swimming in the city’s public pools. The design was an illusion: a way to expose the body without breaking the law. ‘The thong is my response to a contradiction in our society,’ he said. ‘Nudity is here, lots of people want to swim and sun themselves in the nude [but] also lots of people are still offended by public nudity.’

Rudi Gernreich reissues radical 1960s and 1970s swimwear

The design’s influence would extend far beyond California’s beaches; to this day, Gernreich is considered the modern thong’s inventor, introducing the term into public parlance and inspiring the popular underwear style in its wake (such is his influence, both New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute and London’s V&A museum have a version of the Gernreich thong in their collections). It was not the first time that his suggestive designs had garnered publicity, though; in 1964, his ‘monokini’ – a bikini bottom held up by two thin straps, leaving the wearer’s breasts exposed – had been revealed in Time and Life magazines, worn by model Peggy Moffitt to a maelstrom of controversy (the ‘monokini’ was banned in France, picketed by concerned mothers in the United States, and in the Vatican City, roundly denounced by Pope Paul VI).

For Gernreich, trained as a dancer, such designs arose not just from a desire for shock and publicity, but a deep-founded belief in the liberatory power of clothing. Among his other innovations were swimwear with underwiring removed, women’s underwear inspired by men’s athletic and boxer shorts (a move popularised by Calvin Klein in the 1980s), and the eschewing of the runway for direct-to-retail collaborations with chain stores (famously, he would create an exclusive line for the Montgomery Ward mail-order and department store). In his clothing, he sought modernity with use of vinyl and plastic across futuristic, abbreviated silhouettes; his clothing also combined art and fashion, with shapes, prints and patterns which drew on the graphic elements of the Bauhaus movement and Op Art. His worldview was utopian, an outlook he wanted to reflect in his work: ‘Wherever, whenever, whatever – the bottom line is always human freedom,’ said Gernreich in 1976.

In his lifetime, Gernreich had known the opposite. As a 16-year-old in 1938, Gernreich and his mother left the country of his birth, Austria, after it was annexed by Nazi Germany, fleeing to the United States as Jewish refugees. In America, Gernreich would learn that such liberation had its limits; by 1951, the designer had been arrested and charged for ‘homosexual behaviour’ in an entrapment case by Los Angeles police. In response, he was one of the early founders of the gay liberation movement in the United States with the Mattachine Society – a forebear of the groups founded in the wake of the Stonewall Riots – and with his clothing he also sought to dismantle codes of gender and sexuality, rallying against the status quo of what he called a ‘repressed’ society (in 1970, Life magazine asked him to conceive clothing for the future, which he made entirely unisex; later, he would create his ‘Uniform Collection’ designed for both men and women to wear). ‘There’s something very good about destroying archaic values which are unreal for today,’ he said in 1970. ‘It’s a positive act. It’s healthy.’

This month – August 2022 – would have marked Gernreich’s 100th birthday (born on 8 August 1922, the designer lived until he was 65, dying of cancer on 21 April 1985). To mark the occasion, his eponymous label is relaunching a number of his most memorable swimwear designs, including ‘The Thong’ swimsuit and (for the brave) ‘The Monokini’. Other elements of the capsule swimwear collection include graphic cut-outs, knotted briefs and halterneck fastenings, reimagined in a palette of graphic black and white, alongside shots of lime green, cerise, caramel and sable. True to his futuristic vision, the designs feel as if they were created for our present day – a testament not only to Gernreich’s ability to look beyond his present moment, but also to the enduring influence of his work.

The label says that the timing is ripe for a Gernreich revival: ‘Society has caught up with him in some things, in some, we still have far to go,’ it says in a statement. ‘The issues he addressed back then – transgender and woman rights, equality between all races and sexes – are again at the forefront of our social discussions. 

‘We bring his original designs and principles back into circulation for new generations to experience and show how much they still make sense. We want to support his most hopeful vision of the future – that change, freedom, and equality are attainable and not just desirable, and to bring a more free “Future” ever closer.’

INFORMATION

rudigernreich.com

‘There’s a strictness and gentleness to it,’ says Dutch photographer Annemarieke van Drimmelen of the brutalist architecture of London’s South Bank, the backdrop for her first campaign for Margaret Howell, which launches exclusively with Wallpaper*.

Such descriptors match Howell’s own approach to design, whereby a singular vision – often inspired by the precise lines of uniforms, workwear and midcentury furniture – meets a softness of hand, a desire for clothing to feel ‘relaxed, lived in’. ‘I enjoy pulling these threads of British tradition, quality and skill together in clothes that are meant to be worn in the real world,’ she has previously said.

Annemarieke van Drimmelen shoots Margaret Howell A/W 2022

The various images, photographed against the South Bank’s aged concrete walls – of a colour and texture van Drimmelen describes as ‘beautiful’ – capture Howell’s A/W 2022 men’s and women's collections in black and white, a monochrome palette long favoured by the designer for her campaigns. 

‘I like to shoot our campaign images in black and white,’ Howell tells Wallpaper*. ‘This may be connected to social documentary photographs, which are always a source of inspiration for me when designing clothes. People’s expressions, their clothes in movement, a moment caught. I chose to work with Annemarieke as I feel she shares this approach to her photography.’

‘Even though the campaign is shot in black and white, the light and the models' expressions are quite soft and gentle, which is something I wanted to bring back to the photography for the campaign,’ says van Drimmelen. ‘I love some of her early campaigns. The eye for details seen in a gentle way is something that I still associate the brand with.’

The photographer, a former model who is based in Amsterdam, notes that the project is something of a dream collaboration: ‘I’ve been a customer at Margaret Howell for a long, long time,’ she says. ‘To me, there’s something honest about what she makes: essentially it’s very good clothing made really well. That sounds simpler than it is. To do that right for a long time and not compromise is such a strength.’

‘I have a lot of respect for how she works on set. When I work I often disappear into what I’m shooting – I tend to forget everything around me. Margaret let me wander off where I needed, but also stayed with me. With Beat Bolliger [the campaign’s stylist], we made it together.’

‘The devil is in the details,’ Wallpaper* wrote of Howell’s A/W 2022 collection when it was released earlier this year. In van Drimmelen’s clear-eyed images, such details are revealed and magnified: the upturned collar of a trench coat, the cuff of a sweater with a fingerless ribbed glove beneath, a pinstripe shirt appearing from beneath a blazer. Others capture the clothing how it is intended to be worn: in movement, for the day-to-day.

Asked what it is about her photography that she believes drew Howell to her work, van Drimmelen answers that it is more of a question for the designer than for her. ‘But I do feel we both come from a personal place,’ she says. ‘We don’t create anything that we’re not. And perhaps in some ways that’s the same woman.’

INFORMATION

margarethowell.co.uk