In 1951, photographer Bob Mizer published the first issue of his quarterly magazine, Physique Pictorial. Posing as a bodybuilding guide, to comply with the strict obscenity laws of the time, Mizer’s richly illustrated production was one of the first aimed at a gay, male audience.

Inside, photographs of male bodybuilders were presented as artworks, rooted in realism, with each image accompanied by the corresponding model’s real name, age and vital statistics. An eclectic cultural canon launched the careers of artists and celebrities, including Tom of Finland, whose first drawings were published in Physique Pictorial’s pages, and George Quaintance and Dom Orejudos, whose work sat alongside early photographs of model and actor Joe Dallesandro and fitness coach Jack LaLanne.

The magazine, which ran for 39 years, has left a lasting impact, with artists including David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe citing it as an inspiration for their own work. In its celebration of the male body from a pop culture niche, it quietly and defiantly normalised a sensual male beauty.

Now, JW Anderson is the latest to pay homage, presenting an exhibition, ‘Spartacus,’ at his Soho, London store. The name is taken from the chosen pseudonym of the magazine’s illustrator, who was required to adopt a false identity – their true identity remains unknown.

JW Anderson has chosen 40 of Spartacus’ works, once privately owned by Mizer, and now able to view throughout the rest of Pride Month, up to 6th July.

JW Anderson presents: ‘Spartacus, Bob Mizer’s Pictorial Physique’ at the Soho, London boutique until 6 July

A languid elegance defines S/S 2026’s most desirable menswear, where lines between the ornamental and the utilitarian are blurred, and perfection is eschewed in favour of the effortless and the undone.

A series of these looks are captured in the pages of the May 2026 Design Issue of Wallpaper* (on newsstands now), photographed by London and Paris-based image-maker Ana Garcia and Italian stylist Nicola Neri amid the serene interiors of Ed’s Shed, a wooden Adjaye Associates-designed home in London’s De Beauvoir neighbourhood (it takes its name from owner Ed Reeve, an architectural photographer).

Each captures a juxtaposition between the functional and the dressed up – whether the voluminous line of a pair of Dior cargo pants, their layered back inspired by a Winter 1948 haute couture ‘Delft’ dress, or the purposely creased texture of a Zegna suit, its surface covered in safari jacket-style pockets.

Elsewhere, the mood is conjured through intriguing layering: a Loro Piano jacket slung around the waist, a cardigan emerging from the neck of a Loewe jacket. Other pieces simply capture the effortless elegance of the S/S 2026 season, like a JW Anderson wool coat, worn here with a decorative Dries Van Noten necklace, and nothing underneath.

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Models: Amedeo Mancini at The Claw, Vincent Rockins at Kate Moss Agency. Casting: Monika Domarke. Grooming: Lachlan Mackie using Sam McKnight. Set stylist: Haruka Kogure. Photography assistant: Ricardo Muñoz Carter. Fashion assistant: Olivia Renouf. Production assistants: Danielle Quigley, Archie Thomson, Indy Davy. Set assistant: Cedrick Jison. Photographed on location at Ed’s Shed, London N1, edsshed.co.uk

Spring has arrived – and with it, that irresistible urge to get away (if it ever really left). It’s time to dust off your passport, start planning, and say yes to new adventures. Whether you’re booking a spontaneous weekend escape or mapping out something further afield, a little smart prep goes a long way.

From versatile luggage and bags perfect for quick getaways to must-have tech, beauty essentials, and clever hacks to outsmart travel’s usual health pitfalls, we’ve rounded up everything you need. The goal? To help you pack smarter, stay comfortable, look fresh, and – most importantly – keep things stress-free wherever you’re headed.

The Wallpaper* guide to spring travel essentials

A quieter men’s season allowed fashion to ease into 2026, with a handful of standouts shining through an otherwise pared-back schedule. At Pitti Uomo 109, Hed Mayner took the coveted guest designer slot with an intriguing show that revelled in ‘wrongness’, then two hours north in Milan, Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada transformed Fondazione Prada into the ruins of an Italian palazzo to backdrop a collection that grappled with the past. Paris, which now makes up the bulk of the menswear schedule, had a renewed sense of energy, seeing Jonathan Anderson stage an expressive sophomore menswear collection for Dior, and Pharrell Williams debut an unusual architectural project with a Tokyo-based vacation rental company Not a Hotel.

Still, a number of collections may have slipped under the radar – particularly from brands that chose to unveil their new collections off the official calendar, or via lookbook rather than a show. Here, we highlight the best collections you might have missed from the A/W 2026 menswear season.

JW Anderson

What links pop queen Kylie Minogue, fashion editor Tim Blanks, screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes (Challengers, Queer) and creative director Mark Kalman? They are all, apparently, friends of Jonathan Anderson. It's no secret that the Irish designer has been incredibly busy over the past year with his landmark appointment as Dior’s new creative director – he is the first to oversee menswear, womenswear and haute couture – so runways at his eponymous brand have paused for now. Instead, Anderson has cleverly leaned into his rich visual world through imagery, tapping up a ‘close-knit circle of friends, long-time collaborators, and acquaintances‘ to star in playful lookbooks.

The latest of these was released last week, its series of impulsive portraits by Heikki Kaski comprising perfect internet fodder, seeing the unlikely crew of creatives pose in Anderson’s A/W 2026 designs, laughing and climbing out of baskets. The collection itself is typically witty and idiosyncratic – from a tote bag reading ‘Porn’ to motifs of cars and botanics – with several pieces riffing on previous greatest hits. Or, in the brand’s words, ‘the deranged, twisted classics JW Anderson stands for’.

Wales Bonner

Grace Wales Bonner has long favoured a beautiful shoot over a runway, though she did make an exception last season, staging a special Paris presentation to mark ten years of her brand. Titled ‘Jewel’, it explored the figure of the Black dandy through an eclectic, emotionally charged wardrobe rooted in British sartorial traditions – essentially, the language that has defined a decade of her celebrated work.

Released this week, a new series of serene visuals shot by Malick Bodian sees her return to an image-first format. Set within sun-strewn modernist buildings, the collection takes cues from the ‘elemental simplicity’ of modernist architect Balkrishna Doshi. Always balancing the ‘practical and the sensual’, the collection also channels the meditative rhythms of ragas (spiritually charged Indian compositions designed to evoke particular moods and moments of day), specifically those written for the morning. Alongside fresh iterations of her ongoing Adidas collaboration, the clothes this season move fluidly between cultural touchpoints – Bengal-stripe shirting and fine merino knits made with John Smedley, brooches of panga panga wood crafted in Botswana by Beullah Serema and Peter Mabeo, and indigo linen tuxedos from Savile Row.

Using modernist design as a framework to share ‘optimism across cultures’, the collection is ultimately one of ease – something Wales Bonner may very well be seeking in the lead-up to her anticipated debut as Hermès’ new men’s creative director, which the designer has over a year to prepare for (indeed, as the morning raga reminds its listener, there’s no need to rush).

Our Legacy

Leaning into the brand’s less-is-more Scandinavian genre of cool, Our Legacy’s latest collection is dryly titled ‘Just Clothes’. The brand has long avoided the circus of fashion week and, as it does every season, has elected to unveil the new offering through a series of sharp, studio-shot images. Subtly reworking the staples that have made Our Legacy a global cult, the design team started by asking themselves, ‘What makes a pure garment?’ Removing the fizz of trends, their answer is meticulously refined uniform that can be layered and reconfigured in manifold ways: clean-cut outerwear, insulating bomber jackets, elevated denim, workwear-inflected shirting, timeless knits and leather goods embellished with the brand’s ubiquitous silver hardware. In a statement released alongside the visuals, Our Legacy describes it as ‘a necessary retreat from fashion’s ever-amplifying noise’.

Av Vattev

The fluid dress codes of British rock stars – from Mick Jagger’s romantic pirate shirts to Roxy Music’s eclectic tailoring – have fed the moodboards of Italian-born designer Antonio Vattev since he founded his namesake brand in 2018. Since then, he has not only built a cult following but dressed a new generation of pop icons, including creating tour looks for Charli XCX and Troye Sivan in 2024. This season, though, he looked from music to dance, and the figure of Soviet-born ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who defected to the West in 1961. Vattev drew on the dancer’s ‘liberation, sensuality, and understated chic’ both on and off the stage (his rehearsal wear inspired wrapped polos and beanie hats with the lace-up closure inspired by his viral ‘Viper’ cardigan). New for this season was a greater focus on craft: a newly developed ‘python’ textile was crafted from leather petals, each one hand-applied in a process taking hours of work. The starting point for the unique textile was an appearance by Nureyev on The Dick Cavett Show, wearing a python-pattened outfit.

Kartik Research

Marking his sophomore show on the Paris Fashion Week calendar, New York–based designer Kartik Kumra presented his latest collection for Kartik Research in a stately Paris hôtel particulier. Twisting a couturier’s salon-style display through a South Asian lens, seats were wrapped in Kantha fabric and rooms lined with handmade Jaipur rugs, while Kartik’s signature neroli scent filled the space. The collection looked to the refined dress codes of Ahmedabad in the 1970s, a city known as a site of artistic gathering in India. Handwoven textiles – some ornately embroidered, others expressively patchworked – formed silhouettes that merged traditional dress with Western tailoring. Rather than elaborate on the dreamlike narratives of the clothes themselves, the designer used the show notes to address the realities of trade in India at the present moment.

‘The US administration’s decision to impose a 50 per cent tariff on India a few months ago has rippled through the ecosystem in ways that are both abstract and brutally specific,’ he said. ‘We have the relative privilege of being a brand. We can follow the money, shift focus, and try to sell more in Asia to cushion a slowdown in the US. But these are fabric vendors, embroiderers, loom artists, dyers. Their access is narrow, their margins thinner […] Sitting with this reality has crystallised something for me. We need to build something back home with its own gravity. Something not permanently tethered to Western demand cycles, policy swings, or distant administrations. Something that pulls people in rather than constantly reaching out.’

For the runway highlights of men's fashion month A/W 2026, see our reports from Paris, Milan and Pitti Uomo.

What, at its essence, is a fashion boutique? It’s a space for brands to present their wares, yes – but in today’s luxury landscape, that definition feels insufficient. The most influential brands now prioritise universe-building as much as they do merchandising. Customers aren’t purchasing a garment so much as an aesthetic worldview – and the boutique becomes a tangible expression of that vision.

In 2025, this idea crystallised into a full-scale revival of fashion retail. A series of brands unveiled high-concept stores that treated fashion, art and design as a whole. JW Anderson has restyled its stores as design-driven marketplaces offering not just clothing but ceramics and other crafted objects. Extreme Cashmere introduced a boutique where the clothing nearly disappears into a domestic setting. A series of smaller stores have also emerged: like Jake’s, the Saturday-only store which sees Jake Burt, one half of London-based label Stefan Cooke, sell an ever-changing roster of weekly one-offs designed by him and his friends (pastry chef and model Louis Thompson provides the cakes).

Here, we are focusing on the store design itself: from Stone Island’s experiments with cutting-edge tech to stores-turned-galleries, these were the retail concepts that defined 2025 in fashion.

Acne Studios, Tokyo

Acne Studios’ new three-level Aoyama flagship blends minimalist architecture with playful textures. Designed by co-founder Jonny Johansson and Halleroed, the glass-lined, garage-like space is clad in pink granite and filled with vibrant furnishings by the likes of Max Lamb and Benoit Lalloz. The store remains faithful to Acne Studios’ Scandi roots, but nods to Japan through details like candy-bright ceramics by Takuro Kuwata.

READ: Step inside Acne Studios’ pink-hued Tokyo flagship: ‘fashion is supposed to be fun’

Miu Miu, London 

Miu Miu’s revamped New Bond Street store feels clean and contemporary, defined by an industrial metal grid floor, crisp lighting and bold yellow-green display cases. Upstairs, warmer touches – parquet, plush rugs and a sculptural wooden ceiling – add softness. Crucially, this space is conceived as more than a boutique; it functions as a cultural and social hub.

READ: Inside Miu Miu’s ‘proudly modern and minimal’ new London store

Longchamp, New York

The showstopper at Longchamp’s revamped New York flagship is the vivid green steel-ribbon staircase. Thomas Heatherwick returned to reimagine his 2004 design, shifting focus from theatricality to a warm ‘Parisian apartment’ feel. An opened-up upper floor, green carpeting, vintage furniture and eclectic art create a refined but lived-in atmosphere.

READ: Thomas Heatherwick revamps his New York flagship for Longchamp – 20 years after he first designed it

Extreme Cashmere, Amsterdam

At Extreme Cashmere’s Amsterdam store, opened in April, the display of garments is almost secondary to creating a home-like spirit. Plush carpets, a stainless-steel kitchen block, a ‘cashmere spa’ washing machine and curated objects encourage intimate, relaxed interaction with the brand’s sizeless, genderless pieces, which are displayed market-style.

READ: Extreme Cashmere reimagines retail with its new Amsterdam store: ‘You want to take your shoes off and stay’

Dries Van Noten, London

In March, Dries Van Noten ushered in a new era under creative director Julian Klausner, following the founder’s 2024 departure. A new London store on Hanover Square followed, housed in a former bank. The two-floor space showcases fashion and beauty amid artworks by Hockney, Man Ray and Tracey Emin, plus eclectic furniture, design pieces and a vinyl corner.

READ: Dries Van Noten’s new London store is an eclectic, art-filled haven

JW Anderson, London

Jonathan Anderson is slowly but surely steering JW Anderson towards a lifestyle focus, with stores now mixing in art, ceramics and homewares – from Akiko Hirai pieces to Charles Rennie Mackintosh stools. Gallery-style displays spotlight works by Mary Stephenson, Gwen John, Christina Kimeze, Robert Kulicke and more, underscoring a growing curatorial slant. In December, a Pimlico Road store – designed by Sanchez Benton – continued to hone this vision, seeing fashion, art and interiors converge.

READ: JW Anderson’s new London store is an inviting emporium of fashion, art and homeware

Saint Laurent, Paris

Saint Laurent’s recently opened Avenue Montaigne boutique offers a museum-like experience. Across three levels, muted rooms showcase not just garments, but furniture by Süe & Mare, Paul Poiret, Jean-Michel Frank, Charlotte Perriand and Josef Hoffmann, as well as works from the Pinault Collection, including art by Mark Bradford.

Stone Island, New York

Stone Island boldly stepped into the future with its SoHo flagship, embodying CEO Robert Triefus’ refreshed vision. Designed by AMO, the two-storey space showcases the brand’s ‘lab’ ethos of material innovation, featuring charred cork, stainless steel and immersive digital screens. A subterranean lounge with a DJ booth and bar completes the experience.

READ: With exclusive merch and a secret lounge, Stone Island’s New York flagship is all about discovery

Loewe, Paris

Loewe’s first ‘Casa Loewe’ on Avenue Montaigne evokes an art collector’s home. Colourful ceramic tiles meet marble, brass and concrete, illuminated by abundant natural light. The space is furnished with pieces by Gerrit Rietveld, George Nakashima and Isamu Noguchi, which sit alongside Loewe leatherwork, rugs inspired by John Allen and an eclectic art collection spanning Franz Erhard Walther to Domingos Tótora.

Dior, Shanghai

Christian de Portzamparc’s House of Dior boutique in Beijing is a freestanding, five-storey flagship wrapped in sculptural white resin ‘petals’ and golden glass panels. Not only does this lantern-like behemoth blend couture and architecture, it also incorporates lifestyle – home to a restaurant from Anne-Sophie Pic, OMA-designed displays, VIP salons and art-filled interiors alongside floors of fashion.

READ: Inside Christian de Portzamparc’s showstopping House of Dior Beijing: ‘sculptural, structural, alive’

This has been a watershed year in fashion. A quarter of the way through the 21st century, 2025 saw the industry hit refresh: in September alone, 15 designers made their debuts as creative directors of fashion’s major houses, ushering in a bold new era in style (and, as with any such change, prompting passionate – and oftentimes divided – online commentary).

Here, as selected by the Wallpaper* style team, are the 25 fashion moments that defined the zeitgeist in 2025 – from a viral Marty Supreme track jacket and Saint Laurent’s thigh-high wader boots, to big-name buyouts, runway returns and, of course, all those debuts.

Willy Chavarria made his mark in Paris with a powerful duo of shows

In January, CFDA Award-winning designer Willy Chavarria chose to shift his runway show from New York, where he lives and works, to Paris. A striking first show, held at the American Church on Quai d’Orsay, came just a few days after Trump’s inauguration, with Chavarria – whose runway shows have long been a clarion call for the rights of immigrants and the queer community – soundtracking the show with Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon imploring the incoming president to ‘have mercy’ towards marginalised communities. ‘It was so beautiful, and it fell exactly in line with what we were doing,’ he told Wallpaper* of the speech. ‘I wanted to show that everyone is welcome, and to do that in a church seemed like the most pronounced way of showing queer people, trans people, in this environment where they were the saints’. His sophomore Paris show, this summer, was similarly impactful: it opened with 35 kneeling men wearing white T-shirts made in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a reference to those being unlawfully detained by ICE in the United States.

READ: Willy Chavarria: ‘We’re still so stuck in fashion’s old guard’

Faux fur and shearling took over the runway

Not a moment, per se, though the proliferation of faux fur and shearling on the runway – spanning both the men’s and women’s collections – was one of the year’s undeniable style takeaways (so much so, we even spotted it on the spring/summer runways). ‘When worn, it becomes a heady meeting place of signifiers – luxury, wealth, power, but also protection, armour against the elements, an ancient and primal urge to be swaddled in the spoils of the hunt,’ we wrote earlier this year of the renaissance of fur – albeit in imitation fabrics – which seemed to a response to the tumult of contemporary living. Indeed, at Prada, where co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons presented a collection of ‘Raw Glamour’, ‘fur’ coats – constructed from cleverly manipulated shearling – had strange protusions at the collar or were trapped under plastic. ‘We asked ourselves, what is femininity today? It is a constant questioning,’ said Mrs Prada. ‘It is not my job to be political, but when you open a newspaper – oh my God! Our job is to think about what clothes a woman can wear, about what kind of femininity makes sense in this moment.’

READ: Faux fur and shearling dominated the A/W 2025 runways – these pieces capture the material’s ‘raw glamour’

Alessandro Michele entertained with a showstopping haute couture debut for Valentino

Haute couture was always going to be a medium which suited Alessandro Michele, the former Gucci creative director who now heads up Valentino. For his first couture collection for the house – presented this past February – the Italian designer, known for theatrical runway shows and richly imaginative collections, hit new heights, employing the ‘petits mains’ of the Valentino atelier to create a series of showstopping gowns. In a style typical to the deep-thinking designer, they were explained in the book-length collection notes through the language of philosophy and semiotics – Homer, James Joyce and Italo Calvino were all mentioned – with each gown representing a ‘list’ of words and influences (‘[lists] confine the infinite extension of the existing within a meaningful framework… to bring some order to the chaos of the universe,’ Michele wrote, quoting Umberto Eco). These surreal lists scrolled across the show’s set on a series of ticker-tape screens as the dramatic looks wandered across the stage, a millefeuille of satin, lace and tulle – eclectic, intricate and, as fashion sleuths showed after the show, rooted in the Valentino archive. ‘To attempt to describe each look – and its multitude of elements – would require a pages-long list of its own,’ we wrote at the time. ‘It was best to simply let yourself be entertained.’

READ: Inside Alessandro Michele’s showstopping debut haute couture show for Valentino

Martine Rose held her first gallery show – an ode to Bronski Beat’s radical energy

During London Fashion Week in February, Martine Rose hosted her first gallery show at Sadie Coles HQ, revisiting her 2016 film Everything Must Change – a Sharna Osbourne-shot short starring Bronski Beat frontman Jimmy Somerville. ‘Pop charts at the time I was introduced to Jimmy Somerville’s voice were dominated by gay musicians: Erasure, Bronski Beat, Marc Almond,’ Rose told Wallpaper*. ‘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.’ It’s a statement that captures the radical, subculture-infused energy of Rose’s own work: later that year, in June, she staged a one-off show in an abandoned west London job centre, adorned for the occasion in boudoir-style ruffled curtains. ‘I was exploring this new shrunken silhouette,’ she said after the show. ‘Everything feels a bit cinched, a bit too tight, slightly awkward, but somehow still sexy, I hope.’ It is this idiosyncratic approach – at once strange, sexy and real – which has made Martine Rose one of London’s defining voices, doing things her own way for close to two decades.

READ: Martine Rose’s first gallery show celebrates the radical queer energy of Bronski Beat

Calvin Klein returned to the runway with a new ‘sexitude’

In February, Calvin Klein hosted its first runway show since the departure of Raf Simons in 2018 (under him, the runway collections went under the moniker Calvin Klein 205W39NYC; now, they are back to being called Calvin Klein Collection). In one of the year’s first notable debuts, it was former The Row designer Veronica Leoni who took the helm, seeking a mood of sensual minimalism she dubbed ‘sexitude’ – a nod to the pulsing undercurrent of eroticism which ran through the brand’s advertising campaigns and collections in the 1990s. ‘When it comes to sexiness, it’s more like an attitude,’ the Italian designer said backstage. ‘You own it in the way you wear the clothes. I think it’s really intimate being sexy – regardless of the silhouette, the amount of skin, it’s about the confidence.’ The collection came with the blessing of Mr Klein himself, who watched on from the front row. ‘He told me he was happy he had found a new coat to buy,’ she said. ‘I’m really proud for him to feel at home again.’

READ: For her Calvin Klein debut, Veronica Leoni stripped it all back

Fendi celebrated its centenary with a blockbuster show in Milan

2025 was a definitive year for Fendi: not only did it mark a century since the fashion house was founded in Rome, but, after the departure of artistic director of womenswear and couture Kim Jones in October 2024, the beginning of its new chapter. As such, in February, Fendi opened the doors to its newly renovated Milanese headquarters for a celebratory runway show, seeing house scion Silvia Venturini Fendi take the reins for the blockbuster spectacle which included a cast of Fendi muses, past and present. The granddaughter of house founders Adele and Edoardo Fendi, Venturini Fendi started at the house in the 1990s under Karl Lagerfeld, and would go on to head up menswear and accessories, though this was just the second time she had also designed the womenswear line (the first was after Lagerfeld’s death in 2019). Talking to Wallpaper*, she said that it was an honour to head up such a definitive show for both her family and the house – but was adamant this was not about living in the past: ‘I tried to avoid any precise reference because, to me, anniversaries are beautiful, but you don’t want it to be a retrospective or nostalgic’. After presenting a second co-ed collecti on in September, she stepped down from the creative role to become ‘honorary president’. Her successor will be former Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri in a much-rumoured move.

READ: Silvia Venturini Fendi on luxury, lineage and looking to the future: ‘If it reminds me of something we’ve already done, we move on’

Prada agreed to purchase Versace for $1.375 billion

The subject of much speculation and rumour after Donatella Versace stepped down from her role as creative director the month prior, in April, it was confirmed that the Prada Group reached an agreement to purchase Versace after the Italian house was put on sale by former owner Capri Holdings earlier in the year. Agreeing to a deal of $1.375 billion for 100 per cent of the company – well below the initial $2 billion asking price – it marked a definitive move from the Prada Group to establish an Italian luxury conglomerate (The Prada Group comprises Miu Miu, Church's and Car Shoe; in 1999, it purchased controlling stakes in Jil Sander and Helmut Lang, though they were later sold). ‘We are delighted to welcome Versace to the Prada Group and to build a new chapter for a brand with which we share a strong commitment to creativity, craftmanship and heritage,’ said Patrizio Bertelli, Prada Group chairman and executive director, at the time (the deal was completed in December). ‘We aim to continue Versace’s legacy, celebrating and re-interpreting its bold and timeless aesthetic; at the same time, we will provide it with a strong platform.’

READ: Donatella Versace is stepping down as creative director

The Met’s Costume Institute explored the figure of the Black Dandy

In a year which was notable for its slew of fashion exhibitions – from the confection-like gowns of ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ at London’s V&A to a Rick Owens retrospective featuring a lifelike sculpture of the designer ‘urinating’ water into a trough below – the Metropolitan Museum’s annual Costume Institute exhibition in May still demands the most attention. This is largely because of the accompanying Met Gala – the starry event heralds the exhibition’s opening – though it is also down to the Costume Institute’s head curator Andrew Bolton’s eye for finding intriguing subject matter in the Met’s extensive archive. This year, he drafted Monica L Miller, author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, to help curate the exhibition, which traced the sartorial history of the Black Dandy from the 18th century to the present day. Titled ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’, alongside historical garments, it featured the work – or personal wardrobes – of Virgil Abloh, Andre Leon Talley and Grace Wales Bonner, among others, with set design for the arresting exhibition courtesy of artist Torkwase Dyson. ‘I clocked into how people have fashioned themselves as a manipulation of autonomy and ownership in which clothing is a resistance,’ she told Wallpaper* of the design, which riffed on her signature trapezoid sculptures.

READ: Torkwase Dyson’s set design for ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ at The Met meditates on ownership, charisma and histories

Saint Laurent’s viral knee-high boots heralded menswear’s dark, sensual mood

At Cannes film festival, while promoting queer ‘dom-com’ Pillion – a film which explores a dom/sub relationship between a shy parking attendant and a biker – Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård donned a thigh-high leather wader boot by Anthony Vaccarrello for Saint Laurent. Shown at the house’s runway show earlier that year, it became one of the viral accessories of the year, worn by everyone from Pedro Pascal to Marc Jacobs, and ubiquitous in magazine spreads. Inspired by an imagined meeting between two men who designed the aesthetic of the 1980s – Yves Saint Laurent and Robert Mapplethorpe – the collection captured a mood of dangerous sensuality which ran throughout the season, from Prada’s patchworked leathers to Maximilian Davis’s S/S 2026 Ferragamo collection, inspired by the languid sensuality of Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Vaccarello dubbed it a ‘menacing, seductive elegance’ – classic menswear with an inflection of kink.

READ: Inspired by Robert Mapplethorpe, Saint Laurent’s surprise menswear show captured ‘a menacing, seductive elegance’

Homme Plissé Issey Miyake channelled la dolce vita in Florence

It would prove one of the most memorable show locations of the year: unfolding against a painterly Florentine sky at sunset, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake staged its S/S 2026 show at Medicea della Petraia, a former Medici residence on Monte Morello in the rolling Tuscan countryside. A guest of Pitti Uomo menswear fair, the Issey Miyake offshoot used the occasion to introduce a new roving format of runway show: eschewing its usual place on the Paris Fashion Week schedule (its position has been taken by IM Men, another brand in the Issey Miyake family), it will show in a series of locations around the world in the coming seasons. As such, collections will draw inspiration from local landscapes: here, it was done via an evocative use of colour, utilising hues sourced through trips the design team had taken around Italy (from ’Cinque Terre Yellow’ to ‘Zucchini Flower Orange’). The result was a collection which fused Italian charm with Homme Plissé’s pioneering fabrications: played out in the villa’s winding, maze-like gardens, it was impossible not to be seduced.

READ: With an ode to Italy, Homme Plissé Issey Miyake brings its brand of fashion magic to Florence’s Pitti Uomo

Rick Owens spread the love with a Paris retrospective

‘I’m surprised I got so far,’ Rick Owens told Wallpaper* in a wide-ranging conversation to mark the opening of ‘Temple of Love’, a career-spanning retrospective at Paris’ Palais Galliera. A celebration of the American designer’s singular approach – one laced with both subversion and wit – the exhibition took attendees on a trip from his early years on Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990s (a recreation of his Los Angeles bedroom of the time appears in the exhibition) towards his blockbuster spectacles at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo (indeed, in June, an opening party took place just after his S/S 2026 menswear show, with guests simply having to cross the road from one institution to another). ‘Michèle [Lamy, Owens’ wife] kept telling me, ‘You gotta stop calling it a retrospective!’ She doesn't like the finality – I'm leaning into it,’ he said. ‘A retrospective implies a decline, it makes you think about legacy and mortality and ageing, and how long do you stay relevant, and how important is that? I don't have the answers to any of those things, but I am thinking about them and addressing them publicly.’

READ: ‘I’m surprised that I got this far’: Rick Owens on his bombastic Paris retrospective, ‘Temple of Love’

Jonathan Anderson rebooted his brand – and debuted at Dior

It was a busy June for Jonathan Anderson. Alongside his much-anticipated debut show at Dior – a menswear offering for S/S 2026 presented at Paris’ Hôtel National des Invalides, which astutely reworked formal dress codes – the Northern Irish designer also revealed a rebooted vision for his eponymous, London-based label JW Anderson, which propelled him to renown after it was established in 2008. Doing away with the label’s usual seasonal runway shows, the new vision centres on the idea of the shop: in Paris, during haute couture week, he constructed a simulacrum of a new store concept by architects Sanchez Benton which included not only a fashion collection (a greatest hits of sorts, seeing signature pieces imbued with a greater commitment to craft) but a curation of intriguing objects and curiosities, from ceramics and vintage gardening tools to furniture, art, even honey. 'I like change. I have wanted to change things around for two years now, and finally I feel at one with who I am today and what the brand means,’ he told Wallpaper*. ‘It’s things that I either want to wear or want to live with.’

READ: Jonathan Anderson’s Dior debut: ‘bringing joy to the art of dressing’

Craig Green returned to the runway – and to Paris

After just over a decade in business, Craig Green remains one of British fashion’s definitive voices – a singular creative force whose imaginative collections transform humble menswear archetypes (workwear, uniforms, biker jackets) through imaginative construction and unusual fabrications, oftentimes evoking sculpture. This year, he made his return to Paris Fashion Week, having shown a year prior in his London studio, and elsewhere via lookbook (Green is one of a handful of designers who seem to be flourishing outside of the typical fashion calendar). The show was one of our highlights of the year: a poetic, free-thinking collection inspired by The Beatles, psychedelics and 1960s bed sheets – albeit in his typically inventive style. ‘Creativity how everything moves forward,’ Green told us in the October 2025 ‘Long View’ issue of Wallpaper*, in which we documented the process behind the collection. ‘You need creative thought for things to progress, and for new things to happen. You have to have the freedom to make mistakes, to create work and not live in fear.’

READ: ‘You have to be fearless’: inside the free-thinking world of Craig Green

Glenn Martens unveiled his vision for Maison Margiela

The task was unenviable: as the new creative director of Maison Margiela, Belgian designer Glenn Martens would not only have to follow the house’s namesake – arguably the most influential designer of recent times – but also John Galliano, his predecessor, whose final collection, which conjured a troupe of contorted dolls on the drizzly moonlit banks of the Seine, was a true fashion epic. But Martens, who comes with a pedigree of his own after zeitgeist-defining stints at Y/Project and Diesel, was more than up for a challenge. His own creatures were sheathed in masks (a nod to a Margiela hallmark, that of anonymity) and appeared pulled through the the walls of history – quite literally, with a melange of jacquards, Renaissance motifs and embossed leather (inspired by 16th-century Flemish wallpaper), evoking the faded grandeur of abandoned stately homes (indeed, the show set was a series of ‘palatial interiors’ printed on crumpled and crased paper). We called it a ‘thrilling’ debut, a task of ‘reinvention and reconstruction – a precarious balance of what to take and what to leave behind’.

READ: Glenn Martens’ thrilling Maison Margiela debut was a balancing act between past, present and future

Fashion East celebrated a ‘rowdy and raw’ 25 years of nurturing emerging talent

In September, Fashion East’s S/S 2026 runway show doubled as a celebration: 2025 marked 25 years of the Brick Lane-based talent incubator, which was founded by Lulu Kennedy to help forge the careers of London’s rising stars. The roll call of names which have passed through its doors is proof of its success: Jonathan Anderson, Martine Rose, Kim Jones, Craig Green and Grace Wales Bonner are all alumni of the unique scheme, which has long encapsulated London’s unique brand of young talent – defiantly creative, ‘rowdy and raw’ (as Kennedy herself described in a letter distributed to guests at the show). Taking place at the ICA, this season’s show – comprising collections by Nuba, Jacek Gleba and Mayhew – doubled as a Nike-sponsored exhibition tracing Fashion East’s impressive quarter century through its memorable clothing and ephemera, from Green’s ‘broken-fence’ chestplates to a leopard-print cake by Mowalola. Later in the year, in December, Kennedy and her creative partner Raphaelle Moore collected a Special Recognition Award at the 2025 Fashion Awards. ‘We’re proud to have created a unique space where designers have both the freedom to create fearlessly, and a family unit to uplift them,’ they said.

September’s fashion week saw almost too many debuts to count

2025 was fashion’s big reshuffle, seeing an unprecedented number of designers making their debuts at fashion’s biggest houses – from Dior to Chanel, Gucci to Celine. It was September fashion month, though, that was a true changing of the guard moment, with over 15 designers presenting their first collections as newly installed creative leads. These spanned an energetic and playful debut from Nicholas Aburn at Area in New York (the former Balenciaga designer riffed on the figure of the party girl in irreverent style), Simone Bellotti’s masterful first outing at Jil Sander, which saw him astutely explore ideas of modernity and lightness (staged in the brand’s white-walled Milan headquarters, it was a true clean slate momet), or Pierpaolo Piccioli’s typically heartfelt first collection for Balenciaga (an appearance from the Duchess of Sussex ensured column inches).

Elsewhere, notable debuts included Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, Glenn Martens at Maison Margiela, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe and Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier. And, while these debuts were largely lauded – particularly by critics – fiercer debates broke out online in the depths of Instagram comment sections. ‘I have read some really heinous comments about the work of many designers in these last few days,’ wrote Perfect magazine’s Edward Buchanan, former design director of Bottega Veneta, in a much-shared post. ‘It is not always perfect, and it is not always what you personally imagined it to be. You don’t have to like everything… but why not celebrate and talk about what you love?’

Though in Paris, it was Chanel and Dior which commanded the most attention

There were two debuts, though, which commanded the most attention: Jonathan Anderson’s womenswear debut for Dior (he had previously shown his first menswear collection in June) and Matthieu Blazy’s opening act for Chanel. Shrugging off the weight of expectation, both collections provided an astute and contemporary viewpoint on the future of two of fashion’s most storied houses – Anderson through a fearless ‘recoding’ of the house’s archive in his idosyncratic style (we said it was a collection of ‘bravery, vision and instinct’), Blazy through a collection of unbridled freedom and optimism (a twirling Awar Odhiang in a gown of kaleidoscopic feathers, the model who memorably closed the show, encapsulated the ‘triumphant’ mood). After Chanel, which marked the end of fashion month, we said that after all of the debuts, it finally felt like a ‘weight had been lifted’. ‘There will be no more anticipation or speculation, no more guessing games or gossip. The designers are in place, and a new chapter of fashion has begun – from there, the hard work begins.’

While Demna marked his Gucci debut with a Demi Moore-starring film

In what proved an astute move, the Georgian designer Demna – previously of Balenciaga – got ahead of the season’s other debuts by presenting his first collection as creative director of Gucci on the first day of Milan Fashion Week, allowing him a moment in which he dominated the narrative (and, of course, social media). Revealed first through a lookbook of Gucci ‘archetypes’, rewritten in his typically irreverent and subversive style (he called it a ‘bold, sexy new chapter’ for the house), it was followed up by a Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn-directed short, premiered at Milan’s Palazzo Mezzanotte. Titled The Tiger, it starred Demi Moore as the fictional ’head of Gucci international and chairman of California’ whose world begins to unravel at a family gathering. Even cleverer? Demna will get another ‘debut’ in 2026 when he holds his first runway for the house during Milan Fashion Week, in February.

READ: Gucci reveals its ‘bold, unapologetically sexy’ new era under Demna

The fashion world mourned the death of Giorgio Armani

In early September, the fashion world mourned the death of Giorgio Armani, an arbiter of Italian style who founded his eponymous house half a century ago, in 1975. One of fashion’s great success stories, Mr Armani began the label using funds made from selling his old Volkswagen Beetle; on his death, he left behind a multi-billion dollar empire spanning not only fashion but homeware, hotels, restaurants, fragrances and cosmetics. To mark his death, after a private funeral held earlier in the month, well-wishers gathered at Milan Fashion Week in September for his final Giorgio Armani show. Originally intended to celebrate 50 years in business, it took place at Brera’s Pinacoteca di Brera, where an accompanying exhibition unfolded in the galleries above. As ever, the S/S 2026 collection – modelled on a cast of Armani models past and present and watched on by muses Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton and Cate Blanchett – encapsulated Mr Armani’s brand of soft elegance, culminating with model Agnes Zogla in a glimmering gown adorned with his face. Afterwards, guests milled the galleries, where the designer’s work took its fitting place amid the great Italian masters – from Bellini to Raphael.

READ: In Milan, the fashion world gathers to say goodbye to Giorgio Armani at his final show

A Virgil Abloh exhibition celebrated his landmark legacy

Just over four years since his death, American designer Virgil Abloh leaves behind a towering legacy – one which was celebrated this September in Paris with the opening of an exhibition at the Grand Palais. Open for just a few days (cue a sold out booking system and snaking queues around the block), the exhibition opened the doors to his prolific archive of objects, clothing, ephemera, furniture and art, displayed across sprawling tables and shelves as if stepping into his headquarters. Indeed, one senses the polymathic designer – who made history as the first Black creative director of Louis Vuitton – would enjoy the exhibition’s approach, which eshewed the behind-glass formality of the traditional museum (only self-restraint stopped you from picking up the objects on display). Titled ‘Virgil Abloh: The Codes’, the idea is for it to go on display around the world. ‘This is a true celebration of Virgil's vision and ethos,’ said the late designer’s wife, Shannon Abloh. ‘This offers an invitation to the world to engage and to build upon his ideas.’

READ: Inside the Paris exhibition cataloguing Virgil Abloh’s extraordinary archive

Grace Wales Bonner is appointed at Hermès

In late October, Hermès announced the appointment of Grace Wales Bonner as the house’s head of menswear, replacing Véronique Nichanian who made the choice to step down from the role after a record-breaking 37-year tenure (the longest of any working creative director at a fashion house). It felt long overdue for the British designer. An LVMH Prize-winning designer whose deeply felt collections for her eponymous label Wales Bonner – exploring themes of Black masculinity, migration and luxury – have consistently won plaudits for rich storytelling and meticulous craftsmanship, leading many to question why she hadn’t been chosen for a creative director role sooner (she had been rumoured for roles at both Louis Vuitton and Givenchy which went to Pharrell Williams and Sarah Burton respectively). On social media, there was a rare positive consensus on the decision: in her own post, the designer, who was born in South London to a British mother and Jamaican father, expressed her ‘deep honour’ at being chosen for the role. ‘It is a dream realised to embark on this new chapter, following in a lineage of inspired craftspeople and designers,’ she wrote.

READ: Lauded British designer Grace Wales Bonner is the new head of menswear at Hermès

1980s ‘architect of glamour’ Antony Price returned to the runway

The fashion critic Alexander Fury – who is an avid collector of his work – has called Antony Price, a British fashion designer who came to prominence in the 1980s, as ‘criminally underrated’. Best known for creating the visual universe of Roxy Music, and staging similarly dramatic runway shows in the decade, the ‘architect of glamour’ made a welcome runway return in November, courtesy of a one-off salon show with London-based label 16Arlington. Staged in the latter’s east London studio, the high-profile cast – from Lily Allen to Adwoa Aboah – prowled the runway in the high-voltage creations, puffing on cigarettes before posing for photographer Felix Cooper. ‘I personally felt Antony never really received his flowers,’ Capaldo told Wallpaper*. ‘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.’ Sadly, it was announced that Price passed away at the age of 80 on 17 December 2025.

READ: ‘Architect of glamour’ Antony Price makes a high-voltage return to the runway with 16Arlington

Dario Vitale said goodbye to Versace

It was to be one of fashion’s shortest tenures – just a few short months after his debut, in December, it was announced that Italian designer Dario Vitale would be exiting Versace. The former design director of Miu Miu, and the successor to Donatella Versace, the news came as some surprise: Vitale’s debut show at Milan Fashion Week, though divisive, had won over critics and was already being worn by celebrities (Olivia Dean wore custom Versace for a recent SNL appearance, while Addison Rae was also an early adopter). We said that Vitale had ‘stripped back conceptions and ushered in an energetic new vision: sexually charged and ‘reckless’, one that harkened back to the dress codes of Gianni Versace without nostalgia.’ On social media, the announcement came with some disappointment at the way in which designers are given so little time to make their mark: ‘There’s a disturbing pattern across the fashion industry: giant companies, plucking creative directors, placing them on a pedestal, parading them as the future, and then discarding them just as quickly,’ wrote casting director Anita Bitton in a much-shared Instagram post.

In Vienna, there was a chance to see Helmut Lang’s fashion archive for the first time

Though he exited the industry 20 years ago, Helmut Lang’s influence on fashion remains palpable. A definitive figure of the 1990s, he proposed a vision of sensually-charged minimalism and utility which continues to define the way that we dress today. He also changed the way we consume fashion, too: his memorable New York runway shows stripped back the artifice of the 1980s and its elevated runway, drafting friends to walk alongside supermodels, while stripped-back campaigns were captured by a young Juergen Teller. This revolutionary spirit is celebrated in ‘Séance de Travail 1986-2005’, an exhibition which opened in December at MAK in Vienna, which marks the first time Helmut Lang’s fashion archive is on show to the public – from memorable garments to archival film, ephemera, even recreations of elements from his equally definitive stores (Lang donated his archive to the institution in 2011). ‘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,’ curator Marlies Wirth told Wallpaper* of the exhibition, which is designed to immerse you in the Lang universe – all the way down to the floor, which features a seating plan from a runway show.

READ: Inside Helmut Lang’s fashion archive in Vienna, which still defines how we dress today

Marty Supreme birthed the year’s viral garment – thanks to Timothée Chalamet

The Marty Supreme press tour has already come with some memorable sartorial moments – the film’s star Timothée Chalamet and girlfiend Kylie Jenner in matching orange Chrome Hearts for one – though it was more humble track jacket which went viral in December (the Josh Safdie-directed film is out on Christmas Day in the United States). The nylon windbreaker, created by the film’s production company A24 alongside California-based label Nahmias, was part of a merch drop for the film – adorned with ‘Marty Supreme’ and three gold stars, Chalamet has barely taken it off since. Pop-ups in New York and London have seen queues around the block to lay their hands on the $250 jacket – with resale sites selling the garment for up to for up to £4,366 (that’s over 20 times its original price). It speaks not only to A24’s marketing prowess, but also to the rise of movie merch – at the end of 2024, Mary Cleary explored its rise for Wallpaper*. ‘How it will continue to play out is yet to be seen, but one thing is almost certain: movie merch will continue to take over fashion,’ she wrote – and was right.

‘I like change. I have wanted to change things around for two years now, and finally I feel at one with who I am today and what the brand means,’ Jonathan Anderson told Wallpaper* earlier this year when he revealed a new vision for his eponymous London-based label JW Anderson – one where clothing, objects and artworks converge.

It felt an astute move for a designer who had just begun a historic new role: leaving his 11-year-long tenure as creative director of Loewe in March, the following month it was announced he would head up Dior’s mens, womens and haute couture lines. It was the first time the Parisian house had employed a designer to have such far-reaching creative control, with Anderson in charge of over ten collections a year (previously, the menswear and womenswear lines were split between creative directors).

Inside JW Anderson’s new Pimlico Road store

So for JW Anderson, he announced he would be doing away with his four runway shows each year, choosing a new model which focused on the idea of the shop: a rolling collection of men’s and womenswear – much of it drawing on JW Anderson hallmarks elevated through a greater focus on craft – alongside a curated collection of furnishings, ceramics, home textiles, artworks, even tea and honey.

‘It’s things that I either want to wear or want to live with,’ he said, presenting a redesigned store in London’s Soho by Sanchez Benton this past September (before that, in June, he had presented the new vision at a simulacrum of the store in Paris). ‘The idea is how all these things talk together. Ultimately, it’s showing the influence and how I see things, and how it all figures together.’

Opening this past weekend, Anderson continues to expand this vision with the opening of his largest store yet on London’s Pimlico Road, a location chosen for its proximity to ‘antique stores, design boutiques and homeware specialists’ (the neighbourhood has long been known as a design district, with neighbours including Soane Britain, Rose Uniacke and recently opened hub Newson’s Yard). Indeed, the store – which continues Sanchez Benton’s vision and unfolds over two floors – places a greater focus on the home, with just a small selection of ready-to-wear and accessories.

Like in Soho, the idea of ‘curation’ is central: amid Sanchez Benton’s serene interiors – which use velvet panelling to create a series of distinct rooms – sit Anderson’s carefully selected objects, which, while eclectic, are united by the idea of craft and the handmade. ‘With an emphasis on traceable origins and elevated materials; each piece is designed to stand the test of time, to honour traditional skills, and reflect who Jonathan is today,’ said a statement from the house, released this morning.

So there are Nicolas Mosse ceramics, re-editions of Charles Rennie Mackintosh furniture, Wedgwood mugs and fabrics from Polly Lyster’s ‘The Dyeworks’ – known for its use of natural dyes – transformed into cushions, lavender bags and sketchbooks (like many of the objects for sale, this was part of a collaboration between JW Anderson and the producer or artisan). For Christmas, there are vintage tree ornaments, while other curiosities – from dinner candles to coffee-flavoured tea – add to the store’s emporium-like feel.

Artwork is also a component of the store: for the inaugural ‘art installation’, Anderson has installed six wall sconces by British artist Kira Freije in welded metal and glass, designed to hold candles. On display – and, like the store’s other objects, available to purchase – until February, Anderson says the choice reflects the store’s veneration of craft and making. ‘They are made with the same impulse as drawing or collage, intuitive and exploratory in their forms,’ he says.

‘There are elements of chance and serendipity held within the tactility of their presence which is true to their making,’ adds Freije. ‘They are signals, guides, beacons of optimism.’

JW Anderson Pimlico Road Store, 105-107 Pimlico Road, London, SW1W 8NQ.

jwanderson.com

Wedgwood and JW Anderson present an exclusive collection of designs by British studio potter Lucie Rie, dating back to a 1964 collaboration with the fine china brand, but never put into production.

Lucie Rie's pottery work

Born in Austria, Rie fled Nazi Austria in 1938 and established herself in London. Alongside her creative work, she was making ceramic objects, including buttons and jewellery for fashion houses, an experience that later informed her precise colourwork. She was also known for her ‘sgraffito’ technique, consisting of carefully scratching the surface of the material to reveal a different shade underneath. So many decades on, her work is defined by a language that still feels modern. ‘Lucie Rie is one of the greatest potters of the 20th century,’ says Jonathan Anderson, who for many years now has been a collector of her work.

‘Rie worked with incredible restraint and clarity, something that feels transcendent,’ says Emma Glynn, Wedgwood’s creative director. ‘Her refined silhouettes, experimental glazes, and graphic use of line challenged traditional notions of ceramics and paved the way for contemporary makers to explore this medium for both artistic and functional expression.’

Wedgwood and JW Anderson release Lucie Rie designs

Working closely with the Estate of Lucie Rie, Glynn and Anderson developed Rie’s original Wedgwood commission for the first time. Defined by Jasper blue surfaces with white graphic inlays, the collection includes two sets – a teacup and saucer, and a coffee cup and saucer – developed with a technique that makes them faithful to Rie’s designs.

‘The line is unmistakably Lucie Rie, and that’s what I love about these designs,’ continues Glynn. ‘It’s both decorative and structural, creating movement without ever overwhelming the form. It’s a quiet confidence that truly captures her signature style. Bringing that together with our iconic Jasper material, this becomes a remarkable meeting of minds – Wedgwood and Lucie Rie, two visionary forces in a collaboration that truly transcends time.’

The objects are made with a combination of machine and handwork. Once moulded, the pieces are fitted to the turning machine, where an artisan shapes them and ribs them by hand – a process similar to Rie’s own studio work.

‘[We used a] technique called “slip trailing inlay”, and to my knowledge, this is the only time we've used it,’ says Glynn. ‘It's an extremely difficult method – perhaps one of the reasons the design didn’t move forward initially. That said, it's a truly beautiful technique, and one I hope we continue to incorporate into our design language.’

The proceeds from the collaboration will support the newly formed Lucie Rie and Hans Coper Foundation, working to grant the long-term accessibility, digitisation and preservation of archival material. As part of the initiative, a grant scheme will be established to promote academic and creative scholarships.

‘It’s a chance to honour a collaboration she always hoped would happen,’ says Anderson. ‘What’s truly remarkable is that Wedgwood has now realised these designs in the way Rie envisioned them. I think she would be thrilled to see these pieces finally brought to life, especially in this charitable context.’

The collaboration will be available from selected stores in China, Japan and the US, Harrods and Selfridges in the UK, wedgwood.com, JW Anderson Soho in London, JW Anderson Milan, JW Anderson Shibuya Parco Tokyo, and at jwanderson.com from 19 September 2025

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.

As seen in the March Style Issue of Wallpaper*, photographer Luca Strano and stylist Nicola Neri capture the mood of undone elegance that ran through the S/S 2025 menswear collections with a series of collaged and layered-up looks – a proposition for translating the runway into the everyday.

Titled ‘Cut and Paste’, the photo series offers lessons in embracing fashion’s new mood of eclecticism – a throughline of the S/S 2025 season – whether doubling up on jersey vests or shirts for a subversive twist on basics, leaving buttons undone to expose slices of skin, or tying-up the arms of a sweater for playful new proportions.

Cut and paste: how to wear the S/S 2025 menswear collections

Other garments come with layering built in, whether the trim of lace that emerges from beneath an otherwise quotidien grey sweater from JW Anderson, or a trompe l’oeil belt on a pair of Prada trousers (co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons describe their S/S 2025 collection as one where nothing is quite what it seems).

Elsewhere, a diaphonous sheer top by Dries Van Noten is worn over an Hermès blazer – a satisfyingly strange take on eveningwear – while T-shirts and jackets hang from the waistband of trousers to surreal effect. Meanwhile accessories – from colourful lace masks to colourful nylon sneakers and metal brooches – contribute to the season’s uninhibited mood.

Explore the looks below.

Model: Owen Ruppersburg at Milk Management. Casting: Svea Casting. Set design: Harry Stayt. Grooming: Lachlan Mackie. Photography assistants: Elliott Gunn, Luca Viopelle. Fashion assistant: Sophie Bell. Set design assistant: Marko Ilic. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

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

Milan is synonymous with both style and design, so it is little surprise that it plays host to some of the world’s best fashion stores that also happen to have some of the best interiors.

As Milan Fashion Week A/W 2025 begins today, we have consulted some of the city’s most style-conscious residents to collate a list of its must-visit fashion stores, from hidden vintage hangouts to concept spaces and big-name boutiques.

A guide to the best fashion stores Milan has to offer

10 Corso Como

Arguably the world’s first concept store, 10 Corso Como changed how people shop, not only in Milan, but around the world. In 1991, former Elle Italia editor Carla Sozzani converted an old garage on what was then the outskirts of Milan into a gallery. From that initial idea, it quickly turned into what Sozzani once described to us (on the occasion of the opening of 10 Corso Como New York) as a ‘virtual 3D magazine’. The concept encompassed a boutique selling some of the most innovative new names in fashion at the time, and still today, like Maison Martin Margiela, Comme des Garçons and Alaïa; an art bookstore; a café (an ideal location for an afternoon spritz) and even a hotel across the street.

Today, the Milan store still retains its Wunderkammer-like feel, with an endless assortment of some of the world’s most remarkable clothes, books, and trinkets. Yet, in 2024, 10 Corso Como got a new look with a dramatic renovation of its ground floor. Designed as a ‘flexible theatrical machine’, it features mobile and modular devices for displaying clothes that can be configured around the space in an infinite variety of ways; there’s also a gallery space and a project room for design pieces, vintage books and cult magazines.

Corso Como, 10. 20154 Milan, Italy

10corsocomo.com

Prada Galleria 1913

Miuccia Prada’s grandfather Mario Prada opened the first Prada store inside the historic Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II arcade in 1913 as a luxury travel goods shop. Today, the shop features Mrs Prada’s innovative collections – now designed with co-creative director Raf Simons – alongside its vast offering of leather travel goods. But while the items on the shelves have changed, the shelves themselves – exquisite mahogany constructions that Mario Prada commissioned a British architect to make – remain the same. Other classic elements include a marble black and white check floor and large red leather and wood tables where customers can interact with items before deciding on their purchase.

While you are there, don’t forget to take a look at the brand’s ‘Galleria handbag’, a square style that Mrs Prada created in 2007 in homage to the store, inspired by 1950s medicine bags and made with the house’s signature wax-treated saffiano leather.

Prada, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, 63-65, 20121, Milan.

prada.com

Bottega Veneta

While you are in the Galleria, don’t forget to stop by the nearby Bottega Veneta store. Opened under former creative director Matthieu Blazy, the two-storey space became the brand’s flagship in 2021. The design is centered around three materials – glass, Italian walnut wood, and green Verde Saint Denis Marble – which come together to create a space that features Italian modernist inspirations and, in Blazy’s words, ‘spaceship’ elements.

In keeping with the Bottega aesthetic Blazy cultivated before the end of his tenure there earlier this year, the space is enhanced by an array of idiosyncratic details. The golden glass door handles at the front entrance feature teardrop-motifs that are echoed in gold throughout the rest of the space; while green leather couches and chairs both upstairs and down have weave detailing in homage to the brand’s signature ‘intrecciato' designs.

Bottega Veneta, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, 20121 Milan

bottegaveneta.com

Antonia

A 40,000 sq ft luxury department retailer inside Milan’s historic Palazzo Cagnola, Antonia is widely considered one of the city’s most beautiful stores. The space is arranged according to three category types – menswear, womenswear, and five single-brand corners that focus on a rotating selection of labels.

Founder Antonia Giacinti is known for her meticulous taste and in-depth research, which is reflected in the eclectic and carefully considered range of clothing, accessories and shoes. Menswear focuses on more luxe streetwear, while a number of interesting brands can be found throughout, with niche Japanese labels sitting alongside iconic luxury names.

Antonia, Via Cusani, 5, 20121 Milan

antonia.it

JW Anderson

When Jonathan Anderson opened his store in the Quadrilatero – Milan’s main shopping district – in 2023, it marked his first outside of London for the brand and second JW Anderson store overall (the first store opened in Soho in 2020). The space has a neon red window in homage to its London sibling, but everything else about its design is filtered through a distinctly Italian sensibility.

A chequerboard terrazzo floor, walnut-fluted panels and hanging curtains create a welcoming atmosphere, while scaffolding-inspired shelves add an industrial touch. ‘For me, art is always going to be a language, it’s what I love,’ Anderson told us when the store opened. ‘I’m always discovering things I’m fascinated with or curious about. So designing a store, that’s the personal part. To me, they’re just as important as a show, if not more – because they need to last. I enjoy the process, and being involved in every decision down to the door handles. The furniture, the lighting – every aspect I choose to include.’

JW Anderson, Via Sant'Andrea, 16, 20121, Milan

jwanderson.com

No. 21

On the Quadrilatero you will also find the flagship for Milanese brand No. 21. Founded by Alessandro Dell'Acqua in 2010, the brand is best known for blending sharp tailoring with a sensual, modern femininity. That same style is reflected in the flagship’s design, which is both sleek and glamorous. Designed by architect Hannes Peer, who also designed No. 21’s Tokyo shop as well as its Milan headquarters, the brand's Milan space has been conceived as a ‘modernist palazzo’ with monochrome optical marble floor and midcentury furniture.

Spread over the three floors, the entrance space is a marble-filled area designed to introduce viewers to a vast array of clothes, while the second floor showcases the newest men’s and women’s clothing collection and the third room is dedicated to accessories.

No. 21, Via Santo Spirito, 14, 20121 Milan

numeroventuno.com

Slam Jam

Slam Jam is credited with having brought streetwear to Europe when, in 1989, founder Luca Benini started selling Stussy and Supreme in Italy. These days, Slam Jam is still known as one of the continent’s most preeminent purveyors of streetwear and hosts of some of the most buzzed-about events in Milan. Its flagship is located in Brera, the city’s historic design district, and sells collaborations with brands like Nike and Our Legacy, as well as streetwear staples like Kapital, Undercover, BrainDead and more. Spread over two floors, the space also features a dedicated pop-up room that frequently plays host to events and exhibitions.

Via Giovanni Lanza, 1, 20121 Milan

slamjam.com

Cavalli e Nastri + Cavalli e Nastri Uomo

Located down a secluded side street in Ticinese, Cavalli e Nastri and its menswear counterpart Cavalli e Nastri Uomo are two of the city’s best destinations for quality vintage. Cavalli e Nastri contains a plethora of designer finds from ready-to-wear to haute couture, as well as accessories, shoes and even a few home goods – it's the kind of place where you will find a 1980s Fendi kimono alongside a flapper dress from the 1920s.

Across the street is Cavalli e Nastri Uomo, which contains an equally impressive selection of menswear. Downstairs you’ll find outerwear and shirts from brands like Comme des Garçons and upstairs there is an array of suits, blazers and waistcoats from classic Italian labels.

Via Gian Giacomo Mora, 3, 20123 Milan

cavallienastri.com

La DoubleJ

La DoubleJ is known for channelling the joyful spirit of Italian living into fashion and, in the case of its Milan flagship, interiors. Located on Via Sant’Andrea in the Quadrilatero, the store is a vibrant space with emerald green walls, marble floors, and a lotus leaf installation covering the ceiling.

Inside, visitors will find racks packed with the brand’s signature brightly printed dresses, as well as a separate area with a wide array of homeware. Downstairs, you can find the Sacred Grotta, ‘a magical sanctuary conceived as a studio to help you guys fall into an experience of connecting to your feminine energy’. Events include pranayama workshops, heart-opening meditations and more.

La DoubleJ, Via Sant'Andrea, 10/A, 20121, Milan

ladoublej.com

Frip

It is easy to walk past Frip while strolling through the picturesque area around Basilica San Lorenzo, but if you are in the market for quality design pieces at relatively reasonable prices then you won’t want to miss it. Founded by a stylist and a DJ couple in the 1990s, the Scandinavia-inspired concept store sells men’s and women’s clothing from brands like Acne Studios, Ann-Sofie Back, Hope, Marios, Lucio Vanotti and Marques’Almeida. Alongside clothing, it also retails shoes, a rotation of jewellery and a range of international magazines.

Frip, Corso di Porta Ticinese, 16, 20123 Milan

@frip_milano

Nothing is quite what it seems with the S/S 2025 collections, seeing designers riff on wardrobe staples with illusory tricks – from trompe l’œil to twisted silhouettes and unexpected fabrications. Whether the turned-up hemline of a leather Loewe overcoat – as though perpetually caught in a gust of wind – or a surreal Hodakova shoe, which squashes together a beach flip-flop and high-heeled pump, these are pieces that appear as one thing, but are actually another (a response, no doubt, to our increasingly disorientating digital age). The effect is something like a surreal collage; garments that implore a second look.

S/S 2025’s twisted wardrobe staples

As such, in the March 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on international newsstands now), photographer Nicole Maria Winkler and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture these looks in a surreal interior of their own: a liminal apartment whereby Winkler’s archival photographs become trompe l’oeil wall coverings, or adorn folding screens and chests of drawers. Inhabited by Swiss artist and model Veronika Kunz, the space – which was imagined by set designer Kim Harding – is completed with modernist furnishings, from a Ron Arad bed to an Afra and Tobia Scarpa Cassina sofa.

‘Nicole and I have been friends for many years and have played with trompe-l’œil before, and this story was a further exploration of that theme,’ Harding told Wallpaper*. ‘Delving into Nicole’s archive of still lifes, we created some interesting stand-alone pieces to sit among the set itself.’

Model: Veronika Kunz at Kunz Management. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Set design: Kim Harding Studio. Hair: Sophie Jane Anderson. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Makeup by Mario. Manicure: Sasha Goddard at Saint Luke using Dior. Digi tech: Anna-Sophia John. Photography assistant: Tom Porter. Set design assistants: Matilda Greenwood, Heather Allen. Fashion assistants: Nathan Fox, Rebecca Evans-White. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

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

As seen in the March 2025 Style Issue of Wallpaper* (on newsstands now), we explore S/S 2025’s defining trends – from illusory trompe l’oeil to transparent layers and gravity-defying spiralling silhouettes – through 12 arresting looks and accessories, for men and women.

Trompe l’oeil (top left)

‘Truth and pretence, the real and the unreal,’ said co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons of their S/S 2025 menswear collection, which was filled with trompe l’oeil illusions – a response, no doubt, to our disorienting post-truth era, where nothing is quite what it seems. Their womenswear collection followed a similar track: like this coat, its surface printed to give the effect of faux fur.

Cut-outs (top right)

Bold acts of construction have long defined Florentine house Ferragamo, whether the vertiginous ‘Rainbow’ wedge heel – created for Judy Garland in 1938 – or the sculpted surface of the ‘Wanda’ bag. Current creative director Maximilian Davis picked up the mantle for S/S 2025, using the house’s atelier to extraordinary effect with leather mesh jackets and skirts cut to the shape of Ferragamo’s historic ‘Gancini’ motif.

Reimagined plaid

Plaid made something of a return this season, with designers evoking the humble material to suggest a mood of teenage rebellion – a nod to plaid’s longtime synonymy with grunge and punk. At Acne Studios there were enormous plaid bows on skirts (‘the familiar, twisted,’ said creative director Jonny Johansson); nipped-waist checked shirts were infused with a mood of refinement at Bottega Veneta; while at Loewe, Jonathan Anderson placed floating layers of plaid over baggy chino-style pants – part of the designer’s ongoing interrogation of wardrobe archetypes.

Hybrid accessories

The mashed-up accessory – like this futuristic sneaker-cum-penny loafer by Fendi – was a throughline of the season, with designers proposing strange and surreal hybrids that appeared as one thing but were actually another. They seem fit for our online era: the effect is reminiscent of the kind of dizzying juxtapositions you find when whizzing through a social-media stream at speed.

Spiralling silhouettes

The spiralling staircase of New York’s Guggenheim Museum inspired the construction of Pieter Mulier’s latest Alaïa collection, where dresses looped around the body to gravity-defying effect. In a shift from Paris to New York, Mulier presented the collection at the Frank Lloyd-Wright-designed landmark, echoing a similar transatlantic trip Azzedine Alaïa took in 1985, showing at the city’s Palladium nightclub.

Puzzle-piece construction

Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest womenswear show for Louis Vuitton took place on a raised runway constructed from a puzzle-like collection of the house’s signature trunks in an array of finishes and hues. Such playful amalgamations continued in the collection itself, which featured a series of sandals constructed from chunky, bolted-down straps of leather, some adorned with coins and crystals.

Blown-up tailoring

‘The joy of looking, discovering and dressing,’ said Matthieu Blazy of what would be his final collection for Bottega Veneta (he was named artistic director of Chanel last December), hoping to evoke a sense of childhood wonder. Cue animal motifs, colourful tasselled wigs and blown-up silhouettes, as if a child was playing dress up in their parent’s closet. ‘We need joy. We need this moment for ourselves, and continue to play.’

Shifted waistlines

Recent seasons have seen the American designer Tory Burch – once the poster girl for all-American preppiness – take a more experimental approach with freewheeling collections rooted in fabric and form. For S/S25, clever construction sees knee-length skirts hover away from the waist for an unexpected silhouette – the type of twisted classic that has now become Burch’s forte.

Brown

If brown has been something of an overlooked shade on the runway, in recent seasons designers have begun to embrace the hue for its suggestion of nostalgic sartorial elegance – particularly its richest shades of chocolate and chestnut. Like this trench coat by Paul Smith, part of the designer’s reminiscence on Soho’s Italian coffee bars of the 1960s and their famous patrons, from Lucian Freud to Francis Bacon.

Transparency

‘The paradox of lightness through craftsmanship,’ said Nadège Vanhée of her latest outing for Hermès, presented amid a set constructed from raw artist’s canvases. Impossibly lightweight layers of sheer fabric suggested the initial brushstrokes of a painting, while also proposing a mood of feminine sensuality, long a hallmark of Vanhée’s collections for the Parisian house.

Open arms

Jonathan Anderson described his latest menswear outing for his eponymous London-based label as ‘irrational clothing’, a nod to the surreal blown-up silhouettes, supersized knits and balloon-like protrusions of fabric. Though, as is his knack, the strangeness proved seductive, like a series of oversized gilets that proposed arms-out dressing as the mode du jour.

Deconstruction

The ritual of dressing, of putting on your clothes in the morning and removing them at night, was the inspiration behind Victoria Beckham’s S/S25 collection. ‘Observing the physical relationship between skin and garment,’ led the British designer to pieces turned inside out or deconstructed – like a series of sliced-away tailoring, as if still in the process of creation.

Models: Loka Lindaregard at Models 1, Reuben Larkin at Linden Staub. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Mayuko Nakae using Oribe. Make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Ilapothecary. Manicure: Sabina Uzunovic at Snow Creatives using Nailberry. Photography assistants: Guillaume Mercier, Julie Robinson. Fashion assistant: Lucy Proctor. Production assistant: Archie Thomson.

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

2024 has been a frenetic year in style: in a not-comprehensive list, Givenchy, Chanel, Lanvin, Valentino, Dries Van Noten, Tom Ford, Celine and Bottega Veneta have all had new creative directors named in 2024, while Maison Margiela, Y/Project, and Fendi’s womenswear line are currently without a named designer at the helm (while rumours of further departures abound).

Amid this mood of flux, bubbling under is a newly liberated spirit of eclecticism and experimentation. There was Prada’s boldly individual S/S 2025 collection in Milan, complete with 49 entirely unique looks (‘we thought of each individual as a superhero – with their own power, their own story,’ said Miuccia Prada’s co-creative director Raf Simons); Alessandro Michele’s expansive and eclectic opening act at Valentino; or an ode to the joy of clothes at Matthieu Blazy’s S/S 2025 show for Bottega Veneta (it would be his final collection for the house, having been appointed as artistic director of Chanel earlier this month). ‘The power of wow,’ he described of the fantastical show.

Here, the Wallpaper* style team pick their own personal fashion moments of 2024, from Rick Owens’ 200-strong Hollywood epic in Paris to an Eyes Wide Shut-inspired JW Anderson show, and a slicked-back beauty look at Saint Laurent.

Jason Hughes, fashion and creative director

‘As a longtime fan of Stanley Kubrick, it was a exciting to see Jonathan Anderson draw inspiration from the director’s final movie, Eyes Wide Shut, for his A/W 2024 menswear collection which was shown in January in Milan. Most intriguing, though, was the collaboration at its heart: interspersed throughout the collection were paintings by Christiane Kubrick, the director’s artist wife, whose works appeared in the backdrop of her husband’s movies (and are particularly prominent in the interiors of Eyes Wide Shut).

‘Anderson said he was inspired by the way in which the paintings represented a kind of compulsion to create, intrigued by the way that despite her husband’s fame she remained an artist working in the margins. “There is something deeply personal about Christiane’s work. I get the feeling that there is no other way – she has to do it,” he said.

‘It was thrilling then, for Wallpaper’s November Art Issue, to visit Childwickbury Manor, the Hertfordshire manor house where Stanley Kubrick lived and worked for much of his career (Christiane still maintains a studio in the home and her paintings decorate almost every wall). Alongside photographer Kalpesh Lathigra, we shot the collection in the home an its grounds for what was perhaps one of the most unique fashion shoots I’ve ever taken part in. I’m so thankful for Christiane and the Kubrick family – especially her grandson Jack Elliot Hobbs – for letting us document such a special place. It’s a day I won’t forget.

‘Another highlight of 2024 was seeing the evolution of Duran Lantink, an Amsterdam-based designer who won the Karl Lagerfeld Award at the LVMH Prize 2024. For the past few seasons he has riffed on archetypal garments in extraordinary style, creating playful sculptural forms which look like the pieces are inflated under the fabric or have emerged from a cartoon. And, while there have certainly been precedents for his work – there is no doubt a debt to the “lumps and bumps” of Rei Kawakubo’s S/S 1997 Comme des Garçons collection – it feels entirely new. I can't wait to see where he goes in 2025.’

Jack Moss, fashion features editor

‘I always love attending Rick Owens’ shows – the American designer has an innate understanding of the spectacle of fashion, staging monumental presentations on the forecourt of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo which are at once strange, glamourous, rousing and eerie, and always entirely in his own design vernacular (hence why they attract hordes of black-clad disciples Owens affectionately calls his ‘freaks’). He is a true iconoclast.

‘In 2024 we were treated to two very different types of Rick Owens shows: the first, early in the year, saw him open the door to own Paris home, a “concrete palace” in the former French Socialist Party headquarters on the city’s Left Bank. It was about as intimate as a runway show can get: guests sat on his monolithic furniture, while a cast of Owens’ community walked through the various rooms – a twisted take on the traditional salon show.

’The designer said the move towards closeness was a response to the “barbaric times through which we are living”. Clothing suggested a feeling of intimacy, albeit in Owens’ subversive style – enormous shaggy twists of fabric, cashmere “space suits” and delicate branch-like structures adorned with sequins – as did the casting, a community of collaborators which he described “creatives who live their aesthetic defiantly and completely”. I know we all felt lucky to be invited into his world.

‘Later in the year, in June, an altogether different spectacle: a 200-strong take on the Hollywood epic, staged back at the Palais de Tokyo amid plumes of smoke. He called the parading figures – largely cast from local art schools – his “white satin army of love”. It was a response, he said, to the small capacity of the shows at home (he presented both his A/W 2025 men’s and women’s collections in the space), positing the curative effects of being en masse once again. “I felt bad about making attendance so restricted, so this time around I wanted to welcome everyone,” he said of the spectacular menswear show, which would be repeated for his womenswear show in September with additional confetti. “Expressing our individuality is great but sometimes expressing our unity and reliance on each other is a good thing to remember too”.’

Hannah Tindle, beauty and grooming editor

‘I loved Anthony Vaccarello’s tribute to Yves Saint Laurent himself at Saint Laurent S/S 2025, with exaggerated double-breasted suiting and thick-rimmed glasses. The show’s hair and make-up by Duffy and Pat McGrath was a masterful demonstration of restrained runway beauty.

‘Tapping into the androgynous mood, models were given slicked-back styles or nonchalant blow dries. (Although, look 41 included peek-a-boo waves à la Veronica Lake). For the face, McGrath created a flawless canvas alongside barely-there contouring and lightly pencilled brows. Lips had been kept the same shade as the model’s natural skin tone and mascara – if any were used at all – was untraceable.’

2024 was a year of fashion ephemera, whereby designers spoke not only through the clothing they showed on the runway, but the objects which they chose to populate their universes. The result was a conveyor of printed publications, furniture, artist collaborations, edible produce and collectable invites, which were often as intriguing and illuminating as the collections themselves.

Here, we look towards seven objects which tell the story of fashion in 2024, none of which are items of clothing or accessories. Some speak of a newly intimate relationship between fashion and design, like Sabato De Sarno’s reissue of an Enzo Mari classic for Gucci, while others – like Willy Chavarria’s enormous American flag – symbolise an engagement with the wider political landscape. Others are simply gleefully surreal: Blonde Ambition Madonna wigs at Dolce & Gabbana, JW Anderson’s pint of Guinness, or a series of giant cats at Dior Men.

Collated by Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss, together they provide an unconventional but illuminating portrait of style in 2024.

Bottega Veneta’s beanbag animals

Matthieu Blazy said he wanted his S/S 2025 collection for Bottega Veneta to capture the ‘power of wow’, mining a mood of childlike wonder for a vibrant collection which featured animal motifs, colourful tasselled wigs, plays on corner-shop plastic bags, crocheted flowers and enormous tailoring, as if a child was playing dress up in their parents’ clothing. It captured a new mood of eclecticism that pulsated through the season – from Prada to Louis Vuitton – and was presented in Milan amid a menagerie of leather beanbag animals. Inspired by Zanotta’s Sacco easy chair, each guest had a different animal – from yellow chicks to killer whales and foxes – with Blazy saying that he was inspired by the scene in E.T. whereby the titular extra-terrestrial conceals himself in a closet full of soft toys. Looking through a child’s eyes, said Blazy, allowed him to take a creative leap. ‘In a kid’s world everything is possible. You can really approach reality in a different way.’ It would also prove to be his final show for the house: last week, he was announced as the new artistic director of Chanel (at Bottega Veneta, Louise Trotter will take the helm). Read more.

Gucci’s reissue of Enzo Mari’s perpetual calendar

Since the beginning of his tenure as creative director of Gucci, Sabato De Sarno has forged links with the design world: in 2023, just after his appointment, he collaborated with a slew of Italian furniture titans to reissue their most memorable pieces in his own signature shade of oxblood ‘Ancora’ red (the project included designs by Piero Castiglioni, Mario Bellini, Tobia Scarpa, and more). It fit with a wider embrace of the design world from fashion in 2024 – proved by the numerous houses which took over this year’s Salone del Mobile – and was complemented later in the year with a reissue of Enzo Mari’s perpetual calendar, which served as the invite for De Sarno’s S/S 2025 womenswear show in Milan. It reflected a collection he described as about ‘a precise moment in time... a moment to seize and live to the fullest. This collection is a tribute to those moments, and an invitation to stop, seek your own moment.’ Read more.

Dolce & Gabbana’s Madonna wigs

It was perhaps Milan Fashion Week’s worst-kept secret: Madonna, the queen of pop, would be turning up to Dolce & Gabbana’s S/S 2025 show (she is a longtime wearer of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s high-voltage clothing). Arriving clad in a black veil and evoking the house’s brand of Sicilian glamour, the show itself would prove an ode to the musician, with each and every model clad in a Blonde Ambition-esque wig and wearing riffs on Madonna’s signature outfits, including Jean Paul-Gaultier’s pneumatic cone bra. It was a reminder of the fashion show as entertainment, a joyous celebration of a figure who has long defined pop culture – indeed, fashion. ‘Madonna has always been our icon. It’s thanks to her that a lot of things in our lives changed,’ the designers said, embracing a clearly emotional Madonna at the end of the show.

JW Anderson’s pint of Guinness

In one of the more unexpected – and yet somehow totally fitting – fashion collaborations of 2024, JW Anderson united with Irish stout producers Guinness for a capsule collection which first appeared as part of the brand’s S/S 2025 menswear show this past June in Milan. Encapsulating Jonathan Anderson’s eye for the idiosyncratic, historical Guinness advertising adorned sweaters and T-shirts in the playful capsule. ‘I’ve always been obsessed by Guinness and their brand,’ he said. ‘I think they are still today one of the greatest advertisers... I’ve always wanted to be able to show some of it, because in fashion we think we are so radical but actually, Guinness was way before all of that.’ It made for perhaps 2024’s best fashion party: a celebrity-filled Guinness-on-tap booze-up at buzzy London pub The Devonshire, purportedly the best pull of Guinness in town (we drunk responsibly, of course).

Hylton Nel’s cats at Dior Men

‘Homepsun monumentalism’ is how Kim Jones described the work of South African potter-artist Hylton Nel, who provided the inspiration behind his latest collection for Dior Men. On the runway, Nel’s playful, naive cat sculptures – which feature hand-drawn motifs and anthropomorphic elements – were blown up to enormous size, while the collection itself the artist’s work became pins, embroidery and intarsia knits. ‘He’s an old friend of mine, I’ve known him maybe 12 years,’ Jones told Wallpaper*. ‘I love his work, and I wanted to take that idea of working with an artist and working it through the Dior archive.’ Capturing not only the veneration of homespun craft which has run throughout the year’s collections, but it was also one of a slew of art-led show sets, from Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s twisted living room for Acne Studios to Gary Hume’s reimagining of a 1990 work to backdrop Burberry’s S/S 2025 show in London. Read more.

Miu Miu’s ‘The Truthless Times’ newspaper

Miu Miu‘s S/S 2025 show took place amid a set created by London-based, Poland-born artist Goshka Macuga, evocative of a printing press. Over the ceiling ran moving conveyors of hundreds of hanging newspapers: copies of ‘The Truthless Times’, a satirical publication dreamt up by Macuga to capture the disorientating times in which we live (‘Endings Unending as Future Moves to Past’ ran one of the purposely impenetrable headlines). ‘The struggle for truth and meaning in contemporary society,’ said Macuga of the installation, which also featured a short film of sparring lovers amid a futuristic printers (the work was also part of Art Basel Paris 2024 later in the year, supported by the brand). Miuccia Prada responded with a collection which looked towards youth – a ‘period of absolute truth.’ ‘It’s a reaction to an era of overstimulation and over-information, simplicity in clothing may offer clarity and precision, and serve as an honest frame of character,’ elaborated the ever-perceptive designer.

Willy Chavarria’s American flag

Willy Chavarria’s S/S 2025 show was titled ‘América’ – a nod, said the designer, to the immigrant communities who take on the weight of the country’s labour (Chavarria is of Mexican-American descent). Taking place on Wall Street – a temple to American commerce – the show’s runway was backdropped by an enormous American flag. It was given greater significance by the then-looming American election, which would take place two months afterwards in November (as guests left they were given a sticker to remind them to vote). ‘Given the time that we're in – around the corner from a major election – I wanted to shine light on the people who make this country work, and also celebrate immigration and those people who have built the country and are still the backbone of the country,’ he told Wallpaper* at the time, reflecting a wider mood at New York Fashion Week whereby designers grappled what it meant to be an American designer today. ‘We haven't had the opportunities or the benefits that a lot of our white brothers and sisters have had. It's about giving, showing dignity to all of these people.’ Read more.

Just before men’s fashion month began this past June, Meta introduced a new tag for Instagram and Facebook allowing you to label images ‘made with AI’. It was a response, no doubt, to the bizarre ‘AI art’ which flooded the latter: anthropomorphic animals that move like humans; statues of Jesus made of stacks of shrimps or vegetables; ‘cyborg’ children engineered with empty plastic bottles and computer detritus. They have been deemed ‘slop’: a queasy and surreal stream of images made by a mysterious army of bots to mine likes and views (search: ‘weird AI art Facebook’ on Google Images to view some of these oddities).

Later that month at Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons showed a menswear collection which the duo said explored ideas of ‘truth and pretence, the real and the unreal’. It made for a collection of illusions: belts that looked like belts but were actually stitched into the construction of a trouser, shirts that were warped with hidden wires, shield-like sunglasses overlaid with images of Roman statues, ravers and American highways. ‘Viewed from afar, pieces can pretend to be other,’ said the designers. ‘Details may seem simplistic, naïve, but up-close, physically, perceptions transform.’ It was fashion for our bewildering post-truth era, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Throughout 2024, designers have used their collections to grapple with designing for our increasingly disorientating world, resulting in idiosyncratic and intriguing collections which British designer Jonathan Anderson best described as ‘irrational clothing’ (he was talking about his own S/S 2025 menswear collection). The idea of the hybrid ran throughout, strange mash-ups that seemed to capture the dizzying spin of a social-media stream: at Loewe and Balenciaga garments appeared crafted from stacks of discarded clothing, at Sacai garments like the MA-1 flight jacket were melded together in Chitose Abe’s offbeat style, while at Issey Miyake sweaters appeared stitched on to the front of vests (typical of the Japanese brand’s innovative approach, they were actually knitted as a single piece).

Though it was accessories that made for some of the most curious hybrids. There was JW Anderson’s loafer bag, first appearing as part of Anderson’s S/S 2025 menswear collection in Milan, which ‘deconstructed and reconstructed in bag form’ the penny loafer (the classic shoe’s ‘whale-tail keeper’ detail runs across the bag’s boxy design, while the base recalls a loafer’s sole). Part of a collecton that was inspired by the stream of memories dug up by hypnotherapy – sweaters ran with slogans like ‘Real Sleep’ – it was both strange and familiar, like an object appearing from a dream. And, judging by a buzzy release last month, it looks set to follow in the JW Anderson ‘Bumper’ bag’s footsteps as a contemporary it-bag.

At Hodakova, the Stockholm-based winner of the 2024 LVMH Prize, eponymous designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson uses deadstock in imaginative ways. Like a series of bags constructed from discarded belts, or a surreal bag crafted from a knee-high boot, capturing an undone glamour that feels fitting for our times. At Duran Lantink’s thrilling S/S 2025 show, handbags became hats, while at Acne Studios trompe l’oeil prints saw ‘denim jeans’ printed across silk scarves and tote bags. Demna, meanwhile, melded a soft satin house slipper with towering stiletto heel at Balenciaga, while at Bottega Veneta, what appeared like a knitted wool sock was actually a woven leather shoe. Off the runway, New Balance’s loafer-cum-trainer was one of the year’s most divisive (and talked about) shoes.

These were pieces that spoke of not only the experience of living in what feels like an endless, infinite scroll of a social media stream – the dizzying juxtapositions from one post to the next – but also a newly experimental attitude in fashion as designers shift away from the quiet to the loud, no doubt buoyed by a new generation of consumers willing to make bolder statements with the clothes they wear. Indeed Anderson said his S/S 2025 collection had partly been inspired by seeing young people experiment with their outfits when he had attended Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona earlier that year. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said post show. ‘The eye has changed within menswear and within womenswear. People want something that is really challenging.’

Hybrid accessories: the Wallpaper* edit

Today (4 December 2024) JW Anderson launches an uplifting, balloon-inspired capsule collection with beauty and lifestyle brand Pleasing. The collaboration includes a special edition run of metallic nail polishes in five different shades – plus nail stickers and nail decals – marking the first time that JW Anderson has explored the beauty arena.

Jonathan Anderson and Harry Styles have been in creative conversation for the past decade, becoming friends in the process. (The latter founded Pleasing in 2021 with a range of sustainably-made products such as the ‘Pearlescent Illuminating serum’, ‘Pleasing Pen’ eye and lip oil and ‘Perfect Pearl’ nail polish). The musician and actor’s post-boy band image, which has playfully explored gender norms through clothing and make-up, has been shaped by many of Anderson’s whimsical designs.

The JW Anderson and Pleasing capsule collection is here

Such pieces include a custom jumpsuit (nodding to the diagonally-striped, one-shoulder dresses from JW Anderson Resort 2022) worn by Styles in album artwork for Harry’s House shot by photographer Hanna Moon.

And, of course, the viral rainbow cardigan from the JW Anderson S/S 2020 menswear collection, which caused a #HarryStylesCardigan knitting trend to explode on TikTok. The crocheted patchwork garment is now part of the V&A Museum’s permanent collection and is referenced in the Pleasing x JW Anderson collaboration with the ‘Bunch of Balloons Knit Cardigan’.

‘Founded on the back of friendship and mutual respect, this is one of our most special collaborations to date. JW Anderson is a brand we feel so aligned with in terms of point of view, creativity and energy – and has been a brand we’ve wanted to collaborate with for some time,’ notes Harry Lambert, Styles’ long-time stylist and the creative director of Pleasing.

As Pleasing CEO Shaun Kearney reiterates in a statement: ‘What makes [the collaboration] even more meaningful is the personal connection between Harry and Jonathan – a friendship and creative synergy that have inspired the pieces in this collection. Together, we’ve reimagined iconic designs through the lens of both brands, crafting a capsule that celebrates individuality, playfulness, and the vibrant communities that support us.’

The Pleasing x JW Anderson collection is already available to shop online. But, it will also appear in select brick-and-mortar JW Anderson stores and two Pleasing holiday pop-ups running in New York and Los Angeles from now until the end of February 2025. (The addresses for both locations are listed below).

Pleasing Pop-Up: New York City
140 Wooster Street, New York, NY, 10012

Pleasing Pop-Up: Los Angeles
1222 Abbot Kinney Blvd Venice, CA, 90291

Shop the full collection

In the gamut of men’s footwear, there has always been a particular loucheness to the slipper: the Albert slipper, named after Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria, was designed for men of the 19th century to move from dinner table to smoking room without damaging rugs or carpets with the dirt and soot of the street. Oftentimes in velvet – to match tuxedos and smoking jackets – they came to symbolise the suave and the urbane, resurging in midcentury Hollywood among its light-footed leading men.

Another half-century on, the men’s slipper looks set for ubiquity once again. Earlier this month, I was talking to the founder of a London-based skatewear label (and one of fashion’s most influential figures), who told me that he was currently fixated on the slipper: in particular, those produced by the French shirtmaker Charvet on Paris’ storied Place Vendôme, around the corner from The Ritz. Cut from soft suede with their own matching carry case, they are the essence of simplicity: a slip-on style with gently cushioned sole, embossed with the looping Charvet emblem as if a particularly luxurious hotel slipper. He was trying to make his way through every colour, which span classic brown, tan and navy, as well as powdery blue, pink and sanguine red.

Prior to that, Jason Hughes – fashion and creative director of Wallpaper* – had noted to me that the slipper was his shoe of the season, and all he planned to wear during the womenswear shows this past September (a rainy evening on the cobbles of Milan did momentarily highlight the occasional impracticality of the style). His slippers of choice: Prada’s slick, glossy leather mules, which appeared on the house’s menswear runway for A/W 2024 (and returned in a tasselled version for S/S 2025), or a Manolo Blahnik slip-on in mock croc. Another friend, who works at a British heritage house, recently told me he wanted to rough up a pair of the brand’s signature classic velvet slippers – complete with embroidered crest – and wear them on a night out with torn jeans.

If that makes for ‘two’s a coincidence, three’s a trend’, then there was plentiful evidence on the runway, too: at JW Anderson’s A/W 2024 menswear show – which drew inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut – boys wore tasselled slippers with just-sheer tights and socks (as with much of Jonathan Anderson’s output, the result was gleefully strange). The aforementioned Prada mules were part of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ subversive riff on the corporate uniform (guests entered the show through a simulacrum of a nondescript office space), while at Balenciaga, Demna presented a typically twisted take on the slipper, which appeared like a uniform-issue work loafer had been stamped down at the back (they were worn with ballooning track pants).

And despite what might seem like a shift away from the Albert slipper’s formal origins, these new iterations of the style nonetheless come with a suggestion of elegance – even when worn with baggy jeans or trackpants (there is something eternally appealing about the juxtaposition of formality and slouchiness, which conjures off-duty starlets and days after the night before). It makes the slipper a shoe of low effort, high reward, requiring the wearer to simply slip it onto the foot and go – without so much as having to tie up a pair of laces.

Men’s slippers: the Wallpaper* picks

Prada

‘Glossy perfection – best worn poking out from beneath a pair of baggy blue jeans’

Available from Mytheresa, £780

JW Anderson

‘Jonathan Anderson’s ubiquitous chain mule has evolved – now with tassels’

Available from JW Anderson, £520.

The Row

‘Restrained and elegant, The Row’s leather Nicco mule is a forever shoe’

Available from Mr Porter, £1,060.

Balenciaga

‘Stomped down at the back, Balenciaga’s uniform-issue loafer becomes a twisted slipper’

Available from Balenciaga, £820.

Charvet

‘These Charvet slippers are like turning up at a particularly expensive hotel’

Available from Mr Porter, £465.

There was a loving arrangement to divide Childwickbury Manor, the Hertfordshire home that filmmaker Stanley Kubrick shared with his wife Christiane. She, an artist, would have the back, where there was light through the day to paint, while Stanley, despite the frequent intrusions of paparazzi peering over the hedges, would take the front, working in a ground-floor office surrounded by filing cabinets full of scripts, documents and photographs. There was another promise between the two: when they married in 1958, Christiane, then an actress, asked that she never appear in any of his films. Stanley kept his promise until his death in 1999, and he is now buried beneath his favourite tree in the grounds of the manor where Christiane continues to live and work in relative solace.

The home is a handy half-hour-or-so drive to Elstree Studios, the location of many of the director’s film projects, and comprises a jumble of buildings first inhabited by monks in the medieval era (although the majority of the home dates to the 18th century). Inside, a warren of rooms lead off from a central kitchen, including a wood-panelled billiards room which appears straight from a Stanley Kubrick film set, and a library with crimson red walls, the mass of books providing a teasing insight into the director’s mind and fixations (there’s everything from witchcraft to cats). Glimpsed through an open door is a room decorated with the Venetian masks that appear in Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley’s much-mythologised final movie.

On nearly every wall is one of Christiane’s artworks. Often flattened in perspective, and with a purposeful naivety, they capture both the quotidian and the dreamlike. In one, children lounge on hammocks and deckchairs in an Edenic garden of yellow flowers as a glowering grey sky is glimpsed in the distance; in another, flames erupt around a central figure, a depiction of the artist’s grandmother, who escaped the firestorms of Hamburg in 1943 wearing only her nightgown. She continues to paint daily. ‘Nobody has confidence, because it is losing embarrassment, it is losing any insecurity, it is losing a feeling about 500 different things that you’re ashamed of,’ she says in a recent short film, Who is the Painter?, directed by her filmmaker grandson Jack Elliott Hobbs. ‘So you have to do some work every day – start with one job and build it up, not stopping when you feel like an idiot.’

Fashion designer Jonathan Anderson found an affinity with her strange, engrossing paintings – which can be seen in various interior backdrops in Eyes Wide Shut – transposing them on to his A/W 2024 menswear collection for his label JW Anderson. Shown in Milan in February alongside his womenswear Pre-Fall 2024 collection, he said he was thinking about the idea of bringing something from the background into the foreground, and the collaboration continued the designer’s interest in shining a spotlight on lesser-known artists. ‘Her works are so quintessential, but they seem so strange,’ says Anderson. ‘There is something deeply personal [about them], to be able to be that age and for them to be so free, so contemporary somehow. I get the feeling that there is no other way – she has to do it.’

Alongside Christiane’s work, the collection also features a print of a 1998 painting by her daughter Katharina Kubrick, also an artist, of the family’s beloved cat Polly, gifted to her father Stanley on his 60th birthday (Hobbs, Katharina’s son, says you can tell the works of Christiane and his mother apart by the more traditional perspective of the latter’s works).

The catwalk show’s soundtrack featured fragments of dialogue from Eyes Wide Shut, which stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as Bill and Alice Harford, a wealthy New York couple in a decaying marriage. As Alice admits to harbouring sexual fantasies for another man, Bill is swept into a paranoid, obsessive odyssey through nocturnal New York, culminating in a secret masked orgy in a country house. A famously protracted process, it would take 400 days to film. Stanley Kubrick died in March 1999, six days after showing a final cut to Warner Bros and the film’s stars.

The impetus for the collection came from Anderson rewatching Eyes Wide Shut (which is set over a chilly New York Christmas) in the middle of summer. It was jarring to the designer, and it laid the groundwork for a collection that pulsated with the film’s restless sensuality, with its sliced red dresses, bulging satin-lined jackets and poinsettia brooches. The latter was intended to capture a sense of heady danger (‘it evokes a kind of toxicity,’ he says of the plant). Elsewhere, Christiane’s artworks appear on garments like apparitions.

One such print is an image of Hobbs as a child, lit up by the glow of a computer and surrounded by colourful plastic toys. Outside the window, snow falls, though the flattened plain of perspective lends it a disorientating, dreamlike strangeness. It’s a space Anderson so often inhabits in his collections: a kind of between-world, where archetypal garments are shifted in perspective to become something new. It’s an obsessive, consuming task, much like the work of the artist.

‘Her work is a compulsion – I look up to that because I feel like that when I’m working on clothing,’ says Anderson. ‘Sometimes I think the act of discovery of someone’s work is just as important as the work itself. This person is painting with purpose, and this is why I’m drawn to it, and this is why you as an audience can be drawn to it as well.’

Models: Jemma Stevens at PRM Agency, Sophia Enggaard at Present Model Management, Guo Jike at Elite London, Leo de Grandmont at The Squad Management. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Kei Takano using Bumble and Bumble. Grooming & make-up: Faye Bluff at Of Substance Agency using Shiseido. Photography assistant: Keerthana Kunnath. Fashion assistant: Nathan Fox. Hair assistant: Haruka Koresawa. Make-up assistant: Lily Simmonds. On-set producer: Minna Vauhkonen. Production assistants: Archie Thomson, Ady Huq.

This article appears in the November 2024 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands from 10 October, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

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

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

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

The season was an homage to individual style

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

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

Designers reimagined the everyday

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

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

There was a tailoring redux

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

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

American fashion was dissected

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

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

Sometimes things weren’t what they seemed

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

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

If ever there was a time to hone your working uniform it is the autumn, a season which, after the hot and heady rush of summer, marks the moment to pack up your holiday wardrobe and embrace the strangely seductive pull of officewear – a mood of grown-up polish that draws you back to your desk and the routine of the nine-to-five.

This needn’t suggest tedium: the A/W 2024 collections offer an altogether twisted view of city dressing, seeing futuristic and sculptural silhouettes meet unexpected flourishes of texture in a corporate palette of navy, grey and black. Alongside, riffs on the classic overcoat: like Acne Studios’ version in moulded leather, which creative director Jonny Johansson likened to Estonian artist Villu Jaanisoo’s enormous rubber armchairs that were dotted around the runway when the collection was revealed in Paris earlier this year. ‘[It’s] rooted in toughness and human form, leather and denim,’ Johansson says of the full-throttle collection.

A/W 2024’s twisted officewear

Victoria Beckham describes her A/W 2024 collection as taking the silhouettes at the core of her brand and ‘abstracting’ them, often deconstructing them to their essence and rebuilding them into new propositions. This includes office-style tailoring, whereby blazers are redesigned to hang on the front of the body, leaving the back exposed, as one might hold a garment to the body before trying on an outfit. At Sportmax, the wide, notched lapels of a tuxedo are combined with a classic elongated grey coat for statement-making outerwear that need not be removed when you step inside the office.

Meanwhile at JW Anderson and Louis Vuitton, the idea of a sculpted waist is explored in different ways by Jonathan Anderson and Nicolas Ghesquière, two designers who defined the A/W 2024 season with imaginative and intriguing collections. At JW Anderson, a grey sweater has a darted waist for a pinched silhouette recalling tailoring or dressmaking, while at Louis Vuitton, a sculptural jacket comes with the kind of sharp, futuristic line which has defined Ghesquière’s postmodern approach during his ten-year tenure at the house (the A/W 2024 collection was a celebration of the past decade, seeing the French designer revive his archive anew).

In the heart of London’s Square Mile – the financial epicentre of the city – photographer Sasha Marro and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes capture A/W 2024’s new working uniform as part of the October 2024 Guest Editors’ issue of Wallpaper*, which is on international newsstands now.

Model: Julia Rambukkana at The Milk Collective. Casting: Ikki Casting at WSM. Hair: Chloe Frieda using Authentic Beauty Concept. Make-up: Sunao Takahashi at St Luke using Dior Forever Foundation and Capture Totale Le Sérum. Photography assistants: Fred Barlet, Pablo Gallegos. Fashion assistants: Lucy Proctor, Nathan Fox. Production assistants: Minna Vauhkonen, Ady Huq, Archie Thomson. Retouching: IPP Studio.

This article appears in the October 2024 Guest Editors’ Issue of Wallpaper* available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

London fashion has always been defined by a mood of eclecticism, where the establishment – the meticulous precision of Savile Row, Knightsbridge’s gleaming department stores – meets the convention-breaking, from the punkish glamour of Vivienne Westwood to Alexander McQueen’s savage beauty, or the playful, idiosyncratic approach of Jonathan Anderson.

When it comes to shopping in the city, you will find a similarly diverse offering – from big-name boutiques and classic department stores to the best in vintage, alongside the sleek and experimental – which continues to draw international shoppers off their phones and onto the streets. Here, Wallpaper* selects the very best fashion stores London has to offer.

A guide to the best fashion stores London has to offer

Dover Street Market

Moving from its eponymous Dover Street address to Haymarket in 2016 – a short walk from the busy Piccadilly Circus – Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe’s conceptual fashion market remains London’s most thought-provoking boutique. Across the vast 31,000 sq ft space, Dover Street Market London shoppers will find not only pieces from the various Comme des Garçons lines (Kawakubo is also the founder and creative director of the Japanese label), but an array of brands spanning streetwear, luxury houses, and the international avant-garde, as well as plenty of rising talent. ‘People’s expectations rise and you have to rise with them. The question is how do we make DSM even more surprising and create something that you don’t expect?' Joffe told Wallpaper* when the store opened. Indeed, traversing the labyrinthine space, which unfolds over five floors, reveals hidden displays and spaces – head all the way to the top and you’ll be rewarded by a London outpost of the Parisian Rose Bakery, where cakes and pastries line the steel countertop. Read more.

18–22 Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4DG.

london.doverstreetmarket.com

Alaïa

Fashion and art unite in Alaïa’s sleek London flagship, seeing a changing roster of artists – including Sarah Lucas, Thomas Ruff, Steven Shearer and Sterling Ruby – line the space’s gallery-like white walls (the selection is curated by creative director Pieter Mulier). Meanwhile, in an echo of house founder Azzedine Alaïa’s meticulous eye for interiors, Marc Newson’s ‘Pelota’ lamps, chairs by Gerrit Rietveld, Gio Ponti and Franco Albini, and tables by Shiro Kuramata populate the two-storey space, providing a satisfying backdrop for Mulier’s latest clothing and accessories collections. Another nod to the late Azzedine Alaïa comes in an industrially designed kitchen on the second floor – a reference to the late couturier’s Paris home, where he would memorably host home-cooked dinners for his creative milieu of friends and muses. Read more.

139 New Bond St, London, W1S 2TL.

maison-alaia.com

Climax

Though not a fashion store per se, Climax bookstore has become a favourite with fashion industry insiders – so much so, it has collaborated with Heaven by Marc Jacobs and, most recently, Chopova Lowena on a capsule collection. Founded by former Dazed editor-in-chief and current Acne Studios chief marketing officer Isabella Burley, it promises an array of rare and out-of-print tomes, focussing on photography, erotica and counterculture, as well as objects and ephemera. ‘It's about us not just being seen as a second-hand bookstore but having a world, a kind of universe around us that encompasses many different things, not just books,’ Burley told Wallpaper* after opening a New York Climax earlier this month (September 2024). ‘I think books are the foundation of Climax and what we've been trying to do, but it's really fun to think: what is Climax beyond that?’ As such, as well as collaborations, Climax is also a burgeoning publishing house, with Martine Syms and Del LaGrace Volcano monographs in the works.

Climax Books HQ, 5 Wardour Mews, London, W1F 8AL.

climaxbooks.com

Sunspel

While Sunspel has always been a spot for those seeking the best in basics (such is the brand’s appeal, it was the undergarment of choice for Daniel Craig’s James Bond), a relatively new store on Jermyn Street takes the process of honing the world’s best T-shirt one step further. Alongside the usual product range, those visiting the store – which is situated on a street synonymous with made-to-measure style – can have a bespoke T-shirt made, cut to their body shape and requirements (whether a slightly shorter sleeve, higher neckline, or particular colour of cotton). After being measured in-store, the T-shirt will be made in the brand’s historic Long Eaton factory. Also in the store is an ongoing exhibition space, showcasing both the brand’s history and hosting intimate events for the Sunspel community.

23 Jermyn Street, London, SW1Y 6ST.

sunspel.com

Harrods

Steadily approaching two centuries in business, the 1849-founded department store Harrods is a stalwart of London shopping, long attracting hordes of tourists to the Knightsbridge address – whether seeking teddy bears, tea or tote bags, and particularly so when the 19th-century exterior is illuminated for Christmas with its signature rows of string lights. Though recent years have seen Harrods shake off its somewhat stodgy reputation, as it has drafted in a slew of big-name brands for blockbuster takeovers – among them Dior (a gingerbread world for Christmas), Louis Vuitton (complete with an enormous Yayoi Kusama), and Burberry (a blue-lit facade and Burberry-clad porters). This is alongside a promised £200 million renovation of the store’s fashion areas – including an already-completed lingerie and sleepwear area designed by David Collins Studio with all the marble and gleaming glass you would expect, and a near-encyclopedic menswear department on the lower ground floor.

87-135 Brompton Road, London, SW1X 7XL.

harrods.com

Celine

A ‘carnival of materials, furniture and art’ is how Wallpaper’s Dal Chodha described the Hedi Slimane-designed Celine outpost on London’s Bond Street. Indeed, the gleaming space features opulent panels of marble, white walls and neoclassical mouldings, alongside a selection of contemporary art and furniture that reflects Slimane’s singular vision as creative director of the house, which combines classical French luxury and savoir-faire with a countercultural flair. For a truly intimate encounter with the store’s catalogue of artworks, seek out the men’s fitting room which features the 1670 oil painting Portrait of Maximilien de Bethune Duc de Sully of the Flemish school – surely a changing room first. Read more.

40 New Bond Street, London, W1S 2RX.

celine.com

Rellik

Located on west London’s Golborne Road in the shadow of the Ernő Goldfinger-designed Brutalist Trellick Tower, vintage store Rellik is the domain of Fiona Stuart, Steven Philips and Claire Stansfield, who have long sourced some of the city’s most unique vintage finds – from punk-era Vivienne Westwood to rare Maison Martin Margiela, Azzedine Alaïa, and John Galliano, as well as 1930s underwear, costume jewellery and millinery. A spirit of anarchy still defines the small, busy store, though it has become beloved by establishment names from Kate Moss to Kim Jones, and was recently taken over by Valentino for the house’s vintage exchange project.

8 Golborne Road, London, W10 5NW.

relliklondon.co.uk

Balenciaga

Step in Balenciaga’s Bond Street store and you might be mistaken for thinking you have stepped into a site that is still in construction. Indeed the raw concrete walls – each one painstakingly ‘distressed’ by hand – were made to recall ‘the warehouse, the carpark, the emptied gallery – places that have hosted a palimpsest of activities,’ said Niklas Bildstein Zaar and Andrea Faraguna of the Berlin-based studio Sub, who collaborated with Balenciaga creative director Demna on the space. It makes shopping akin to walking onto a film set, leaving you to wonder what is real and what is fake, all the way down to the patina of rust on enormous concrete girders. Demna calls it ‘raw architecture’, and it makes for a shopping experience like no other. Read more.

24-25 New Bond Street, London, W1S 2RR.

balenciaga.com

The Row

The Row’s London outpost is an exercise in refinement: which other store in London greets you with one of James Turrell’s glowing orbs in the entranceway? Elsewhere, a tasteful array of objects and furniture adore the airy space, a reflection of the design-focussed universe Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have curated at their 2006-founded label. Located just off Mount Street – an afternoon of shopping in itself – it makes for a serene haven in which to peruse the brand’s men’s and womenswear collections, which marry ascetic design with enveloping fabrications and flourishes of craft and play. And it's only getting better. But so is demand – with searches up 93 per cent on Lyst, we advise befriending store staff to get a heads up on new arrivals.

5 Carlos Place, London, W1K 2EY

therow.com

Aries

Aries founder Sofia Prantera envisages the skatewear brand’s Soho outpost as a kind of ‘library’ for its community, hosting not only its collections but an outpost of Paris café Paperboy, a bookstore, and a vast basement which can be transformed for events and screenings. Meanwhile, the store design echoes what she calls the ‘temple and the rat’ ethos of Aries (a reference to Fergus Purcell’s playful graphics for the brand), seeing the brand traverse the worlds of luxury design and streetwear. Here, a marble staircase references Carlo Scarpa’s Venetian architecture, while sparse concrete floors, strip lighting and scaffold poles meet luxurious Italian furniture. ‘[Since the beginning], our identity is all about this duality – the elevated temple and the decay of the rat,’ Prantera told Wallpaper* when the store opened. Read more.

31 Great Pulteney Street, London, W1F 9NN.

ariesarise.com

Baraboux

Sarah Faisel, owner of the east London-based vintage store Baraboux, has fashion in her blood. Named after a fashion business run by her mother – which then sold leather goods and handbags – Faisel has since turned Baraboux into a fashion archive which collates a sleek edit of pieces which lean towards 1990s minimalism (in stock currently, S/S 1990 Prada capri shorts, a Maison Martin Margiela ‘sock boot’ from A/W 1999, and plenty of Helmut Lang). Housed in Hackney’s Netil House (by appointment only), Faisel says that ‘in a world of excess, Baraboux aims to provide just what you need: nothing more and nothing less’.

Netil House, 1 Westgate St, London E8 3RL.

baraboux.com

JW Anderson

Soho is not the typical address for a fashion store, though Jonathan Anderson – lover of the strange and the idiosyncratic – is no ordinary designer. Housed next door to the ‘Las Vegas’ amusement arcade in a former corner shop, the JW Anderson store features gleaming neon lights (a nod to its neighbour) alongside sleek shelving housing the brand’s famed accessories, like the Bumper bag. A more enveloping basement level features curtains of fabric and rough plaster walls, which 6a architect Tom Emerson (who designed the space) says is ‘how you might finish a London basement that you would never expect anyone to see'. ‘As much as everyone is consumed with the online experience, it's still important to have a physical space,’ Anderson told Wallpaper when it opened in early 2020. ‘It's kind of like porn somehow. Everyone can get porn online but they still come into Soho. Everyone can get fashion online but they will still come into Soho.' Read more.

2 Brewer Street, London, W1F 0SA.

jwanderson.com

September, so said legendary American Vogue editor Candy Pratts, is the January of fashion. Following a brief summer break after the conclusions of menswear and haute couture – which took place over June and July – Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025 arrives in New York next week on September 6 2024, with subsequent stops in London, Milan and Paris. Think of it as a new fashion term.

The schedule is now set, with a few surprises along the way. Among them, the news that Pieter Mulier will show his next Alaïa collection in the city on September 6, heralding the start of fashion month. It is over four decades since the house’s eponymous founder, Azzedine Alaïa, first showed in the American city, when he presented a collection in September 1982 to an audience which included Andy Warhol and Paloma Picasso. No doubt Mulier – who has garnered plenty of high-profile devotees of his own – will draw a similarly starry crowd. Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren will show the day prior with a special show in the Hamptons on September 5. London-based label Cos has also announced a return to New York, having shown last season in Rome.

Elsewhere, it will no doubt be the season of debuts: chief among them is the much-anticipated arrival of Alessandro Michele at Valentino, who will show as part of Paris Fashion Week. Eyes will also be on Givenchy, Chanel and Dries Van Noten which – at the time of writing – are each without creative directors.

Here, everything Wallpaper* knows about Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025.

Women’s Fashion Week S/S 2025: what to expect

New York Fashion Week S/S 2025 (6 – 11 September 2024)

New York Fashion Week S/S 2025 will begin – unofficially – on September 5, as American fashion behemoth (and member of the Wallpaper* USA 400) Ralph Lauren presents his latest collection in an exclusive show in the Hamptons, the beachside Long Island locale which has long played host to the rich and famous. ’The Hamptons is more than a place,’ said Lauren in a statement. ’It’s a natural world of endless blue skies, the ocean, green fields, and white fences, rusticity and elegance with a quality of light that drew artists here decades ago. It has been home, my refuge and always an inspiration.’

The day afterwards, Pieter Mulier will show his latest Alaïa collection in New York, four decades after Azzedine Alaïa first showed in the city in 1982. It will be his second time showing outside of Paris – an intimate show at the designer’s brutalist home in Antwerp, Belgium took place in 2023 – and will no doubt be one of the highlights of the schedule. ’A city close to Pieter Mulier’s heart and the maison’s,’ said Alaïa on Instagram. It will be accompanied by ‘a series of exclusive moments’ which will take place in the city from 6–8 September. Meanwhile Cos – which last season showed at Corsie Sistine in Rome – will return to New York with a show on September 10 in Brooklyn. ‘New York is a dynamic city with so much character – it’s a place of inspiration, full of interesting and creative people,’ says the brand’s design director Karin Gustafson. Another new arrival is Off-White, who under creative director Ib Kamara will swap Paris for New York, showing on the afternoon of Sunday 16 (the title of the show is ‘Duty Free' and will take place at Brooklyn Bridge Park). Nanushka will also debut at the week, showing on the afternoon of September 7.

Elsewhere, expect a continuation of the Tory Burch renaissance as the designer presents her S/S 2025 collection on the evening of Monday 17, while New York stalwarts Coach, Michael Kors and Carolina Herrera will all show during the week. Wallpaper* USA 400 members Willy Chavarria and Peter Do, the latter showing his third collection for Helmut Lang, will round out the schedule, alongside rising names Zankov and Diotima. Tommy Hilfiger has also confirmed a spot on the week’s schedule, having initially been absent. He will show his latest collection at 6.30pm on Sunday 16.

London Fashion Week S/S 2025 (12 – 17 September 2024)

Beginning slightly earlier this season to avoid a clash with Milan Fashion Week (which starts this season on September 17), London Fashion Week will continue its 40th birthday celebrations with a packed schedule comprising the usual slew of energetic, emerging labels amid a smattering of more well-established names. Of the latter, Burberry will remain the chief draw for international editors visiting the city – Daniel Lee will show his fourth runway collection for the British label – while JW Anderson will present another agenda-setting collection on Sunday morning, his usual slot.

Other names showing this season are Simone Rocha, Roksanda, Erdem, Ahluwalia and Aaron Esh, alongside a new edition of London-based incubator Fashion East (participants are yet to be announced). Watch out for Derrick – Luke Derrick’s burgeoning London-based label had plenty of buzz last season for its sleek, contemporary riff on men’s tailoring – and Nensi Dojaka, who returns to the schedule after a hiatus. Feben will also return to London, having shown last season with the support of Dolce & Gabbana in Milan. Look out too for the rebirth of Kent & Curwen, with the British label having been purchased by Chinese golf brand Biem.L.Fdlkk Garment in 2023.

London Fashion Week will also have a new home this season, the central Newgen space moving from Old Selfridges Hotel back to 180 Strand.

Milan Fashion Week S/S 2025 (17 – 23 September 2024)

Milan Fashion Week will run a day longer this season, part of a re-jigging of the fashion month schedule led by Camera della Moda, the week’s organising body. ’I’m very satisfied with this synergetic effort by the four main players on the fashion circuit,’ said the organisation’s president Carlo Capasa. ’[We] had for some time been asking for an extension of the Milan Fashion Week, given its calendar of over 200 appointments.’

As such, the week will begin with Fendi on September 17, the Roman house presenting its S/S 2025 collection at 3pm (this time, the show will take place on a Tuesday, as opposed to its usual Wednesday). Elsewhere, expect a continuation of Prada’s ‘fairytale ravescape’ set which it revealed as its menswear show in June (the house’s womenswear sets usually riff on their menswear predecessors ), alongside similarly blockbuster shows from Gucci, Versace, Ferragamo, Dolce & Gabbana and Bottega Veneta.

Absent from this season’s schedule is Tom Ford – after the departure of creative director Peter Hawkings earlier this month – and Giorgio Armani, the latter showing in New York off-schedule in October. Also currently absent are MSGM and Blumarine (David Koma will show his debut as creative director next season), while Central Saint Martins graduate Susan Fang will show with the support of Dolce & Gabbana on Sunday morning.

Paris Fashion Week S/S 2025 (23 September – October 1 2024)

No doubt the biggest moment of Paris Fashion Week will be the arrival of Alessandro Michele at Valentino, who will present his first runway show this September (the ex-Gucci creative director’s first collection for the house, titled ’Avant les Débuts’ was revealed in a surprise lookbook drop this past June). ‘It’s an incredible honour for me to be welcomed at Maison Valentino. I feel the immense joy and the huge responsibility to join a maison de couture that has the word “beauty” carved on a collective story, made of distinctive elegance, refinement and extreme grace,’ said Michele in a statement issued after his appointment in March 2024. He will show on the afternoon of Sunday 29.

A number of other houses – among them Givenchy, Dries Van Noten and Chanel – are currently without creative directors. Givenchy is absent from the schedule (the new creative director will likely debut in February 2025), Dries Van Noten is slated to show on the afternoon of Wednesday 25 (it will be the first show since the eponymous creative director exited in June), and Chanel will retain its usual spot on the morning of Tuesday 1 October. An otherwise busy schedule – as has become the norm for the city – will include shows from Loewe, Louis Vuitton, Rick Owens, Dior, Saint Laurent, Hermès and more. Balenciaga, meanwhile, will show on the evening of Monday 30, shifting from Sunday morning.

In other news, Paris label Coperni will host its S/S 2025 show on October 1, 2024 at the so-called happiest place on earth – Disneyland Paris. Founders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer have said the collection will blend ‘magic with reality, paying tribute to the beloved Walt Disney Animation Studios movies of our childhood’. Meanwhile Ganni, the stalwart of Copenhagen Fashion Week, will shift to Paris this season, following the appointment of Laura du Rusquec, previously of Balenciaga, as CEO this past April.

Stay tuned for more from Women’s Fashion Month S/S 2025.

A freewheeling mood took over this season‘s menswear shows, seeing designers embrace the ‘irrational’ and the eccentric with colourful, experimental collections which in the heat of Florence, Milan and Paris captured summer’s uplifting energy. Indeed, designers from Rick Owens to Rei Kawakubo, Sabato De Sarno to Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, spoke of a shift towards hope and optimism, albeit tentative. ’I want to hope for some light, even if very small,’ said Kawakubo, while Owens called his hundreds-strong runway cast his ’white satin army of love’. Meanwhile, the looming Paris Olympics – and its message of global unity and personal tenacity – was unavoidable, seeing preparations transform the city as a backdrop to both the menswear and haute couture shows which followed.

After the shift in recent seasons towards quiet, understated luxury – and the undeniably safe collections this often yielded – it felt like a refreshing re-emergence of men’s fashion month, which thanks to blockbuster shows from the likes of Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton is shaking off any suggestion of its demise. Here, we unpack the S/S 2025 menswear shows – from ’irrational’ clothing to couture-level craft and eclectic new takes on tailoring.

Nothing was what it seemed

‘Truth and pretence, the real and the unreal.’ So began a Prada collection which saw Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons urge the viewer to look closer, ‘to question the actuality of what we perceive, to reconsider, to look at things closer’. Staged amid a ‘fairytale ravescape’ – whereby models emerged from a vertiginous white cabin, which before the show had been blaring techno music – this was a collection of illusions, from belts that were in-set into trousers to trompe l’oeil Breton striped T-shirts, or trousers which appeared to be made from tailoring wool but were actually printed cotton. Elsewhere, shirts under sweaters or cardigans were constructed as a singular garment. ‘Viewed from afar, pieces can pretend to be other,’ said the designers. ‘Details may seem simplistic, naïve, but up-close, physically, perceptions transform.’ It was disorientating fashion, for disorientating times, where even the appearance of reality is no guarantee (just prior to men’s fashion month, Meta introduced a label for Instagram and Facebook which tagged images that had been ‘made with AI’). And trompe l’oeil would appear throughout the season: at Acne Studios, denim was adorned with plastic chains, stacks of belts or printed rips and tears, while at Loewe, what looked like a cable-knit sweater was actually hand-painted fabric. ‘Things are not what they seem,’ said creative director Jonathan Anderson.

Designers embraced the ‘irrational’

Indeed, earlier in the month in Milan, the Northern Irish designer presented an equally illusory collection for his eponymous label JW Anderson. ‘Irrational clothing’, he described, noting that he was inspired by the free association of hypnotherapy (‘Inhale. Exhale. Are you feeling dreamy? Maybe a little delirious?’ read the accompanying notes). It made for a typically idiosyncratic outing – from enormous knitted house coats to Guinness-adorned knits and protrusions of coloured fabrics – which in part drew its liberated mood from viewing young people at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said. ‘The eye has changed within menswear and within womenswear. People want something that is really challenging.’

This desire was echoed across the season, as menswear designers eschewed any notion of ’quiet luxury’. Martine Rose, who showed for the first time in Milan this season, adorned her stomping cast with prosthetic noses and tangled wigs, while at Rick Owens – undoubtedly a highlight of the season – the designer staged a Hollywood epic on the forecourt of Palais de Tokyo. There, his hundreds-strong ‘white satin army of love’ marched out in an arresting array of looks, from monastic hooded gowns and laddered jersey bodysuits to sculptural capes made from tarnished gold Japanese denim (‘megacrust’ is how Owens playfully described the technique). The showstopping spectacle was a celebration of fashion’s liberatory spirit, one which Owens likened to escaping his hometown of Porterville, California and running away to Hollywood. ‘[It was] the boulevard of vice I gleefully ran to to find my people, [the] weirdos and freaks.’

Craft was couture level

At a preview for his latest Dior Men collection – which was inspired by the South African ceramicist Hylton Nel – Kim Jones noted a growing desire from his consumers to have something entirely one-of-a-kind. ’People want something that nobody else has got,’ he said. It was part of the reason he introduced his first dedicated couture collection for men last season and, while his S/S 2025 show in Paris did not have any official couture pieces – he has said he will create a couture collection only once each year – one particular jacket took over 600 hours of hand-embroidery to complete. A similar veneration of craft came at Loewe, where intricate tabard-style tops were crafted from woven metal or delicate shards of shell, an echo of the extraordinary 'caviar' beaded pieces from his A/W 2024 womenswear collection where each of the thousands of tiny beads were embroidered by hand. Equally seductive was the simplicity of Norbert Stumpfl’s latest Brioni collection, shown in the serene gardens of Milan’s 18th-century Palazzo Borromeo d'Adda. There, his ongoing quest for lightness – a signature of his tenure at the Italian house – was formulated in the collection’s fabrications, which spanned featherweight wools, supple perforated leather and airy vicuña knits. Most spectacular, though, was the eveningwear, where one double-breasted dinner jacket was embroidered with 10,000 baguette beads, each one hand-knotted in silk thread.

But there was still a slice of reality, too

If the enthusiasm for ‘quiet luxury’ has tempered in recent months, there nonetheless remained an appetite for the particular pleasure of real clothes – perhaps best epitomised in Paris by Auralee, Ryota Iwai’s Tokyo-based label which celebrates ten years in business this year. In its relative normality – there were no tricks here, just sweaters, jeans, and the like – it was impossibly desirable, the type of collection which makes you want to throw out your entire wardrobe and start again. It is down to Iwai’s exacting but uncomplicated approach, where tactile, meticulously sourced fabrics (Peruvian Alpaca, Mongolian cashmere, New Zealand wool, Indian cotton) meet a sensitive, considered palette (this season: pale green, red, buttercup yellow) which makes it anything but boring. ‘People put a lot of pressure onto their clothing, perhaps hoping to make a huge statement but I’m more interested in how smaller changes can highlight something about the wearer,’ Iwai told Wallpaper* prior to the show.

There is nothing normal about Hermès – and yet, despite Veronique Nichanian’s dedication to painstaking craft and truly luxurious fabrications, her collections end up feeling entirely effortless, and even thrown on. This season, she said she wanted to evoke ’a sweet summer’, and as ever there were plenty of real-world clothes here: breezy Oxford shirts, blouson jackets and bowling-style knits – in a palette of blues and pale pink – would fit into any man’s wardrobe. The same goes for Dries Van Noten, who has made a career of instilling the quotidian with a louche romance. His final show – earlier this year Van Noten announced he would be leaving his namesake label after 38 years – was a celebration of this, presenting a final collection which captured the designer’s distinct eye for colour and tactility. For this, he will be missed. ’This is my 129th show; like the previous ones, it looks ahead. Tonight is many things, but it is not a grand finale,’ he said. ‘Creating is about leaving something that lives on.’

The suit is still ripe for reinvention

Each season, it feels like there is a diktat on the suit: it is double- or single-breasted, narrow or full, cropped at the ankle or pinched at the waist (as such, it often deemed emblematic of the season’s mood). For S/S 2025, though, there was little consensus, except that the suit remains ripe for reinvention, as designers across the board riffed on the garment in differing and distinctive ways. At Loewe, the show opened with razor-sharp black tailoring, evocative of the uniforms of security guards or gallery attendants. ‘This is my own interpretation of precision,’ said the designer, who noted inspiration from the ‘singular’ creative vision of figures like Paul Thek, Peter Hujar and Susan Sontag, whose work populated the show space. But there was illusion at play here, too: the fabric, a woven silk mohair, was designed to hold its shape with an almost-spongey finish. ‘These are things [that] are incredibly difficult to do but that which when you see them it feels effortless,’ he said.

There was experimentation of a different kind at Junya Watanabe, where the Japanese designer’s paean to denim included classic wool tailoring spliced with the fabric for an intriguing hybrid. Meanwhile at fellow Japanese label Comme des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo’s Homme Plus collection contained plenty of tailoring cut in the designer’s cerebral manner, whether sliced-apart tailored jackets adorned with ruffle-like collars, or those out of which flashes of vividly coloured lining emerged. Colours were equally vivid at Issey Miyake Homme Plissé, where double-breasted blazers, waistcoats and ties were crafted from the brand’s signature lightweight knife pleats in crisp shades of green, orange and blue. Entirely crease-resistant, and undeniably easy in their roomy, stretchy silhouettes, they will prove a useful companion next summer. And, for the brave, so too will Gucci’s super-abbreviated tailored short shorts, part of a youthful S/S 2025 collection which creative director Sabato De Sarno said was inspired by the ’freedom, energy [and] community’ of surfing.

Sportswear was given an Olympics boost

Even for the most sports-averse, it was near-impossible to avoid the looming summer of sporting events ahead on menswear’s European tour – whether the Euros (which Emporio Armani hosted screenings of in both Milan and Paris), or the Olympics. The latter, taking place in Paris later this month, felt particularly prescient, not least because Parisian luxury goods conglomerate LVMH is one of the event’s principal sponsors. Unsurprisingly, then, Pharrell Williams evoked the Olympic spirit at his third menswear show at Louis Vuitton, which was held at Maison l’Unesco and made a plea for global unity and community (in fact, if you squinted, you could see the Olympic rings adorning the Eiffel Tower in the distance). ‘[It is] the celebration of human athletic prowess,’ said the designer, who featured several football kits adorned with ‘LVFC’. Meanwhile, at Wales Bonner, the British designer continued her successful collaboration with Adidas Originals, which here featured a shimmering sequinned version of the brand’s Samba sneaker, alongside slouchy basketball shorts and hoodies, striped polos and – most memorably – a pair of three-stripe swim trunks. And at Gucci, Sabato De Sarno’s surfing inspirations made for a collection of sleek, graphic menswear in sporty, luminous tones – including one of the season’s most covetable accessories: sunglasses on fluoro straps, worn like chokers around the neck.

Workwear has long been the bedrock of men’s fashion, endlessly riffed upon, honed and upgraded – from the classic denim shirt and jeans, adopted by cowboys and miners in the American West, to chore jackets, cargo pants, and hi-vis jackets. This sense of utility was seen throughout the S/S 2024 collections – from Prada’s danger-red pocket-covered gilet, a play on the uniforms of security details, to Givenchy’s khaki bombers, Celine’s camo-adorned pants and hardy suede jackets at Miu Miu.

Utilitarian men’s fashion gets an upgrade for S/S 2024

The season’s functional mood is captured in a series of carefree combinations by Italy-born, London-based stylist Nicola Neri and photographer Luca Strano, who is based between London and Milan. As seen in the May 2024 Milan Preview Issue of Wallpaper* (on international newsstands now), this series of portraits puts the utilitarian aesthetic in the hot seat – leaving you with a blueprint of how to upgrade the everyday this spring and summer.

Models: Tom Davison and Milo Boaten-Rolfe at Xdirectn, Oscar Young at Premier, Rea at Milk Management, Zakaria Dau at PRM, Mason Marchetti and Yertai Abdibekov at Next London. Casting: Miro Raynov. Hair: Kanae Kikuchi at Haco+ using Instant Icon. Make-up/grooming: Jo Banach using Chanel Les Beiges Summer Spirit and Hydra Beauty Micro Serum Lip. Interiors: Olly Mason. Photography assistants: Domizia Salusest, Farid Ghimas. Fashion assistant: Hope Palmer. Hair assistants: Takuro Watanabe, Rio Shimmaki. Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson.

A version of this article appears in the May 2024 Milan Preview Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

It was a series of firsts for Loewe at Milan Design Week 2024; the first time showing its design week installation in the heart of Brera at the historic Palazzo Citterio, and the first time that creative director Jonathan Anderson and all of the 24 featured artists had worked in the medium of light.

’Each season we want to tackle different things within the interior, within how Loewe can explore different possibilities within the function of interior, and for me it was something that we had never tackled,’ Anderson told Wallpaper* as the presentation got underway this week. ’I think it’s something quite beautiful, the idea of illumination within the house [and] within the home.’

Let there be light: ‘Loewe Lamps’ at Milan Design Week 2024

Many of the 24 pieces had already found a home by the end of the week, with that elusive red sticker to be seen on the majority of the works. Comprising floor, table, ceiling and installation lamps, the collection was both a celebration of experimentation and the individual, often rare, techniques of each artist.

See the spherical tower by Dahye Jeong (winner of the 2022 Loewe Craft Prize), which was created using a traditional horsehair weaving method that Jeong is thought to be one of the only artisans in the world using, or the suspending calabash fruit shells by Young Song Lee, each covered in coiled mulberry tree paper hand-rolled by Lee herself. Enrico David’s curved table lamp featuring a backlit woman’s profile was engineered from onyx and glass; and Anthea Hamilton’s kimono-inspired installation came to life through a combination of lacquered wood and privacy glass, giving the ordinary an extraordinary spin.

’Loewe’s team are willing to take a leap of faith and make anything become a reality, so why not make a kimono a lamp?’ said Hamilton, who was inspired by the Italian Radical Design movement and the creations of Gaetano Pesce for the project. ‘My lamp is for a dreamer, it is an oversized, glowing body to watch over you whilst you sleep.’

While it may have been the first time this group of artists has come together to celebrate Salone, each has worked in some form with Loewe before, including Anne Low, who won the Loewe Craft Prize in 2019, and Magali Reus who worked with Anderson in the early days of his Loewe shows.

‘Loewe Lamps’ was not the only event staged by Anderson during Milan Design Week. A few blocks away, off Via Montenapoleone, a collaboration with the American artist Patrick Carroll for his eponymous brand JW Anderson was unveiled (it was staged in JW Anderson Milan store, which opened in 2023).

‘Days’ with Patrick Carroll at JW Anderson, Milan

Entitled ‘Days’, the event featured 37 works by Carroll, who stretches fabrics he has knitted onto wooden bars to appear like canvases, each of which features a quote, a message or a word derived from the central theme of queer art of the 20th century.

‘Some of them name paintings, like Boys Do Fall in Love, [by] Patrick Angus (1984) and there's one that is a quotation from a Derek Jarman journal. So in part, it's kind of trying to construct a narrative or a sensibility of a historical study,’ Carroll told Wallpaper*.

Carroll and Anderson have worked together once before, for Anderson’s first Milan catwalk in June 2022, where models wore Carroll’s knitted outfits to welcome guests to the show.

’I think that for each of us, it's pretty evident what we admire in each other's work,’ Carroll continued. ’Which is primarily an investment in art and the history of art and a desire to continue that history on.’

‘Loewe Lamps’ is on view at the Palazzo Citterio, Milan, until 21 April 2024.

‘Days’, an installation showcasing Patrick Carroll’s artworks, is on view at JW Anderson Milan now.

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The A/W 2024 show season finally came to a close last week (12 March 2024), with Celine presenting its latest collection via film (it had been shot across several different art deco locations in Paris). The house also announced the imminent arrival of its first-ever beauty line, Celine Beauté, designed by Hedi Slimane; a pale pink lipstick in the shade ‘La Peau Nue’ was applied to models by Aaron de Mey, providing the perfect teaser of what’s to come.

Prior runway collections, which were staged across February and early March in New York, London, Milan, and Paris, also brought forth a wealth of stand-out beauty moments, of course. They saw designers reuniting with long-time collaborators across hair and make-up – Guido Palau, Anthony Turner, Lynsey Alexander, Peter Phillips, Pat McGrath, and Diane Kendal included – and also pairing up with skincare and nailcare brands, such as 111Skin, Augustinus Bader, MyBlend, and Biosculpture.

Here, we recap A/W 2024 beauty highlights, from curly grey wigs at JW Anderson to gilt eyeliner at Chanel, and perfectly manicured nails at Hermès.

1. The Skin

16 Arlington

16Arlington paired up with 111Skin for A/W 2024, with products providing the models with a discernible glow, before make-up was applied. (Any bare-faced beauty look, created by make-up artist Lauren Parsons in this instance, requires a meticulous, skincare-first approach). Prep began with mini facials, featuring lymphatic drainage to tackle the all-pervasive fashion week puffiness and fatigue, which was then combined with the Harley Street-based brand’s ultra-hydrating yet lightweight Y Theorem Repair Serum Light NAC Y2 serum, which is scientifically formulated to repair stressed-out skin.

Isabel Marant

At Isabel Marant A/W 2024, the runway was treated to the coveted ‘Glow by Bader’, with Augustinus Bader, responsible for skin prep backstage. Facialists from the Paris-based Académie des Facialistes worked with hero products such as The Face Oil, The Cream, and The Rich Cream (which all contain the brand’s patented Trigger Factor Complex, a cell-renewing technology featuring a blend of natural amino acids, high-grade vitamins and peptides) before key make-up artist Lisa Butler took care of product application.

2. The Make-Up

Dries Van Noten

Dries Van Noten’s A/W 2024 show (which turned out to be his final womenswear collection, after the designer announced that he would be leaving his namesake brand in June 2024) saw Lucy Bridge create ‘strange’ but beautiful make-up looks, which combined unusual colour palettes – such as grey and caramel-toned lipstick and bleached false lashes - using products from the Dries Van Noten beauty line.

Chanel

Chanel A/W 2024 by Virginie Viard drew inspiration from Claude Lelouche’s 1966 film A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme), starring Anouk Aimée. In it, Aimée wears a make-up look emblematic of the time, with winged liner and false lashes framing her eyes. Make-up artist Lisa Butler nodded towards this in the beauty for the A/W 2024 show, creating statement liner with a contemporary twist, using Chanel Beauty products in hues of pink, pale blue, orange, and gold to mirror the clothes.

Dior

Peter Phillips, creative and image director of Dior Beauty, combined pared-back, dewy skin (using the brand’s latest product Dior Forever Star Filter and the Dior Forever Skin Glow Foundation) with painterly pops of raspberry pink pigment in the corner of the model’s eyes, for Dior A/W 2024. This was inspired by the palette that Marc Bohan used in his collections for the house, and provided visual contrast with the latest, designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri, which comprised a neutral palette of black, white, beige, and blue denim.

Rabanne

At Rabanne A/W 2024, Diane Kendal (who has been heading up the fashion house’s beauty line since it launched in 2023) created glossy finishes on eyelids and lips, using moisturising products such as Rabanne Beauty’s tinted lip balm, which contains hyaluronic acid and pomegranate to moisturise and plump. The final effect was beautifully subtle, with lashes heavily coated in the brand’s deep black Famous Volumising 5-in-1 mascara to add definition to the model’s faces.

3. The Hair

JW Anderson

In line with Jonathan Anderson’s vision of British suburbia for the JW Anderson A/W 2024 collection – which included riffs on thermal underwear and subtle nods towards curtain twitching – Anthony Turner created a series of curly grey wigs that referenced the ‘blue rinse brigade’; the sort of styles that were once hugely popular by women of a certain age. To bring the look up to the present day, Lyndsey Alexander used a velvety, matte lipstick in the orange-red shade Vermillion from Merit Beauty’s latest range.

Loewe

Guido Palau worked with colourist Antonia Cometa on the hair for Loewe A/W 2024, which took the shape of futuristic bowl cuts inspired by anime. Using extensions that were dyed black, red, turquoise, and blue, with a single plait at the back of the head, Palau set the looks with one of the new products from his Zara haircare range, a delicately scented, fine mist hairspray that leaves barely any residue.

Issey Miyake

‘For this show, I was looking at a picture of how the fabrics were dyed. They twist them and they twist the twists around themselves. I want to bring that into the hair, twisty and knotty but very fluid and beautiful. Enveloping and beautiful,’ said Anthony Turner of how the clothes at Issey Miyake A/W 2024 influenced his concept for hair. Using Dyson’s new ‘Supersonic r’ hair dryer ensured that strands (first prepped with mousse and treatment oil) were sleekly blow-dried, before being sculpted into knots using a weaving needle and secured with kirby pins.

4. The Nails

Roksanda

For Roksanda A/W 2024, session manicurist Georgia Rae worked with Biosculpture – the cult nail brand used by professional nail artists, which has the staying power of a hard gel but simultaneously strengthens and cares for nails. The models’ fingertips were matched to their make-up look, designed by Sharryn Hinchcliffe using M.A.C: either a dark berry and black twist on a French manicure, or a nude shade tailored to individual skin tones.

Coperni

In keeping with the codes of Coperni, which tread the line between sci-fi fantasy and real-world technology – nail artist Marie Rosa used huge acrylic tips, painted matte black, to form alien-like talons for the Parisian brand’s A/W 2024 show. Opening with John Williams’ score for Stephen Spielberg’s 1977 film Close Encounters of The Third Kind, models carried sealed ‘Ziploc’ bags with ‘top secret documents’ contained within them – as though they were clutched in the grip of extraterrestrial life forms, running away with the evidence of their arrival on Earth.

Molly Goddard

Pleasing  partnered with Molly Goddard on the A/W 2024 show, with nail polish shades that provided a strong cohesion between the vividly coloured collection (described by the designer as ‘smushing, blobs upon blobs, two become one’). The look, created by Saffron Goddard, was based on the idea of trialling out multiple nail polishes at once, with two different hues painted abstractly on fingertips. This included ‘Borgonha Acai’, a glossy burgundy, paired with ‘Beach Ball’, a deep, opaque, and ‘Syrupberry’ (a vibrant pink) placed on top of ‘Don’t Lady Bug Me’, a rambutan red.

Hermès

At Hermès, nail artist Anatole Rainey created an impeccable, clean manicure, using polishes from the house’s beauty line. Products included Les Mains Hermès enamel base coat, followed by two shades of delicate pink (one slightly deeper than the other) before finishing with a Les Mains Hermès enamel top coat. A soupçon of Les Mains Hermès complete hand care cream, which contains white mulberry extract, moss and passiflora precious oil, and a plant-based emollient complex enriched with Pistacia lentiscus L. sap nourished the skin before the runway show began.

5. The Scents

Burberry

Burberry’s A/W 2024 show was held in a vast and dimly lit tent in London’s Victoria Park, adorned with dark green matting that was designed to look like grass. Daniel Lee had said that the collection was inspired by ‘Burberry’s heritage of the outdoors’. To enhance the verdant ambience, Perfumer H (the British perfume house founded by nose Lyn Harris) scented the space with its Ivy fragrance, which evokes an English garden in autumn, through notes of red berry, rose, frankincense, and musk.

Tom Ford

Tom Ford’s fragrance Vanilla Sex – which is described by the brand as a ‘beguiling, deeply seductive scent of vanilla resinoid, mahogany wood accord and roasted barley’ – set the olfactory tone of Peter Hawkings’ sophomore collection for the American brand, and was sent to guests with the show invites. Such names included the likes of Alec Wek, Uma Thurman, Dominic Sessa, and Sharon Stone, who sat front row as the show opened with the Basic Instinct soundtrack playing.

Jacob Cohën

At Jacob Cohën’s latest presentation in Milan, a sprinkling of snow fell from the ceiling of the Teatro Lirico and onto the model’s heads. As owner and creative director Jennifer Tommasi Bardelle let Wallpaper* know from the sidelines, each piece of the paper snow had been spritzed with Jacob Cohën’s signature denim scent, mixed here with a transporting note of pine, recalling Alpine forests.

London Fashion Week A/W 2024 heralded the 40th anniversary of the event that, despite earlier iterations, was inaugurated in the early 1980s by British PR maven Lynne Franks (Franks was said to be the inspiration behind Absolutely Fabulous’ Edina Monsoon). Since then, the week has held its unique balance of rising stars – perhaps best represented by fashion incubator Fashion East – and the city’s blockbuster names, from Vivienne Westwood to Burberry (and even featured an appearance from Queen Elizabeth II, who attended a Richard Quinn show in 2018). 

This latest edition continued the week’s legacy, beginning on Friday evening with a return to London Fashion Week from historic British house Dunhill after four years (it heralds the arrival of new creative director Simon Holloway). Elsewhere, the two biggest draws were JW Anderson – its eponymous designer Jonathan Anderson first rose to prominence at Fashion East in the 2010s – and Burberry, where Daniel Lee showed his third runway show for the historic British label in Victoria Park on Monday evening. Rounding out the schedule was a mix of the week’s stalwarts, including Molly Goddard, Simone Rocha, Roksanda, Erdem and Ahluwalia, alongside a raft of next-generation talent, from KNWLS, Aaron Esh and Conner Ives to the Central Saint Martins MA fashion show.

Here, reported from the shows, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss rounds up the best of London Fashion Week A/W 2024.

The best of London Fashion Week A/W 2024

Burberry

It was a return to the great outdoors for Daniel Lee’s third runway collection for Burberry, shown yesterday evening in a vast tent erected in east London’s Victoria Park (on the floor were woodchips, while guests sat on enormous fleece cushions). It has been a thematic link that has run through his opening triptych, initially inspired by tents and outdoor-wear from the late-19th and early-20th centuries that he found in the British house’s archive. ‘Burberry’s heritage of the outdoors continues to inspire me,’ said the Yorkshire-born designer in a series of quotes issued after the show. ‘[This season], I wanted this collection to feel warm and protective.’

Soundtracked by a collage of Amy Winehouse clips and music – Lee said backstage that he was inspired by her tenacious desire to write about her life, in her own way – the collection doubled down on Burberry’s synonymy with outerwear, seeing a funnel-neck moleskin version of the trench coat, abbreviated parkas and puffers, and hefty shearlings appear throughout. The mood of textural richness was inspired, Lee said, by British and Irish wool and fabric (also used across long pleated skirts, zip-front trousers, and myriad enveloping, homespun knitwear). ‘[It’s] functional – these pieces are made for the outdoors,’ he said. The line-up of models, including Agyness Deyn, Lily Donaldson, Lily Cole, Naomi Campbell and Edie Campbell, recalled the 2010s, when Burberry was at cultural ubiquity. 

Backstage, after the show, Lee noted the trickiness of designing for a brand that is made to appeal to huge swathes of people: from royalty to football fans. With this collection – which was full of seductive propositions for real-world wintertime dressing – Lee made his strongest push yet. ‘I have to have a point of view,’ he said. ‘You can’t just make a simple trench coat forever.’

Aaron Esh

A brilliant winter collection from rising London-based designer Aaron Esh, inspired by the dress codes of his inner circle, closed out Sunday evening in an intimate show at east London’s Sarabande (Esh recently became part of the foundation, which was set up by Lee McQueen and offers studio spaces to emerging artists and designers). Building on his runway debut in September 2023, staged at Tate Modern against views of the London skyline, the designer once again noted the influence of his native city and its ‘rhizomatic’ streets. ‘It’s the clothes that I see when I’m at a house party; or the clothes someone would wear to do an off-licence run – big shades, ripped jeans, a blouse thrown over her shoulder,’ he told Wallpaper’s Hannah Tindle at the time.

It lends his work a kind of dishevelled sensuality, where slinky bias-cut dresses, smeared eyeliner, sunglasses, caps and hoodies meet intriguing tailoring, like a wide-lapelled tuxedo cut with a poker-straight hem (later, it evolved into an expansive overcoat), or the pinched hooded tailored jackets that the models grasped closed with their hands. Esh says that he hopes the ease of his clothing belies the craft and construction behind them, something that felt achieved here: his models looked as if wandering home from evenings out, or perhaps the morning after. Skinny jeans, meanwhile, heralded the return of a silhouette introduced by Hedi Slimane in the 2000s while at Dior Homme – the French designer’s singular, subculture-infused approach no doubt an influence on Esh’s growing oeuvre. 

JW Anderson

Nosy neighbours, M&S knickers, horse riding trophies – after the show, Jonathan Anderson laid out the nostalgic inspiration points for his A/W 2024 collection, presented this season at Marylebone’s Seymour Leisure Centre in a shift from The Roundhouse. ‘It was something twisted, in terms of the woman next door,’ he said, a mood elaborated in the press release as ‘a grotesque everydayness, in grotesque distortions and proportions’. So there were knit dresses with enormous stitches, trails of blown-up haberdashery adornments, layers of everyday ribbed underwear and vests, house slippers, and brassy grey curly wigs. In its strange banality it was surprisingly affronting, a further demonstration of Anderson’s ability to traverse the seductive and the ugly (the designer is perhaps only equalled by Miuccia Prada in his ability to strike this dichotomy so successfully season on season). 

Other pieces were designed to recall interiors, like a series of twisted dresses which evoked curtains and curtain ties, looping elegantly around the model’s bodies (their evolution into a version in pearl made for a convincing proposition for a contemporary wedding gown). Outerwear recalled British heritage styles, here blown up in size and slightly dishevelled, pulled up at the sleeve to reveal the lining beneath, while everyday staples like the striped sweater and sweatpant shorts appeared throughout. Anderson elaborated backstage that it was in part a consideration of Britain, a strange refraction of the country’s past – at once nostalgic and subverted, likening it to the slew of recent songs that have risen up the charts years after they have been released. 

‘Young people are discovering nostalgia,’ he said. ‘And then they glorify [things from the past], and it becomes a kind of future thinking in a didactic way. They’re like mixing things that my parents know, that we all know, and reconfiguring them. It makes nostalgia not such a scary thing.’

Simone Rocha

Simone Rocha described her A/W 2024 collection as the closing chapter of a triptych of works which began with last season’s ‘Dress Rehearsal’ – capturing the anticipation and fraughtness of the evening before a wedding – and continued with the designer’s haute couture collection for Jean Paul Gaultier shown in Paris last month, which was titled ‘The Procession’ and looked towards the nuptials themselves. Presented in medieval church St Bartholomew-the-Great in Smithfield, the conclusion was titled ‘The Wake’, with Rocha beginning the collection by looking towards the mourning attire of Queen Victoria after the death of her husband Prince Albert (famously, she would mourn the loss for over four decades of her life). It made for fertile ground for the Irish designer, whose collections have long had a swelling undercurrent of darkness despite the beauty of their execution. Here, pelts of faux fur sat on the shoulders of delicate, near-transparent tailoring, while corsets – adorned with shimmering crystal embellishment under the chest – seemed a continuation of her collaboration with Gaultier. Unexpected accessories came in the shape of soft-toy lambs carried in the models’ arms, a nod to the mythical animals which serve as church guardians, while mourning blacks were reimagined in tie-hem anoraks, worn with faux-fur stoles adorned with crystals. ‘This was the final piece of the triptych, because I was working on these collections at the same time,’ explained Rocha backstage. ‘I’ve been looking at a lot of preserved garments, a lot of archives, and I really wanted to take that and place it today.’

Molly Goddard

A vast mural by London Group artist Ivon Hitchens provided the colourful backdrop for Molly Goddard’s latest collection, staged at the main hall of Cecil Sharp House, the home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in north London. The collection itself reflected the work’s freewheeling composition – Hitchens took three years to complete the 1954 mural, which depicts a mass of abstract figures dancing in a mythical woodland – with Goddard noting that this season she once again began the collection with an ‘experimental fitting’. In these, the designer takes vintage pieces, samples from her archive and toiles and begins to combine them as a starting point for the collection (she also noted inspiration from her eBay watch list, which with two young children is currently comprised of colourful baby and toddler wear). Here, it led her to a consideration of form – ‘shapes on top of shapes; garments combining – pulling in, pushing out, smushing’ – in part inspired by the haute couture silhouettes of Cristobal Balenciaga and Christian Dior, though relaxed with elasticated and tie fastenings for the everyday. Meanwhile, a continuing exploration of tulle – this season, Goddard described their construction as ‘blobs’, tightly ruffled shapes which provided dramatic silhouettes across skirts, shirts and dresses – met slouchy sweaters, cowboy jackets and polka-dot tops and bustiers in a collection of refreshing levity. 

Roksanda

Earlier this week, Zendaya wore a Roksanda look to Dennis Villenvenue’s Dune: Part Two London premiere: a plum-hued suit, jacket nipped in at the waist with exaggerated shoulders and loose-cut trousers, layered with a knee-length skirt. It turned out this was a sneak preview of the A/W 2024 collection presented yesterday, against the backdrop of the Tate Britain. (The suit opened the show with Law Roach, the actor’s stylist, watching on from the front row).

This season Ilinčić said she had been inspired by Le Corbusier, one of the Serbian-born designer’s ‘heroes’, and that she had recently spent time at the architect’s tiny holiday cabin, Cabanon de Le Corbusier. It was constructed in 1951 and located in Cap Martin, a coastal commune in the South of France. The interiors, and most notably the murals in the entrance hall, were subsequently referenced in the tapestries swathing around the body and trailing dramatically along the runway. Melton wool, a fabric ‘used in interiors and homes, places that provide refuge and comfort’, formed the opening suit and additional tailored pieces, where boucle, fil coupé jacquard, and a smattering of faux fur also lent themselves to the embrace of soft furnishings.

Roksanda is renowned for her considered use of colour, and of course, A/W 2024 was no different. The show notes reeled off a descriptive list of shades, reminiscent of the names that one might find on tins of expensive emulsion: Chartreuse-Verse, Canvas, Dark Flamant, Grey-Melange, Bleu-Cair, Pale-Lime, Light Hibiscus, Antique Rose, Peche-Clair. There were also sportier nods to windbreakers and wellingtons (footwear was produced in collaboration with Fit Flop), with the closing looks of the show taking the form of huge taffeta dresses that appeared almost tent-like, as though held up with a framework of poles. They conjured the idea of spending a windswept day along the coast, before returning to the warmth of a lavishly decorated home. Hannah Tindle

16Arlington

Writer and curator Charlie Fox’s 2019 exhibition My Head is a Haunted House, presented at Sadie Coles gallery, provided the starting point for Marco Capaldi’s A/W 2024 collection for 16Arlington. At the time, the group show was described by Fox as an attempt to recall ’the hallucinogenic memory’ of a childhood obsessed with werewolves, bats and monsters; here, Capaldi gave the monstrous a more elegant twist, seeing his sharp, streamlined vision for the brand enlivened with flourishes of strangeness, like swathes of shaggy faux fur or the clattering tinsel looks which closed the show. A pair of diaphanous white dresses, meanwhile, seemed to conjure Frankenstein’s bride, while shirts and sweaters tied around the neck in lieu of scarves suggested a mash-up of parts. ‘It’s not about Halloween – it’s about human nature,’ Capaldo said. ‘Hence the title of the show, I’m Not Sorry, It’s Human Nature, borrowed, of course, from Madonna. Those who go against conventions are often ostracised, but there’s so much strength and power and beauty in rejecting norms. These are the people I design for.’

Dunhill

For its first runway show since 2020 – and the first collection from newly installed creative director Simon Holloway – Dunhill chose the Duveen Wing of the National Portrait Gallery, a series of rooms inaugurated by King George V and Queen Mary in 1933. The historic venue hinted a return to classicism for the British brand (itself in its 130th year), a mood also captured in show’s the layout, which with its low-lit individual tables, gin martinis and dainty plates of cucumber and caviar sandwiches nodded towards traditional salon-style fashion presentations of the early 20th century.  

’This collection celebrates our origins and subsequent evolution into a unique British luxury house,’ explained Holloway of the A/W 2024 collection, which sought to capture Dunhill’s rich tailoring heritage and tradition of dressing figures from stage and screen (earlier in the week, the brand hosted a star-studded pre-BAFTA party, a hint towards this new direction). So the collection itself ran the gamut of what Holloway called the ‘finer things in life’ – whether motor racing (recalled in the suede field jacket worn by model Kit Butler, or the leather driving gloves throughout), jaunts to the great outdoors (gabardine chinos, blazers in heritage checks and cord, aran-stitch cashmere sweaters) or a swathe of evening wear, including an elegant ivory riff on the tuxedo with matching bowtie and overcoat (worn here with a sneaker).

‘[These are the things] we have always done best,’ concluded Holloway of the collection, which felt like something of a palette cleanser for his tenure ahead. ‘I hope we have re-captured that spirit, one that is at once refined and international,’

Fashion East

There was an interesting synchronicity to this season’s Fashion East designers Olly Shinder and Johanna Parv – the latter in her third and final season at the talent incubator – who both provided their own distinct riffs on the nine-to-five wardrobe. Shinder, who last season presented a debut collection of pieces inspired by the sporty, sleazy nightlife uniforms of Berlin and London, where the designer splits his time. Soundtracked once again by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, here Shinder turned his attention towards the corporate uniform, which was ‘queered... displaced, subverted and refined’. So there was a take on ’middle managerial’ shirting, which appeared to have been grasped at the collar and sliced down the back, while other pieces continued Shinder’s more familiar exploration of workwear, with clean-lined functional sets with PVC at the sleeves and over the trousers, as if models were about to deal with hazardous materials (indeed, Shinder likened his studio this season to a lab). Completing the lineup were pieces primed for the dance floor: slick, semi-shirted latex bodysuits, or abbreviated mini shorts in black and silver. Judging by buzz, he already has an audience for these clothes.

Parv, meanwhile, is a designer who looks towards the functionality of sportswear through toggle and adjustable fastenings, and technical fabrics, attempting to replicate them across the full gamut of a woman’s wardrobe. This season, a polished collection continued this approach with what she said was inspired by the ‘topography of the city’, and the demands of urban life. The mood was darker, and more sensual than previously – the skirt suit was sliced open at the front and shoulders – while zip-up mini dresses were featherweight in their fabrication. As ever, a series of clever accessories accompanied in the form of leather bumbags and handbags with an adjustable nylon strap, evocative of those found on a backpack. It will be interesting to see what Parv does next.

London Fashion Week S/S 2024 began with a celebration of 30 years of Newgen – the British Fashion Council’s incubator scheme which supported the careers of many of the designers who now show on the week’s schedule – at the Design Museum. Titled ‘Rebel: 30 Years of London Fashion’ (on until 11 February 2024), it captures the rebellious design codes that have defined British fashion for the past three decades. 

The eclectic, creative spirit of London’s young designers continued to define the week – among them this season were Aaron Esh (who made his debut), Chopova Lowena (which presented its sophomore runway show) and this year’s Fashion East line-up, which included Olly Shinder, Johanna Parv and Standing Ground. Elsewhere, Stefan Cooke, KNWLS, Ahluwalia and Supriya Lele continued the city’s energetic mood, while stalwarts Simone Rocha, Molly Goddard, Roksanda and Erdem each evolved their distinct offerings. 

Perhaps the two most-anticipated shows of the week were JW Anderson – which took place at the Roundhouse – and Burberry, whereby Daniel Lee presented his sophomore collection in north London’s Highbury Fields. Jonathan Anderson, meanwhile, complemented his S/S 2024 womenswear outing with the opening of an exhibition at Offer Waterman gallery; titled ‘On Foot’, it combined both art and fashion for an imagined wander through London. 

Here, find the best of London Fashion Week S/S 2024, which we reported live from the shows.

The best of London Fashion Week S/S 2024

Aaron Esh

One of the upper floors of Tate Modern’s Blavatnik Building provided the setting for recent Central Saint Martins graduate Aaron Esh’s first runway show (previously, he has shown via lookbook). The expansive views of the city’s skyline offered by the space were a nod to the designer’s inspirations, which circle on his native London, where he grew up and continues to live. As such, he plays with British archetypes: here, Savile Row tailoring was referenced in narrow and nipped suiting, some sliced away at the sleeves or with shrunken lapels, while an opposing sense of street and clubwear was referenced in shredded jeans, caps, and slinky dresses that wrapped elegantly around the body (the 2000s-tinged look was completed with requisite face-shielding sunglasses). Esh said that much of his inspiration comes from his friends – for those who know the designer, certain looks were the spitting image of people in his circle – while another continual touchpoint is his roots in London clothes-making, Esh’s Cyprian emigrant paternal grandfather having worked as a tailor in the East End. It made for an impressive debut from the designer, combining a feeling of rigour with the frenetic energy of London’s streets he called a musing on ‘chaos and control’. 

Burberry

Daniel Lee’s much-anticipated sophomore collection for Burberry was shown in a tent erected in north London’s Highbury Fields, a slice of green space surrounded by Georgian and Victorian terraces (in keeping with Lee’s desire to use Burberry to demonstrate London’s rich cultural life, the houses’ famous inhabitants included the artist Walter Sickert). The show came in the midst of a takeover of London titled ‘Burberry Streets’, which saw Bond Street station titled ‘Burberry Street’ and adorned in Lee’s now-signature ‘Knight Blue’, while Archway’s Norman’s Café became a temporary outpost of the brand, presenting the house’s riff on the traditional greasy spoon (at the show, Norman’s served cake and tea). Which is to say that Lee’s vision for the British house is expanding – one gets the sense that he is attempting to recall the cultural ubiquity Burberry had in the 2010s – a mood that extended to the collection itself, where he took on its most famous export, the trench. Here, Lee’s proposition was cut slim, minimally designed and came with a dropped waistband, allowing hands to be tucked into pockets just above. Versions came in leather or looping equestrian-style prints; others were sleeveless. ‘Lightness, sensuality, beauty and elegance’ were the descriptions that Lee chose to describe the confident collection, which also comprised printed silk dresses – a sense of toughness lent by metal eyelet fastenings – oversized shirts with trench-style epaulettes, and hints of the bourgeois in ladylike leather handbags and pleated skirts. Elsewhere, playful prints – after last season’s mallards – saw Lee turn British strawberries Burberry blue.

Supriya Lele

Supriya Lele returned to the fashion week schedule with a collection presented in a multi-storey carpark at London’s Barbican Centre. The concrete surrounds provided a juxtaposition to the languid sensuality of her garments, which the designer says begin with the ‘realities and fantasies’ of being a British woman born to Indian immigrant parents, ideas which then ‘dissolve’ into wider garments. The result is a melange of references: the twisting drape of a mini dress is recalled from memories of the women in her family wearing saris, a particular shade of lilac from the colour of lipstick worn by friend and artist Jai Chuhan, while a series of ribbed vests – cropped high on the chest – ‘beckon toward quotidian Indian life… contorted into sensuality’. Such contortions lent the collection a strange, dreamlike quality: skirts sank low on the waist to reveal the line of underwear beneath, dresses fell away into tasselled fronds, while laddered knits seductively exposed the body. Irridescent fabrications and clear plastic footwear – like those you might wear to clamber on rocks while on holiday – gave the impression of the Supriya Lele woman emerging from the sea.

KNWLS

It felt like a recent collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier had got the designers Charlotte Knowles and Alexandre Arsenault channelling the perennial showman – and his love of unexpected muses on the runway – with guest appearances from Mia Khalifa, former adult film star and founder of fashion label Sheytan, and Lily McMenamy, who closed the show strutting and twirling down the runway (both elicited loud cheers from the gathered crowd, where there was a palpable buzz). The collection itself was titled ‘Petrol’, largely honing KNWLS’ recognisable – and already much-imitated – signatures, namely strappy second-skin body suits, corseted leather outerwear and a handbag they call the ‘Razr’. KNWLS-adorned T-shirts and mini dresses will no doubt prove popular with their devoted following, while a series of oversized leather jackets – with vast ‘linebacker’ shoulders – hinted at the possibility of an evolving silhouette.

Erdem

Deborah ‘Debo’ Cavendish, the former Duchess of Devonshire and youngest of the Mitford sisters, provided the starting point of Erdem Moralioglu’s latest outing, presented in the fittingly regal portico of the British Museum (sitting under enormous Greek revival columns, the colonnade is arguably London’s most dramatic show location). It was a collection which channelled the idiosyncrasies of the eccentric Cavendish, who was known for her biting humour, which she channelled into writing, particularly about the Chatsworth Estate, the Duke of Devonshire’s ancestral seat (‘Deborah Devonshire is not someone to whom one can say, “joking apart”, joking never is apart: with her it's of the essence,’ wrote her friend Alan Bennett). She was also an avid fan of Elvis Presley, collecting memorabilia throughout her life; for the show, Presley’s Always on My Mind (covered by the Pet Shop Boys), provided the soundtrack. Presley was referenced in coloured leather jackets, dotted with studs, worn alongside narrow-waisted gowns which were printed with motifs that recalled Cavendish’s antique furnishings. Indeed, a series of jackets – created in collaboration with Barbour, a favourite brand of the Duchess – utilised real antique fabrics from Chatsworth House for a luxurious exercise in upcycling. Footwear, meanwhile, saw kitten-heeled pumps adorned with enormous bows that flapped next to the foot, purportedly inspired by Cavendish’s love of chicken breeding. Much like the vintage textiles that made up the collection, the collection was proof again of Moralioglu’s canny knack of giving old stories new life.

Simone Rocha

The bare bones of a white chapel, adorned with angels, had been constructed in the English National Ballet’s Canning Town rehearsal centre to provide the backdrop to a Simone Rocha show the designer titled ‘Dress Rehearsal’. The cocooning, all-black space – made to recall the proportions of a traditional stage – provided a starker setting than recent seasons, a mood of reduction which extended to the collection itself. Though there were naturally swathes of glimmering embellishment and adornment – as well as gowns which recalled wedding cakes in their layers of tulle and bows – most intriguing this season was a series of minimal sculpted silk and taffeta pieces, which looped elegantly around the body (some into twisting flowers) or gathered gently at the neck with uneven pin tucks. In shades of black, white, red and pale pink, some subtly adorned with delicate red ribbons, they provided an astute counterpart to the typical grandeur of Rocha’s work. Indeed, the Irish designer noted that this season was one of greater ‘intimacy’, a mood reflected in lingerie-inspired detailing and sheer fabrications which revealed a series of roses trapped in the lining of dresses and jackets. The inspiration, she said, was not a wedding but the evening before, and the fraughtness such ceremony entails (in keeping with the theme, each look was designed to evoke the anniversary gifts for each year of marriage, from paper to pearl). It lent the collection the undercurrent of foreboding that so often runs through Rocha’s work, reflecting her unique ability to marry the sweet with the subversive, the darkness and the light. 

Holzweiler

Holzweiler chose Camley Street Natural Park, an Edenic urban nature reserve close to King’s Cross station, to show its latest collection. Amid a flurry of rain which started, as if on cue, as the show began, models wove their way through the sandy pathways in what was the Norwegian brand’s first London outing, having shown previously as part of Copenhagen Fashion Week. The move signalled the growing awareness around the label, founded by siblings Susanne and Andreas Holzweiler in 2012, which after investment seeks to mimic the successes of other Scandinavian imports (notably, it seems to have an affinity with Danish brand Ganni, which also shows in Copenhagen and has grown to have over 40 stores worldwide). The show itself was titled ‘Rewilding’ and was rooted, said the Holzweilers – who brought in Maria Skappel-Holzweiler as creative director in 2014 – in their Norwegian upbringing surrounded by nature. ‘We’ve been thinking about the notion of rewilding, about the beauty of nature springing up to reclaim urban space,’ they said, noting that Camley Street itself was a former coal mine that now teems with natural life. As such, the collection had a breezy, bohemian air that melded botanic prints, homespun crochet knits and diaphanous, asymmetric silhouettes with utility elements primed for city living – from cargo pants to technical hoodies and anoraks (the latter proving fitting for the weather). It was a reminder, the Holzweilers said, to ‘live mindfully in the present’, though one gets the sense that the family behind this quickly growing brand has its eyes squarely set on the future. 

Molly Goddard

Molly Goddard said that this season’s collection began in the costume hire of London’s National Theatre – an extensive archive of garments which have been used in previous productions – where she became fascinated with ‘underskirts and underwear: crinolines, 1950s bras, Victorian christening gowns, Georgian underskirts’. It made for a collection Goddard described as ‘inside out’, the designer taking elements usually hidden – grosgrain zip plackets, hook-and-eye fastenings, the underside of seams – and putting them on show (one tulle dress in particular was left open down the back to reveal its workings beneath). It felt like a consideration of craft and making from Goddard: cotton ruffles emerged from simple pin-tuck gowns, cardigans were gently edged with satin, while padded skirts and matching bustier tops recalled quilts or blankets. Elsewhere, faded floral prints, heart-shaped motifs, and simple ribbon fastenings further evoked the domestic –here elevated to the elegant salons of Christie’s auction house, which provided the collection’s backdrop.

JW Anderson

The invitation for this season’s JW Anderson show was a block of modelling clay, a material that was used to create the collection’s opening look: a sculpted hoodie and shorts, warped and exaggerated in proportion as if crudely pressed together by hand. Presented in the sunlit circular hall of Camden’s Roundhouse on Saturday morning and accompanied by an energetic soundtrack that included a Soundcloud mash-up of Ethel Cain’s Crush and Cher’s Believe, it set the tone for a collection that was all about play, seeing Anderson toy with archetypal garments in his typically idiosyncratic style. Much of it was tactile: oversized MA1 bomber jackets were adorned with explosions of feathers that emerged from their interior (‘bursting from the seams’), sculptural circular constructions sat under elongated T-shirt dresses, while a melange of woven elements – from footwear to handbags – appeared throughout. Despite the mood of experimentation, it was a collection nonetheless grounded in reality – it had begun by observing young people on the street – seeing Anderson continue his ongoing journey to distill clothing to its essence, a mood expressed in recent seasons at both his eponymous label and Loewe. ‘I want truth and simplicity,’ he said post-show.

Roksanda

A temple of brutalism – the vast open-air sculpture court on the Barbican Centre’s top floor – provided the dramatic setting for Roksanda Ilinčić’s latest collection, which looked towards the Orthodox monasteries of her native Serbia for inspiration. As such, there was a feeling of ceremony: models marched the semi-circular runway crowned with towering headwear recalling the kalimavkion worn by Orthodox clergy, while British soprano Isabelle Peters provided a soaring live soundtrack of Puccini arias. Diaphanous silk gowns, some interwoven with circular metal sculptures, flared ladylike dresses inset with panels of clear Perspex, and printed painterly motifs recalling the monastery’s faded frescoes, demonstrated Ilinčić’s astute balance of grandeur and delicacy, which this season felt even more refined. Footwear, a collaboration with Manolo Blahnik, was decorated with fronds of feathers, while a typically luminous palette spanned shades Ilinčić described as elderflower, amaryllis, tangerine, water-chestnut and wisteria.

Chopova Lowena

Staged in a skatepark under the vast Westway dual carriageway, Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena-Irons returned to a perennial fascination – folklore and traditional ceremonies, and the dress codes which define them. Often, this is derived from Chopova’s Bulgarian heritage – she was born in the United States to Bulgarian parents, and previous seasons have referenced various festivals in the country – though this season, the pair drew inspiration from the British coastal county of Cornwall. Specifically, Helston’s Flora Day festival, which heralds the arrival of summer and sees locals don colourful dress to tell ancient tales of war ‘angels and devils, peace and war, sea and shore, and mermaids and maidens’, as the pair described. As ever, this meant an eclectic amalgam of elements – delicate lily of the valley motifs, clattering hanging charms, naive prints of dragons, demons and angels – brought together across versions of their signature garments (in particular, the pleated kilt and expansive bell-sleeved dresses and shirts). The pair also noted a reference to an altogether more modern myth: ‘falling for a skater boy’ and the dizzy memories of teenage love. As such, nostalgic elements reminiscent of a noughties youth – baggy plaid and cargo pants, graphic tees, bermuda shorts – clashed playfully with the collection’s ancient inspirations. The result? ‘A lovely mess,’ the designers concluded. 

Ahluwalia

Priya Ahluwalia chose the atrium of The British Library to present her latest collection, which the designer titled ‘Acknowledgements’ – a journey, she said, of ‘creative rediscovery’, which drew her to lesser-known ’makers, doers and thinkers’ from history whose work might not have yet been widely acknowledged by the Western establishment. Among them, Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine, who rose to prominence in the 1940s art scene in Paris – she had her first exhibition at age 17 in 1947 – and drew the attention of André Breton and Pablo Picasso, both said to have been influenced by her work (others mentioned in the collection notes included Bollywood actress Madhubala and the American activist Marsha P Johnson). As such, floral motifs featured throughout the collection, in intarsia knits or as a motif across sustainable ISKO-developed denim – a nod, Ahluwalia said, to the expression of ‘giving someone their flowers’ – while other prints and swirling jacquards had a surreal, illusory air ‘challenging the observer to look closer’. Elsewhere, Ahluwalia struck a balance between vintage sportswear – colourful 1970s-style track pants and jackets, patterned sweater vests, football shirts with vivid patchwork patterns – and languid glamour, like a series of fluid cowl-neck dresses in silk viscose, dotted with embellishment and in tones of orange and red which suggested celebration. 

Fashion East

Bloomsbury’s Yeomanry House provided a historic setting for an altogether modern trio of collections from this season’s Fashion East class (or four, if you include the bonus return from A Sai Ta’s label Asai, which previously showed as part of the incubator, and here presented a colourful woven collection to close the show). 

The highlight was Michael Stewart’s Standing Ground, a designer whose elegantly engineered silhouettes draw their inspiration from the origins and forms of neolithic standing stones, particularly in his native Ireland (‘They’re just beautiful lines, and they, to me evoke a whole a whole world,’ he says). Stewart’s columnar dresses continued to impress this season, while new techniques – like a series of beads intricately stitched into folds of jersey – were designed to recall the discovery of layers of fossils within rocks. There is something about the clarity of Stewart’s design that sets him apart from several of his contemporaries; in just a few seasons he has developed a distinct look, often featuring looping padded elements on otherwise austere jersey gowns. ‘There's something really natural that happens when I put my mind to jersey,’ he told Wallpaper* prior to the show. ‘I think I've developed a handwriting, a language of form.’ 

Both Olly Shinder – who makes his debut with Fashion East this season – and Johanna Parv presented takes on sports- and workwear, albeit in distinct style. Recent Central Saint Martins Shinder – who says he interprets traditionally masculine clothing through a queer lens – captured an after-dark mood with sporty, nightlife-infused pieces that came with a frisson of subversion and sensuality (one garment left a model entirely exposed along the back). There were sheer T-shirts slashed open with zips; dungarees dotted with buttons like studs; workmen’s trousers that appeared dipped in water and dirty from wear, while looping silver body adornments seemed constructed from shower pipes. Completing the mood, Berlin-based photographer Wolfgang Tillmans provided the soundtrack.

Parv, meanwhile, continued to explore the everyday needs of women – whether at work or play – reimagining traditional female silhouettes in technical fabrics. In particular, 1950s and 1960s silhouettes were melded with cycling and performance-wear elements – looping straps, toggle fastenings and fabrications with stretch and lightness – for elegance and pragmatism at once.

Stefan Cooke

Stefan Cooke and Jake Burt used their S/S 2024 show to debut a menswear collection with British leather goods brand Mulberry (read more on the Stefan Cooke and Mulberry collaboration), seeing the pair transform 27 vintage styles with their distinctive motifs – including the slashed-diamond pattern which is their contemporary take on argyle. The multiplicity of bags – each one entirely unique, some complete with playful adornments like jumbo tassels crafted from upcycled rugby shirts – captured the joyful abandon of the collection, which the designers said was about ‘high-fashion confidence and hardcore craft’. Cue long chequered skirts covered in hundreds of studs, star-adorned knitwear with elongated in-built sashes, or a series of extraordinary sculpted tops crafted from spongy foam (other models carried colourful foam fingers like those brandished at sporting events, the pieces’ inspiration point). Indeed, athletic influences ran throughout the energetic collection: intricately draped tops were cut with wide shoulders for what the designers called ‘a quarterback impact’ and made from a melange of lycra and vintage rugby jerseys. A series of elongated Harrington jackets, looped around the hem with an in-built belt, added a more down-to-earth counterpoint, while brilliant studded or star-covered footwear further demonstrated the duo’s ever-growing accessories prowess.

In its 15 years in business, London-based fashion label JW Anderson – helmed by designer Jonathan Anderson, also creative director of Loewe – has fostered an enduring relationship with the art world, both at home and abroad. There was ‘Disobedient Bodies’, an Anderson-curated exhibition at Hepworth Wakefield – featuring his own works in conversation with artists spanning Constantin Brâncuşi, Louise Bourgeois and Alberto Giacometti – while collaborators have included Gilbert & George, Tom of Finland, Dame Magdalene Odundo and Shawanda Corbett. 

Now, Anderson is set to present his latest foray into the field with ’On Foot’ (18 September – 28 October 2023), a new exhibition at Mayfair’s Offer Waterman gallery that coincides with the arrival of London Fashion Week in the city. Much like ‘Disobedient Bodies’, the exhibition will combine artworks with pieces on display from his own collections, though here the focus is on London, ‘embracing the stark contrasts and unlikely juxtapositions that even a short journey through the city offers up’. Amid this, works of seminal British artists – including Barbara Hepworth, Lucian Freud and David Hockney – will be placed ‘in dialogue’ with a new generation of international contemporary artists, from Lynette Yiadom-Boakye to Florian Krewer.

JW Anderson at Offer Waterman: ‘On Foot’

In keeping with the theme, Anderson will playfully transform the rooms and corridors of the Georgian townhouse in which Offer Waterman is located into an imagined walk-through of London – conjuring both the refined streets of Mayfair and the hedonism of Soho, where JW Anderson’s London store is located. Imagined scenes will traverse ‘traffic-clogged streets’, a city park (complete with park bench), and a pub – the exhibition’s final stop – in which ‘a diverse cast of characters will each tell a story of the city they live in’.

Pigeons – a familiar sight on London’s streets – will also feature, with British artist and longtime Anderson collaborator Anthea Hamilton creating a special version of the designer’s viral ‘pigeon clutch’ which will be presented at both the gallery and the brand’s Soho store. Garments from both JW Anderson and Loewe will also feature, chosen for the way in which ’they transform the body and give it sculptural potential’.

The exhibition will open on September 18, two days after Anderson presents his S/S 2024 womenswear collection for JW Anderson as part of London Fashion Week on 16 September.

JW Anderson at Offer Waterman ‘On Foot’ runs from 18 September – 28 October 2023.

jwanderson.com

The provocative, pioneering British dancer and choreographer Michael Clark – who rose to prominence in London in the early 1980s – has long provided a cultural touchpoint for fashion designer Jonathan Anderson, who first discovered Clark’s work while at university in the early 2000s. 

‘I became completely obsessed,’ says Anderson, who this past February at London’s Roundhouse (during London Fashion Week A/W 2023) presented an A/W 2023 collection that featured a number of pieces created in collaboration with Clark – from T-shirts and vests emblazoned with the Michael Clark Company logo to slogans and iconography taken from his performance posters and flyers (including, memorably, a phallus-emblazoned top that referenced an advertisement for a performance at The Roundhouse, a location Clark returned to throughout his career).

JW Anderson x Michael Clark has arrived

’Michael Clark is an incipit. A starter, a white page, the agitator who defied the system,’ said Anderson at the time, noting that the collection itself looked back at a number of pieces from throughout his own eponymous label’s 15-year history. ‘He is embedded deep, somewhere, in the foundation of JW Anderson and impels now the urgency of a blank slate.

‘At its core, this is a collection about fandom – completely personal, frequently irrational, often embarrassing,’ he continued. ‘As I look back through my own archive for this show, resurrecting elements from each collection of the last 15 years, Michael helped me rifle through this. It helped me pinpoint my own obsessions.’

As of this week, the capsule collection – titled JW Anderson x Michael Clark – arrives in stores and on the JW Anderson website. There is a paper bag-style clutch imprinted with the Michael Clark Company logo – alongside the T-shirts, vests and tote bags from the show which featured the same motif – as well as imagery from the collection’s show set printed across further T-shirts and shirts. Other slogans, like ‘Witch?’, ‘Sham Man’ and ‘The Dentist’ are transposed onto sweaters and caps.

‘The first time I came across Michael Clark was when I was at university,’ Anderson said this week ahead of the collection’s launch. ’It was not until I got the Michael Clark book, though, that I completely fell in love with him, and what he had contributed to the British landscape in terms of art, dance and the way that we look at things, or the way we challenge the body, or challenge the way that we see things, or perceive the idea of what we think is wrong and right.’

JW Anderson x Michael Clark is available now in stores and online.

jwanderson.com

The menswear season rolled onwards to Milan Fashion Week S/S 2024 this past weekend as the Italian city played host to an eclectic amalgam of runway shows, presentations and openings. Among them, a dedicated menswear show from Valentino, which opened proceedings on the afternoon of 16 June. Titled ‘The Narratives’ and held at the Università degli Studi di Milano Statale, it saw the house divert from recent co-ed shows held in Paris – a tribute, said creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, to house founder Valentino Garavani, who showed his first menswear collection in 1985 in Milan. 

Elsewhere in the city, Ralph Lauren Purple Label made its return to the Milan Fashion Week schedule, while British labels JW Anderson and Charles Jeffrey Loverboy continued to choose the city to present their latest collections. Rounding out the week was the usual array of high-profile Italian houses, looking to define the menswear season ahead – among them Prada, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Emporio Armani, Giorgio Armani, Tod’s, Missoni, and Zegna, which closed the week on the afternoon of 19 June.

Here is the very best of Milan Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2024 – from curtains of slime at Prada to a return to reality at JW Anderson.

The best of Milan Fashion Week Men’s S/S 2024

Zegna

Held in central Milan’s Piazza San Fedele – creative director Alessandro Sartori’s favourite square in the city – the sun-soaked outdoor runway was outlined with 192 enormous bales of raw linen flax. Not just a prop, the bales had been transported from Normandy; after the show they would go back onto the production line to create Zegna’s various linens at the house’s Italian factories. The show itself, titled ‘L'Oasi Di Lino’, was a celebration of the summertime fabric, selected for its feeling of lightness and fluidity and rendered in countless iterations – among them, linen gabardine, linen faille, linen knits and satin linen. Of the clothing, Sartori described a ‘soft precision’, spanning relaxed, unembellished tailoring, oversized zip-up shirts and simple scoop-neck vests and pullovers. ‘At Zegna we keep rethinking what an efficient wardrobe should be like today,’ he explained. ‘It’s the idea of the uniform that prompts non-uniformity – the suit as matching jacket and trousers no longer applies. The overall fluidity makes it all look quiet and luxurious, but the tension in the details, the richness of colours and the freedom infinite combinations suggest is not quiet at all.’

Giorgio Armani

A giant pencil stood at the end of the Giorgio Armani runway, held in the dedicated theatre in the basement of the house’s spiritual home on Milan’s Via Borgonuovo. Its purpose was metaphorical, the designer likening it to the way he has consistently written and rewritten the codes of Armani since its founding in 1975. ‘Narrating a certain style is a constant process… examining familiar elements from different angles to craft new plots and weave new stories,’ said the house. If not a greatest hits per se, the collection instead elegantly distilled Armani signatures: liquid tailoring was elongated in proportion, geometric patterns recalled memorable archival prints, while sportier references came in a series of looks which were reminiscent of traditional tennis whites. Flights of craft ran throughout: like delicate intertwining threads and knotted sandals and shoes, designed to evoke the fluidity of handwriting.

JW Anderson

Backstage after the show, a relaxed Jonathan Anderson said there had been ‘no angst’ in the creation of his latest menswear collection, presented in Milan for the third season running. ‘I love showing here, it’s so calm,’ he explained, noting that recent months have seen him feeling ‘more creative’ having been working alongside Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino on the costumes for his upcoming feature Queer. The latter experience, he said, had got him thinking about the idea of realism, a mood reflected in the collection itself – there was a real-world simplicity to the boxy striped rugby shirts, tie-waist sweatpants and hoodies. ‘Ease… the fluency of restarting after setting a blank slate,’ read the collection notes; ‘we’re still in this moment of reduction,’ he said after the show. 

One reference, he said, was the everyday textures and patterns of the home: furniture upholstery, woven carpets and tableware, the last referenced in the collection’s invitation – a striped blue and white teapot made by Cornishware, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year. The stripes ran throughout the collection, continuing across the show’s sprawling runway and into the backstage area. Knitwear was abundant – over half the collection was constructed from knit fabrics – culminating in colourful woven knits reminiscent of shag-pile 1970s carpets or balls of yarn. ‘A sense of plainness, and calm, that is not so plain, not so calm,’ said the collection notes. Or, in Anderson’s words: ‘it is what it is.’ 

Prada 

‘Fluid interruptions’ was how Prada described the sheets of slime which began to drip, Alien-like along the stainless steel runway as the house’s latest menswear show began. Such a juxtaposition – the stark, sci-fi-like perfection of the space interrupted by oozing goo that pooled into green mounds on the floor – spoke to the central idea of the collection, which was a musing on restriction and fluidity. Titled ‘Fluid Forms’, Prada called it ‘an examination of fluid architecture around the human body’.

The season began, said co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, with the archetypal men’s white shirt. ‘We start with the white shirt – the most simple. And from that base, from a base of the most basic and normal, you can do whatever you like. It allows transformation, and individuality,’ said the former. It marked a shift, she noted, from recent seasons, where the pair have sought to reduce a garment to its essence. ‘Here, from something simple, we expand. Life and understanding of life is so complex – simplicity can be too simple. We were interested rather in this elaboration, in this expansion.’

So the pair sought to apply the white shirt’s feeling of ‘lightness, ease and comfort’ across the collection. It began with tailoring, which took the severe, masculine silhouette of the 1940s – narrow-waisted, wide across the shoulder – and reimagined it in ultra-fine fabrics as a riposte to restriction. ‘If you look at the tailoring in the show, it is a classicist man’s suit, but when you actually see it, it feels completely different. It allows the body, which is always in movement and always in transformation, to feel free,’ said Simons. ‘We were thinking a lot about the body – to give freedom to the body, even if our interest is to show references to archetypes and architecture in fashion, which is usually restrictive.’

It led to what Mrs Prada called a musing on ‘the individuality of people, and therefore about an individuality of thinking’, expanding outwards from the simplicity of the inspiration towards vivid expressions of colour and print – shirts bloomed with appliqué flowers, others were decorated by fringing, while classic polo knits sprouted faux fur along the seams and lightweight anoraks arrived in an array of Prada-esque hues. As the designer noted after the show, despite its influence, the white shirt itself ‘disappeared’ entirely from the collection. ‘Sophistication of thoughts, allow a reconsideration of simple things,’ she said.

Tod’s

Presented in the lush gardens of Villa Necchi Campiglio, the Piero Portaluppi-designed home perhaps best known for its starring role in Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love, Tod’s latest collection reflected the sun-soaked ease of its surroundings. Rooted in Tod’s history of craftsmanship – ‘Italian craftsmanship and the excellent quality are the protagonists of the collection,’ said the notes – pieces spanned easy, casual tailoring in tones of tan and ecru, buttery leather shirts, and relaxed riffs on the varsity jacket. The classic Tod’s ‘Gommino’, the brand’s signature slip-on driving shoe, appeared throughout the presentation, while moccasins, tasseled slip-ons, and new versions of the ‘Tab’ sneaker completed the footwear offering for the season.

Etro

‘How does a book collecting anonymous depictions of allegories, found by pure chance in an old bookstore in the city of Messina, relate to the present moment, and to fashion making in particular?’ began the collection notes for Marco de Vincenzo’s latest menswear outing at Etro. The discovery of a 17th-century tome by Cesar Ripa – filled with allegorical images ‘depicting virtues, qualities and vices’ – provided the inspiration for a richly crafted collection. The link to the present day? The way that such allegorical images were the Renaissance-era equivalent of modern-day Gifs and TikToks. Getting dressed, said De Vincenzo, is a similarly symbolic gesture – the subtle meanings behind our choices of clothing, how fashion itself is an act of ‘make believe’. Esoteric explanations beside, the collection was an expansive demonstration of De Vincenzo’s intuitive and eclectic vision for the house, shifting between fluid, bohemian elements – blanket-like coats, elongated cardigans, shimmering printed shirts – and Renaissance-inflected motifs, courtesy of Ripa, which decorated playful football-style jerseys.

Magliano

Luca Magliano was the recipient of the Karl Lagerfeld Award at this year’s LVMH Prize, a nod of recognition that speaks to the growing buzz – and intrigue – surrounding the Bologna-based designer at Milan Fashion Week. On Sunday morning, he staged his first-ever runway show; building site-style metal fences and white tarpaulins surrounded the elevated catwalk, a suggestion that Magliano is still a work in progress. ‘For the first time, a proper runway works as a sincere invitation: “come see us”,’ read the accompanying notes, with various garments in the collection offering slogans of ‘prayers, epigraphs and thanksgivings’ (16th-century nun Teresa of Ávila was quoted on the press release). 

The collection itself continued Magliano’s deft plays on everyday garments – warped in proportion, dishevelled and undone, but nonetheless imbued with a feeling of elegance. Deconstructed overalls, bombers and windbreakers were reshaped into what Magliano called ‘a wretched couture’, while glimmers of crystal and delicate marabou-style boas spoke of lost glamour. The deep-thinking designer said that Italian writer Alda Merini was this season’s patron saint; in her intense, passionate writings she made sacred moments of the everyday, a reflection of Magliano’s own desire to transform the quotidian. 

Emporio Armani

A vast recreation of the Chinese ginkgo tree provided the backdrop to Giorgio Armani’s latest Emporio collection, chosen for its ‘elegance and endurance’ – an apt metaphor for the collection itself, which the house said was ‘a return to the essence of Emporio Armani, purified to the core and seen through the filter of moonlight’. Drawing inspiration from world travel – silhouettes referenced at once Italian sartorialism and the ease and construction of traditional Chinese dress – the comprehensive collection spanned louche tailoring and diaphanous sheer and silk shirts (notes described ‘liquid lines that barely touch the muscles’), an array of tunic-style silhouettes, and sportier cuts, like a voluminous wide-legged trouser with sweatband-style waistband. The show ended with the news that Mr Armani has created team Italy’s kit for the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics, the designer joined on the runway by a series of athletes in the kit, each one wielding the Italian flag.

Dolce & Gabbana

‘Respect for identity, for an imagery that has been created over time,’ described the collection notes for Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s latest collection, which was part of a continuing attempt – at both the house’s menswear and womenswear collections – to return to the distinct essence of Dolce & Gabbana and the pieces with which it is most synonymous (‘the tank-top, the coppola, the rosary, the black, the jacket, Sicily’, said the house). As such, the collection was titled ‘Style’ – a reference to the rejection of ephemeral trends towards something more timeless – comprising elegant black tailoring (with occasional moments of brown, camel and white), narrow at the waist and flaring towards a wider, voluminous trouser. Other continuing motifs were a series of wrapped silhouettes, fabric looping sensually around the body, or continuing plays on exposure and transparency (from diaphanous sheer organza to lace pyjama-style tailoring). Moments of embellishment showed off the savoir-faire of the Dolce & Gabbana atelier; notably, a series of delicate flowers which hovered over jackets and shirts. 

MSGM

Titled ‘Sogno Off Road’, Massimo Giorgetti’s latest collection was inspired by a recent trip to Tanzania. Memories of the country infused the collection with a feeling of wanderlust – vests were decorated with images of sunrises and sunsets (the photographs had been taken by Giorgetti using his iPhone on his travels), oversized utility jackets and cargo pants riffed on safari wear, while textures and colours were drawn from the distinct landscapes of the east African country (from earthy hues of sand, brown and green to vivid blues and oranges inspired by sky and sun). Giorgetti said that he wanted the collection – perhaps his tightest menswear outing in recent seasons – to feel like the moment of promise when the sun rises, ‘illuminating uncharted lands [and] heralding the dawn of a new day’.

Gucci

Gucci’s latest menswear collection – which will mark the last created by the in-house design team before the debut of new creative director Sabato De Sarno – looked towards the ‘iconography’ of the house for an exercise in ‘adaption, deconstruction and reconstruction’. Namely, the house’s signature ’Horsebit’ loafer, introduced by Aldo Gucci in 1953 and featuring a miniature metal clamp like those found on a horse’s bridle. Since, it has become one of the house’s most recognisable emblems appearing across clothing, handbags, and shoes; as such, a special event to coincide with the menswear collection saw Milan-based curator and creative director Alessio Ascari gather several artists at the Spazio Maiocchi to reinterpret the style. These included photographer Charlie Engman, multi-media artist Harry Nuriev and designer Gyuhan Lee, each creating vivid ’rooms’ in a surreal country club playfully titled the ‘Gucci Horsebeat Society‘ (the exhibition will be open to the public from 17-18 June 2023). The collection itself flickered across screens in the space, comprising what the house called its take on a ’classic men’s wardrobe’ spanning louche wide-leg tailoring, oversized embroidered denim and sportier short sets featuring Gucci emblems – from the horsebit (here as a digital print on an oversized shirt) to the house’s signature GG boucle.

Valentino

The invitation for the Valentino show was a special copy of Hanya Yanagihara’s 2015 novel A Little Life, a sprawling exploration of male friendship in New York City. Marking the Roman house’s return to the menswear schedule – recent seasons have seen the house present co-ed offerings – and also to Milan, where Valentino Garavani staged the first Valentino menswear show in 1985, the novel proved an apt counterpoint to a collection that creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli said was an attempt to ‘redefine an identity of men, to re-examine a meaning of masculinity’. Held in the courtyard of Milan’s Università Statale di Milano against a live soundtrack from New York musician D4vd, the poetic offering combined sartorial elegance – much of the collection focused on tailoring, gently oversized or elongated – with romantic flourishes, from blooming floral prints to quotes from Yanagihara’s novel printed on bags and shirts (’we are so old, we have become young again’, was one such slogan). Piccioli also noted a feeling of fragility in the collection, referencing the Japanese concept of ‘kintsugi’ (’golden seams’), which denotes the power of imperfection and repair. ‘A strength can be found in fragility, a power in gentleness, a perfection in imperfection,’ he said via the collection notes, likening it to his desire to reconsider ‘the life of men, the life of their clothes, the reality of masculinity now’.

London Fashion Week A/W 2023 continued the city’s unique amalgam of emerging talent and heritage names – the latter represented in perhaps the most anticipated show of the season so far, ex-Bottega Veneta creative director Daniel Lee’s debut at Burberry (yesterday evening, Monday 20 February). ‘I really would like [people] to see the new vision and feel reassured,’ he revealed earlier this year. ‘Like, “Oh, yeah, this makes sense: This is what Burberry should be.”’

Elsewhere, there was a return to the usual busy schedule, after last season was disrupted by the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the ensuing official mourning period (several shows were cancelled or rescheduled). Among the designers showing were JW Anderson (who swapped last season’s evening slot for 11am on Sunday morning), Conner Ives, Christopher Kane, Simone Rocha, Nensi Dojaka, Molly Goddard, Roksanda, and Julien Macdonald, who returned to the London runway on Sunday evening. Moncler’s blockbuster ‘The Art of Genius’ closed out proceedings with a live show at London’s Olympia on Monday, featuring collaborations with Alicia Keys, Pharrell Williams, Mercedes-Benz (see our preview), Adidas Originals, Roc Nation by Jay-Z and more. 

Here, Wallpaper* rounds up the best of London Fashion Week A/W 2023. 

London Fashion Week A/W 2023: the highlights

Moncler ‘The Art of Genius’

Moncler is known for its vast spectacles, which often involve open-to-the-public happenings; to celebrate its 70th birthday in Milan last year, 1,952 performers (a reference to its founding date) gathered on Duomo square in a meticulously choreographed showing of the outerwear brand’s might. For its latest project, ‘The Art of Genius’, Moncler decamped to London to close out fashion week in spectacular style, taking over the vast central hall of Olympia London with numerous immersive installations created alongside the eclectic cast of collaborators for which the brand’s ‘Genius’ project is known. These included Pharrell Williams, who created a surreal ‘outdoor’ space in the venue inspired by ‘glamping’, Mercedes-Benz, which revealed its collaborative art project-cum-vehicle Project Mondo G, and Adidas Originals, which imagined a ‘vertical LED glacier’ to showcase its clothing collaboration with the brand. Others included Rick Owens, Palm Angels, Salehe Bembury, Roc Nation by Jay-Z, FRGMT, and Alicia Keys, who performed for the thousands of attendees to close the evening. ‘This commitment to new forms of creativity and cross-fertilisation continues to this day,’ said Moncler. ‘What evolves are the spaces where this creativity takes place and expands going beyond boundaries. It is the ability to see and create together what we could never have imagined alone.’

Burberry

‘The winds of change’ – so began a new chapter in the 167-year-old history of Burberry as Yorkshire-born designer Daniel Lee marked his debut collection for the British institution in a specially erected tent in London’s Kennington Park. The expression was printed on a T-shirt mid-way through the blockbuster show, serving as a double entendre – a declaration of out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new, but also a nod towards the roots of the collection in Britain’s famously unpredictable weather. ‘I thought it was funny… change for me, change for the brand, change for the positive thing,’ said the ex-Bottega Veneta creative director post-show, noting that for him, Burberry is built on functionality and a desire to protect its wearer from the elements. As such, the space itself was a reference to tents sold by the brand in the late-19th and early-20th century; on each seat, a Burberry check water bottle was gifted to attendees, while piles of blankets were also stacked around the space (befitting the mood, warming hot toddies were also served). Outerwear, of course, was a focus for the designer; Burberry’s famed trench coat was blown up in size and came with faux fur-trimmed lapels, while deconstructed versions of the car coat, the duffle, and aviator also featured. Blankets featured in the collection, too, slung around the body or riffed on in cocooning overcoats, handkerchief-cut dresses and versions of the house check. 

But there was also a new eclecticism at play – notably in the swathes of colour and print, a marked contrast to forebear Riccardo Tisci’s pared-down palette of beige, white, and black – which the designer credited to being back in London after living in Italy while at Bottega Veneta. One particular print featured a duck, repeated across colourful clashing shirts, trousers and dresses. ‘[They are] very British – they are about London parks, and the rain,’ he said of the bird, which also reappeared as a playful knitted hat. ‘You walk down the street and you’re surrounded by people from so many walks of life, all living together,’ he said of being back in the city, name-checking the anarchic creativity of figures like the late Vivienne Westwood. ‘There is great music here, great theatre, great art. I want to shine a light on those things and show a positive side of Britain to the world. That’s something I missed in recent years and that’s what I’m trying to celebrate.’

Saul Nash

‘When you grow up in London, you wear a lot of ski outerwear, but you never learn to ski… it’s a symbol of aspiration that’s juxtaposed with the realities of inner-city living,’ said young British designer Saul Nash of the starting points of his latest collection, which was titled ‘Juxtaposition’. Known for his sportswear-inspired pieces that adapt to the wearer’s body in movement (Nash is also a dancer and choreographer, and this show featured moments of contemporary dance), the Royal College of Art graduate noted that this collection marked a step forward for the burgeoning label in pursuit of ‘function, hybridity and the elegance of a tailored silhouette’. ‘Now I’m 30, I don’t want to wear a tracksuit for the rest of my life, but I will always want to be in activewear,’ Nash elucidated, noting that the technicalities of skiwear and its links with aspiration and luxury reflected his own desire to refine his offering. As such, a sleek bonded skiwear-inspired jacket – cut with an elegant, narrow silhouette – was combined with the first fly-fronted trousers Nash has designed, while a longer gilet-style jacket (also in bonded technical fabric) was imagined with ‘the presence of a tailored coat’. Following his International Woolmark Prize win in 2022, Nash also continued to experiment in merino (one particular sweater was crafted with panels of ‘aerated ventilation’), while a footwear partnership with Ugg saw him customise a number of the brand’s styles with hardy Vibram soles.

SS Daley

A cameo from legendary British actor Ian McKellan – who read an extract from Alfred Tennyson’s The Coming of Arthur to the gathered attendees – continued Steven-Stokey Daley’s flair for the theatrical in his seasonal presentations (previous shows have seen appearances from the National Youth Theatre, of which the young British designer was once a part). Fresh from winning the 2022 LVMH Prize, Stokey-Daley said that the latest collection began with his listening to concept EP The Ninth Wave by Kate Bush, which revolves around a character being stranded in water (‘They’re absolutely terrified, and they're completely alone at the mercy of their imagination,’ said Bush in a 1992 interview). As such, nautical references abounded – ‘a sailor across time’, as the notes described – in oversized navy pea coats and shirts, berets and fisherman-inspired knits, while tailoring (a focus for the season) was reimagined with a ‘neat sailor’s collar’. The reference to water signalled something of a new chapter for fast-growing brand SS Daley: ‘The pull of the water has led us to a fresh new world, one that’s about the confidence of being who I want to be,’ said Stokey-Daley. 

Nensi Dojaka

The strength of Nensi Dojaka’s casting alone – which included appearances from supermodels Caroline Trentini, Mariacarla Boscono, and Imaan Hammam – signalled that the 2021 LVMH Prize winner remains one of the city’s hottest tickets. For good reason – Dojaka’s sensual, lingerie-inspired designs have a level of accomplishment and craft that sets her above many of her peers (her signature LBDs, with intricate strap fastenings and pleated tulle detailing, continue to stand out despite a proliferation of similar styles appearing on both the runway and high street). Like last season, a single flower was left on each attendee’s chair, a nod towards what Dojaka calls her ‘eternal inspiration’, the flower. As such, delicate red tulle flowers decorated the chest of a bra top, while fronds of tulle at the ankle of trousers ‘unfurled like petals’. A white ‘snowdrop’ dress, meanwhile, proposed a ‘new silhouette for evening wear: a fitted skirt in fine jersey, with further godets of tulle’ and was decorated with Swarovski crystals. Despite the sweetness of the reference, Dojaka’s designs have a severity of cut that avoids the saccharine, while new collection elements – like denim jeans, oversized blazers and an expansive black overcoat – exuded the sensuality and confidence now synonymous with the brand.

Christopher Kane

‘Housewives, cleaners, barmaids,’ said Christopher Kane of the muses for his A/W 2023 collection, which the Scottish designer noted began with memories of his mother, aunt, and neighbours in the 1980s. Shown in an office space close to Angel tube station, Kane riffed on these inspiration points with a typically intoxicating mix of sensuality and subversion: vast ruffles emerged from the waist of a red PVC skirt, the structured panels that rose from the back of dresses and around models’ necks were inspired by ‘chopping boards’, while kitschy prints of chicks, rats and pigs (generated by AI) adorned body-conscious gowns slit to the upper thigh. ‘A modern wardrobe for those who desire clothes that challenge sartorial tastes and standards,’ described the collection notes, referring also to delicate flower motifs – like those you might find on vintage home furnishings – which appeared throughout and  ‘softened hard-line silhouettes’. Such juxtapositions, Kane said, were an attempt to capture the ‘complexities of growing up in a working-class environment’ – a reference to his own upbringing, which continues to prove fertile ground for his work.

Erdem

Staged within a black-curtained studio space at London’s Sadler’s Wells theatre – lit only by a series of bare lightbulbs which lowered as the show began – Erdem Moralioğlu said that this season began with peeling back layers of wallpaper in his Bloomsbury townhouse to discover the ‘echoes of the building’s former residents’ (before the show began, ghostly murmurs and footsteps played in the space). The building’s past lives included ‘A Home of Hope for the Restoration of Fallen Women’ in Victorian times; ‘The women are long since departed, but the imprints and vestiges of their presence remain,’ read the collection notes. Noting inspiration, too, from American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s proto-feminist short story The Yellow Wallpaper – in it, the protagonist muses on fading yellow wallpaper and sees in it a series of hallucinations – the collection’s looks encapsulated a ghostly, faded glamour, their forms appearing from the darkness and tracked with roving spotlights. In the clothing itself, historical silhouettes in various jacquards and prints, recalling those found in 19th-century homes, were reinterpreted with Moralioğlu’s contemporary eye. Notes of subversion emerged in vast taffeta gloves (the appearance was that of a bell sleeve), unravelling hems and shades of bright yellow and citrine, while the designer’s richness of craft emerged in the expansive use of embellishment and embroidery throughout. 

JW Anderson

‘Looking back is not something I do very often, but occasionally it feels necessary as a way to move forward. The past can be a lens that brings the future into focus,’ said Jonathan Anderson of his latest collection for London-based eponymous label JW Anderson. It continued on from a move towards clarity and reduction signalled in his menswear collection earlier this year (‘I think we’re going to head into a season of stripping things back,’ he said at the time). Vast billboards – one the outline of an enormous phallus, another a playful riff on the Coca-Cola logo that read ‘Enjoy God’s Disco’ – populated the centre of the circular show space at Camden’s Roundhouse, comprising old advertisements for performances by subversive Scottish dancer and choreographer Michael Clark. Clark, whose eponymous dance company was celebrated in a recent exhibition ‘Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer’ at London’s Barbican, provided the driving force of the collection: ‘Michael Clark is an incipit. A starter, a white page, the agitator who defied the system, who threw a couple of glittery fingers in the face of the dominating culture and created another,’ said Anderson via the collection notes. ‘As such, he is embedded deep, somewhere, in the foundation of JW Anderson and impels now the urgency of a blank slate.’

References to Clark appeared throughout the collection – the same phallus appeared on a crinkled T-shirt, while ‘Michael Clark’ was written on tank tops or handbags like memorabilia – though beyond the designer’s admitted fan-boy status, Anderson said that looking towards the choreographer’s wider body of work had drawn him to looking back at his own. ‘History and the long term: as perspective, not as a burden,’ the notes continued, elucidating that much of the collection was drawn from Anderson’s own archive: ‘15 years of JW Anderson are condensed here and now, redone and re-seen’. As such, references to previous collections abounded – furry bustiers with front chest pockets, jackets with vast shawl collars and sailor-stripe T-shirts emblazoned with the brand’s anchor logo had all appeared in previous iterations, here distilled with the clarity of mind which comes with the gift of hindsight. It made for a sleek, elevated collection from the designer, complete with the visual bluntness that defined his menswear offerings earlier this year at both the eponymous label and Loewe, where Anderson is creative director. ‘A constant exchange: then and now… Reducing, compressing, condensing… And starting again,’ he concluded. ‘I am curious, orange.’

Simone Rocha

Simone Rocha has often looked towards the traditional festivals and folklore of her native Ireland in her collections; this season, the designer’s typically poetic show notes – comprising a sparse but evocative list of descriptors – referenced inspiration from Lughnasadh, a traditional Gaelic holiday that celebrates the beginning of harvest. ‘Peeling the apple in the mirror to reveal your future love… the blood daubed on children's foreheads for protection from otherworldly beings and bad luck,’ read the notes, seeing Rocha inhabit a space between sweet and subversive in the collection – a juxtaposition which has provided much of the impetus behind her work. The use of raffia recalled the Lughnasadh tradition of weaving hay and wheat into ceremonial shapes – here imagined in intricately braided dresses or handfuls of raffia trapped under tulle to give gowns their shape – while delicate red ribbon, adorning dresses or hanging from beneath the model’s eyes like tears, referenced the festival’s link with blood (the god Lugh was believed to have poured his own onto the fields in order for the harvest to thrive). Other Rocha signatures were revisited this season, whether delicate sequin and crystal embroidery or the expansive, ultra-feminine silhouettes, as was menswear, which debuted last September. ‘There is a crossover of ideas and emotion, and influences of fabrications and silhouettes – they are coming from one place but each is their own individual character that responds and reacts to [the other],’ she recently told Wallpaper* of the addition. 

Roksanda

Roksanda Ilinčić chose the opulent art deco surroundings of the French drawing room in Claridge’s Hotel to host an intimate salon-style presentation of her eponymous A/W 2023 collection (befitting the mood, a single rose was left on each attendee’s seat, tied with a Roksanda-branded ribbon). An ode to ‘art, design and community’ as Ilinčić described, the collection drew inspiration from Japanese visual artist Atsuko Tanaka; in particular, her involvement in the midcentury Gutai movement, which often involved a harmony between the human body and artwork (one of the group’s leading forces Kazuo Shiraga would create paintings with his feet, for example, or roll in mud, rocks, and clay as performance). One particular work which Ilinčić looked towards was Tanaka’s ‘Electric Dress’, comprising hanging cylindrical lightbulbs in various bold colours in a structure that could be worn, here recalled in expansive jewel-toned gowns which took their sculptural forms from twisting foam loops. ‘The unexpected forms and notions of the collection invite a deeper connection between the creation of the body and craft, beauty and technology,’ said the designer, who described the collection as one of ‘unapologetic femininity’. 

Molly Goddard

Molly Goddard opened up her studio in east London’s Bethnal Green for a close-knit presentation of her A/W 2023 collection, which the designer said was an attempt to capture the feelings she had when starting her brand in 2012. ‘It was a time when working in fashion, to me, involved making clothes on my own and trying to get stockists,’ she elucidated. ‘Now, working in fashion involves many things I wasn’t expecting – events, award ceremonies, promotion, social media – it was nice to think about the simplicity of when I started and the passion that spurred on the work at the beginning.’ As such, Goddard had scoured old magazines with her sister and stylist Alice Goddard at the Central Saint Martins library, remembering how they would have worn the pieces she coveted at the time, and the clothing they had owned as teenagers growing up in London. ‘Leopard-print jeans we’d bought at Gap Kids in Whiteleys [shopping centre], screen-print sporty knitwear from Portobello [market], an exposed popper belt we shared from Claire’s Accessories,’ all of which appeared in various iterations throughout the collection, albeit in Goddard’s vivid style. A streamlining of her signature expansive silhouette (the designer is known for using yards of tulle in a single dress), made for some of the collection’s most arresting moments, including a cerise-pink dress with knife-sharp slits, out of which delicate panels of red tulle emerged. 

Conner Ives

Conner Ives wants to make people fall in love with fashion again, the designer told Wallpaper* in the run-up to his A/W 2023 collection, noting particular inspiration this season from the 1999 Paul Thomas Anderson movie Magnolia.  ‘What I love about that movie is that it really depicts incredible facets of humanity... I think working with the idea of a cast of archetypes that represent different ideas is the Conner Ives niche that I don't want to lose,’ he told Hannah Tindle. As such, the collection itself – shown in London’s Old Selfridges Hotel – saw Ives imagine an array of archetypal figures, conjured on the runway in the New York-born, London-based designer’s playful, 1990s and 2000s-tinged style (he is also known for a commitment to sustainability, with around 70 per cent of this season’s collection made from repurposed second-hand vintage). There was ‘The Glasto Girl’ (an ode to Kate Moss’ mud-stained 2000s looks at the festival), ‘The Shiny Set: Nan Kempner’ (referencing Nicholas Coleridge’s description of the shiny set in his book The Fashion Conspiracy), and ‘The Showgirl, Nomi Malone’ (‘it’s not Versayce, it’s Conner Ives!’ read the collection notes). It made for an emphatic offering from the young designer, whose irreverent approach feels like it’s capturing the zeitgeist. ‘Fashion nowadays feels more like a business, it’s no longer the escape it once was,’ Ives said. ‘It moved me to pursue a certain gravitas this season. I wanted to feel [what I felt as a teenager], I wanted fashion mania.’

Fashion East

Michael Stewart’s Standing Ground provided the opening act of this season’s Fashion East with an impeccably crafted collection that evolved his signature sculptural evening wear, which debuted last season at the talent incubator. A focus on silhouette and form remained at the heart of the offering – ‘histories of figuration, whether ancient or ancestral, are abstracted and animated in work that fortifies presence’, read the collection notes – whereby vivid tones of velvet and satin were crafted into elongated gowns, often with twisting padded detailing around the waist. The introduction of a series of Donegal wool overcoats, wide at the hips, showed Stewart is adding new depth to his offering, while tops, skirts and jumpsuits were also introduced this season. The way that the Irish designer weaves his expansive view of history – inspiration, he said, might come from Paleolithic figurines or silhouettes from the 1500s or 1950s – into these distinctly contemporary pieces, shows maturity and purpose. He’s one to watch.

Elsewhere, this season marked the debut of Estonia-born designer Johanna Parv, who was nominated for the 2023 LVMH Prize last week. A focus on sportswear provided the impetus for the collection, which combined moments of utility – drawstrings, stirrup leggings, cyclewear-inspired second-skin tops – with crisp, defined silhouettes and moments of femininity (the designer says her approach is a riposte to traditional sportswear design which was largely evolved on men’s bodies). Karoline Vitto, meanwhile, continued her own sensual exploration of the female form with garments that hung seductively on the body, often with sculptural metal fastenings evocative of contemporary jewellery. This season, the introduction of tailoring – albeit in the designer’s distinct asymmetric style – added new depth to her oeuvre. 

Harris Reed

The transformative power of dressing – a continuing theme of American designer Harris Reed’s work – provided the starting point of his A/W 2023 collection, as elucidated by actress Florence Pugh in a monologue that opened the show at London’s Tate Modern. ‘Clothing has a transformative power, whether for an actor, or simply a performer on the stage of life... the art of dressing up allows us to express who we truly are,’ she said, introducing a collection titled ’All the World’s a Stage’. Typically dramatic silhouettes – including vast orb-shaped millinery, pannier-style swathes of fabric at the waist, and an ‘upside down’ fishtail skirt – defined the theatrical collection, this season gilded in shimmering gold sequins and metallic lamé with rich black velvet providing a sleek contrast. 

AV Vattev

Bulgaria-born designer Antonio Vattev – who founded the eponymous London-based label Av Vattev after stints at Saint Laurent and Lanvin – titled his A/W 2023 collection ‘The Privilege of Observation’. It referred, in part, to the idea that Vattev was looking outwards this season, drawing inspiration from his longtime admiration of artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Christo. ‘[It] is a reflection of Antonio’s vision and lifestyle that goes with it,’ read the collection notes, which accompanied a campaign starring several high-profile fans of Vattev’s work, from British artist duo Corbin Shaw and Flora Miles to Grammy Award-winning musician Scribz Riley. The clothing itself recalled the visual immediacy of O’Keeffe and Christo’s work, here figured in graphic silhouettes and colourful undulating motifs which stretched across the shoulder of a garment like an O’Keeffe petal (Christo was referenced in pleated nylon raincoats, which recalled his dramatic wrapped forms). Cut-outs, something of a Vattev signature, also featured, as did a nod to his Bulgarian roots with traditional embroidery from the country reappearing throughout.

Stay tuned for more from London Fashion Week A/W 2023.

The menswear season continues with Milan Fashion Week Mens A/W 2023, heralding an eclectic schedule which spans both the city’s stalwarts – Prada, Giorgio Armani, Fendi among them – and a small but energetic contingent of young designers providing a fresh take on Italian style. The week opens with the introduction of a fresh chapter at Gucci, following the departure of creative director Alessandro Michele last November, continuing across the weekend with JW Anderson’s sophomore Milanese outing, Marco de Vincenzo’s debut menswear collection for Etro, and an array of presentations and events taking place across the city. 

Here is the best of Milan Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2023, as it happens.

The best of Milan Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2023

Zegna

Alessandro Sartori looked towards the roots of Zegna with a collection titled ‘The Oasi of Cashmere’ in reference to both the Oasi Zegna nature park in Piedmont, Italy, where the brand’s first wool mill was opened in the early 20th century, and Oasi Cashmere, a fully traceable line of cashmere products which signal the company’s wider sustainability goals (each comes with a QR code to see the garment’s entire journey from natural fibre to finished product). ‘At Zegna I have the unprecedented opportunity to create fabrics from weaving through to finishing, challenging our manufacturers, pushing them to explore uncharted waters,’ he said, noting the collection was a celebration of Zegna’s unparalleled Italian craftsmanship. ‘[It] allows me to mould our silhouettes right from the matter, making sure that our commitment to innovation and excellence is rooted in every step of the process. The result is an all-encompassing language that is truly progressive.’ The collection itself was one of ‘soft precision’, exploring the idea of leaving space between body and garment – here figured in the gently oversized silhouette of minimal blazers, blousons, or cocooning sweaters with intricate bouclé or frisé jacquard textures.

Giorgio Armani

Accompanied by a soaring soundtrack composed by Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi, Giorgio Armani’s latest collection – shown at the house’s headquarters – drew inspiration from traditional Milanese architecture. In particular, the atriums and courtyards of the city’s palazzos – ‘atriums that hide gardens, spaces designed with discreet geometry in white and coloured marble’. As such, the colour and texture of marble was echoed in a rich array of fabrications – cashmere, alpaca, velvet and silk among them – many of which featured designs evocative of zig-zagging floor or wall tiles. Diaphanous silhouettes and softly structured tailoring in rock-like shades of grey and beige, meanwhile, recalled Milanese statuary. ‘A nod to the age of elegance, that, while partially forgotten, echoes in the elegant spirit of this city,’ said the house. 

JW Anderson

Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore show in Milan – having shifted his menswear to the city this past June – began with an underwear-clad model carrying a roll of fabric. ‘Clothing stripped down to where it all starts,’ read the collection notes, which spoke of Anderson’s desire to return to a ‘blank slate’, ‘reducing, compressing, and condensing, with a certain crudeness and definite blankness’. It lent the collection a visual starkness; in several of the looks models would wear just a single garment, like a fuzzy sweater or a pair of pants, and nothing else (‘no fuss, no extra, no more… everything is what it is, and that’s it’). ‘I think we’re going to head into a season of reduction and stripping things back,’ the designer noted backstage, an observation which was echoed by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons who had a similarly reductionist approach to their Prada menswear show earlier in the day. As such, several of the garments worked from archetypes: a duffle coat (here fastened with BDSM-like buckles), a trench (left raw at the edges), or a pair of shorts (frilled at the hem, reminiscent of those shown in his breakout A/W 2013 collection). If it was a diversion from the surrealism of his recent collections, moments of satisfying strangeness remained, whether a single pillow held to the chest or the frog-shaped footwear, created in collaboration with children’s shoe producer Wellipets. Anderson noted that he had wanted to work with them for several seasons; prior to the show they appeared in a number of teaser images on the designer’s Instagram. ‘There’s something about them that reminds me of my childhood, they were such a thing to have,’ he said. ‘It’s the only surreal moment in the collection; they’re almost like a cassette player – an icon of design.’

Etro

Rolls of the colourful patterned fabrics synonymous with Etro were stacked around the runway for Marco de Vincenzo’s debut menswear show for the house, noting that the collection began with his own cherished memories of fabric – like a jacquard velvet blanket he loved as a child. ‘The Etro house and Marco’s household overlap and mingle, and a broad sense of domesticity comes through,’ said the collection notes. As such, there was a feeling of the homespun to the collection – crotchet fruits on fuzzy jumpers, blouson-style jackets cut from upholstery fabrics, and pieces made from soft teddy – while colourful patterned linings spoke of private pleasures. ‘The idea of merging the public and the private, the homely and the social,’ De Vincenzo said of the collection, which marked a charming start to the Italian designer’s menswear tenure at the house. 

Prada

In recent seasons, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons have been drawn to simplicity, looking back to the ‘fundamentals of fashion’, stripping garments of complication and translating archetypal forms for the realities of living today. Those explorations continued this season with a collection titled ‘Let's Talk About Clothes’, which sought to oppose a feeling of ‘reduction and simplicity’ with moments of softness – ‘comfort, exaggeration and intimacy’. 

This juxtaposition was reflected in the Fondazione Prada’s Deposito show space, which was transformed into a low-ceilinged, bunker-like space, the only marks of decoration being hazard-orange columns that ran up the outer walls. As the show began – opening with a stream of minimal, single-breasted tailoring from which colourful pointed collars emerged – the ceiling slowly rose, revealing vast art deco chandeliers at full height. It seemed to speak of an opposition between minimalism and decoration, but also volume – how one shape can become another, ‘that proportion can transform perception’, as the notes described. 

As such, the narrow tailoring gave way to more expansive silhouettes, their forms signifying protection and comfort – whether an optic white protective vest, a bulbous take on the bomber jacket (stripped of ornamentation and hardware), or a padded top evocative of the cushions which the house sent as invitations. Miuccia Prada said these pieces were a response to the realities of living today: ‘It is a complicated moment in the world – and we react to it,’ she said. ‘The most honest thing we can do is to create something useful for people today – to face reality in, and frame the idea of our reality through clothes. We want to create fashion with a significance and a meaning – that is the value of fashion today.’

Simons added that this collection was also about the ‘DNA of Prada… clothes embedded with fragments of an identity we can recognise as fundamentally Prada.’ Indeed, those familiar with the house’s archive could pick out traces of previous collections from the house in its details – making something of a return to Prada’s foundations. ‘These are unmistakable and significant gestures,’ Simons continued, ‘towards the heritage and history of the brand, and to the meaning of Prada now.’ 

Fendi

An enormous helter-skelter hovered over the Fendi show space; as the show began, metallic Fendi-branded orbs rolled their way along its course, gliding over the audience’s heads. The Italian house said it was designed to evoke pinball machines found in roller discos, a mood reflected in the collection’s Studio 54-tinged sensibility – pieces were imbued with a languid glamour which Fendi called ‘subverted classicism’ – and the shimmering soundtrack by legendary Italian producer Giorgio Moroder, which crescendoed with Donna Summer’s I Feel Love over the finale. ‘Expressions of shimmer and shine’ added to the collection’s after-dark mood, from scatterings of sequins to delicate metallic appliqué en tremblant, while shawl-like elements across tailoring and outerwear cocooned the body in glamorous style. 

Dolce & Gabbana

Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce’s latest collection was a swerve away from the maximalism of recent menswear seasons with a rigorous – and impeccably tailored – collection in shades of black, grey and white. Much like their womenswear collection shown this past September (see highlights of Milan Fashion Week S/S 2023), the designers expressed a desire to get back to the house’s codes, Dolce & Gabbana’s ‘essence’ – here arriving in sensual tailoring, much of it double-breasted and lightly cinched at the waist, corsetry-inspired cummerbunds, and moments of sheerness and exposure in a celebration of the body. Despite the clarity of the silhouette, flourishes of glamour and embellishment remained, from delicate beaded and crystal flowers to swathes of sequins – a demonstration of Dolce & Gabbana’s feats of Italian construction and craft. 

Emporio Armani

Giorgio Armani titled his latest Emporio Armani show ‘A View From Above’, the newly in-the-round show space at the Armani Teatro decorated with a map of Milan which stretched across the floor. Befitting the scene, the opening looks recalled vintage 1930s aviation wear – leather pilot hats, goggle-like sunglasses, flight jackets, heavy boots – as if the models were circling the city from the air (via the collection notes, the designer said that ‘flight, represented by the eagle, is part of the Emporio Armani spirit: a sense of adventure and boundless taste for exploration’). Elsewhere in the expansive collection, a focus on contemporary tailoring – the closing gamut of eveningwear looks in black, some shimmering with sequins, were a masterful showcase Mr Armani’s fluidity of cut – while sportswear inspirations remained central in crisp quilted bombers, voluminous technical trousers and enveloping EA7 parkas. 

MSGM

The invitation for Massimo Giorgetti’s A/W 2023 menswear collection for MSGM was the enrolment letter for an architectural degree at the fancifully named ‘Dreamers University, School of Art, Fashion, Music and Happiness’. Taking place in the Brutalist concrete basement of real-life university Politecnico di Milano, Giorgetti looked towards the dress codes of American campus style – he noted inspiration from 1989 movie Dead Poets Society, set in a Vermont prep school – melding collegiate motifs (‘Cheer’ emblazoned sweaters, baseball-style cardigans, hoodies and varsity jackets) with preppy tailoring, shrunken sweater vests and ties set askew. An element of teenage rebellion came in black berets – historically associated with student protest movements – and a blaring soundtrack by 1980s Italian punk band CCCP, known for its anti-establishment stance.

DSquared2

Dean and Dan Caten said that they were ‘looking back to look forward’ with an unapologetic A/W 2023 collection which found its nexus in their first-ever runway show which took place in 2003. In it, Naomi Campbell – brandishing two shopping bags – memorably sprinted towards the steps of a grounded Boeing jet (in heels), before turning and striding down the runway. It has since become one of fashion’s most re-shared clips, an example of the Caten brothers’ brand of joyfully unrestrained camp.

Yesterday evening’s show began in a teenage boy’s bedroom – complete with rumpled bed sheets and walls tacked with posters – for an exploration of the rebellious dress codes of youthful archetypes: ‘the geek, the jock, the goth, the emo and the femme’.  ‘The freedom to be who you want to be,’ said the twins of remaking these stereotypes, playfully amalgamating distinct elements of Y2K dress – trucker caps, low-slung torn jeans, tops sliced away to reveal the naval – with irreverent slogans, ‘Choke’, ‘24-7 Star’, ‘Recycled Teenager’, and ‘Livin’ Doll’ emblazoned throughout. Models, including an array of TikTok stars and social-media personalities, walked the runway with Campbell-inspired panache – ‘full Dsquared2 energy’, as the notes described.

1017 Alyx 9SM 

Matthew M Williams looked towards American artist Mark Flood – known for punk-inspired pastiches of American culture and the contemporary art world – for his A/W 2023 1017 Alyx 9SM collection, with a retrospective of Flood’s work at Milan’s Spazio Maiocchi gallery providing the show’s backdrop. Flood’s slogans and works also appeared throughout the collection in a series of collaborative pieces – some motifs were created for the show, others existing – which added a visual richness to Williams‘ severe brand of minimalism. The influence of technical sportswear remained strong, with Alyx-emblazoned running gear worn over jeans or tailored trousers, while a streak of rebellion came in flourishes of studs and thorn-like spikes, appearing on the knee of a leather trouser, on the toe of a boot, or around the neckline of an otherwise unembellished floor-length halter dress.

Gucci

Anticipation was high for Gucci’s A/W 2023 collection, which marked the first since the departure of creative director Alessandro Michele in November 2022. Presented in the round – in the centre, American noise-rock trio Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog provided the live soundtrack – the house said the collection centred on the idea of ‘improvisation as methodology’, an apt metaphor for an in-house team, sans creative leadership, attempting to define a new chapter of the historic house in mere months. Initially, the collection felt something of a return to Michele’s earliest collections at the house – hinted by the reappearance of the fur-lined backless loafer, one of the designer’s first cult pieces – with languid tailoring, oversized overcoats, and romantic oversized silk shirts, delicately ruffled at the collar and cuffs. As the collection went on, these ideas evolved in new directions – a nod, the house said, to the ‘multi-faceted creatives and craftsmen that make up the house of Gucci’ – which spanned nods to Tom Ford’s Gucci tenure (denim jeans tied with stacks of silk scarfs, T-shirts slashed to the naval, crystal-studded denim) to colourful oversized boiler suits and Motocross pants, to dancewear-inspired leg warms, ribbed-knit trousers and wide boat-neck sweaters. The suggestion was a more discreet vision of luxury for the house, though what comes next is anybody’s guess – Michele, of course, was picked from the in-house team. Perhaps the next creative director of house is already waiting in the wings. 

Stay tuned for more from Milan Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2023.

London Fashion Week S/S 2023 is a season like no other. Arriving in a period of national mourning after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, designers have had to grapple with the unique challenges of presenting their collections against an unprecedented moment in modern British history. As such, the British Fashion Council cancelled and postponed all events outside of the core number of runway shows and presentations – parties, launches, and the like – while attempting to reschedule those designers set to show on Monday, which was a day of pause in light of the Queen’s funeral and coinciding public holiday. 

Nonetheless, the show has gone on, with designers citing the Queen’s own steadfast resolve as inspiration for a celebration of London’s diversity of creative talent (particularly those emerging into the spotlight as brands and businesses). Indeed, the Queen attended London Fashion Week in 2018, presenting Richard Quinn with the inaugural Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design, which has been presented to rising fashion talent in the time since. 

Here, in an ongoing report, Wallpaper* reports from a historical London Fashion Week, as it happens. 

The best of London Fashion Week S/S 2023

Sunday 19 September

Christopher Kane

Christopher Kane’s S/S 2023 collection was held in the vast circular hall of Camden’s Roundhouse, marking the designer’s much-awaited return to the London Fashion Week runway. If not a greatest hits, exactly, Kane was certainly revisiting old fixations – swathes of wipe-clean clear plastic encased dresses, sharply sliced panels of lace, dizzy floral prints and shimmering crystals all provided reminiscences of the designer’s previous work. This season, Kane refracted these through an exploration of the body – not just the exterior, but its interior, too, laying illustrations of body parts sliced in half (the muscle and bone of a leg, for example) across slip and sheath dresses, or crafting bustier tops in clear plastic which recalled the shape of the rib cage. It resulted in a collection both unsettling and seductive, ‘a celebration of the beauty and complexity of the human body’, made to ‘empower and thrill’. 

Erdem

There was undeniable emotional weight to Erdem Moralioglu’s latest collection, which was presented on the eve of the Queen’s funeral on the covered colonnade that runs along the British Museum’s grand exterior. ‘Grief is the price we pay for love’, began the collection’s notes, a quote from the late monarch on the interplay of mourning and memory. Aptly, the show began with a model in a delicate black veil and black suit beneath, intricately embroidered with flowers, a motif that continued throughout. Moralioglu said the collection was about the restoration of art – another form of remembrance – intrigued by the ‘forensic passion’ of such work, which he noted could take up to 20 years to complete for just a single piece of artwork (he observed the process himself, behind the scenes at the British Museum, Tate, the V&A and the National Gallery). Here, that intricacy figured in the rich embroidery, embellishment and etched prints that spanned the collection, while silhouettes lingered between past and present – like masterpieces restored, memories observed in new light. 

Simone Rocha

Though men have been adopting various pieces from Simone Rocha’s womenswear collections into their own wardrobes since the brand’s inception, S/S 2023 saw the introduction of menswear proper, a departure for the label that had been announced earlier in the week. Presented in the grand surrounds of London’s Old Bailey, the city’s Central Criminal Court, these menswear looks – centring on riffs on the bomber jacket and parachute-strap fastenings – arrived as part of wider collection that the designer said was about ‘harnesssing a feeling’, an exploration ‘fragility, remorse, anger and nature’. The relative toughness of the menswear pieces infiltrated the women’s collection too, with vast bomber jackets worn beneath bouncing tulle veils, harness straps across romantic frilled dresses and skirts, and pailette flowers reimagined in mourner’s black. It spoke to the Irish designer’s unique command of juxtaposition – between fragility and strength, romance and melancholy – for a collection which captured a feeling of barely restrained emotion. As Rocha herself took to the runway for her finale bow, she held back tears. 

Rejina Pyo

South Korean designer Rejina Pyo is attuned to spaces that make for a memorable fashion show – on one previous occasion, models walked poolside at Zaha Hadid’s monumental London Aquatics Centre (replete with Olympic divers in action). This season, it was to new heights as Pyo held her S/S 2023 show on the 28th floor of Hylo, a recently opened east London skyscraper. The building’s corporate air – and magnificent views of the city beyond – set the stage for a collection that the designer said was about ‘love and work’ (originally derived from a quote by Leo Tolstoy, ‘one can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love’). In practice, this meant a continuation of Pyo’s broad approach, catering to the various necessities and whims of a contemporary woman’s wardrobe – from outsized tailoring and elegant trench coats to deconstructed denim, diaphanous strappy dresses, and whimsical macramé accessories, which lent the collection a feeling of human touch and craft. 

Nensi Dojaka

2021 LVMH Prize winner Nensi Dojaka continued her ascent this season with an evolved collection which riffed on the label’s hallmarks – delicate straps, lingerie-inspired elements, intricate hosiery – while expanding in fresh directions. The mood was defiantly sensual (no easy feat at 10am on a Sunday morning), with the designer noting that the collection had begun with a gifted book of Jean-Paul Goude photographs, as well as her ‘eternal inspiration’, the flower. Such reference points suggested a juxtaposition between boldness and romance, notable in the new fabrics for the season, from lace, which delicately trimmed signature graphic black mini dresses, to an array of fluid, sheer and metallic fabrics (one particular silver slip dress appeared molten in movement). Two-tone denim was also introduced for S/S 2023, while a series of blazers – broad-shouldered, cinched at the waist, with in-set lingerie – was perhaps the most convincing tailoring proposition from the Albanian designer yet. The show ended with three contemporary ball gowns in sheer fabric  – one adorned with iridescent paillettes that shimmered like scales – no doubt set to win Dojaka a legion of new high-profile fans, like American model and author Emily Ratajkowski, who closed the show.

Saturday 18 September

JW Anderson

Recent seasons have seen designer Jonathan Anderson –  at both his eponymous label and as creative director of Loewe – consider the way in which we have become one with our digital devices, and how that has shifted our perception of the world. In the various collections, this has resulted in increasingly surreal moments, whereby what Anderson calls ‘high-definition’ silhouettes meet an assemblage of objects, often fused onto the garment in unexpected ways (this might be motorcycle handlebars or a Perspex balloon; the result is something akin to scrolling a social media feed while momentarily glancing between the phone and the real world beyond). 

With the show held in a gaming arcade and casino in Soho next door to the label’s London store, Anderson once again considered this notion of alternative reality (the giddy neon arcade screens and perpetual twilight of the setting proved apt). ‘Are we falling into our screens, becoming our phones?’ Anderson considered after the show, noting the ‘layers and layers’ of the ways we interact with technology every day. It gave the collection a down-the-rabbit-hole effect: palm tree and dolphin prints were derived from stock images akin the those found on screensavers, garments were dotted with computer keys, dresses took on the appearance of giant bags of goldfish, like those won at a funfair (indeed, Anderson noted that ‘size matters’, with a play of proportion explored throughout – all the way down to a tiny version of his ‘Bumper’ bag). A giant shiny silver orb, fashioned as a dress, was perhaps the collection’s nexus – as the gathered audience held up their phones to capture the moment, our disembodied faces were reflected back at us, warped. What better metaphor for the endless scroll of social media than that? 

SS Daley

Steven Stokey-Daley held his latest show amid a constructed English country garden in the St Pancras Renaissance hotel, a setting which would become a stage for a short theatrical performance at the end of the presentation, whereby actors read lines from the correspondences of Vita Sackville-West and Violet Trefusis sent in the early 20th century. Stokey-Daley said he drew inspiration from the women’s loving relationship – which caused scandal at the time – for a collection that once again saw the designer explore gender and sexuality against the backdrop of the British class system (both Sackville-West and Trefusis were part of the Bloomsbury Group, a primarily aristocratic artistic and intellectual movement). ‘In their letters, there’s a sketch of Vita and Violet arm-in-arm, walking around the south of France. They’re all in black, Vita in a tuxedo, and it’s this moment of connection when the tone of their letters is increasingly sad, when they cannot be with one another,’ the designer said. ‘The emotion of that moment fills this whole collection.’ As such, Stokey-Daley’s clothing riffed on hallmarks of British dress (at times swapped across genders), while motifs inspired by the garden, a particular fascination of Sackville-West, who alongside artistic endeavours wrote a column on gardening for The Observer, ran throughout. 

Molly Goddard

Staged in the bright main hall of Marylebone’s Seymour Leisure Centre, Molly Goddard’s colourful outing for S/S 2023 continued to expand and refine her vision for the eponymous label. A mood of Americana lingered over the first half of the collection in riffs on the T-shirt (one elongated T-shirt dress included the designer’s signature ruffles rendered in jersey), 1950s polka dots, printed denim and kitschy wallpaper motifs, as well as the footwear, a series of high-colour cowboy boots and matching pointed pumps. But it was the kaleidoscopic palette that proved the collection’s energising force: neon pinks, greens and yellows met shades of red, purple, and navy in a brilliant mash-up of colour and print. ‘I wanted the staging of the show to feel like a break from relentless scrolling,’ Goddard said of the collection, which also included a series of menswear and bridal looks. ‘The experience of watching in person is different to seeing it online – slower, messier, more spacious.’

Friday 17 September

Chopova Lowena

There was an undeniable buzz surrounding Chopova Lowena’s debut runway show – their collections have previously been presented in lookbooks or one-off printed publications – in part down to the number of people throughout the day who could be spotted wearing the duo’s distinct looks (notably, the colourful pleated kilts with thick leather waistbands that have now become synonymous with the brand). Shown at Bayswater’s Porchester Hall and modelled by a communal gathering of friends and peers, the collection saw Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena-Irons look once again towards the former’s Bulgarian roots; it collided the spectacle of summer Rose Queen festivals in the country’s central Rose Valley with sporty lacrosse wear (since the brand’s inception, such juxtapositions between centuries-old costume and craft and colourful 1980s sportswear have been a bedrock of the pair’s work). Chopova and Lowena-Irons noted that they wanted to encapsulate the sport’s feeling of ‘aggression’ – the soundtrack was overlaid with the virile shouts of lacrosse players who had been mic’d up on the practice field – emerging in a feeling of teenage rebellion that ran throughout in profusions of chains and charms, scrawled illustrations, chunky footwear and the label’s already signature tough leather belts, carabiner fastenings and pleated minis. A contrasting sweetness – nodding to the tradition of the Rose Queen – emerged in ruched rose motifs that bloomed from the back of jackets and dresses, bow fastenings and macramé jewellery. ‘Loveliness extreme’, read an extract from Gertrude Stein’s 1913 poem ‘Sacred Emily’ on the accompanying press release, an apt description for the compelling contradictions at the heart of Chopova Lowena, a brand that has cemented itself at the vanguard of emerging British design. 

Fashion East

This season, Fashion East began with a serene presentation by Irish designer Michael Stewart, whose label Standing Ground showed its inaugural collection as part of the talent incubator. Comprising a series of striking column gowns sensitively draped on the models’ bodies – some wrapped with padded twists of fabric, or adorned with looping elements of metalwork – the collection mined the monolithic motifs of ancient cultures, from Ireland’s Newgrange, a prehistoric tomb, to Ur, a city-state in Mesopotamia (for example, the designer noted that padded waistbands evoked the ‘ringed recesses’ of ancient burial grounds, while other shapes were drawn from neolithic carvings). Rendered with an impeccable eye for proportion and form, it was a convincing – and polished – opening act from the designer, who graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2017. 

Jamaica-born Jawara Alleyne – the only returning designer this season – playfully noted that his S/S 2023 collection began with imagining ‘a modern-day yacht crashing into a pirate ship’ (the figure of the pirate has been a fixation for the designer throughout his career so far). Jersey dresses hung from the body, fastened with safety pins, sheer billowing shirts were worn over torn singlets, and tailored jackets were sliced away at the sleeves. He called it ‘The New World’, noting he wanted to explore the way in which Caribbean history is often only taught from the arrival of European voyagers in the 15th century. ‘It got me thinking about what “The New World” means to me,’ he said. ‘How do you build an identity when fragments of yourself have been told to you in ways you have to decipher?’

Karoline Vitto is an alumnus of Central Saint Martins who originally comes from Brazil (‘Summer in January’, the title of the collection, was a nod to her home country). Vitto’s work is defined by the creation of garments for a gamut of body types that are usually underrepresented in fashion, born from the freedom she found in moving to London to pursue fashion after feeling ‘hyperconscious’ of revealing her body growing up on the beaches of Brazil. Here, this liberated approach was explored in a series of jersey garments that twisted and looped around the body, delighting in – as the notes described – ‘the bulge of an armpit, a squish of hip fat, or the curve of a back roll’. Presented on a group of models who ranged from a size ten to size 20, it forms part of a growing movement to expand the historically narrow confines of designer fashion.

Thursday 15 SeptemberHarris Reed

Harris Reed

Central Saint Martins alumnus Harris Reed – who has risen to swift fame with endorsement from a slew of celebrity fans, most notably Harry Styles – is not a designer to shy away from spectacle. For his first official runway show on Thursday evening, guests gathered at London’s Dutch Hall, a renovated church in the city of London, for an intimate (but no less theatrical) presentation soundtracked by a live performance from current Queen frontman Adam Lambert. Inspired by the feminine pomp of a debutante ball, models slowly moved through the space in the collection’s 12 looks, which riffed on tropes of corsetry, crinolines and embellishment, albeit imagined through his liberated lens (the designer calls himself a ‘fluid’ designer, with clothing that traverses and defies gender binaries). Proportions here were blown up in a playful manner – models peered through giant taffeta circles of fabric, while Reed’s typically outré millinery, made in collaboration with Vivienne Lake, levitated above model’s heads – though it was a relatively simple ballerina-inspired bridal gown that was perhaps the collection’s most polished look. Reed called the collection an ode to ‘collective effort, community and collaboration’, presented with a typically dramatic flourish – an assertion, the designer noted in an Instagram post shared before the event, that for London’s young designers the show must go on. 

Daniel W Fletcher

As one of the several designers whose shows were cancelled on Monday in light of the public holiday for the Queen’s funeral, Daniel W Fletcher found himself as London Fashion Week’s opening act – a somewhat tricky proposition, with little opportunity to sense-check the way the week’s other participants would respond to the unexpected backdrop. Fletcher chose a respectful tone, beginning proceedings with a minute’s silence, before an opening all-black look replete with mourning armband (his collection notes called this addition ‘a solemn tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’ and he noted afterwards his recognition of the importance of allowing for a moment of national grief). What followed was a more expansive exploration of British ceremonial garb, in what he called a ‘love letter to London’, from riffs on the military parade jacket – here reimagined in clean white and black, with minimal embellishment – to Prince of Wales checks, kilts, corsets and rowing blazers. The designer said he imagined these pieces at the intersection of heritage and rebellion, noting how such garments had been adopted and subverted by countercultural movements from Swinging London to punk (of the latter, delicate studs were dotted throughout, including across his first official womenswear looks). Funnelled through an increasingly refined aesthetic – indeed, Fletcher revisited and perfected pieces from earlier in his still-young career – it was a confident, considered outing that stood up to a challenging task. 

Stay tuned for more Wallpaper* coverage from London Fashion Week S/S 2023

Jonathan Anderson is known for an unrestrained, and often unexpected, use of colour – whether shaggy shearlings in electric shades of blue and green (their colour achieved using boxes of hair-dye) or a broad array of saturated prints, from bright red strawberries to yellow-haired rugby players. His latest collaboration with Moncler – under eponymous label JW Anderson – arrives this week, providing perhaps his most vivid exploration of colour yet. 

JW Anderson unites with Moncler Genius on kaleidoscopic collection

The capsule – aptly titled ‘Dream in Colour’ – marks the designer’s third collaboration with Moncler Genius, this season looking towards the brightly coloured outfits worn by rock climbers (the designer has his own memories of the pursuit, on school trips to the south of France). Made to ‘entertain the eye’ as the notes describe, it is defined by its bold palette – electric blue, coral, green, yellow – rendered here in fabrications which soften the intensity of the hues, from washed and overdyed denim and cotton to fuzzy brushed yarns, bouclé knits and superlight nylons.

Like much of Anderson’s work at his own label, quotidian garments are gently subverted in size and shape – whether puffed-up padded shorts and skirts, leather-strapped parka jackets, or giant hoodies and teddy fleeces (silhouettes are ‘played-down buy playful’, say Moncler). Prints compound the collection’s dreamy, almost childlike vision, with hazy sprayed spots, ‘coiling’ waves and a glowing iteration of the Moncler + JW Anderson logo adorning the capsule’s various pieces. A series of ‘supersized’ accessories complete the look.

The collection is captured in a series of images by American photographer Tyler Mitchell, a longtime collaborator of Anderson. Trippy cut-outs of antiquity statues – an eye, a torso, a Romanesque head, themselves in day-glo shades – backdrop the collection, photographed at Italy’s La Foce estate. ‘Direct, yet twisted, familiar and obscure, straightforward and surprising,’ says Moncler.

INFORMATION

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jwanderson.com

When it came to the A/W 2022 menswear season in Milan, aficionados at home – and those watching IRL in the Italian city – had a sweep of style heroes to choose from. At Prada, a host of actors emerged from a futuristic illuminated tunnel at its Fondazione Prada Deposito space, including Twin Peaks’ Kyle MacLachlan, dinosaur-digging (and previously unofficial Prada mascot) Jeff Goldblum, Moonlight’s Ashton Sanders and Sex Education’s Otis Butterfield. Meanwhile, at Dolce & Gabbana, the label appealed to Gen-Z fans, with a performance from a sequin suit-clad Machine Gun Kelly. 

While the A/W 2022 season has been beleagured by the threat of Omicron and rising infection rates in Europe, a host of behemoth and burgeoning brands presented both physical and online shows from the Italian capital. DSquared2 celebrated its in-person return after a Covid-19 induced hiatus, and Prada presented its first physical menswear show under the co-creative directorship of Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons. Ermenegildo Zegna and MSGM favoured a digital presentation, as did JW Anderson, the British brand which had originally been scheduled to present its first physical fashion show in Milan - this will now take place in June 2022. 

6 key takeaways from Milan Fashion Week men’s A/W 2022

Classicism is back on the menswear menu

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, designers have postulated on the future of the menswear cannon, considering the relevance of tailoring and the staying power of relaxed silhouettes. At Prada, the Milanese label turned this concept on its head, shirking seemingly endless conversations around comfort and loungewear, in favour of a wardrobe firmly rooted in work. ‘The language of sartorial tailoring, a formality which confers an importance,' read the brand's press release, of a collection which welded the executive with the utilitarian, featuring exaggerated leather trenchcoats, asymmetric blazers accented with shearling armbands, hazard-hued slacks and glossy boilersuits. A vital accessory for your vending machine change? A triangle motif coin purse attached to your belt buckle.

At Fendi, Silvia Fenturini Fendi was also captivated by notions of classicism. The Roman house presented a ‘treasure trove of future heirlooms' that riffed on the elegance and sophistication of old world silhouettes: Vichy check tweed overcoats, boxy cropped tuxedos, pilot's jackets and short suits, imagined in raspberry, mocha, taupe and white. In a dandyish flourish, sweeping coats were pinned with shearling corsages, Mary Jane brogues buckled with wristwatch strapes and bags had evening time proportions.

Elsewhere, Aspesi's Laurence Steele was struck by archetypal silhouettes, combining finesse with function, while Brunello Cucinelli mediated between differing sartorial codes, presenting luxurious pieces from peacoats to down jackets, incorporating super fine wools, shearling and Prince of Wales houndstooth. Tod's took inspiration from contemporary Italian art, tracing the line of its A/W 2022 silhouette back to the country's creative cannon, with updated classics in forest tones like fur-effect bomber jackets inspired by the traditional lining of outerwear and cashmere gymwear. 

Deep burgundy and bold blue: choose your favourite hue

Flavoursome news for wine buffs: a deep burgundy bolstered the Milan catwalks, as demonstrated by brands including Fendi, Ermenegildo Zegna and 1017 ALYX 9SM. Zegna's meditations around the ‘new suit', featuring softly rippling tailoring, drew on an organic palette, terracotta and tangerine, while 1017 ALYX 9SM – which presented in Milan for the first time – drew on lilacs, cherry reds and nude. Elsewhere, oceanic blues were favoured, with Brioni's Norbert Stumpfl creating bold suiting, including daytime double-breasted wool suits and striking silk satin tuxedos in exuberant turquoise. 

Inspect your new errogenous zone

Skin was a central element of the S/S 2022 shows, and continues to take extrovert effect for autumn. The erogenous zone of choice for the upcoming season? A sultry sliver of chest. At Fendi, this was demonstrated with heart-shaped cut-outs on cable knit roll-necks and V-necks in cricket white and glittering raspberry. At JW Anderson - whose digital runway show reveled in party silhouettes, fantastical flourishses and an all-out abandon into weirdness, the chest was revealed in knitwear weaved into chunky loops and hula hoop hemline crop tops in bright paintbox tones.

Power to the shoulder

Designers weren't concerned with playing proportions safe for A/W 2022, serving up striking strong-shouldered silhouettes that even David Byrne would be driven to. You'll need to watch out for Prada's work-inspired power-shouldered trenchcoats when you're in the office. Ardusse's Gaetano Colucci was also inspired by the strong shoulder. The label's collection fluctuated between decades, drawing on the frilled prom shirting of the Seventies, grungey long-sleeve tees and Ivy League style of of the Nineties and the power shoulder tailoring of the Eighties, with bold blown up check mohair coats in a square silhouette. 

Meet me in the Metaverse

Brands continue to experiment with the physical and online worlds: JW Anderson and Dolce & Gabbana recently launched NFTs, Phillip Plein accepts cryptocurrency, and glitchy, pixelated prints abound in brands collections - just look to the checkerboard and graffiti prints at Dolce & Gabbana. At Fendi – a brand that continues to experiment with the tech accessory world – the label teamed up with Ledger Nano X, on a Baguette bag shape that incorporates digital hardware wallet for cryptocurrency. JW Anderson also experimented with the digital realm. In anticipation of the brand's online show, the label released short films of female avatars sporting its A/W 2022 designs, jumping from the screens of iPhones and springing on stars. Video also unveiled blinking eyelids accented with bold make-up, with a JW anchor monogram logo at the centre of their pupil. 

Adventure is always on the cards

Happy campers have even more reason to be cheerful, as a host of brands celebrated the great outdoors, revelling in a nomadic and adventurous spirit. DSquared2 went wild with layered silhouettes that nodded to a range of outdoor pursuits from rock climbing to camping, to bouldering and birdwatching, with ponchos and sequinned cagoules, snuggly sleeping bag coats and quilted shorts, that riffed on the high-tech and the hippy. Missoni was also about high altitude. The brand's Mountain Calling capsule collection features psychedelic Nordic knits, featuring alpine scenes and a trippy logo. Etro too inclined to the outdoors, with a collection featuring wolf, fox and snowflake intarsia knit jumpers, jewel tone raincoats and puffers, plus velvet robe coats for a more resplendent take on around-the-campire dressing.

Technical outerwear specialist C.P Company, which continues to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary milestone and is fresh from a collaboration with Emporio Armani, also hosted the exhibition ‘Cinquata', featuring seventy iconic archival designs, sketches and memorabilia, that have defined the label's half-century. A-Cold-Wall also presented a digital film revelling in the label's performance and sportswear tropes, featuring striking foiled trousers and tracksuits swathed in paint, inspired by building materials like clay and plaster. 

‘Sustainable fashion': a phrase common in today's luxury parlance. But the popularity of a term doesn't make it any easier to unpack. In fact, it makes it even more difficult to understand if a brand or retailer is operating from an environmentally-aware manufacturing perspective, or is greenwashing its production practices.

For today's conscious consumer, the buzzwords around sustainability are becoming increasingly impenetrable, from circular economy to supply chains, traceability to carbon footprint, mycelium to micro plastics, regenerated to recycled. Not forgetting the host of conscious certifications used to to label garments (BCI, GOTS, Oekeo-Tex, Cradle to Cradle to name just a few).

Here we present a checklist of how to approach shopping for clothing with a more environmentally friendly mindset, alongside the sustainable fashion brands to focus on.

Sustainable fashion: shop second-hand

Garment production is predicted to grow by 81 per cent by 2030, and as more virgin clothing is produced around the world, so more natural resources are destroyed, from over farmed landscapes caused by cotton, wool and viscose production, to the chemicals from denim manufacturing polluting water supplies. A simple way to spend more consciously? Shop second-hand, and purchase pre-loved designs which are already part of fashion's manufacturing eco-system. Think marketplaces and peer-to-peer reselling plaftorms like Gen Z favourite (90 per cent of users are under age 26) Depop, luxury menswear and sneakerhead favourite Grailed, and for men and women shopping for burgeoning and classic brands alike, France's Vestiaire Collective (whose financing round in March received a €178 million investment, backed by French luxury group Kering) and the United States' The RealReal. 

A benefit of shopping second-hand, is that brands that may appear out of reach are in fact, affordable. ‘Buying timeless luxury, especially on the secondary market, is one of the smartest things you can do because the quality and craftsmanship behind the pieces mean they can have many lives,' says Sasha Skoda, head of women's, The RealReal. ‘In the past year, the website saw a 36 per cent increase in first-time buyers purchasing high-value pieces and saw like handbags, jewellery, watches, and sneakers.' The luxury consigment retailer has also just launched ReCollection 01, a series of upycled pieces, from blazers to shirts, crafted from materials donated by brands including Balenciaga, Dries Van Noten and A-Cold-Wall*, and reworked with an Americana-inspired spin by Atelier & Repairs.

Check your carbon footprint

A considered way to shop is to consider an environmental metric, and work to reduce it. McKinsey's ‘Fashion on climate' report published in August 2020, concluded that in 2018, the sector was responsible for some 2.1 billion metric tons of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, which is about 4 per cent of the global total and the same per year as the entire economies of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined.

San Francisco brand Allbirds, most famous for its streamlined merino wool trainers, works to reduce the carbon footprint of its manufacturing processes, and alerts consumers to the carbon number of its products. Take its Dasher performance shoe, formed from sugarcane and tree fibres, which encompasses 9 kg of carbon dioxide per pair, estimated by the brand to be nearly 30 per cent lower than the average trainer. Or its t-shirt, made from waste fibres from the shells of Canadian snow crabs, which has a footprint approximately 20 per cent lower than a standard polyester design.

Allbirds is intent on sharing its findings and innovations with the wider retail and apparel industry. Its sugarcane EVA material, used to make its SweetFoam™ soles, is used by Reebok, Timberland and Ugg and in May 2020, the label announced a revolutionary brand partnership with Adidas, to create sustainable fashion with the lowest possible carbon footprint. In celebration of Earth Day 2021, Allbirds released an open-source version of its carbon footprint calculator at FreeTheFootprint.com, to allow other labels to use its technology. Its also called on brands to be more transparent about the carbon footprint they generate during manufacturing. At the G7 summit in Cornwall in 2021, the brand also etched a pair of giant footsteps in the sand of the beach opposite its coastal location, to urge world leaders in attendance to ‘walk the walk’ when it comes to sustainability.
 
Merino wool specialist Sheep Inc., which creates unisex jumpers, cardigans, lightweight hoodies and beanies, operates from a ‘carbon negative, future positive' standpoint. The label's biodegradable and ultra-fine merino wool pieces are knitted using solar-powered, zero-waste machines, using raw fibres sourced from New Zealand sheep farms, which use regenerative farming methods. Each Sheep Inc piece features a tag that scan be scanned to reveal the provenance and carbon footprint of the design. The label also invests 5 per cent of its revenue into biodiversity projects, projects which mitigate, at minimum, ten times the CO2 impact of each sweater’s full lifecycle. 

Shop local

Another sure fire way to reduce your carbon footprint – reducing the distance that manufacturing components and finished pieces travel around the world – is to shop from brands that produce in studios and ateliers local to you.

For Spanish footwear and bags, look to Hereu, which works with artisans to create moccasins, shoulder bags and sizeable totes in natural fabrics, including Spanish full-grain calf leather. In the United Kingdom, knitwear label Hades work with a family-run wool mill Yorkshire Pennines in England, and knit their designs in Hawick Scotland, while JW Anderson's ‘Made in Britain' capsule collection features shirting and trenchcoats, created in UK-based factories. In France, mother-and-daughter brand MaisonCléo creates hand knitted designs in Lille, using deadstock threads and fabrics, while in the United States, New York brand Peter Do manufactures its designs, in the label's founding city.

Watch your water intake

According to the WWF, it takes more than 20,000 liters of water to produce just one kilogram of cotton, which roughly amounts to a single t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Dyeing, bleaching, washing: there are many manufacturing processes in denim production that require water, but a number of brands are using pioneering technology to reduce their water footprint.

At Levi's, the label's pioneering Levi’s Water Less project has seen it incorporate 20 water-saving initiatives, including using 96 per cent less water in its denim finishing process. The label also uses recycled water in its factories, including 100 per cent recycled water in its Epping plant in South Africa, and between 2017 and 2020, the cumulative amount of water its suppliers recycled grew by 40 times, for a total of more than 9 billion liters of water. Currently, Levi's produces 80 per cent of all its products using Levi’s Water Less techniques. Other brands, including Frame and Reformation, have joined with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's The Jeans Redesign initiative, adopting its guidelines and recommendations. Frame’s Ellen MacArthur Foundation Jeans Redesign capsule collection features jeans and a jacket which are produced with water waste-reducing processes, without harmful chemicals, while Reformation's jeans offering is made from with cotto from Good Earth, the first Australia-based carbon positive cotton farm.

For other planet protecting options, look to pieces that are crafted using Econyl or regenerated nylon, a nylon substituted made using wasted ocean plastics, like fishing nets and drinking bottles. Evarae, Away That Day and Ohoy Swim all provide chic swimwear options, while Prada's Re-Nylon pieces use Econyl to update its signature sporty nylon silhouettes, from backpacks to bucket hats. The brand plans to be free of all virgin nylon in its supply chain by the end of 2021. Environmental organisation Parley for the Oceans also creates fashion pieces using ocean plastic-derived waste, including a series of woven textile pieces, due for release in autumn, designed in collaboration with innovative Dutch knitwear specialists Byborre.

Embrace environmentally-friendly fabrics

A host of incubators, brands and luxury groups are innovating around novel materials, that can be used as substitutes to materials formed from animal products and non-renewable oil-based polyesters. You may not expect your local green grocer to be a leading contender in the world of environmentally friendly fabrics, but alternatives to leather and silk, are being crafted from oranges, pineapples and apples. The mushroom is also a fungal force, and in March 2021, Stella Mccartney launched two garments, a bustier and a pair of tracksuit bottoms, using Mylo, an alternative to leather crafted using mycelium (sourced from the root system of fungi), developed by Silicon Valley materiality start-up Bolt Threads. In October 2020, Stella McCartney, luxury group Kering, Adidas and Lululemon all teamed up to make investment in the innovative company.

Luxury maison Hermès is also a fan of fungi. In March, the house released a prototype version of its classic Victoria travel bag, created using Sylvania, a lab-grown mycelium leather, created in collaboration with MycoWorks, which had been tanned in its specialist leather workshops. 

In June 2021, Gucci announced the launch of Demetra, a non-petroleum or animal-derived alernative to leather, which its team of scientists and artisans have spent two years formulating. Demetra has been used in the launch of three sneaker styles, the ‘Basket’, ‘New Ace’ and ‘Rhyton’, and Gucci plan to expand the use of Demetra within footwear and wider product categories over the coming months.

Elsewhere, other incubators are offering leather alternatives that will soon be industrialised. Natural Fiber Welding Inc, has created a substitute formed from vegetable oil, that has 40 times less carbon impact than traditional leather and 17 times less carbon impact than synthetic leather, made from plastic. All Birds is an investor. Biotech company Modern Meadow is also producing a leather alternative in its New Jersey lab, using a fermentation process involving yeast and collagen.

Pay attention to by-products

Leather is a conflicting material for many, especially those who are vegetarian. However, many ‘vegan' leathers also pose environmental problems, as they are produced using plastics. For fans of the durable and long-lasting fabrication a host of brands use leather that is ethically or organically certified, and is not used specifically for fashion production, but as a by-product of the meat industry. Leather specalist Skiim works with companies including The Sustainable Angle and the Leather Working Group to source and accredit its materials, which are used to craft timeless pieces like trenchcoats, ruffled skirts and shirts. These initiatives were implemented after model and eco-advocate Arizona Muse joined the brand as a sustainability consultant.

Opt for upcycled materials

‘For those of you who are not familiar with the production process of a garment, you have your flat fabric laid out on the table, you have your pattern pieces—your sleeve piece, your front piece and your back piece—you lay them on the fabric, you cut around your pattern piece, you get your garment pieces and you put them together, but you are left with waste fabric,' London-based designer Phoebe English explained in ‘Fixing fashion: clothing consumption and sustainability', an environmental report submitted to the UK government in February 2019. The designer is a leading pioneer in sustainability. In August 2020, she was shortlisted for the Design Museum annual Beazley ‘Designs of the Year’ exhibition, with the ‘Nothing New’ collection, which featued a quilted jacket, produced from waste from a previous fashion collection, in itself non virgin material sourced in the label's home city of London.

In the UK, consumption of new clothing is estimated to be higher than any other European country at 26.7kg per capita. However, according to the Textile Recycling Association, it has one of the highest collection rates of used clothes in the world, thanks in part to charity shop networks. Look out for a host of burgeoning brands that incorporate deadstock, waste or upcycled fabrics into their designs, from Paris' Marine Serre, whose brand is made up of 50% upcycled fabrics, London and Devon's Wright Le Chapelain, who create timeless tailoring using denim and shirting sourced through homeless charity Crisis, Dutch Duran Lantink, who works with brands and retaliers like Ellery and Browns, to splice and dice surplus stock and materials into new silhouettes. For A/W 2021, Lantink's collection film was visualised as a satirical salon show, with models sporting DIY deconstructed designs, which were auctioned off on the brand's website after it was streamed. Also slook to London's Ahluwalia and Copenhagen's Ganni, who have launched a patchwork capsule collection created from deadstock leopard print fabrics and leathers.

Analyse your ethics

Sustainable fashion isn't just about the environment, it's about shopping from an ethical perspective too, asking not just where our clothing comes from, but who it is made by. From 19-25 April, non-profit global organisation Fashion Revolution, is launching its latest campaign, #whomademyfabric, one calling upon the public to question more than 60 major brands and retailers, asking ask them to publicly disclose the processing facilities and textile mills in their global supply chains.

Fashion Revolution Week is focused around the anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, which saw 1,138 people and scores injured. Worldwide, the charity works to make the fashion industry and governments recognise the interconnection between human rights and rights of nature. Human rights abuses are notable in textile mills, informal workshops, tanneries, dyehouses, plantations and farms, that provide fabrics and materials for clothing. In August 2020, fast fashion retailer Boohoo, which sells dresses for as little as £4, faced a modern slavery probe, after it was revealed that workers in its Leicester garment factories in the UK, were being paid less than half the legal minimum wage.

Up the rent

Lured by a one-wear only occasion piece, bought for a wedding or black tie event, and never to be flaunted again? We suggest renting your out out ensemble instead. Clothing rental platform Rotaro, which has party dresses aplenty, plants a tree for each rental it provides and a thicket of bushes for each new brand in partners with. It also uses recycled packaging and Ozone cleaning, which has minimal environmental impact. Peer-to-peer lending service Hurr, which features a range of products from clothing to shoes, also allows customers to work out the quantatitive enviromental saving of renting an item instead of buying it. The platform has just launched a host of eye-catching jewellery pieces, from London based brand Alighieri. This includes a selection of bridal rental pieces, including embellished dresses, head pieces and veils. Elsewhere, bag rental service Cocoon, which received investment from luxury group Kering in June 2021, allows you to borrow bags from brands including Bottega Veneta, Gucci and Chanel, swapping your choice several times a month, depending on your subscription service.

Care for your clothes

Adopting eco-friendly practices at home is a simple way to operate more environmentally. Wash clothing using natural detergents in the washing machine at  30° instead of 40° and place synthetic items (think sportswear and thermal wear and pieces made from regenerated nylon) in a Guppyfriend Bag, a washing machine pouch that catches microplastics from clothing and prevents them from polluting water systems. 

For products to extend the lifetime of clothing, look to Swedish garment care company Steamery, which produces eco detergents produced in a carbon-neutral factory, alongside other tools for pepping up your clothing, from steamers to fabric shavers, clothes brushes to clothing and shoe mist. A host of repair services also ensure you can keep your favourite pieces for a lifetime, from luxury goods recovery service The Restory, to Toast, which offers repair workshops in person and online, using Sashiko, a specialist way of mending and patching clothing. 

Move towards made-to-order

According to Greenpeace, 300,000 tonnes of used clothes are burned or buried in landfill each year in the United Kingdom, and the average life span of a garment is only just over two years. One logical solution to reduce garment waste is simply to create less clothing. In a bid to prevent overproduction and create sustainable fashion, a host of innovative brands and retailers are adopting a made-to-order buying model. Traditionally associated with the world of haute couture, this means that garments are only produced after they have been ordered by a customer. 

A host of brands and retailers are excelling as made-to-order mavericks. Look to APOC Store, an innovative e-commerce marketplace to emerging artists and fashion designers, which sells according to small production runs or bespoke orders. Check out high street retailer Toast, which has introduced a made-to-order offering of craft-celebrating artisanal designs, from Ikat dresses to leather tote bags. And look to smaller labels like London-based Cawley, which specialises in easy, fabric-focused creations, from gingham dresses to upcycled patchwork jackets, and fellow Londoner Helen Kirkum, who creates spliced and diced sneakers crafted from upcycled footwear and has worked with brands including Reebok, Adidas and Casely-Hayford. 

In celebration of its tenth anniversary, the David Chipperfield-designed Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire, is launching a series of creative collaborations with artists and designers, which are exclusive to the The Hepworth Wakefield Shop.

First on The Hepworth Wakefield’s roster is fashion designer and creative director Jonathan Anderson, who curated the 2017 show ‘Disobedient Bodies’, an exhibition exploring what its chief curator Andrew Bonacina described to Wallpaper* as ‘the confrontation of the form and where it goes’. The show established a dialogue between art and fashion, pairing synergistic artwork and clothing side by side, such as designs by Henry Moore and Jean Paul Gaultier, Naum Gabo and Comme des Garçons, and also featuring pieces by Louise Bourgeois, Alberto Giacometti and Sarah Lucas.

The centre of the show also included the specially created installation 28 Jumpers, made up of a forest of oversized jumpers through which visitors could walk and interact with the different materials. ‘Jonathan has a very curatorial approach to bringing disparate things together in a way that’s expansive and promiscuous,’ Bonacina added of the designer's exhibition approach.

Celebrate a decade of The Hepworth Wakefield

Anderson's collaborative edit for the The Hepworth Wakefield Shop features a unisex T-shirt, a tote bag and a pair of earrings. The T-shirt features a graphic representation of Barbara Hepworth’s sculptural work Single Form (1961-64) on its front and a close-up nod to Anderson’s 28 Jumpers on its back. The jewellery evokes an Anderson design signature, comprising chunky wooden studs and dangling white enamel baubles.

‘I’m so delighted to collaborate once again with The Hepworth Wakefield and make a small contribution to their tenth birthday year,’ Anderson says. ‘Working with the gallery on the 2017 exhibition “Disobedient Bodies” changed my viewpoint on design, fashion and art, for which I will always be grateful.’ 

INFORMATION

hepworthwakefield.org

Jonathan Anderson has long shown an interest in bringing a new lens to silhouettes, often exploring notions of mundanity and archetypal clothing. For his eponymous brand's S/S 2022 collection which was unveiled last month, the label looked at items synonymous with the everyday contemporary wardrobe, from fleeces to striped tops, and transformed them into something new, using 18th century-inspired strawberry prints and voluminous silhouettes.

The same approach can be seen in JW Anderson’s latest collaboration with Italian eyewear specialist Persol, featuring classic sunglasses silhouettes that have been imbued with a new sense of colour and ebullience. For the prismatic partnership, Anderson has looked to two styles – the ‘649’ aviator style, which dates back to 1957 and was sported by tram drivers before being popularised by Marcello Mastroianni in the 1961 film Divorce Italian Style, and the innovative ‘0009’ silhouette, which features four lenses – and reinterpreted them with two-tone combinations of bold blue, red and orange.

JW Anderson x Persol: classic design meets kaleidoscopic colour

‘They are a design classic; I wear them all the time,’ Anderson says of his long-held affinity for Persol. ‘The craftsmanship and quality is amazing. They remind me of midcentury furniture design, and their classic form inspired the colour combinations.’

In celebration of the collaboration, Anderson has enlisted Brooklyn-based photographer Tyler Mitchell, who also shot and starred in the brand’s A/W 2020 campaign, to photograph a series of emotive portraits, featuring men and women sporting sculptural hair creations that echo the architectural contours of the sunglasses’ silhouettes. These striking structures were created by Jamaican-American hairstylist Jawara. ‘I wanted images that became kind of poetic miniatures, almost like windows,’ Anderson says of the visual series.

Fancy starring in your own miniature portrait? We suggest you pick up a pair of JW Anderson x Persol’s prismastic sunglasses pronto.

INFORMATION
jwanderson.com

persol.com

Uniqlo enthusiasts profess an affinity for many of the elements that comprise the global retailer’s output. Some laud its hard-to-beat thermal wear (Heattech), the softness of its affordable cashmere, the breathability of its AIRism basics, the colourful spectrum of its soft cotton T-shirts, or the featherlight form of its padded layered jackets. Not forgetting the high-end energy of its diverse design collaborations, which span partnerships with brands including Jil Sander, Marimekko, Lemaire, JW Anderson, musicians and artists such as Billie Eilish and Takashi Murakami, and institutions such as The Louvre.

A host of lines live under the Japanese retailer's design umbrella, from Uniqlo U, an offering of elevated sartorial basics, led by Parisian designer Christophe Lemaire, to UT, a colourful collection of graphic men's T-shirts, featuring prints nodding to a melting pot of references, like Marvel, Peanuts, Haruki Murakami, Keith Haring and Roy Lichtenstein. Impressively, Uniqlo's head of research and design, Yuki Katsuta, oversees the brand’s diverse DNA, working to maintain the balance between the label's utilitarian LifeWear ranges, and its more sartorially swayed collaborations.

Wallpaper* sat down for a rare interview Katsuta-san to hone in on Uniqlo's design vision for the future. Here he outlines the importance of collaboration, the semiotics of sustainable fashion, and his favourite British fashion designer today.

On the success of the relaunch of the +J Jil Sander collection, which first launched in 2011 and returned for A/W 2020:
‘I have to say thank you to all customers. So many people who experienced +J ten years ago came back to us for this new collection. We also had a younger generation who invested in the line. I’m very proud that with his project we can bring loyal, heritage customers, but also attract a younger one.'

On the possibility of one design collaboration too many…
‘Collaborations create a sense of newness, and with our collaborators, we never decide beforehand if we will work with them for one season or many. We don’t have a formula. It’s possible that we will start considering a more concept-focused strategy in the future.’

On the two-pronged approach to sustainable fashion.
‘The first approach we used is based on technical sustainability, meaning how we can use recycled or ecological materials in order to protect the environment. In this instance, we are aiming to do as much as we possibly can. We’ve introduced materials including recycled polyester and down, and we manufacture denim using processes which save water.’

‘The second approach is focused on producing pieces which people can wear not just this season, but for the next three, five and ten years. This is the core idea of our LifeWear collection. We’ve been creating these types of timeless silhouettes for the last ten years.’

On how the Covid-19 pandemic affected Uniqlo's approach to fashion design.
‘Generally speaking, a lot of fashion brands, including us, started selling clothes which people can wear primarily in the home. Our loungewear category expanded and saw growth over the last year. However, we recognised that while people have limited activities, they still want to enjoy fashion and celebrate their individuality. This concept gave us a lot of encouragement and we felt a responsibility to provide new creative energy for customers.

On the importance of a physical retail experience.
‘We continued to open stores over the last 12 months, even in new global regions. My guess is that our hunger will continue to increase for real face-to-face communication and the store as a concept is going to be more and more relevant. Human touch is so important and in-person contact is the essence of communication. You can’t only achieve this by video or SMS message.

On creating a global brand that responds to the needs of its diverse customer base.
‘We have satellite offices in Shanghai, New York, Paris and LA, and separate creative collaborators from around the world. We have 2000 stores in 25 countries, which means I have 2,200 antennas globally. I also speak to our customer service teams every day for feedback on product purchases. I speak to the US in the morning and Europe in the afternoon.’

On the importance of collaborating with JW Anderson.
‘For me, Britain is a country with a history of uniforms, workwear and sportswear. Our collaboration is based on the concept of original British clothing. When I first considered this I wanted to work with the best British designer today, which is Jonathan Anderson. I thought to myself, if Jonathan declines, I’ll have to skip the idea!’

INFORMATION
uniqlo.com

There’s long been debate about whether fashion design constitutes art, but for S/S 2021, men's knitwear creations made a convincing creative argument. A host of brands used clothing as a canvas, interpreting the gestural strokes of figurative portraiture and the globulous bulges of ceramic forms within their folds.

At Dior, Kim Jones was compelled by the emotive and bold brushstrokes of Ghanaian portraitist Amoako Boafo, who had his first solo exhibition at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Chicago last autumn. In a tactile and tonal twist, a figure inspired by Boafo’s oil on canvas ‘Yellow Dress’ has been translated into an intarsia motif on a cashmere roll neck.

Jonathan Anderson showcased the figurative work of Catalan illustrator and designer Pol Anglada in his eponymous brand’s spring collection. A fiery chunky knit weave cardigan features a brow-furrowed face, inspired by illustrations in Anglada’s father’s comic book collection. 

At Loewe, where Anderson is also creative director, the designer achieved state of the art style, nodding to the figurative works of Paul Cadmus, whose portraits paid homage to the male form. A jacquard wool jumper translates the egg tempera brushstrokes of Cadmus’ ‘The Inventor’ into fabric.

The oozy, molten forms of ceramicist Brian Rochefort inspired Berluti’s Kris Van Assche, who transformed the colourful glazes and lava-like textures of the LA-based sculptor’s pieces into prismatic jacquard jumpers. Their knitwear fabrications evoke the appearance of Rochefort’s works, which seem to overflow with dribbling glazes.

INFORMATION

A version of this article first appeared in the April 2021 issue of Wallpaper* (W*264) – available to download here

When Jonthan Anderson moved to London in the Noughties, he ate out in Soho every night, mesmerised by its bustling streets, densely populated with late night bars, sex shops, coffee stop offs, and elegant eateries. When the designer opened his eponymous brand’s first boutique in March, just days before the UK went into its first lockdown, he settled on a two storey former corner shop on Soho’s Brewer Street, which beckons fashion fans into its interior with an illuminated neon sign. ‘For me, I’m more excited about this area than Bond Street,’ he says.  

Anderson enlisted 6a Architects to design his brand’s flagship, who he first collaborated with in 2017 for his exhibition Disobedient Bodies at The Hepworth. The 13,000 sq ft space features details that celebrate the vibrant history of Soho, from checkerboard tiling that nod’s to the location’s original flooring, to shelving and cabinets constructed from faux wood formica and brass trim, that evoke interior elements of neighbourhood cafes and bars from the 60s, 70s and 80s. The designer was also inspired by Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge (where he also held his Resort 2016 show) and now his flagship has also erred on gallery space, with the opening of the exhibition ‘Setting a Hare in the China Shop’.

‘When we opened the store before the pandemic, the idea was to have five exhibition shows a year, giving people I really respect, or people I collect, free reign of the space,’ he explains. The debut show features works by North London-based Japanese ceramicist Akiko Hirai and Russian-born fine artist and set designer Ivan Kochkarev. Hirai, who creates decorative and practical pieces, has created vessels and vases that draw on the drinking culture of Soho, from traditional tea sets to goblets, sake cups to beer mugs. They highlight her glazing techniques which include finishes resembling ice caps. Kochkar’s oil on canvas paintings include ‘Soho Hares’, which depict long-eared leaping animals, on which the name of the exhibition was based. 

‘I was inspired by this idea of having very late nights in Tokyo and stumbling into a conceptual store selling beautiful things,’ Anderson adds of the inspiration behind the debut show. ‘I love the physicality of these pieces.’

‘In a weird way, I’m glad the show is happening this year,’ Anderson adds, referring to opening a space inspired by the energy and hedonism of Soho, which for many months has seen a restriction on revelry. ‘Fashion needs to change. Things need to be more personal and about what you love, and I’m lucky to be taking on the role of curator. This isn’t just about clothes.’

INFORMATION
‘Setting a Hare in a China Shop’ on view until 20 December. jwanderson.com

ADDRESS

JW Anderson
2 Brewer Street
London, W1F 0SA

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Spanning fiction, photography and craft, these page-turners are sure to keep you entertained and educated, and will also heighten your understanding of the eclectic world of the founder of JW Anderson and creative director of Loewe.

Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective – Lynn Zelevansky & Elisabeth Sussman

Jonathan Anderson dressed his S/S 2020 and A/W 2019 menswear show spaces with artworks by Paul Thek, and owns a group of 1970s bronze sculptures by the American artist. This monograph accompanied Thek's first US retrospective at the Whitney Museum in 2010. 

Queer – William S Burroughs

Penned in 1952, this short novel wasn’t released until the 1980s. Autobiographical, but written from the perspective of William Lee, it documents life as an American expatriate in Mexico City. 

Less than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis

Ellis’ 1985 debut novel documents the cultural and social disillusionment of privileged college student Clay, who returns to his Los Angeles home for winter holidays, and experiences a range of shocking encounters involving sex, drugs and death.

The Adventures of Constantine Cavafy – Duane Michals

In this 2007 volume, the renowned American photographer uses grayscale images of human interaction, to loosely illustrate the works of twentieth-century Greek poet Constantine Cavafy. A stack of books about Michals sit in Anderson's study at home.

The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century – Tanya Harrod

This book accompanied ‘The Pleasures of Peace: Craft, Art and Design in Britain from the 1940s to the 1960s’, which opened at the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia, UK in 1999. Surveying a range of disciplines, from ceramics to silversmithing, it provides an expansive introduction into Anderson’s obsession with craft

Information

jwanderson.com
loewe.com

The glowing neon signage that wraps the front of JW Anderson’s newly minted flagship makes it somewhat camouflaged in its gritty Soho surrounds. Perched on the corner of London’s Brewer and Wardour streets, a ‘Las Vegas' amusement arcade sits directly next door while a jumble of tattoo parlours, adult bookshops and numerous Soho walk-ups sit happily next to frozen yoghurt cafes and busy coffee shops in the surrounding streets. It’s only on closer inspection, when you look through the store’s tall glass windows that it becomes apparent that this particular shop is not quite like any of its neighbours.

‘It hasn’t really hit me that we’re finally opening a store after 12 years of doing this,' reflects Jonathan Anderson looking around the space in disbelief. ‘But in a weird way it feels like exactly the right time.'

Anderson, who moved to London in the noughties to attend the London College of Fashion has a longstanding love of the neighbourhood and singled it out as the perfect location for his first bricks and mortar store.

‘When I first moved to London, I would eat in Soho every night,' he recalls. ‘I would go to Maison Bertaux (a famous cake shop on Greek Street) and there was an amazing woman there who would always say, “you can’t sit there” when you tried to sit down, because there was some other customer who always sat there. It actually reminded me of where I grew up in Northern Ireland because you’d be told the same thing in the local pub. So to encounter that in London, which is one of the biggest cities in the world, was kind of comforting.'

The Victorian building that the flagship occupies previously housed two separate stores on its ground floor, one of which was a corner shop, that, according to Anderson, was the ‘go-to place' for late night cigarettes. The stores were divided by a typically narrow Soho entranceway that led to flats above.

The new 1,300 sq ft interior, which is spread across the ground and basement level, is designed by London practice 6a, and like the neighborhood itself, cleverly blends glossy new finishes with references to the building’s not-so-polished past.

The brief, Anderson reveals, was non existent, but having already worked with 6a on his career-defining show, Disobedient Bodies, at The Hepworth in 2017 he was confident that the architects had an innate understanding of what he wanted.

‘What we had done at the Hepworth was kind of a rehearsal,' says architect Tom Emerson, who set up 6a with his wife Stephanie MacDonald after they graduated from the RCA in 2001. ‘We had got to know Jonathan and knew what he liked.'

‘In Mayfair your job is to stand out and to outdo your neighbours, but in Soho you just need to blend in. It’s an area that holds a lot of memories and people are fiercely loyal to it, so you have to do something that joins in and participates in the neighbourhood.'

‘So we started this project by asking, "what happens when you place JW Anderson into the Soho environment and which parts of that environment we interested in keeping?"'.

One of the most notable retained elements is the strip of chequerboard flooring that runs across the store’s ground floor linking with a series of steps that trace the location of the building’s former walk-up hallway. The original tiles and stair were ripped out before they could ask for them to be preserved, Anderson informs, but these are near identical replicas.

The stairs are now used as display shelves for JW Anderson’s Converse collaboration and the tiles create a dividing line across the interior, clearly indicating where the former shops used to be separated. The Wardour street shop space is bright and lined with glossy aluminium shelving, polished stone floors and immaculate white leather seating. Meanwhile the Brewer Street space where the corner shop used to sit is full of shelving and cabinets made from faux wood formica and brass trim. Blue vinyl tiles line the floor while the original patchy paintwork covers the ceiling.

Emerson notes that elements such as the Formica are a nod to the distinctive interiors of local cafes and bars from the 60s, 70s and 80s where faux materials were all the rage. Likewise, the fluted aluminium used on the facade nods to the Italian cafes that once populated the neighbourhood.

‘This abrupt contrast is also present in Jonathan's work, which is also why we wanted to translate that into the interiors,' explains Emerson.

Past the cash desk towards the back of the space, a set of stairs covered in plush cream-colored carpet edged with incongruous strips of bright yellow nosing lead down to a more intimate basement level. Here fabrics hang behind leather-wrapped rails that display JW Anderson’s menswear and womenswear collections. Contrasting with the sumptuous carpet and fine leather detailing, the basement’s original alcove has been refinished with a rough textured plaster that Emerson describes as ‘how you might finish a London basement that you would never expect anyone to see'.

One of Anderson's key references for the project was Kettle's Yard art gallery in Cambridge, which Emerson says is an example of a ‘very British idea of cultured modernism'.

‘You’re discreet but also very knowing,' he explains. ‘There are things you are connected to, but you’re not going to show off about it. Somehow Soho is not unrelated to this idea. So in a sense there wasn’t a brief for this project, but there was a place.'

For Anderson, the collaboration has been a rare chance to take a back seat in the creative journey. ‘I think as a creative, you naturally become a bit of a control freak, and what I’ve really enjoyed about this is being able to take a step back and enjoy the process.'

Going forward the space will be more than just a showroom. JW Anderson will host workshops, readings, exhibitions on ceramics and art, as well as events with the wider Soho neighbourhood. ‘It's going to be a snapshot into the brand,' says Anderson. ‘As much as everyone is consumed with the online experience, it's still important to have a physical space. It's kind of like porn somehow,' he compares with a laugh. ‘Everyone can get porn online but they still come into Soho. Everyone can get fashion online but they will still come into Soho.'

INFORMATION

jwanderson.com

ADDRESS

JW Anderson
2 Brewer Street
London, W1F 0SA

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Mood board: In recent seasons Jonathan Anderson has used his Bloomsbury runway space to highlight his extensive art and design inspirations — last season Liz Magor’s Pet Co. (2018), an installation of museum archive inspired boxes took center stage. But for A/W 2020 his eponymous brand’s show set design was unusually stripped back, featuring only single lines of black benches and a cream carpet. ‘I was thinking about how you compete with a space,’ Anderson said backstage of his A/W 2020 inspiration, which also explained his stark set up. ‘You forget with shows that models have to walk into a room full of strangers.’ Devotees of Anderson’s clothing will have no trouble competing with any setting. For autumn they’ll be sporting XL coats with oversized shawl collars, described by Anderson as a ‘favourite moment of excess’, caped dresses in lurex fil-coupé, picnic blanket capes and densely ruffled blouses with cascading pussybow collars. A room with an internal view indeed.

Best in show: Anderson is famed for his encyclopedic range of references, and the everyday influence behind a draped metallic dress — emblazoned with brewery typography — drew on the humour and wit he brings to design. ‘Not to be Irish and cliché but I used to be obsessed with the Guinness campaign, the iconography of its can and it’s typography’ he chuckled. The dress’s folding pleats resembled something like an aluminium can being crushed. In a more organic turn, the shredded celluloid fringing which swathed the shoulders of sequinned dresses, ribbed knits and checked coats, was inspired by ‘melting ice.’

Finishing touches: Anderson added another lust-worthy accessory to his already brimming roster: a molded leather bag style in the shape of a punchbag. Kitten heels were imagined in hairy calfskin with rhinestone ankle straps or adorned with discs of crystal, which jangled with the movement of the wearer.

Mood board: In 1978, artist David Wojnarowicz photographed a man wearing a paper mask of French poet, Arthur Rimbaud. Jonathan Anderson sent facsimiles of the mask as invitations to his A/W 20 show. He had seen a retrospective of Wojnarowicz’s work at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. ‘I was thinking about how he interpreted the poet during that particular moment in New York and what that would be like today,’ Anderson said. Dressed in a new collaboration with Wojnarowicz’s estate, twosomes of mannequins sat wearing Rimbaud masks in between the guests. The collection zoomed in on the JWA look: the idea of the shift, a blowing up of proportions. The suggestion that a coat uses a total of fabric. An avant-garde timelessness. 

Sound bite: Lining peeked out from below wool trousers; second layer shirting hovered underneath coats; lapels paired in harmony. There was a paisley silk duffel coat cut with trapeze proportions and long paisley tunics. ‘It’s really about a JW look. It’s about going back to triangular cutting, and it’s looking at how you do product that is substantial instead of having 15 coats,’ Anderson said. ‘Maybe have one coat in multiples and develop it to the point where it feels like it has always been there, like Rimbaud’s face. You take something which is poetic and you make it underground.’ 

Team work: There was a see-now-buy-now capsule featuring felted intarsia knit jumpers with an interpretation of the original artwork Untitled (Burning House) by Wojnarowicz. Proceeds will go to Visual AIDS, an organisation founded in 1988 to raise awareness and support HIV+ artists. ‘It is not about having a political voice just for the sake of it, it’s about stimulating creativity through having a political voice. It’s thinking before you speak, thinking before you act, and I think that’s what I like about the collection. There has been more of a reduction. I was looking at how David dresses and Rimbaud and the vocabulary of that moment in the 1970s when America felt like the end of the world but it wasn’t. There is an optimism as much as it is incredibly heavy. This sense that, you know, there will be a solution.’

Mood board: ‘It was about looking and questioning’ said Anderson backstage after his S/S 2020 show. ‘The ability in fashion of being able to refocus.’ And there was plenty to look at inside the designer’s usual bleacher-lined Bloomsbury show venue. Draped one sleeve dresses with a rhinestone smattered infinity-shaped breast pieces and belts, lurex harem pant suiting, colourful fringed shirting, splodgy Dalmatian prints and leather drawstring pouches slung in threes over the shoulder. Anderson spoke of ‘noise cancellation’ and honing in on details in the oddly specific and eccentric style he is renowned for. Take boned blazers, their fronts ‘blown up in Marie Antoinette style’ and backs deflated, bejeweled sandals designed to barely stay on the foot and beaded daises covering breasts inspired by ‘1970s iconography.’

Scene setting: ‘It was about the idea of ephemera,’ Anderson added, referencing the show’s venue set up, which featured the artwork Pet Co. (2018), by Vancouver-based artist visual artist Liz Magor, made up of boxes of transparent plastic museum casings, holding colourful childhood toys. The installation spoke of things once treasured, lost, found and given new meaning, in the same way fashion works to bring new modernity to silhouettes, techniques and shapes. ‘It’s about taking things we no longer want and repositioning them,’ Anderson said.

Finishing touches: Anderson focused on the idea of jewellery and it’s ability to ‘become armour or something more sensual,’ seen in rhinestone sparking breast harnesses, repositioned as a form of underwear worn as an outer layer on the body, worn both as a form of protection and adornment

Jonathan Anderson has started small for his first hotel design project. The Loewe creative director and founder of JW Anderson has crafted a new one-bedroom hotel, Ruinart Hotel 1729, that opens today for just two weeks in London, following its inaugural iteration in Primrose Hill last year.

Located on one of Notting Hill's imposing residential boulevards – whose black iron railings and white-brick facades remain centuries unchanged – the townhouse looks like any other on the avenue; bar an out-of-sequence house number on the gate – ‘1729'; the year French champagne maison Ruinart was founded.

Deceptively bijou, Ruinart Hotel 1729 comprises just the one bedroom suite (which, granted, stretches the entire first floor), an open-plan family kitchen, formal living room, pretty courtyard garden, and roof terrace. The homely space allowed Anderson the opportunity to intimately express his working process and design ideals in the most personal of ways. To which end, he chose to fill it with beautiful art, tableware and furniture from his own home and personal collections, picking pieces that resonate with him and the French champagne house alike. The choices result in part from a recent trip Anderson took to Maison Ruinart, marking the designer's first time in the Champagne region, where he was inspired to learn more of the etiquette of eating, drinking and living at the time of Ruinart's inception.

A heavy door opens onto a sunshine yellow entrance hall (which is Pantone's Traditional British Stately Homes colour); where an impressive stack of Dutch Delftware plates, chargers and vases mosaic the wall in blue and white. They demonstrate how Holland was influenced by (and imitated) the Oriental style in the mid 18th-century – a fashion which was also exported to France and England during Ruinart's 1700's genesis.

Also in the hallway, an oversized wicker basket from 2018 Loewe Craft Prize nominee Joe Hogan sprouts spring blooms. Anderson previously commissioned Hogan to make several pods, which were displayed at the Loewe S/S 2019 show.

The living room mantelpiece clinks with a clutch of precious glass boots, fronted by a pair of rare Anglo-Japanese Rosewood coffee tables, one of which boasts foraged shipwreck ceramics – barnicles and all. Meanwhile, an abstract 2017 Martin Belou mobile gently rotates in the corner, signifying Anderson's deft ability to match the antique seemlessly with the new; or as he phrases it, ‘nostalgia and contemporary innovation'.

‘We are now in the moment of recycling, which I love,' he continues. ‘There is a romance to glass, and other things that are second hand – and the same goes for champagne.' Of which, a history of antique champagne flutes scales the kitchen wall downstairs, in a tower of exceptionally rare tazzas, sweetmeat dishes and jelly glasses. One only hopes the dinner parties don't get too raucous.

Perhaps the piesta-de-resistance is the tableware; a personal joy of Anderson's. For the settings, he was inspired by the 1735 Jean-François de Troy painting Le Déjeuner d'Huîtres, (The Oyster Lunch), which sees a group of French noble folk supping on mountains of oysters, discarding pearl-like shells across the floor. ‘I’ve been interested in the etiquette of eating ever since I was a child, so when I saw this painting, I thought… we do not live like this anymore, but there is something in the conceptualism of eating in this style today.'

The extravagant table dressing somehow reamins true to Anderson's unique form of minimalism, offering an intriguing way of valuing antiques in contemporary settings. More Japanese blue and white ceramics pile high, alongside English and Irish Regency period cut glass jugs, ice buckets and water bowls; which represent the height of 18th century sophistication when ice would have been an absolute rarity.

Blessing the tableware is head chef Luke Selby (previously of HIDE fame), who has developed a luxurious menu filled with treats (zestily-dressed oysters, buttery salmon with crisp apple scales, and charred duck breast) to complement a cellar of Ruinart wines.

With just one King-sized suite up for grabs; only 20 guests will have the opportunity to fold themselves in Ruinart Hotel 1729's floury Irish linen. However each evening, the residents can invite up to eight friends for a dinner party to remember – 18th century debauchery included. (Hide the Delftware).

INFORMATION

ruinart.com; jwanderson.com

Mood board: The theme for S/S20 was for a shared wardrobe. In 2013, Anderson stunned the audience with frilled bloomers and corsets for men – now such a look is the blueprint for London’s brightest young stars. And although its translation onto the street is taking a little longer, Anderson showed knitted shift dresses with tassels on boys for the coming season. The show featured sophisticated riffs on the tuxedo too. Lapels turned into fringed scarves and were worn naked, with slim trousers. ‘I liked the idea that the tuxedo tape started to blow up and fall off. That’s where we started,’ Anderson said. The look had a haphazard sensuality.

Scene setting: The show space was dressed with works by artists Kate Newby, Harry Kramer and Paul Thek. New Zealand born Newby’s ‘Make! A! Wave’ (2016) in porcelain was hung in the middle of the room and trilled as guests unknowingly brushed past. Suspended on coloured wires too were large globules of glass that seemed to sit still in mid-air. Casually arranged as if abandoned, a framed poster of Thek’s 1966 show rested against a column. Newby’s ceramics and found glass fragments were scattered on two more framed posters by Thek. There was a purposeful, radical nonchalance to the whole thing, a layering of generations, materials and ideas. ‘Grosses H’ (1962-1964), a large kinetic wire piece by the German sculptor Harry Kramer, took centre stage.

Sound bite: ‘I like this idea of craft goes machine. I was looking at Kramer – who did all these kinetic sculptures. He was a hairdresser and I found it interesting that you have someone who was doing hair, moving into art,’ Anderson said. Sleeves on trenches were slashes, creating a graphic shoulder line from the back; knits were slashed and caged, and had the air of tumbling around the body. ‘You have felted clogs and a grandmother-knitted look that looks like it has been passed down but there is modernity in the wrongness. As much as the look is very relaxed, there’s a precision to the edge. When you do a knitted sweater, it’s not part of something else, it’s one complete thing,’ he said.