Rick Owens Spring 2021 Menswear

Titled “Phlegethon,” after the river of molten fire that Dante said swept the agonized damned through the seventh circle, this collection was previewed by Rick Owens from his place at the Venice Lido. Down the Zoom he appeared moist and was topless: “I just got out of the water. It is beautiful. Delicious.”

Both in Italy and France, the Big Picture has been shifting in a more positive direction of late—working upstream, not drifting down—and this was, Owens said, one of the contributing factors to a sudden change of direction the day before this video presentation. Shortly after he was released from “le confinement” Owens traveled to Italy where he made not one but two collection videos. The first was for “Performa,” the fall 2020 collection he showed in January but whose distribution had since been shut down. The second, a little later, was for this collection, already mostly planned. Owens’s original scheme was to offer “Performa” once more at this digital Fashion Week.

He explained: “At the time it seemed like the smart and kind and rational and logical thing to do. I thought, ‘I can kind of press reset and start doing this from now on.’ So that was my plan. And then yesterday morning I changed my mind…because for better or for worse, the world has become accustomed to being able to see everything at the same time—the preview of what’s coming and imagery of what is available right now. My plan would have been to only be providing what was available right now, and not having what was coming. And after a while that was going to start feeling old. We’re used to seeing something that is fresh out of the oven. And I don’t think we can go back. The genie’s out of the bottle…it might seem logical, but emotionally it just doesn’t make sense.”

Owens’s team worked all last night—“I gave my people a heart attack”—to edit the video you see here of Owens fitting and styling Tyrone Dylan Susman in this new (but auto-Owens referential) collection. The format, especially when compared to the epic sweep of an Owens runway show, is, Owens agreed, intimate. He said: “Doing something spectacular and confrontational and transgressive would not have been the right thing to do now…so I showed the real action of us working on the collection, which I thought was the most genuine expression that I could come up with.”

Owens added that while mostly ensconced in his lagoon cocoon, he has been peeking out of it: “I keep talking about what Balmain did. The show on the boat. I thought that was just the loveliest thing. It was not wasteful. It was poetic. It was charming. It was fun. And what I also realized when I saw it is that a company like Balmain, or any of us, it’s almost that we have a duty to present the best of the best of what we can do…We represent excellence.”

Watching Owens and Susman parlay over “Wish I Woz a Dog” by Alien Sex Fiend, you could see both excellence and provenance in this collection. “It’s one of my favorites ever,” says Owens as they arrange what becomes look 19, an unlined jacket with quilted shoulder details inspired by his research into Larry LeGaspi. Owens said the double-layer loose leather mesh tank tops were echoes of a collection in 2012, and added that knits and swimwear were fresh expressions of the membrane T-shirt first developed for 2017’s collection “Dirt.” Said Owens: “I didn’t really do it that deliberately, but that’s how it came out. I did look back and use my own archives. Because I was in that mindset that we’re not going to throw things away.” Through their dialogue, Susman helped shape the presentation of this collection, a development of which Owens offered: “I’ve let people in a little more than I used to. I have more people that I’ll ask and listen to, whose opinion interests me…But at the same time, I am only going to be interested in a creative voice that is personal, not a committee decision. My selfishness is intact.”

Source: VogueRunway

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Loewe Spring 2021 Menswear

Fashion people have been bandying about terms like ‘experiential,’ ‘immersive,’ ‘multi-platform’ and ‘digital’ for years, but only now—in the midst of the horrendous crisis of the pandemic—have creative people started breaking through the walls of all that jargon. What Jonathan Anderson orchestrated on July 12th around the launch of Loewe’s spring 2021 collection and its women’s pre-collection felt like a long-needed quantum leap into the new world of open-ended possibilities. Where would a designer who’s always talked about Loewe as ‘a cultural brand’ and his links with artists and artisans go? How can the truth of tactility and emotion be felt when no congregational live event is possible?

In a midday Zoom call, Anderson said that in the initial shock, he’d tussled with confronting how to carry on. “In the first two weeks of the lockdown, I hated being in the job I do. There’s been a couple of weeks where I’ve really struggled to know why I’m doing this; feeling powerless because you’re not saving lives, or because you’re part of a weird elite.” But then he rallied, “realizing you’re trying to save jobs through this, that there’s a whole ecosystem of families, people who’ve been making bags for generations.”

On one level, what he came up with felt like dipping into a 24-hour Jonathan Anderson-curated worldwide live summer festival of arts, crafts, and conversations on Loewe’s Instagram page and website. “My whole thing is to do something in each time zone,” he said, from his London home, around 12PM British Standard Time. The program rolled from Beijing time onwards, connecting with (amongst others) crafts-collaborators Kayo Ando, who showed the art of Shibori, paper artist Shin Tanaka from Japan and the basketweave artist Idoia Cuesta in Galicia, Spain. There was music curated by Adam Bainbridge (aka Kindness), who showcased a calming ‘medley’ comprising different versions of Finnish musician Pekka Pohjola’s Madness Subsides, performed by Park Jiha in Korea, performer and producer Starchild, French-Malagasy pianist and bandleader Mathis Picard, and American harpist Ahya Simone. Lots more roved through live chats between Anderson and the actor Josh O’Connor, and, later, a conversation with contemporary textile artists Igshaan Adams, Diedrick Brackens, Anne Low, and Josh Fraught.

And on another level, there was the Loewe Show-in-a-Box, a cache of paper-art discoveries delivered as a tactile substitute runway experience to the doorsteps of the people who’d ordinarily have trooped to Paris for the show in the Before Times. It was a grander follow-up to the JW Anderson show-box he sent around last week. This one was a large linen-covered box file. Inside was a pop-up show set, a flip-book of photos of the clothes on mannequins, a paper-pattern of one of the garments, print-outs of sunglasses to try on, textile samples, a set of paper pineapple bags and looks to stick together to make your own 3D ‘models,’ and a pamphlet listing Anderson’s art history inspirations. Slipped alongside was a packet of cut-out paper portrait silhouettes he’d had made of Loewe staff members. “I like that they’re kind of immortalized in this moment,” he said.

For Anderson, it’s been a way of honoring the people who make, the crafts that are involved, and the sea-changes in emotion being wrought in these weird times—as well as capturing it all for posterity in the form of an object, something that a 20-minute runway event never could. “For everyone who’s turned up at my shows for the past 10 years, I’d like them to say ‘Oh, this is how we dealt with it,’ instead of it being visual content that we don’t keep.”

With their sculptural volumes, twisting, looping, and wrapping forms, both collections read as Anderson’s push to convey the 3D presence of garments through the limitations of a flat, 2D medium of communication. Some of his references had been taken from El Greco and Velázquez, and his absorption of high Spanish art in the Prado in Madrid; others from his admiration of Issey Miyake’s pleats, and from wanting to showcase the painstaking handcrafts his collaborators bring. The leather-workers helped him evolve a basket-weave top and a soft, suspended bag that folds itself around one side of the body like an apron. The Japanese Shibori print radiates from the side of a tunic.

“I have actually really enjoyed this process. It has made me be way more humble about who I am in this industry,” he concluded. “If I look at before the pandemic, I was slightly struggling. I was going out to prove that we are doing something. I think what’s been good about doing this is that I’m closer to the people who make the bags, to the pattern cutter.” Holding it all together in the digital space is turning out to mean more sharing of the glory, less behind-closed-doors mystique, more proof of the humanity, time, and ingenuity that goes into making things, he believes. “I think that fashion now has to get rid of all the layers and just say, ‘This is what this brand does, and we’re going to do it with conviction.’ It has to be real. I think it’s bigger than the collection. I’m really proud of it because it’s very honest, it’s our humility. And it’s actually about finding that I love what I do.”

Source: Vogue

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Junya Watanabe Spring 2021 Menswear

See these dudes? Get ready for who they are: Yusuke Seguchi, a master sushi chef; Taro Osamu, samurai swordsmith; Yutaro Sugitsara, professional fly-fisherman; Takaya Maki and Akira Nakamura, automobile mechanics; Masashi Hirao, bonsai master. We haven’t yet gotten to the bottom of the list of the guys—the honored experts in their fields, all over Japan—whom Junya Watanabe approached to be photographed wearing his spring 2021 men’s collection. But you get the gist. In the necessary shift away from the Paris runway format, Watanabe turned to the heroes of highly specialist traditional and technical professions he reveres. “This collection is designed for people who pursue their work with a sincere attitude all over Japan, and all over the world,” came the explanation. “People who demonstrate a certain authenticity and humility.”

Hardworking clothes for hardworking men—it’s more than a fancy fashion trope in Watanabe’s world. In an important sense, the context of the real-guy look book returns his aesthetic to its rightful roots. For years, his own work has been carving out that ideal masculine space in which the distance between fashion and authentic utilitarian workwear is absolved. Still, while the baseline items—chore jackets, workwear denims, Carhartt khakis, carpenter coats—are durable and fit for purpose, there’s an undeniable romanticism about them. In the middle of a pandemic, with so many people stuck working on screens at home, the valorization of manual skills, of men who get under cars, forge swords, and fish rivers seems all the more vividly poignant.

In his own time of confinement, Watanbe also found room to praise the cool men who uphold social life in Japan, saluting the Kobe bar owner Agobe Osamwentin and the Harajuku DJ-producer Bryan Burton-Lewis. A subtext threaded through these portraits of modern manhood was a list of books Watanabe has on his shelves. You don’t see that overtly stated in this collection, but the print and pattern he used refers to the graphic artists (and other design creatives) whose work forms his pantheon of idols. Coded and loaded with solidarity for what matters, he called this collection a “Manual.”

Source: Vogue

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Feng Chen Wang London Fashion Week SS 2021

The ‘Rework’ collection from Feng Chen Wang is a sustainability conscious line focused on reducing environmental impact. The collection takes reference from Feng’s own memories; growing up as a child in rural China through her past collections she reflects on the meaning and messages each memory conveys.

The Rework collection recycles past Feng Chen Wang garments and fabrics, creating new pieces with the brand’s signature 2-in-1 design technique which incorporates deconstruction and draping. It combines the concept of recycle and redesign by reviewing the production process to reduce the brands impact towards the environment, allowing the garments and fabric that are leftover to be brought into a new dimension. This capsule revisits important Feng Chen Wang moments, such as the AW18 collection where “There’s no place like home” was a key theme. Feng referenced her first house number by embroidering 239 to evoke a sense of home, her memories, family and friends.

The iconic SS18 collection’s ‘Made in China’ stamp is also included in this capsule to continue seeking to redefine and challenge its global connotations. These key moments are reflected upon and reincarnated into the Rework collection to signify a revival and remind ourselves to reflect on our own memories.

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Virgil Abloh Shares Pics of His LV² Collaboration With Nigo

When Virgil Abloh announced his Louis Vuitton collaboration with Nigo in December, he gave props to the Japanese streetwear pioneer. “Me being at Louis Vuitton is directly attributable to work Nigo’s done in the past,” Abloh said. “A collab project with him—it puts his work in the right context.”

The French luxury goods house famously partnered with Supreme in 2017, when Kim Jones was still LV’s menswear designer, but this hookup is different. There are no logos for Nigo’s brand, Human Made, on these clothes and accessories. In fact, there’s not much streetwear in the collection at all. “Let’s not do the expected,” is how Abloh characterized the interaction between himself and his mentor and friend.

That rings true with a statement Abloh made in an interview Dazed published shortly after the Louis Vuitton and Nigo project was announced. “I would definitely say it’s gonna die, you know? Like, its time will be up,” was how Abloh summed up streetwear’s fate at the time. As offhand as the comment was (see below), it stirred up quite a lot of internet talk in the industry and beyond. Three months later, Abloh has some new thoughts on the topic. He shared them, along with photos of his collaboration with Nigo, exclusively with Vogue.

Tell me about your friendship with Nigo.

He’s among the first real mentors I had in fashion. Since my trajectory was different, had I been a quote, unquote traditional designer, I might’ve gone to New York and apprenticed under Donna Karan. But since streetwear is a new genre of fashion design, those earliest mentors, the Yves Saint Laurent or Balenciaga of streetwear, it’s Nigo, it’s James Jebbia, who founded Supreme. They took what was organically happening within culture—skate and street brands—and they made hard-core brands from that.

Nigo, I was fortunate over 15 years ago to have met him in Japan. He took us under his wing and showed us the ropes of how he was building the brand A Bathing Ape at the time.

What was the process of working with him like?

We met in his studio [in Tokyo]. He has a completely vertical fashion brand with Human Made. In one building, he designs, does the photo shoot, does the manufacturing. I was impressed by that. We had subsequent meetings in my studio in Paris. They were really hands-on. Our strongpoint is the art direction of the concept. What people might be most surprised by is that for two guys known for streetwear history and ability, the collection is completely the opposite. That was our starting point: Let’s not do the expected. Let’s not put streetwear in a box. That’s the epiphany within the collaboration.

You’re doing a lot of tailoring together.

Yeah. If you were to say our names and that we’re doing something at Louis Vuitton, you would almost be able to predict it. But to me fashion with a capital F, it’s supposed to take you on a journey, to lead. Last fall I did an interview where a quote was taken out of context; my sentiment was that streetwear will die.

Virgil Abloh says streetwear is dead. It was the quote heard around the fashion world…

I’m such a novice; I don’t realize that things can even go that far. I’m a little bit naive in that way. It was literally me in my kitchen just riffing on what I’d been thinking. I didn’t say it to be polarizing. I think that in the context of this conversation with Nigo—if you speak to anyone that’s been in streetwear for the last 15 years, it’s always had this sort of nine lives, dying and coming back, and dying and coming back. There’s so many first-generation streetwear brands, stores, and retailers. The market wasn’t as vibrant as it is now, so they went out of business and people don’t remember those. Nigo has had projects before; he’s had many a brand, many identities within streetwear. Partially what I meant that “it will die” is that new things like tailoring from guys like Nigo and me will be born from the regeneration of it.

Back to the collaboration. You’ve put the LV Damier check to good use. It’s not something you’ve touched on yet, right?

A hundred percent. I thought this was a perfect project to do things like that. The mood of the collection started off with our appreciation for the U.K. dandy and the mod era, Savile Row tailoring. That gave us the silhouette; but when it came to adding our own texture within the silhouette, that was very much using the codes of the house.

When I think of Japan, I think of denim. You’ve done some amazing things with the material here.

What the Japanese are known for is great archiving and reinterpretations of Americana. Nigo has one of the most formidable collections; he has some of the very early Lee and Levi’s pieces that were ever found. His personal style, he’s a true connoisseur. He buys his suits on Savile Row. He goes for the experience, the custom bespoke nature of it. Also, his personal collection of denim! When it was a matter of developing these pieces, I thought that was the most authentic [thing], using him as a muse.

So, his influence is in the bags?

He had this brand called Ice cream with this drippy signature. I thought, What if we made that playfulness a little more serious and merged it with the Louis Vuitton signature?

And I see you’ve done a hooded bomber with Mount Fuji on the back.

We would do those pieces in our sleep. But we didn’t want the collection to be 100% that. My program at Louis Vuitton, the overarching vision is father to son. So, having a portion of more mature pieces with youthful pieces.

Let’s talk about the LV² label. Is it only applicable to you and Nigo, or is it a new logo for you plus somebody else going forward?

It’s something for Nigo and me specifically. It’s like a new rap group. Nigo came up with the name of LV². We were from outside having an opinion and just styling it. Now we’re inside designing it and styling it.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from Nigo?

It’s a sense of detail, a Japanese precision. But also generosity. He’s extremely heartfelt. I’m American and I work a lot in Europe. In Paris fashion can be cutthroat. It can have this manic feeling. In America it’s very workhorse. Working with him and having him in the studio, seeing his disposition and how he was thinking of the challenge of making tailoring, of how to refine all these ideas, he did it in a very respectful, calm, polite, but very precise way.

So is it really just a one-off?

Yeah, but as we’ve finally finished, there’s already been talks that this could be an ongoing logic. I think both sides are open to it, so I wouldn’t rule out that other things could come. I can say the future will involve a way of activating this collection, when it comes time to release, that will be more immersive than just simply putting it out into stores. We both have a passion for eventizing these moments. It’s not just the clothes, it’s the context.

Source: Vogue

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Bottega Veneta Fall 2020 Menswear

In between his last show and this one, Bottega Veneta’s Daniel Lee swept London’s Fashion Awards, scooping up four statuettes, more than any designer has ever managed to win in a single year before. Among the prizes were the designer of the year and the brand of the year. Lee has the industry’s attention, that’s clear. Fashion loves a new guy, and collectively we’ve determined he’s “it.” There was not one, but two major profiles of Lee published in the days before this Milan show. Tonight’s collection, his third on the runway, suggests he has the goods to back that up.

He definitely has the guts. After scoring his first hit with the Pouch bag, a clutch that shrugged off the house patrimony woven intrecciato leather, he did the contrarian thing this season: He embraced the intrecciato. Only his intrecciato pouches come with a difference: They’re double-faced, meaning they’re unlined and the leather strips are double-sided, so the same exceptional workmanship visible on the exterior of the bag is exposed on the interior. It’s the kind of modernizing touch—apparently instinctual, but in the end quite thoughtful—that Lee is making his own. Consider another: a high-heeled sandal that curled ergonomically around the ankle and was made on a 3D printer, BV’s first stab at the process and quite a sexy one.

Previewing the accessories at a showroom appointment, Lee extemporized about Bottega Veneta. “When you look at the brand’s beginnings, everything it made was so soft. I find that super inspiring.” That thinking informed the ready-to-wear he put on tonight’s runway. But equally, so did the fact that at 34 Lee is part of the street wear generation, a cohort that came up wearing Nike trainers and clothes that put an emphasis on cool and comfort. Explaining his approach to fall at BV he asked, “How do we put ourselves together in a considered, elegant way but still feel comfortable?”

His answer was stretch. Even the men’s tailoring was built with stretch in it, he said, so it moves with the wearer. This was the big change from his debut to today. Last February he seemed mostly concerned with the profile cut by a man or a woman in Bottega Veneta. A year later he’s come to understand that the way his clothes feel to the bodies inside them is just as important a selling point. That’s why you’ll see a big emphasis on both knit dressing and jersey, for both day and evening. The other major talking point here was all the fringing. For one reason or another fringe been a popular motif in Milan—see also Prada and Jil Sander—but no one has been as audacious on the subject as Lee. His fringed shearlings will be instantly identifiable on the streets a year from now, although truth be told, they would’ve been more powerful if fringe wasn’t already such a collective movement.

This was a confident outing, one that leaned into controlled repetition to drive its points home. Lee has quite handily established his Bottega Veneta as the coolest brand in town. He said he’s been spending a lot of time at La Scala watching dance performances; he likes all kinds, from ballet to modern. With the wind at his back at BV, going forward he should give himself freer rein to explore—to let go.

Source: VOGUE

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FALL 2020 PRADA MENSWEAR

As a swelling and ominous bass obscured heroic but fading trumpets the lights came up over a Prada set that closely resembled one of Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings. There were two bare but Palladian-proportioned arched piazzas; in the middle of each was the statue of a man on a horse on a podium—classic 19th-century masculine heroism.

Except, naturally, not quite. The horse and rider were constructed like those cardboard dinosaur statues for kids, from insertable, flat, anonymizing sections. Said Mrs. Prada in her post show debrief: “I wanted an equestrian statue, but of course equestrian is not politically correct, so I told Rem [Koolhaas], ‘Let’s do an equestrian that is totally non-heroic.’”

Which allows us to canter on to the clothes. These were bookended between the bare-armed tank top looks at the top and high notch-collared two-button topcoats at the end: two particularly Prada-ish chapters in the recent masculine narrative of dress. Between them, even if Mrs. Prada indicated it wasn’t the intention, we seemed to take a survey of various professionally specific styles of dress seen through a house eye. There were young executives in three-piece suits or mismatched tailored separates, portfolios thrust between arm and hip, in different volumes of jacket. We transitioned to rural worker in mid-calf boots and oversized corduroy jacket, then onto a more urban kind of Prada hipster freelancer combination of the previous two categories that mixed elements from both and inserted some technical touches and piped sport raised graphics on pocket flaps. Two Macintosh-like rubberized coats matched with baggy pants tucked into beaten leather galvanized sole boots (plus rectangular lensed shades) were a little scientist-fights-contagion. Following those was an absolutely wicked green half-length coat that seemed particularly fashion show reviewer.

De-formalized top-to-toe cotton day pajamas with small ruffled bibs and some great treated shearlings followed. We arrived at those last two topcoats via a series of knits and silks patterned with punchily-colored gridded graphics whose palette nodded to the earlier separates and seemed related to the lavender and olive shapes on the set. They also shared something with the (Google searched in the back of the car) fabric patterns associated with Koloman Moser and other artists of the Vienna Secession (mentioned in an aside by Mrs. Prada during the treasure hunt chat at the end).

“Let me say what’s the point of this show,” she obligingly added: “That in the big—not ‘confusion’—but the complication of the current time between the world going wrong or going better, the discussion on sexes, on surviving or not… I thought to give an indication that the only thing that makes me calm and optimistic is to give value to work… to give value to things that matter in your life and your work. And so the creativity is mixed with technicalities, which is a little bit similar to the Secessionist period when ideas, creativity, and actual work had to be all together.” And going back to that post-triumphant equine statue, was this also about the nature of contemporary heroism? “Not heroic, but heroes… I want to give a hope that in this casino [translation: chaotic world] if you do well your job, paired with intelligence, and with culture, then this already is something… It’s to give respect to work, to effort, to fatigue, and to what is difficult.”

Source: Vogue

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