June 23, 2019

At Celine, the Designer Who Fell to Earth

A cube drifts down the runway, all four sides clad in theatrical red curtains, and the curtains slowly begin to rise, revealing a contraption made of metal and lights that holds a single model sitting in stasis waiting for his cue to get ‘out of the box.’ In his glittering diamanté-encrusted suit, he is reminiscent of David Bowie’s character Thomas Jerome Newton in Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 film ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth,’ who sits watching multiple screens at once, absorbing American culture.

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June 22, 2019

Ode to Orlando at Comme des Garçons

A runway show split over four acts, with four different lighting set-ups, four distinct soundtracks, and so much more. With Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garçons, we’re often left with little more than guesswork as we extract meaning, if any, so skillfully concealed. Today, however, we had a clue: she’s recently been tapped to design the costumes for a new production of Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid, time-traveling classic Orlando at the Vienna State Opera — clearly on her mind at today’s outing.

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June 22, 2019

Farm to Runway: Junya Watanabe

Opening to the farmyard sounds of a rooster crowing a wake-up call, Watanabe sent out his first look replete with an oversized tote bag stamped with the logo of the infamous London restaurant St John. The restaurant began life as the food side of Soho’s The French House, a bar frequented by the likes of Francis Bacon, Dylan Thomas and Lucian Freud, before moving into St John street in Clerkenwell near to Smithfield’s meat market. They specialize in ‘nose to tail’ cooking, using offal and parts of the animal that aren’t usually used.

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June 21, 2019

Giving Floral at Dries Van Noten

Dries Van Noten took us to a venue we had never been to before today, something very rare on the fashion week treadmill, and then turned our expectations upside down. It was composed of a series of vast white ‘perfect’ spaces for a gallery show. Or indeed, a runway show, that ended in a long intimate corridor bathed in hot pink light. And this was the master touch: taking us out of our comfort zone and dragging us into the unique world of his collection.

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June 21, 2019

Printer Friendly at Yohji Yamamoto

A Yohji Yamamoto show comes with certain expectations and, in the same breath, certain unknowns. We know that he is the undisputed king of all things black, and that his garments are poetry in motion, but something he doesn’t usually get credit for is his astute eye, and hand, for print.

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June 20, 2019

Slim and Sculpted at Rick Owens

The invitation was a layered sculptural object signed Thomas Houseago, a Los Angeles-based artist who has his first retrospective in France at the moment in the Musée d’Art Moderne. The museum shares a common courtyard with the Palais de Tokyo, Owens’ venue of choice where we found ourselves today, face-to-face with a huge Houseago sculpture that occupied the space between the two museums, dominating the runway scenography. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, right?

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May 19, 2019

From Painting Patti to Cutting Wood

After seeing Patti Smith’s ‘Horses’ album cover, her jacket-over-shoulder ease of presence photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe, a young Swiss artist by the name of Franz Gertsch endeavored to immortalize the punk poet in a series of five larger-than-life paintings, presenting her as omnipresent yet authentic, while forging an auspicious, hyperrealistic start to his own career in art.

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May 1, 2019

We All Scream for Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch, Godfather of Gloom, was neurotic before anxiety became big business, as seen in a new exhibition, Love and Angst (April 11 – July 21, 2019), at London’s British Museum. Gen Z hangxiety or farting in Sweaty Betty yoga pants can’t compete with classic vices like drugs and taboo sex.

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March 3, 2019

Dark Forces at Comme des Garçons

Last season was brutal, referencing war and pain, so we were ready for an uncomfortable ride from the outset at Comme des Garçons. This season we were treated to a ritual, though I’m unsure as to what kind of spell Rei cast on us.

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