Actions Rather Than Blah Blah Blah: Chloé S/S 22
The Youth4Climate event kicked off in Milan at the end of September, as the fashion shows in the Italian capital of style came to an end and the runways moved to Paris. Yet there was a show today in Paris that may have won the approval of climate activists – Chloé's runway.
Showcased on the bank of the Seine with Notre Dame Cathedral covered in scaffolding as the backdrop, the show marked the third collection Gabriela Hearst designed as Creative Director of the house and it also proved that she is continuing to transfer the modus operandi she applies to her namesake label to the French maison.
Hearst's eponymous fashion house, a favourite of Jill Biden, the First Lady of the United States, usually features in its collections crafted pieces made by artisans following sustainable procedures and the designer is trying to extend that vision to Chloé as well, coming up with designs made with leftover fabrics and materials.
Luxury is supposed to be handmade but nowadays most collections are produced in factories, using machines. Hearst wants instead to bring back the artisanal manufacturing processes in the making of luxury pieces and, to do so, she collaborated with a wide range of NGOs.
Chloé's S/S 22 collection still featured Hearst's staples, including caftans, ponchos and relaxed pantsuits, but the emphasis was on sustainable processes and upcycled and recycled materials.
One of the first dresses on the runway was made from a patchwork of vegetable-dyed leather; an ivory dress was decorated with upcycled pieces from a jewelry workshop; there were very desirable dresses hand-crocheted and covered in multi-coloured scallop-like motifs, or made with knotted and twisted strips of leftover fabrics forming dynamic effects or trellis or grid-like structures.
Also the necklaces were made by weaving and knotting seashells with strips of leftover fabrics from previous collections. All these techniques were created by Akanjo, a social enterprise organization in Madagascar. Strands of deadstock fabrics and leather were also used for bags.
These pieces featured a special logo - "Chloé Craft" - to highlight the highly artisanal process behind them, while the seashell and macramé necklaces, the basket-shaped bags as well, included a label with the name of the artisan who made them.
Cotton (in the clothes and the lining for the bags) was also replaced with linen, a material that emits fewer greenhouse gases and requires less water, and there were actually further sustainable details to note when it came to the shoes.
The multi-coloured soles of the flatform sandals were indeed made from upcycled flip-flops and were the result of a partnership with Kenyan nonprofit social enterprise Ocean Sole that employs people from low-income areas to reshape and cut flip-flops washed up on beaches and makes with them sculptures and accessories. The new Nama sneaker is made instead with 80 percent less water and emits 35 percent fewer greenhouses gases than the previous Sonnie model by Chloé.
Last but not least, the benches for the guests at the runway show were made with raw earth bricks by Les Bâtisseuses, a network working to integrate female refugees into French society by training them in eco-construction.
Now, realistically we all know that just one label working in this way is like the proverbial drop in the ocean, but, by making these designs, Hearst shows that it can be done and also hopes to influence fast fashion retailers.
Hearst reduced, for example, the numbers of items on the runway, cutting it back and editing the collection (from around 50 to 31 designs), something that other luxury houses, but also fast fashion retailers could start doing. Besides, while not many of us may be able to reproduce her multi-coloured fabric strip dresses as we would need not just the skills to make them but also a lot of materials, the most creative among us may try and do smaller piece or accessories recycling fabrics or repurposing a garment that we do not wear anymore.
Greta Thunberg complained at the Youth4Climate conference that global leaders just keep on promising to address the climate emergency, and she dismissed their debates as "blah, blah, blah", in a nutshell vapid talk but no action. Hearst has been doing the opposite with her collections, researching the supply chain, sourcing materials that can be recycled and showing environmental and social responsibility. Let's hope that others in the fashion industry (and beyond) will starting opting for action rather than vain talk.
Geometrical Coral Reefs and Origami-Shaped Spaces in Samira Boon's Sustainable Designs
Sustainability has become a priority for a few fashion houses, especially for younger brands, but also for interior design projects, as proved by a recent installation by Samira Boon. The Dutch architect, textile and accessory designer created a special piece for the Entrance Lounge of the Kunstlinie theatre and cultural centre in Almere, The Netherlands.
Designed by the internationally renowned Japanese architectural firm SANAA, the Kunstlinie, partly anchored to the shore grounds and partially resting on piles over the water, hoovers over the Weerwater Lake.
Samira Boon's installation is entitled "Intertidal" and it is inspired by this sort of suspension between the sea and the land, the inside and the outside, it consists indeed in a garden of sculptures made from recycled linen and in particular from old bed linen.
This sturdy material in an off-white colour is employed to create a series of elements recreating a coral reef-like structure. Visitors can walk among them, a concept inspired by Richard Serra's open sculptures, while listening to atmospheric soundscapes.
The recycled linen material also allowed the designer to play around with another dichotomy - stiff / soft - since the origami-like configurations of geometrical corals look as if they were made with a rigid and hard material, but the base material to make them, linen, is soft.
While this is an "artificial" coral garden, it represents a sustainable ecosystem in which fibres are allowed to have a second life. the recycled textiles for this installation were transformed into a structural and durable biocomposite material designed by Studio Samira Boon for interiors and called BioFold (the new name for the studio's former research BiOrigami).
BioFold mainly employs non-reusable textiles, such as jute coffee bags, that are otherwise hard to recycle, alongside biobased plastics in a new biocomposite material. By employing Japanese origami and digital production techniques, Studio Samira Boon transforms the biocomposite material into a functional, sensory and flexible architectural product with a 3-dimensionality added that guarantees flexibility and excellent acoustic properties.
As Germany Goes Towards a Three-Coloured System, the "Pantone Merkel" is Set on Fading Away
A new chapter is opening in the political history of Germany: at Sunday's elections Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic SPD narrowly beat the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) of the outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel. The Green party arrived third, proving people, especially younger voters, are very interested in environmental issues.
As the CDU/SPD duopoly comes to an end, it becomes clear that Germany will be governed by a three-party coalition - either the green-yellow-red traffic light coalition, with the SPD, Greens and FDP (the Greens' Annalena Baerbock is willing to work with the SPD's Scholz), or the "Jamaican" coalition of the CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP.
While critics are analysing the victory and wondering if centre-left parties are recovering in Europe, and if Covid played a part in the voters' decisions, we do know that as a new era opens for Germany, another one finishes. For the time being, Angela Merkel remains caretaker leader, but sooner (or later, depending on the time it takes for the coalition to be formed) will disappear from the political scene.
A diplomatic quasi-presidential figure, Merkel managed to keep her party and the EU together in difficult moments, but she also made mistakes and filtered decisions through German lenses. Climate issues were neglected under her; refugees policies and a fairer asylum system didn't seem to be on her agenda (it took her until 2015 to admit that she hadn't realised how conflicts in Syria and Iraq may have affected Germany).
Last year she also reached a compromise with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's regime in Hungary and the illiberal Law and Justice (PiS) government in Poland, while Germany's dependence on Chinese markets meant that the issue of human rights in China wasn't discussed. Yes, she remains uncorrupted compared to some politicians (Italy comes to mind...) and terrifically diplomatic even when former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called her "an unf*ckable lard-ass" in an interview with a newspaper editor in 2011, when former US President Donad Trump refused to shake her hand at a meeting in 2017 and when a year later Trump was pictured confronted by Merkel acting like a spoiled child having a terrible tantrum at the G-7 summit in Canada (View this photo).
Merkel symbolised her diplomacy and monolithic presence also through her looks. For 16 years she has indeed adopted a very basic uniform comprising a jacket with three or four buttons obviously done up, dark wide trousers and flat shoes. Fashion designer Bettina Schoenbach dressed Merkel since she won the 2005 election, creating a look that didn't attract the attention to clothes, reshifted the dynamics of discourse onto politics and symbolised a sort of sober, no-nonsense and maybe a bit cold political style.
There was only one thing - well, actually two things - that changed: the colour and the materials of her blazers. As the years passed and she took part in international meetings we saw Merkel in over 50 shades of wool, silk, shantung and velvet blazers, from bright orange to pastel pink, from soothing lavander to blood red. Neutrals - from white to beige - were favoured for meetings with business leaders. There was therefore a sort of intrinsic code behind the colours, just like there were symbols behind Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's brooches.
Merkel only opted for dresses when she went to the opera, even though she disliked the attention her low-cut taffeta dress for the opening of Oslo's Opera House in 2008 got her, and also made sure her necklaces weren't too ostentatious after a necklace in the colours of the German flag in a 2013 TV debate sparked a dispute about nationalism.
Merkel's jackets became so popular that a while back Dutch graphic designer Noortje van Eekelen created the "Pantone Merkel" (also known as the "many shades of Merkel" or "Merkel Rainbow"), basically 100 images of chancellor Angela Merkel in her trademark jackets arranged into a color chart and accompanied by dates and locations. Widely imitated through more Merkel rainbow pics that accompanied features about her published on prominent newspapers and websites, the Pantone Merkel was part of "The Spectacle of the Tragedy," a satirical project about the Eurozone crisis van Eekelen developed in 2012 for his Master of Design at the Sandberg Instituut, in Amsterdam.
It would be reductive to summarise 16 years of conservative-led government in Germany through the chancellor's blazers and maybe through her iconic pose with hands making a rhombus shape. At the end of the day, it is indeed the politics that count and not the clothes. Yet, fashion-wise Merkel's uniform entered history with her, representing a minimalist and sober moment of politics.
Guess we will miss her colour-coded messages, but let's hope that, as the Pantone Merkel fades away, the Green party (that managed to convince 250,000 previous non-voters to give it their votes) may spark in the near future a debate at government level about a more sustainable garment and textile industry in Germany and influence the rest of the EU as well.
The Fashion Face-Off We Probably Didn't Really Need: Versace + Fendi = Fendace
Once upon a time a fashion brand would compete with another to win the money (and loyalty) of consumers. Then came collaborations and things changed with limited edition products and collections to whet the appetite of fashion fans.
Coronavirus changed quite a few things in fashion, though: with lockdown fashion ceased to be a necessity and consumers started redirecting their money towards other goods that went from electronics to videogames. When lockdown ended, the priority seemed to go out and see the world once again, so travelling and holidays were high on the agenda for many of us.
Many fashion houses therefore started looking for innovative and fun ideas to rechannel the attention and money of consumers towards clothes and accessories. For some, collaborations were the answer, after all there's safety in numbers, and so came the unlikely duet between Balenciaga and Gucci, a collection showcased a few months ago in which two different houses belonging to the same fashion group tried to have fun at hacking each other.
Yesterday evening, during Milan Fashion Week, Fendi and Versace pushed things further with a friendly fashion battle. Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi of Fendi and Donatella Versace of Versace swapped indeed houses.
The project was sparked by a dinner at Versace's family house, continued with a trip to the Novara-based Versace archives for Jones and the Rome-based Fendi archive for Donatella Versace and resulted in a collection showcased in the courtyard of the Versace family palazzo in Via Gesù.
Presented under the rather cringing Fendace moniker (that evokes the slogans you may see printed on bootleg shirts that make fun of fashion brands), the collection was unveiled with a grand runway that featured all the most famous models and supermodels you may expect to see at a glamorous fashion show, from Kate Moss and her daughter Lila Moss Hack to Amber Valletta, Shalom Harlow, Kristen McMenamy, Mariacarla Boscono, Gigi Hadid, Adut Akech and Naomi Campbell.
House tropes were swapped and promptly integrated in each other's collection: safety pins and Baroque prints made their debut on the Fendi section of the runway that also included elegant lace gowns in black or pale pink and sporty oversized shirts and shorts for men; Donatella added bright and bold colours in the logo suit, jumpers and denim pantsuit with bell bottoms, incorporating the Medusa logo on Fendi's totes (while Jones added safety pins on Peekabo and Baguette bags), emblazoning Gianni Versace's trademark oroton gowns with Fendi's double-F logo.
The runway was divided in two sections that featured 25 designs each, but the results weren't always so distinguishable, and at times they looked rather predictable, nothing was indeed too unexpected or extremely innovative.
The collection allowed Silvia Venturini Fendi and Donatella Versace to explore other houses from the inside (they never designed for other brands). Besides, "Fendace" proved that two rival houses - or in this case fashion dynasties - that are not part of the same fashion conglomerate can actually work together (allegedly for fun reasons and definitely not for money...). Another interesting point about this collection was the fact that the swap regards also the manufacturing aspect - Fendi will indeed produce the Versace collection and vice versa.
That said, "Fendace" is one of those commercial ventures aimed at generating immediate media revenue upon its launch and possibly reasonable sales upon its release. It can be considered as a way to celebrate the return of fashion in a grand kitsch style after a global pandemic but maybe, if there hadn't been a global pandemic, the two brands would have never worked together.
It is indeed undeniable that Covid-19 brought brands together and that partnerships and collaborations are now the rule, as they represent a way to go through difficult times. As you may remember from a previous post, a few months ago Ermenegildo Zegna and Prada bought a majority stake in Italian cashmere company Filati Biagioli Modesto SpA together; in April 2021, after a fire burnt down a Valentino manufacturing plant in Tuscany, Prada's CEO Patrizio Bertelli made one of the fashion house's factories available to Valentino's employees to make sure they could keep on working.
Will Fendace become a tradition for the two houses? It obviously depends from the sales (the collection will be available from Fendi and Versace boutiques exclusively from next May), but deep down you wish there would be healthier types of collaborations between brands. It doesn't indeed take a genius to mix the main logos, tropes and codes of two fashion houses and create a remixed language that some consumers may find interesting (and that will be easily copied by many fake fashion manufacturers out there - you can bet that in a week's time Fendace will be all over Aliexpress...). In this case the two houses may have worked only with leftover materials from each other's stocks to give the collection a sustainable twist.
It would also be more intriguing if two houses could develop together something more durable, from a new textile to a processing plant where materials could be recycled. Yes, we do need collaborations, partnerships and clever exchanges, but they need to bring something genuinely new and innovative to the table to be truly ground-breaking, rather than just the umpteenth branded accessory that nobody really needs.
From Cosmic Disco to Spinning Recycled Yarns: Vitelli S/S 22
Looking at the reports from the latest fashion weeks you'd think not much has changed after all in the fashion industry in this post-pandemic world. After all, as IRL runways have come back, luxury brands are once again organising their shows as they used to, while influencers have resumed their peacocking outside the venues, especially in Milan. Yet there are small and tangible changes in the collections with a few up-and-coming labels, among them Vitelli, switching towards more sustainable designs.
Founded in 2016 by Mauro Simionato, the brand's creative director and former co-owner of footwear brand Volta, and Giulia Bortoli, knitwear director, Vitelli wants to spin a sustainable yarn (pun totally intended). Its narrative is indeed steeped in music, Italian manufacturing and knitwear made with recycled materials.
Simionato is into fashion and music, he loves vinyl records and DJing and reunites his passions in a Milan-based space called Organic Knitting Theater inside the Spazio Vitelli in via Felice Casati, a sort of knitting workshop and R&D center complete with small stage and DJ decks. Part of the space is used by a collective of knitwear enthusiasts called Rayon Vert, using waste yarns to make outdoor clothing, accessories and blankets.
Vitelli's first proper collection, showcased during Milan Fashion Week at the Fondazione Sozzani, was produced in the Veneto region, around the Schio and Vicenza areas, and was inspired by Cosmic music and the Hippy Trail.
The former is a reference to cult Italian nightclub Cosmic (View this photo), located in Lazise in the province of Verona, and operating between 1979 and 1984. While its set was inspired by the space aesthetics, with a DJ booth first shaped like a glittery space helmet and then reinvented to look like a small spaceship (View this photo), the club was famous for its eclectic mix of electronic, experimental, funk, African pop and Brazilian music, pioneered by DJs such as Daniele Baldelli, Beppe Loda and Claudio "Mozart" Rispoli.
Readopted by gay and straight clubs in Britain over 10 years ago, Cosmic music was characterised by one very simple point: essentially Baldelli & Co would play the tracks they fancied, often at the wrong speed, and, as they wouldn't understand the content of the lyrics in foreign languages, they would use the voice as an instrument and mix it with other records to produce innovative soundscapes.
That's more or less the idea behind Vitelli's S/S 22 collection: entitled "Gioventù Cosmica 2021 - Parte seconda: Il morso (Bit)" ("Cosmic Youth 2021 - Part II: The Bite (Bit)"), the collection was an attempt at recreating with a mix of recycled yarns the eclectic combination of sounds produced at the Cosmic club and come up with a series of non binary zero-waste garments and accessories inspired by the "Overland" or "Hippie Trail" that many young people followed between the end of the '50s and the '70s and that went from Europe to Goa and Bangkok passing through Kabul and Peshawar.
To make this collection the Vitelli collective that describes itself as "responsible, multi-ethnic punks of Italian couture", didn't start from shapes and silhouettes, but moved from the reclaimed materials they found, mainly piles of deadstock and leftover yarns that they collected from companies that were getting rid of them (the official Instagram page of the brand features posts showing a van full of plastic bags containing spools of deadstock yarns). So the main point was moving from specific inspirations, but working with what they could find.
The results were experimental and multi-layered with the yarns transformed via a variety of techniques including felting into oversized T-shirts and cardigans, cropped bolero jackets, Bermuda shorts and ribbed trousers, sarong-like skirts and shirt dresses, ample caftans and distorted tops, hand-made crocheted accessories and felted clogs.
All the pieces, often in clashing patterns and characterised by densely textured surfaces, incorporated a variety of upcycled fabrics, scraps and yarns.
Will Vitelli manage to survive in a fashion world that is fighting to go back to its pre-pandemic times almost to pretend that nothing happened?
Time will tell, but for the time being, their slow approach to fashion and the resulting sustainable collection made by mixing recycled yarns, just like Baldelli & Co mixed strange and wonderful tracks at the Cosmic, was considered by many as among the freshest collections in Milan (one of their pieces, a cropped striped top, was already spotted on Shawn Mendes at the latest MTV VMAs 2021, View this photo, so the brand is already acquiring a cool aura...). Looks like the Italian capital of fashion may be set on a new course towards sustainability and, thanks to the know-how of Italian manufacturing companies, going green may be a great opportunity for a solid economic recovery.
Retreating Ice, Devastating Fire: From Melting Glaciers to a Fashion Collections Healing a Land
In yesterday's post we looked at a designer upcycling second-hand garments to create demi-couture pieces. Let's continue the eco-friendly theme with a juxtaposition that looks at retreating glaciers and devastating fires.
Milan Fashion Week is currently on, but those who are in town for the event and would like to learn more about the current conditions of glaciers, have a passion for photography and want to take a break from the runways, should head to the Triennale for the exhibition "Sulle tracce dei ghiacciai" (On the trail of glaciers; from today till 17th October). The event is part of the Triennale's programme of events focused on the environment and on the impact human beings and urban lifestyles have upon it, and it is perfectly timed with Greta Thunberg's visit, scheduled for next Friday.
The event features pictures of glaciers taken by Fabiano Ventura and a video installation by Paolo Scoppola. Ventura's photographs are juxtaposed to archival images that the photographer meticulously researched, taken by explorers and photographers from the end of the 1800s to the early 1990s.
Vintage pictures taken 100 years ago are compared to images taken by Ventura on the same spot and around the same period of the year the original pictures were taken.
The images included show missions to Karakorum (2009), Caucasus (2011), Alaska (2013), Andes (2016) and Himalaya (2018). The results are shocking: you don't need to be an expert in glaciology to realise that the situation is dramatic and that the landscapes have radically mutated.
Concentrations of greenhouse gases have reached higher values over the past 800,000 years, mainly due to emissions from human activities.
This is the predominant cause of global warming, which has led the increase of the global average temperature by about 1°C compared to pre-industrial levels and that caused an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events since 1950. Among the different impacts, one of the most obvious is the reduction of the glacial mass on a global level.
The serious health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has absorbed most of the global efforts, redirecting the political and economic attention to the containment of the contagion on the one hand and the economic recovery on the other. But it is necessary to increase the level of attention on the climate crisis, the consequences of which are already evident and visible on a daily basis.
Among the most significant events this summer, there were the serious fires which affected many regions (USA, Europe and the largest islands in Italy for example) and the high temperatures recorded throughout Europe and particularly in Sicily, where the 48,8°C were touched (highest temperature ever recorded in Europe).
But while Milan's Triennale is inviting visitors to consider the effects of retreating glaciers, Sardinian designer Antonio Marras is exploring with his S/S 22 men's and women's wear collections the consequences of devastating fires.
Showcased digitally during Milan Fashion Week with a film and a photoshoot, the collection was photographed in Sardinia in an area that on 24th July this year was destroyed by a large fire.
Unfortunately, strong winds, high temperatures and dry vegetation, allowed the blaze to spread rapidly, reaching Cuglieri and destroying secular plants such as an olive tree believed to have lived for a millennium, a rare example of botanical archeology.
Within days the fire burnt over 11,000 hectares, roughly the size of around 20,000 football fields. Homes and farmland were also damaged and hundreds of people had to be evacuated.
In the area where Marras shot the video and photoshoot, Santu Lussurgiu, only 100 hectares escaped the flames. In both the images and the video the burnt soil covered in a sand-like black dust and the skeletal trees, contrast with the white and ivory clothes, covered with delicate appliqued flowers, vintage embroideries and lace. The aerial images are particularly shocking as they show what was once a green area reduced almost to a desert.
Gradually colours start reappearing in the collection, from aqua details in the knitwear or dresses to the delicate pink or vivid red rose prints, from the leopard inserts on the parkas and jackets to the colourful patchwork motifs on shirts. They hint at rebirth, a concept symbolised also by the wisp of grass that can be seen at a certain point in the film.
Fragility is instead echoed through the faded floral prints, the tulle and lace encrusted frocks, the see-through slipdresses and lingerie matched with blazers fastened with ribbons, designs with a strong artisanal quality that is missing in many contemporary collections by young and hip designers allegedly producing demi-couture.
Destruction is evoked instead in this collection by the black and faded dark grey designs, their charred beauty perfectly matching the surrounding lunar landscape of rocks and desolation.
Some of the motifs included in this collection were created by Marras during lockdown: after the designer found the fabrics used by seamstresses for the prototypes, he started painting on them, in an almost therapeutic process.
In the film entitled "I had a wound in my heart", a voice talks about stitching a wound (a metaphor for the destruction in Sardinia, but it could be intended as a metaphor for many other things, including the pandemic), a process that triggers a healing process and doesn't leave a scar, but a delicate embroidery at the bottom of the heart.
In the video this concept is symbolised by a red string that a model wraps around his finger, a vague reference maybe to the blue ribbon of Marras' beloved Maria Lai that united an entire village. And while in the film accompanying the previous collection there was an energetic end with a fun twist, here there is a poetic message of hope.
The possibility of a genuine renaissance is indeed evoked in the final tableau with models in white shirts (inspired by Marras' installation at the Sassari-based Giovanni Antonio National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography?) with inserts of lace dipped in tea to create a vintage-like effect.
Yet, as the runways are rebooting and IRL fashion is coming back after the Covid-19 pandemic, we must remember that there won't be any renaissance for our planet and we won't get back a healthy global ecosystem if we don't act now and restore climate stability, rebuilding deteriorated ecological systems.
So, while attention to climate-related issues is laudable in any kind of forms it can manifest, from exhibitions to fashion runways and collections, let's hope that global warming and climate change do not remain themes we discuss and debate about without bringing any real changes.
1. The Ameghino Glacier, Alberto Maria De Agostini, 1945 - © Museo Borgatello
2. The Ameghino Glacier, Fabiano Ventura, 2016 - © Associazione Macromicro
3. The Muir Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, William Osgood Field, 1941 - © Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks
4. The Muir Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, Fabiano Ventura, 2016 - © Associazione Macromicro
When an Appetite for Opulence Explores the Benefits of Upcycling: Harris Reed's Gender Fluid Demi-Couture
Fridays for Futures are back after a long break due to Covid-19 and today students organised demos and events all over the world to raise awareness about climate change. Not many fashion houses actually directly mentioned climate change in their recent collections, but recycling and upcycling have been on a few designers' minds. American-born, London-based Harris Reed is one of them.
On his path to change the fashion system from the inside, Harris Reed, emerged like you do these times - online, debuting his Graduation Collection (he studied at Central Saint Martins) on Instagram (where Harry Styles' stylist Harry Lambert also discovered Reed in 2017),while in lockdown in May 2020. Digital and therefore different from the physical 1945 exhibit Théâtre de la Mode, Reed's showcase actually had the same aim and objective of that early fashion event - taking fashion to people in a theatrical way and telling a story about the young designer. In lockdown Reed learnt indeed to collaborate with other people even without being able to meet them and to play around with new technologies.
Reed's images - inspired by rebellious characters combining history and pop culture, from the New York Dolls to the British dancer Lindsay Kemp, and Henry Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey - were the result of a collaborative effort with fellow design student Bella Thomas who worked on the makeup, illustrator Lukas Palumbo who hand-painted sets, and animator Lauren Dean Hunter.
The results were a combination of fashion, animation and illustration revolving around the theme of gender-fluidity with models wearing grand silhouettes and hats the size of a small flying saucer, voluminous looks that were almost a reaction to the lockdown fashions we had become accustomed to.
The four physical looks, three pairs of boots (the "H Boot", inspired by glam and the '70s) and two digital looks plus a custom-made AR filter in the form of a white hat - intended by the designer as a symbol of liberation - looked opulent, eccentric and inventive. The images looked a bit like tarot cards and the hats vaguely called to mind something surrealist like the Alchemist's outfit complete with towering hat in Alejandro Jodorowsky's epic "The Holy Mountain".
One of the outfits - a tailored jacket with peak shoulders with a hoop-skirt draped in tulle and hot pink satin - eventually ended up in the December 2020 issue of US Vogue donned by Harry Styles, opening up a debate about men wearing dresses and outraging more conservative people such as Republican Candace Owens who posted at the time a Tweet about bringing back "manly men".
Interest around Reed soared: while still studying Reed interned at Gucci for nine months, became the protégé of Alessandro Michele, modelled in Gucci's Resort 2019 show in Arles and starred in the fashion house's 2019 Mémoire d'une Odeur fragrance campaign.
He also dressed other celebrities, including Solange and Ezra Miller, scored a beauty partnership with MAC Cosmetics on a makeup collection and a jewelry collaboration with Missoma, and created capsules for Matchesfashion.com
His first collection post-graduation, unveiled in February 2021, featured six demi-couture ensembles that looked again extreme and gender-fluid.
Made once again in lockdown, the collection, promoted with a film, taught Reed to be resourceful and prompted him to upcycle fabrics and spray-paint tulle (a trendy exercise at the moment favoured by tulle enthusiasts à la Tomo Koizumi). Reed's passion for maximalist fluidity returned in his new collection showcased on Tuesday, at the end of London Fashion Week.
Maybe surprised by the fact that, after Covid, quite a few designers seem to have decided to go back to the usual schedule and conform once again to a pre-Coronavirus runway show in an attempt to rebuild the fashion industry as it was, Reed opted instead for an intimate off-schedule show at the Serpentine Pavilion in Hyde Park with a performance by musician Kelsey Lu. The presentation only included 10 of his demi-couture looks made with upcycled materials.
While shopping for records, books and clothes on the website of British charity chain Oxfam, Reed found the bridal and grooms wear sections and decided to give a new life to bridal gowns and groom's suits, twisting the traditional concept of wedding.
Rather than merely merging half of a suit with half a gown, an experiment that has been attempted already in fashion, or ripping the designs and reconstructing them, Reed fluidly merged them.
He added for example romantic veil panels to cropped tailored tuxedo jackets with big lapels and matched them with his signature flared trousers; he created corseted pieces for men that elongated the body making the wearer look like a supernatural being; included in the collection more of his supersized tulle gowns and, by cutting down a black suit and a white satin dress into srips, he composed a dazzle camouflage pattern slightly reminiscent of Gareth Pugh's designs.
The wide-brim hats of his graduate collection also returned, as flat as the halo of a saint in a two-dimensional painting. It was as Reed had merged together the monochromatic wardrobe of the extravagant Alchemist from Jodorowsky's film.
Reed may be more prone to design costumes, something he may have naturally taken from his father's links with Hollywood, he is indeed the son of the Oscar-winning movie producer Nick Reed, also founder of Shareability (a connection that puts Reed in a privileged position compared to other fashion designers of his age).
Earlier on in September he was invited by Anna Wintour to the Met Gala and created for Iman (View this photo) a look inspired by 1920s showgirls' attires (think about actress and dancer Doris Hill to get an idea View this photo) and made with the support of Dolce & Gabbana's Alta Moda ateliers that provided Reed with the necessary fabrics.
Reed has got a few intriguing ideas, but above all he seems to have more passion to change the game: he is part of a new generation of designers who do not seem interested in being part of a destructive creative cycle, a hamster wheel that churns out one ready-to-wear collection after the other without a pause, without a break, but believes that a collection can and should be season-less. That's why for the time being he has decided to focus on made-to-order pieces and collaborations.
Therefore the garments from this collection will not be available in shops, but will only be sold to private clients, while one piece will be displayed at Oxfam's Selfridges space and sold for charity. Reed is not the only designer taking this path and his will to focus on self-expression and gender-fluidity, may change the industry more than Covid-19 already did.
That said, Reed is only 25 years old, and at the moment he is still divided between a series of projects, from his demi-couture and costumes to his modelling career and his candles sold in collaboration with his mother (an ex-model and candlemaker). While time will tell us who he truly is (a fashion or a costume designer?) there is something he will have to do - expand his vocabulary when it comes to shapes and silhouettes (especially regarding trousers) and leave behind his beloved glue gun at some point if he genuinely wants to take his designs to a more artisanal, demi-couture level.
From Femicides to Girls with a Gun: Yuhan Wang S/S 22
The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence - in short the Istanbul Convention, from the city where it was signed in 2011 - is a human right treaty recognising violence against women as a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination against women.
According to the convention, forms of gender-based violence against women that are to be criminalised include psychological violence, stalking, physical violence, sexual violence (including rape), forced marriage, female genital mutilation, forced abortion, forced sterilization and sexual harassment.
The 34 member states of the Council of Europe that have ratified the Istanbul Convention (Turkey withdrew from the convention in 2021) must adopt measures to fulfil their commitment to preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. Sadly, though, while these states have pledged to prevent violence against women, protect the victims, prosecute perpetrators and implement related comprehensive and coordinated policies, these objectives aren't often met.
Last year the United Nations highlighted how Covid-19 was also overshadowing the issue and called on nations to act on International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Almost a year ago, in November 2020, Dubravka Šimonovic, a UN human rights expert, spoke about a "pandemic of femicide and gender-based violence against women" that is "taking the lives of women and girls everywhere." It is indeed true that as soon as you switch on the news you hear horrific stories about women killed by men, mainly men in their own family or by their own partners. Just last week, Sabina Nessa, 28, a teacher was killed, probably by a stranger who may still be at large, in Cator Park in south-east London while on the way to a pub to meet a friend.
There have been artists who analysed femicides, highlighting they are a global emergency, among them Mexican Teresa Margolles and Indian Shakuntala Kulkarni but the theme wasn't often tackled in fashion. Alexander McQueen actually explored violence against women and rape in a few collections.
Throughout the '90s McQueen shocked the fashion media and even attracted hostile coverage with shows that featured bruised and battered models (graduate show, March 1993), models with clothes streaked with tyre marks as if they had been driven over ("The Birds", S/S 95), or wearing torn and tattered clothes as if they had been raped ("Highland Rape", A/W 1995–96 and "Widows of Culloden", A/W 2006–7, but here the torn lace and tartan were also references to the eighteenth-century Jacobite Risings and the nineteenth-century Highland Clearances). McQueen replied to all those who accused him of being a misogynist, explaining he actually wanted women to look stronger.
Last week, during the London S/S 22 shows, Chinese designer Yuhan Wang also tried to present a vision of stronger women: she moved from romantic dresses or trouser suits with a floral print, but equipped her models with gun holsters and cases.
The inspiration actually came from watching Labour MP Jess Phillips in a parliamentary debate in March 2021 on International Women's Day reading out a long list of all the women killed in the UK over the past year, in all these cases a man was convicted or charged.
The list included sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, found stabbed to death in Fryent country park in north-west London last year, whose bodies were also photographed by Metropolitan police officers supposedly guarding the murder scene who shared the images via a WhatsApp chat group. Phillips closed the list with Sarah Everard, kidnapped, raped and murdered by Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens who had just finished a shift guarding the American embassy, on her way home in South London.
Yuhan Wang, channeled in this collection - that she named "Juliette Has a Gun" - the sadness and anger that she felt realizing femicides are extremely common. While her ruched lace dresses and trousers suits in floral and butterfly prints and laces pointed at Victorian romanticism (see also the detachable Victorian jabots accompanying some of the looks), at femininity, fragility and vulnerability, she added a darker note to the designs with harnesses, body straps and gun holsters.
Yet the holsters weren't a reference to girls with guns and campaigns in support of self-defense and firearms, but metaphors for women who take control of things and react, a bit like Monica Vitti in Mario Monicelli's 1968 film "The Girl with a Pistol", who turns from rape victim with a weapon in her hand ready to kill the man who abused of her, to an empowered independent woman.
Yuhan Wang's silhouettes came from Victorian-era photographs of North American frontiers women and ranchers, imagine armed women in Westerns like Claudia Cardinale in Sergio Leone's" Once Upon a Time in the West" (the Western inspiration was echoed also in the horse prints and in off the shoulder looks).
The mood of the collection was permeated by the thought of violence against women, defined by the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, adopted by the General Assembly on 20 December 1993, as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life". Camouflaged in flower-prints or highlighted in bright and vivid green, the pistol holsters were a provocation, asking us to which extent should women go to defend themselves when laws do not seem to be enough.
Yesterday, in the "Violence Against Women and Girls: Police Response" debate at the House of Commons in the UK Parliament, Harriet Harman, Labour MP for Camberwell and Peckham, highlighted that Her Majesty's Inspector of police Zoë Billingham describes the current femicides as an "epidemic" of male violence against women that also shows the extent of the impunity of men (Harman remembered how the killer of Sophie Moss got away without a murder charge by claining it was just "rough sex gone wrong"). We may think that fashion can't do much for this "epidemic", but it can definitely join the debate in a constructive way like Yuhan Wang proved.
Now Trending: Your Vaccination Status
As we have learnt from previous posts, in fashion it is often the case that bootleg designs are more popular and more interesting than the original ones. Humorous designs that play around with logos, fashion houses and designer names, often transforming them into puns (think about the "Versace da bere" T-shirts - literally meaning in the Rome dialect "Pour us (Vérsace) something to drink"), are also quite popular.
And so it happened that a few months ago Los Angeles-based streetwear brand Cloney, that usually produces designs with funny references and puns inspired by pop culture, fashion and music, did a Covid-19 vaccine inspired black hoodie with the trademark Valentino "V" signature logo accompanied by the word "Vaccinated" in Valentino red (well, what else?).
Retailing at $190, the hoodie was hilariously cool and perfectly timed. Cloney may have even gotten away with it citing parody if Valentino had ever sent them a cease-and-desist letter, as you do in these cases.
Instead, Valentino Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli at Valentino bought five hoodies, kept one for himself, gifted the others to friends, including Lady Gaga, and sported the look in an Instagram post that caused a sensation this past August.
Things went further, though: humoured by the design and realising its potential, Piccioli decided to actually contact the brand's founder, Duke Christian George III, but not to sue him. Together they reached indeed an agreement, turned the hoodie into a Valentino x Cloney collaboration and now Valentino produces the same hoodies in its factories featuring both logos.
Launching tomorrow on Valentino's online shop, the limited edition Valentino/Cloney luxury hoodies promoting vaccination retail now for $690, but 100% of the profits will be donated to UNICEF to support its work with the World Health Organization's global COVAX program, that helps distributing Covid-19 vaccines, treatment and testing.
Valentino's creative director, Pierpaolo Piccioli, shared his thoughts about the collaboration in a statement published on Valentino's official Instagram page, explaining: "Getting vaccinated has become the most effective way to fight this global pandemic, as well as a symbol of respect for others and social responsibility. One cannot hide behind the concept of freedom by deciding not to get vaccinated. Freedom must always be protected, and we must all fight for freedom but respecting others: the freedom to be ourselves, the freedom of thought, the freedom of love, the freedom to express and fight for our own ideas."
All's well that ends well, you may say, but while this limited edition hoodie is for a good cause, fashion-wise it is disappointing to think that a luxury house would have never thought about releasing such a clever Insta product if Cloney hadn't bootlegged it before. So, yes, it looks like bootlegs still look more entertaining, fun and spot-on than original designs.
For what regards "Vaccinated" designs, well, you can get Valentino X Cloney's hoodie if you can afford it or opt for the many "I'm vaccinated" T-shirts and tops, often supporting science and legendary Dr Fauci, that have mushroomed on the Internet over the last few months. Even better, you may just get vaccinated and get a Green Pass or Health Pass, a document now trending all over Europe.
The hoodie arrives indeed while regulations about the so-called Green Pass (a document released when you get vaccinated or when you test negative, in this case it is valid for 48 hours) are tightened in Italy and the pass becomes necessary to access not just cultural and leisure venues (cinemas, theatres, museums, theme parks or cultural centres), restaurants, bars and gyms, to work in hospitals and schools, but it is extended also to all public and private sector workers.
The Emergency Temporary Standard ("ETS") on COVID vaccinations is instead currently being drafted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("OSHA") in the States. US President Joe Biden announced last week that all private employers in the United States with 100 or more employees will need to make sure their workforce is fully vaccinated, while unvaccinated workers will have to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before accessing the workplace.
Most people do support vaccines and, at the moment, most of the people hospitalised with Covid-19 in Europe are unvaccinated. So brands supporting vaccinations and mandates regarding green and health passports may encounter the favour of consumers, especially of the young adults who welcomed vaccines as soon as they became available for their age group and who may want to take their pro-vaccination position further by buying into Covid-19 vaccine merchandise.
Cultivating Hope Through Fashion: Thebe Magugu's "Porte-Bonheurs" @ Le Bon Marché, Paris
The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us that fashion can have a positive impact on people's lives, with designers making PPE or brands sponsoring vaccination hubs.
As the days pass and things are slowly but gradually returning to normal, we must try and develop what we have learnt to make sure that fashion can be used as a dynamic force not to generate money just for a few ones, but to start projects that can bring tangible changes to people's lives.
Young South African designer Thebe Magugu, the recipient of the LVMH Prize in 2019, for example, recently worked on an installation for Paris' Bon Marché Rive Gauche store.
Entitled "Porte-Bonheurs" (Lucky Charms; until 17th October) it consists of thousands of green lianas sprouting colourful fabric flowers hanging from the glass ceilings of the department store. The flowers were also used to spell out in the department store windows words of love and hope.
Yet this is not just another commercial installation combining art and fashion supposed to attract more consumers to the department store, it has indeed got an aim and a purpose that go beyond its visual beauty.
The event was created in collaboration with NGO Dessine l'Espoir and the flowers were made, sewn and embroidered by 120 women living in vulnerable situations in four workshops supported by the non-governmental organisation, two in Eswatini, in Piggs Peak and Bulembu; and two in South Africa, in Roosboom and Johannesburg.
The women associated with the project made 20,000 flowers and their work allowed their families to pull through Covid-19. The association also donated to the women's workshops several sewing machines, but there is more that we can do.
The brooch flowers in seven colours including aqua green, yellow, navy blue and red, symbols of fragility and generosity, are indeed on sale (15 and 20 euros, depending on their size) on a dedicated site, www.lesfleursdethebe.fr.
Fashionistas will be happy to hear they all bear Thebe Magugu's signature tag and 20% of them feature a petal cut from designer print fabric.
By selling the flowers Dessine l'Espoir will be able to finance a new project: the Jardin des Savoir-Faire, in the village of Malanti, in Eswatini.
The project will include a garden and training center where people will be able to learn more about agroecology, crafts and micro management. All the courses run there will be aimed at local people but in particular at disadvantaged women and children.
The "Jardin des savoir-faire" will provide them with workshops equipped for sewing, crafts, processing garden products and acquiring knowledge in nutrition, while cottages on site will be reserved for solidarity tourism and accommodate volunteers who can share their know-how.
Thebe Magugu is focused on fashion, but also engages in extracurricular activities such as creating exhibitions, catalogues and fanzines that promote new African voices, besides he has also got a passion for exploring concepts and ideas through multidisciplinary capsule projects.
Hopefully, he will manage to develop further installations or collections with solidarity in mind: working on such projects may be challenging for a young designer, but if he manages to do so, he will set himself apart from other young brands and will also find new inspirations for his future collections as the women who worked on his "Lucky Charms" project have stories to tell, but some of them have also got great craft skills to share.