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The final three days of Paris Fashion Week capped off a nine-day sprint spanning over 100 shows and presentations.

Two of the strongest collections to emerge in the last push came from somewhat unlikely candidates — @akris and @christopheresber both explored textures in interesting ways while delivering an attractive, wearable wardrobe. Some brands took a step back, like @valentino, where the identity of the house and its current creative director have not yet meshed.

Industry behemoths @chanel and @louisvuitton were the biggest shows rounding out the calendar. Matthieu Blazy continued his probing into Chanel’s personal history, while Nicolas Ghesquiere presented one of his most restrained lcollections for LV in years.

Visual Curator & Editor: @k8thlynn
VO: @nashhill25

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The middle section of Paris Fashion Week saw the arrival of the Comme Des Garçons universe, with more experimentation from Junya Watanabe, Noir Kei Ninomiya, and CDG. There was some strong work elsewhere too, as Yohji Yamamoto explored a soft, almost countryside wistfulness. Loewe and Issey Miyake explored their materiality in different ways, and Rick Owens took to verticality and softness for Spring.

Visual Curator & Editor: @k8thlynn
VO: @nashhill25

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Born in 1961, Isabel and her family emigrated from Cuba during her childhood, and soon arrived in New Jersey. As fate would have it, her husband, Ruben Toledo, and his family also came to America as Cuban refugees, They both landed in the same school, and the two began dating in their early teenage years, drawn to one another’s artistic inclinations. The two married in 1984, the same year that Isabel Toledo introduced her first line.

Toledo studied at both FIT and Parsons, but left before graduation to work under Diana Vreeland at the Met’s Costume Institute. Across five years, Toledo was able to study couture firsthand, through pieces from the likes of Madame Grés and Vionnet, and other legendary couturiers. In the meantime, she showed collections at underground nightclubs where she and Ruben connected with the downtown New York art scene of the ’80s.

“Romantic Mathematics” is how Toledo described her designs. Both her personal style, as well as the offerings of her collections— which only ran in the few hundreds, due to the complexity of construction— possessed a baroque elegance that betrayed the exacting rigor of her patternmaking.

In their Midtown loft, of which they owned several floors in the building, Ruben and Isabel shared the kind of home that artist couples rarely achieve. On the 11th floor, where the two lived, Ruben worked as an artist and illustrator. Down a few floors, Isabel had her studio and production areas; Ruben illustrated her designs and passed them on to the seamstresses.

Remaining an independent company, Toledo refused to conform to the fashion industry. She stopped showing runway collections in 1998, preferring to create on her own schedule and sell to her faithful clientele at her own pace. As a designer, she focused almost entirely on that namesake principle that first and foremost defines the profession, not the conflation with celebrity that precedes the job nowadays.

Isabel Toledo passed away in 2019, aged 59. The Cuban-American designer leaves a legacy of uncompromising creativity and the ultimate love for her craft.

Writer: @nashhill25
Visual Curator: @k8thlynn_

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“McQueen’s Spring/Summer 2009 collection was presented on a catwalk filled with antique taxidermy - including an elephant, giraffe, tiger, zebra and polar bear - in an art space that was formerly a Paris morgue. It was a fitting venue for a collection that was to interrogate the impact of humanity on the environment. Mounted on a plinth at the back of the sloping concrete catwalk stood a metal globe onto which images of a glowing sun, silver moon and the earth rotating on its axis were projected. The show invitation featured a lenticular by Gary James McQueen, the designer’s nephew. in which the image of McQueen’s face morphed into a human skull, hinting at the vulnerability of life.

The primary inspirations behind the collection coalesced around Charles Darwin, the Industrial Revolution and, in particular, the impact of the destructive nature of man. McQueen divided the collection into two sequences to convey his message. The first featured organic shapes, soft colors and natural fibers digitally printed with images of the earth’s natural materials - wood grains and meadow flowers - that were engineered for each garment… While dresses cut from a single piece of fabric connoted historical simplicity, silk flowers trapped in tulle referenced Victorian specimen jars…

The second sequence continued to draw inspiration from natural forms - flowers, crystals and minerals - but here they were engineered with a hard edge and enhanced to convey the synthetic qualities associated with modernity and the human touch. Prints were angular and invoked crushed crystal, metallic structures such as the Eiffel Tower and a granite mountain that was borrowed from a Dan Holdsworth triptych. In one design a diamond print morphed into a human skeleton. Dresses shaped like bell-jars and bodysuits encrusted with jet, gold and silver Swarovski crystals conveyed harsh lines in material form…

Whilst McQueen stated in the collection notes that he was ‘not aiming to preach’ his belief that ‘we’re in danger of killing the planet through greed was fundamental.”

(Condensed excerpt from ‘Alexander McQueen’ by Claire Wilcox, 2015)

Visual Curator: @k8thlynn

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Like most of fashion’s greatest figures, Roy Halston Frowick began as an outsider. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, the designer grew up in Indiana before attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He began as a milliner, first in Chicago, then as in-house milliner at Bergdorf Goodman in New York in 1959. His ambitions were not yet satisfied, and he launched ready-to-wear – which he correctly identified as the way of the future – under Bergdorf in 1966. In 1968 he split off on his own, establishing the mononymous Halston label with a dramatic salon on the Upper East Side.

Against the backdrop of 1970s social upheaval and newfound liberation, Halston sought to dress the new modern woman. He injected American fashion with a newfound sexuality, with clothes that were exceedingly glamorous in motion while pared-back and unfussy. He dispensed with any non-functional detail and rarely used prints, instead relying on generous volumes of fabric to gently hug the body, enabling his Halstonettes rather than reducing them to dolls. This sense of pragmatism allowed Halston and his American counterparts to make the hegemonic French couturiers look stuffy and old-fashioned at the Battle of Versailles. A true socialite, Halston mediated between uptown high society ladies and the burgeoning downtown set revolving around The Factory and Studio 54, and he was regularly photographed alongside the likes of Andy Warhol, Pat Ast, Liza Minnelli, and Pat Cleveland.

Over the course of the 1980s, a mess of licensing deals led to Halston losing control of his company, and the right to design under his own name, rendering him creatively paralyzed save for a few outings as a costume designer for his friends. In 1990, he passed away due to AIDS-related illness.

Halston’s story foreshadows many of the industry developments in later decades: the sexed-up minimalism of the late 1990s, which owes a great deal to his influence; the power of the supermodel and the celebrity; the licensing and ownership complications, which have befallen so many subsequent designers; and the tragedies that would shatter the dreams of disco-era New York.

Writer: @chrisziebert
Visual Curator: @k8thlynn

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With a resume that includes designing for one of the hottest brands in London in the ’80s, followed by the opening an atelier backed by Yohji Yamamoto, hiring on a young Alexander McQueen fresh off Saville Row, and then creating some of the most fantastic and imaginative collections of the ’90s, you’d think Koji Tatsuno would be more of a household name.

When Koji Tatsuno arrived in London in the early ’80s, he came with no formal training in design. In his teenage years in Tokyo, he taught himself sewing and worked as a freelance hairstylist, makeup artist, and designer.

Tatsuno’s penchant for collecting vintage clothes and fabrics, remixing and transforming them earned him work in London. He soon became the designer of Culture Shock in 1982, joining Jeannie McArthur and Yuzuru Koga.

Culture Shock was a key name in the alternative fashion scene in London, which included the likes of John Galliano, BodyMap, Richmond/Cornejo, Katherine Hamnett, and more. This generation of London fashion gave the city its reputation for experimental, boundary-pushing design, injecting its elite sartorial traditions with a streetstyle edge. Tatsuno’s eye for beautiful fabrics, from decadent silk brocades to ikat fabrics sourced from Eastern Asia, gave Culture Shock a sense of refinement.

In 1987, Tatsuno created his own label, and a year later opened an atelier in London, backed by Yohji Yamamoto. Settled in Mayfair, the home of Saville Row, Tatsuno honed his skills in tailoring and sharper shapes.

Tatsuno began showing in Paris in 1990, and moved to the fashion capital in 1992. This move seemed to unlock his capacity for fantasy. His collections from the ’90s featured one-of-a-kind creations that rivaled some of the best couturiers of his generation. Tatsuno maintained his curatorial approach in the use of secondhand fabrics, but now he was finding materials from the natural world and directly referencing biological forms– a bodice made from sprawling tree branches, or a coat resembling fan corals.

From a self-trained hand to couture-level collections, few designers have threaded a career as diverse as Koji Tatsuno’s.

Writer: @nashhill25
Visual Curator: @k8thlynn

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Louis Vuitton A/W ‘13

Marc Jacobs presented his Autumn/Winter 2013 collection for Louis Vuitton amidst speculative rumors about the status of his soon-to-expire contract with the French maison, a potential end to a 16-year tenure of lavish spectacles that obfuscated the intellectual slant for which Jacobs was rarely properly credited.

This season, that grandiosity was captured in a facsimile of a grand hotel, with 50 doors (one for each year of Jacobs’ life, with his 50th birthday around the corner) encircling the runway. At showtime, to selections from the soundtrack of The Tree of Life (2011), models cracked open their doors and stepped into the hallway-catwalk, leaving their shadowed partners to dress behind the Louis Vuitton trunks visible in their rooms. The models, each wearing a short 1950s-style black wig, were captured in various states of undress as they stalked the hotel in what multiple publications called a glamorous walk of shame. Barely-there floral slip dresses were worn under luxurious furs, and boxy, mannish coats concealed lace negligees or matched brassiere and skirt sets. The bags, no monograms in sight, were shown at their most luxurious, in fur, feathers, and waxed crocodile. Kate Moss closed the runway in a sheer floral look with almost nothing underneath, garnering a burst of applause when her face was recognized under the anonymizing wig. Backstage, Jacobs described the collection as exhibitionistic and voyeuristic: “It was about intimacy, the mystery of what’s going on behind the door. It’s Hollywood mixed with rive gauche.”

Jacobs took his bow in his pajamas (from Vuitton’s men’s line), justifying his decision backstage: “I haven’t worn anything else for months.” It was a testament to the massive workload he carried between Vuitton and his eponymous label. One season later, the rumors would be confirmed, and Jacobs’ contract with the house expired, concluding his image-defining design tenure at Louis Vuitton.

Writer: @chrisziebert
Visual Curator: @k8thlynn

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Maison Martin Margiela A/W ‘94: A Doll’s Wardrobe

On September 7th, 1994, Maison Martin Margiela presented its Autumn/Winter 1994 collection on the same day at nine stores around the world. During the five minute presentation, introduced by the sound of bongos, twelve local women tore paper from the windows of each store, each woman modeling one of the same twelve looks at each of Charivari, Joseph, Kashiyama, L’Eclaireur, Maria Luisa, Printemps, United Arrows, 10 Corso Como, and Syndikat. The radical presentation came after Margiela neglected to present during the season properly, and was motivated by a desire to better reach the customers of the maison, both geographically and seasonally.

The collection was composed of five sections: underwear, artisanal, replicas, reissues, and enlarged doll’s clothes, the motif which would give the collection the nickname “A Doll’s Wardrobe.” Garments appropriated from the wardrobes of Barbie, Ken, and G.I, Joe were enlarged 5.2 times to human size, the tag noting that “details and disproportions are reproduced in the enlargement.” The effect is uncanny, the scaled-up garments details just slightly off.

The play with scale that was introduced in A/W ‘94 was an integral code for Maison Martin Margiela. In 1989, before this motif reached the commercial collection, Margiela produced garments from his early collections scaled down to fit Barbie dolls for an exhibition (reproductions of those dolls, alongside some miniature reproductions of iconic Margiela looks, are available in next week’s Martin Margiela – Archives Personnelles auction). A few years later, Margiela’s oversized collections (S/S ‘00 – F/W ‘01) would play with scale in an opposite direction, scaling up existing garments to supersized proportions.

Martin Margiela himself made a surprise appearance at Charivari’s presentation of the A/W ‘94 collection in New York (the same presentation at which @chloessevigny was a model). Ever-anonymous, when attendees tried to talk to him, his response was simple: “Please look at the models. I think everyone should pay attention to the models.”

Writer: @chrisziebert
Visual Curator: @k8thlynn

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The main reference in Undercover’s Spring 2011 “UNDERMAN” collection came from when Jun Takahashi was watching “Kamen Rider” and other live-action superhero shows like “Ultraman” with his eldest son. “. From here, Takahashi decided to create his own superhero universe, with characters very similar in attributes to those of“Kamen Rider” which premiered on TV in 1971.

“The year is 20XX. The world, in which the souls of the people have been incapacitated by the forces of evil, is empty. UNDERMAN is born to restore these lost souls. The battle against sorrow wages on.”

So begins the story of this collection, which is told in the lookbook presented as a set of trading cards, just as “Kamen Rider” had. To complete the superhero aesthetic, Undercover collaborated with Medicom Toy to create collectible figures based on the hero and protagonist, ‘Underman’ and ‘Pyranoid.’

As part of the photoshoot, done with photographer Katsuhide Morimoto and Tetsuya Nagato, the team went to an abandoned quarry located at Mount Iwafune, which had been used as a site for special effects and pyrotechnics in Japanese live-action films and TV shows. Recently, the UNDERCOVER team was seen back at Mount Iwafune shooting the UNDERGIRL campaign set to release in September.

View the full lookbook and check out the whole UNDERMAN story at the link in our bio.

Writer: @nashhill25
Visual Curator: @k8thlynn
Scans Provider: @fashionwiki.co @riv.ig

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Raf Simons A/W ‘16: Nightmares and Dreams

Raf Simons’ A/W ‘16 collection was his first runway to follow his abrupt departure from Dior, an escape from the blistering pace of corporate fashion that had defined his work for the past decade. His response was a meditation on time, and a collection which revisited some of the core influences to Simons’ then 20 years of work. Those influences were made explicit in the show notes, eight groups of four reference points each, beginning with four names: Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch, Martin Margiela, and Cindy Sherman.

In a rebuke of fashion hierarchy – perhaps a relieved exhalation following the Dior years – all show attendees were forced to stand amidst the wooden maze that served as the show’s set. The show opened with a monologue from Badalementi recalling the development of the Twin Peaks Theme with David Lynch, setting a familiar tone of youth isolation as he drew Laura Palmer out of the piano. The arrhythmic series of boyish models that followed sported massively oversized knits, puffers, and tailored coats, paired with skinny cropped trousers and tall, tight-laced patent leather boots.

The landmark pieces from the collection were a series of massively oversized v-neck varsity sweaters, caught somewhere between Nadine Hurley’s back-to-school uniform in Twin Peaks, the abrasive youth of Simons’ career beginnings, and Maison Martin Margiela’s early 2000s XXL collections. Margiela, ever one of Simons’ twin North Stars, was cited as a reference point, specifically the play with scale that characterized that period of his work; very similar sweaters were shown for women for A/W ’00.

Simons’ work post-2005 is frequently written off, as his collections became less reproductions of youth subculture than translations of its feeling. But A/W ‘16 was a culmination of the themes from this second decade of the Raf Simons story: his attempts to escape the literality of men’s fashion and to translate the conceptual feats of his heroes like Margiela into menswear, escaping the rigidity of the men’s wardrobe for something challenging and new.

Writer: @chrisziebert  Visual Curator: @k8thlynn

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Balenciaga Spring/Summer 1998: Ghesquiere’s Debut

Nicolas Ghesquiere’s Spring/Summer 1998 Balenciaga debut came at a critical moment for the house. The collection came on the tail of Josephus Thimister’s disastrous F/W ‘97 show; half the audience left in annoyance with the soundtrack, and the crowd that remained found the show at best mediocre. To the deafening sound of Inevitable Fast Access by Add N To (x), Thimister’s 10 show tenure at Balenciaga was over.

In the scramble to replace him in time for the following spring, household names like Helmut Lang and Yohji Yamamoto swirled around the fashion circuit as rumored suitors for successorship. But it would be a then unknown Nicolas Ghesquière, an internal hire, who would be selected to lead the house. Ghesquière, who had previously freelanced under Mugler and Gaultier, had been cutting his teeth designing licensed funeral wear for Balenciaga’s Japanese market - a successful but undesirable gig.

Ghesquière’s debut was a course correction, an almost entirely black collection presented at the Opéra Bastille just four months after Thimister’s departure. Models marched down the runway in leather caps and heavy eyeshadow, their trousers tight fitting and low slung. The collection blended ’90s minimalism with the architectural language of Cristóbal’s work. Where there were spaghetti straps and skin tight rider boots, there were also updated chemises, maxi dresses, and cocoon silhouettes. Tailoring presented high vented suits with sharp shoulders, buttonless and cinched closed with a cummerbund, with wide sleeves to billow behind in kimono-like fashion, paired with flip-flops and pointed heels.

The show is often described as a modest beginning, a title in part given to the austere color palette and material compositions, an homage to Thimister’s first show at Balenciaga in 1992, which was all black as well. Ghesquière’s immediate success rewarded him with the longest running tenure in Balenciaga’s history after Cristóbal himself, a transformation that brought Balenciaga from a storied couture house into modernity.

Writer: @sethsherwoodjr
Visual Curator: @k8thlynn

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