Louis Vuitton Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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Cathy Horyn 2014 on Ghesquière’s LV debut: 

“Even Nicolas Ghesquière, with his much-anticipated first collection for Louis Vuitton, showed wearable styles with polish: trim coats, ’60s-cut minis, modest accessories. And that’s not what people expect from Ghesquière, who for most of his 15 years at Balenciaga created a genuine stir. There, he developed cutting-edge materials and artful interpretations of archive looks. What struck me about the Vuitton show was Ghesquière’s comment that he listened to what women around him wanted to wear. Did he care before?”

But the pannier experiments of the past few collections are finally “Ghesquière” again. His abstracted farthingale rolls in Vachetta leather: gawky, disastrously luxurious. This brand of hard edge chic to unite both hipsters and patricians alike.

Olivier Theyskens Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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We can no longer stomach the smell of freshly minted Fabric. Fabric’s loom of mass manufacture a leitmotif for Kapitalism’s Svengali trade. the valorization of humanity’s bleakest labor fracking entire regions through the goop of polyurethane and spoiled cotton. We try deny the loom through its degradation: reworking rags, patchworking deadstock, boiling, cooking, burying, soiling. The irregular twists of patching bias cut fabric as contra to smooth machinic flow. The poesis of crumbling production mills only to be worn by Karlie Kloss on red carpets: Theyskens’ melancholy. 

Balenciaga Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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That people only now understanding Balenciaga not some clairvoyant, oracle. That its here the emperor declothed? last Resort 2023 gimps parade the NYSE trading floor. the message? “Money is Fetish.” The team gather around Denma chewing in suasible awe. The metaphor so dumb blunt it makes Tim Gunn and Colin McDowell sound like savants. Remember Rachel Tashjian’s Resort 2023 defense as something like “WOAH denma embraces money and power—no other artist dares do that!”  

The brand’s hot takes pile the cognitive window display. shopping for cultural commentary to make meaning easy. And the clothes themselves now boring, cheap. Do even drip influencers still wear these? the profitable trading strategy in disposable irony itself disposable. 

Kiko Kostadinov Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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“catnip for it-girls everywhere”. The Kiko customer, saccharine hipsters with less disposable income than Philo’s, more than Vaquera’s. CSM productification for sure. The school merchandised in bite size Ssence confectionery. We accessorize these to feel bubbly, piquant, without jeopardizing a Grayson Perry/Anna Piaggi harlequinade. Glass blown gems, twisted design lines, fine chains, paisley mohair. Their 70s spacewear now with a 40s film noir. Kiko’s pretty product genrelessness an ascension to the Marc Jacobs throne? (or just Heaven?)

Comme des Garçons Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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“In the modern age clothing has become man’s second skin, from which he will under no pretext separate himself and which belongs to him like an animal’s coat, so that nowadays the real form of the body has been quite forgotten” (Théophile Gautier 1860)

But this is no second skin: clothing so monstrously baroque it mocks our sartorial rectitude of health and classicism. Rei’s Lumps and Bumps (1992) first expressed the profound disjuncture between dress and the body. That, despite our tendency to naturalize clothing, over time it inevitably appears wholly alien; strange anthropological studies. Then in 2012, 20 years on, her flat manifesto collections saw the body under renewed attack. Asphyxiating felt steamrolling limbs and compressing lungs; clothing winning the dialectical war. And by ~2015, Rei abandoned the anatomy altogether, jettisoning the saleable sweet jetsam of Shirt, Play, Tricot, Homme et al. CdG runway pieces stripped of armholes with necks built high above transmogrify their host. Acephalic giant laceballs with drooping relapsed glands. The body not forgotten, but obliterated. monstrous Beauty.

Rick Owens Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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Has there ever been more homosexual clothes? A sort of high camp intergalactic emperor in stripper platforms. But where rick excels is always his more undisclosed sculptural figurations (look 32,33). Boulders of cloth that defy the human figure. 

Courrèges Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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Nicolas Di Felice, Yolanda Zobe, Sébastien Meyer, Arnaud Vaillant. We cant help resuscitate dead corpses. resuscitate old houses like a desiccated money tree shaken to death. 

Remember the aesthetico-political revolution of Spaceage (Gernrich, Cardin)? An attempt to bring us closer to fashion’s “pure form.” Of geometric planes & techno assimilation. This streamlined ready-to-wear minimalism a new theory of mass-production: That the all-purpose unisex uniform might be fashion’s social democratic utopia. The destruction of couture. This why Cristóbal despised his former apprentice André Courrèges…but it's Telfar (maybe Yeezy?) not Courrèges who explores this condition today, using the aesthetic regime of mass-production as departure point... Instead Di Felice does Coachella clubgear for the parvenue.

Acne Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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Has always looked like Fashion. A mise en abyme of moodboards within moodboards. Acne, COS, Zara. An infinite white cyc to spawn the great blob of looks. Haley Wollens a pure symptom.

Saint Laurent Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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Genuine billionaires wear these. Gated away from parochial Purple Lucien downtowners and Broken Arm cadre. Bill Blassesque for an era of stupendous wealth divide. What’s not to love even Omahyra Mota looks unblemished. Extol when fashion’s mission accomplished.

Dior Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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We continue to speculate Claire Fontaine’s 2020 participation a meta critique? Is Chiuri, in fact, a motif of female disempowerment? What does her signature lace bustier do for the Woman of Couture? And now here, the patrimony of Dior abandoned to the toile de Jouy, broderie anglaise and raffia so much associated to the Etsy seller of cottagecore.

Matty Bovan Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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CSM circa early 21stC a carnival of artisan kids making manteaus from plastic clutter and crap. Yardage of fresh textile coiled into entire collections; silhouettes like a crude children sketch materialized with all its curio. We admire the toddler’s collage of glued wooden sticks and crayon handprints as memorabilia of a now forlorn wonder...The school a kind of Dickensian Fashion mill; their ringleader Charles Fredrich Worth high on mercury. This is Bovan’s fête galante, his inherited livery, of Louise Wilson and Louise Gray.

The jean pannier of acid check glitter, neon telephone cord: A nostalgia for the anna piagi harlequinade. Leg’o’mutton Victorian anachronisms of amethyst apple checkers. And despite the cheap corsetry and manufactured printedness (see: Charles Jeffrey), Bovan’s infantile joy remains.

Bottega Veneta Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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Blazy arms Luxury’s weapon of trompe-l'œil. Wearing denim as delicately lasered supple leather. So plaid shirts and wife beaters are actually fine leather, an elvish craftsmanship (12 printing process to get the plaid effect). Is tricking the eye perhaps luxury’s best and last defense? That wealth needs a supple conceptual disguise, a rebuslike challenge we play to affirm our taste. Two layered dress of deceased animal skin, not fetishist or militant but affirmatively urbane. And then, jacquard knits whose uneven fine fringe is actually hand beaded. Fabrics so precious they extol single use. The successful spread of male Phoebe Philo caliphates (even after despot Daniel Lee’s massive severance) a testament to Luxury’s stronghold. But Bottega’s signature intrecciato still gives us eerie trypophobia.

Ferragamo Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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Nicole Phelps over the years:

“In the end, though, the collection didn't quite make a persuasive case to be taken on a par with the brand's lucrative accessories.”

“To be fair, setting a ready-to-wear direction for a label best known for its grosgrain ribbon flats is no easy task.”

“But in the end, its novel charm wasn't enough to rescue this collection from its overbearing beginnings.”

“Cristina Ortiz is doubtless under a great deal of pressure as the new creative director of Salvatore Ferragamo, where she replaces Graeme Black, who left the brand to focus on his signature label. The strain showed today.”

“the fit was not only unflattering but often poor; nipple slippage is one thing on the runway, quite another in real life.”

“It's not clear whom Ortiz is targeting with these clothes”

“Toward the end, though, Ortiz couldn't resist flashing some skin. These were ill-considered bits of frivolousness that did nothing but distract”

“Africa was Ortiz's reference point. That led to some rather unflattering jodhpurs cut very generously at the hips […] The show's highlights were […] in the end, it was a case of too little, too late.

“The press notes called Giornetti's muse "an elusive woman," and to be honest we're not sure the boardroom power broker without a bra that he has conjured up here really exists.”

“but neither quite lived up to Ferragamo's impressive legacy.”

“Overall, though, drama was in too short supply here. Rigoni's task for next season will be imbuing his Ferragamo with more soul.”

Why stop here?

Versace Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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Sheer animalfloral frock gothic succubus. For celebrities sans stylists. 

Gucci Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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“critical theory has never been as fashionable in the fashion industry. While artistic director Alessandro Michele from Gucci quotes Michel Foucault in his creations, Dior is employing psychoanalysis theorists to contextualize their collections. [...] Gucci Spring/Summer 2018 press releases employed the idea of “The Act of Creation as an Act of Resistance” proposed by Gilles Deleuze”

Maximalism’s exhaustion. Does anyone still care for this psychobabble?  Total lethargy for the saturated Wes Anderson safari discotheque. A kaleidoscopic face-fuck of Pepsi pansexual activism.

Vaquera Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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Tumblr fashion graduation. Frou frou ruffles of sailor Harajuku like a wish.com Simone Rocha. Trafficking in 200% graded-up gag garments: the ersatz all-too-obvious Margiela F/W ‘00 sequins. Explained away as “fashion fanfiction.” Does the buyer wear the punchline or they just become it? Emma Wyman?

Moschino Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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“I was thinking about a lot of stuff in the news. I was thinking about how people were talking about inflation, inflation, inflation. So I created a collection that literally inflates.” The obviousness a ribald reversal of sensibilities that makes fashion punk. Scott’s signature 40s/80s suits and proms preened in candy colored flotation. The ability to achieve one of fashion’s highest telos: self-deprecating cupidity. No noblesse oblige statement on wealth and its assorted troubles (of which usually expected from designers deploying this theme)… Designers use the dictum ‘fashion is fun’ as a lofty prophylactic for our brutal existence. But whereas most do this through pops of color and fringe, none transport Neverland like an inflatable Lichtenstein project runway… That a Katy Perry hamburger is a best in show reflects the state of today.

Richard Quinn Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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The effrontery of Leigh bowery smoothed over via the pantomimed Cristobal silhouettes that Denma does so well. A dirge for textiles without a home. 

Diesel Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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The Ursina Gysi contagion spreads. Y2K thotification. Gen X denim in need of a Supreme sales pitch (post 2019 bankruptcy). This is online fashion par excellence (apologies A-Cold-Wall). Where once the fin-de-siècle fashionable subjects were surveilled and recirculated at the racecourse and boulevard, now our digital footprint is surveilled wholesale. Fashion an AI algorithm of accelerating feedback loops, recirculating us onto us. street is tiktok is luxury is street. Virgil at LV, Denma at Balenciaga, now Glenn here. We are speed junkies.

Stefan Cooke Spring 2023 Ready-to-wear

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On their hand sewn embossed pleat fabrication last season: “We’ve been trying to do it for four seasons,” Cooke said. “It took the whole team one week just to do one shirt, everyone shaking trying to get it perfect.” Burt added: “Because if you fuck it up, you have to start all over again.”

This “refinement reinforced by repetition” of painstaking codes, a 2020s demi couture:

Stefan Cooke’s signature pierced-lattice argyle embossed in creamy lacquer. Miniskirts of double-spaced looped ribbon. “Decorticated knitwear” developed through appliqué bows in female equestrian pants. The denim “Napoleonic trompe l’oeil” an antediluvian cording technique of embroidering around faced rope. Found shirts armored by perfectly contiguous sewn paillettes. Denim flat fell seams of a near Junya Watanabe obsession. (missed are the English tweed varsity jackets and scalloped-edge Fair Isle collars)

A millennial Savile Row. Lapidists of cloth