The Western fashion month is over. The onslaught of the New York, London, Milan and Paris fashion shows and presentations has concluded. While the high (or exhaustion for us in fashion media) of the instant gratification that comes with this content begins to fade, these four weeks tell us what the next six months to a year will look like. Concurrently, these shows are a sociological thermometer of the now. What does the weather report show us?
People look to high fashion to be removed from reality. Interestingly, there has been a big push for wearable clothing on the runway. The ghost of the quiet luxury craze has been haunting the brands and houses.
Loewe, known for its wacky presentations, had a restrained offering that felt grounded in reality. The collection, featuring sky-high-waisted trousers and leather integrated into classic silhouettes, felt like a muted redux of their menswear showcase in June. Jil Sander, a brand rooted in minimalism, and Ferragamo by Maximilian Davis shone bright by creating clean, crisp and contemporary clothing. Using concise tailoring while including unique variations like grommets, peplums or interesting cuts, they focus on the craft of garment making.
It was a big season for debuts. Industry wunderkind Peter Do showed their first collection as the creative director of Helmut Lang to a lukewarm response. By including obvious nods to previous ad campaigns and referencing some of the predominant colours that showed up in Lang’s work, he displays a keenness to reintroduce the customer of today to the brand’s history.
At Tom Ford, Peter Hawkins, Ford’s right-hand man, chose to maintain the status quo for the brand with a collection that felt like a greatest hits compilation of Ford’s oeuvre.
The SS24 collection, filled with velvet suits to the daring and revealing clothing that shot Ford into the zeitgeist, is very well made. Interestingly, this reminds me of the adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. However, if the image and language of the brand don’t evolve, do we even still need it?
Sabato de Sarno heads in the complete opposite direction for his debut by providing a completely new image for Gucci. De Sarno opts to create new basics for the Gucci customer and proposes a new signature maroon for the brand. The collection may be refreshing for the crowd who objected to Alessandro Michele’s maximalist aesthetic. However, the rudimentary and uninteresting takes on the clothes of daily living make a case for the dangers of minimalism to the untrained eye.
In the digital fashion community, the word of the season was perverse. While it may indicate something negative, in this context, its use demonstrates the pleasure in the wrong.
For example, Dries Van Noten functions at this level. In the SS24 showcase, he intelligently takes the familiar and reframes it in the unfamiliar.
Double-breasted denim blazers and striped cotton reminiscent of rugby jerseys shouldn’t work, but they do in how he cuts, drapes and gathers. It is today’s “ugly chic”.
Molly Goddard presented a collection that focused on the inner workings of clothing and reflected them on the outside. From the unfinished edges and selvedge to boning, strapping and pin tucks, the various underworkings of the clothes became the main attraction.
The inner workings of garments were focal points for brands like Undercover by Jun Takahashi and Simone Rocha. Rocha, whose collection explores texture, creates florets by twisting and gathering various textiles. She then uses sheer fabrics to reveal roses inside dresses, jackets and skirts. Takahashi continues this by using sheerness to showcase his construction in his suits. He takes this motif to the opposite end of the spectrum by incorporating a terrarium inside the final dress.
Balenciaga seemed to suffer from the lack of gimmicks (some might say the cast was the gimmick, but I think it came from a genuine place). The increasingly large shoulders that square out the silhouette wears the models and makes the clothing feel bulky. The double sleeved coats swallow the wearer. In the world that Demna had built that was filled with edge, ironically, the only thing that seemed to work were the pleated floral dresses.
Takahashi defies the common theme of the SS24 collections. The season’s overarching quest of no tricks or gimmicks that fell victim to the overwhelming diversity of subculture feels like a yearning for a pre-pandemic world. The trend cycle has narrowed in length, and the chasing for the next trend and new colour is sartorially exhausting. This reckoning separated the wheat from the chaff and highlighted the unsustainability of operating like this.
There is a heaviness that hangs over the world at the moment. The world is going through multiple crucibles which will define the new era. The two predominant colours of this season, white and light blue, reminded me of a baptism. Maybe the chase for lightness led to those colours being prominent. Or was it a rejection of the bold and bright colours that have saturated the market? Irrespective of this, baptism often accompanies rebirth and the new. This season, inadvertently, was looking towards a symbolic newness that I am ready to welcome.
• Ulindelwe Ratsibe is a freelance fashion journalist and stylist.
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