As the year draws to a close, the team behind AnOther Magazine reflect on their favourite fashion moments of the past 12 months
Jordan Duddy, Junior Fashion Editor
“As an avid follower of Raf Simons’ work, the announcement that his eponymous label would close was one of my major fashion moments of the year. His work has pushed the boundaries of menswear and had a far-reaching impact, culturally speaking. Today his shows from the late 1990s and early 2000s are heralded as iconic menswear moments and are still widely referenced. After 27 years, the brand’s closure was big fashion news and a blow to fans. I was lucky enough to see his final show, a triumphant swansong that will go down in the fashion history books.”
Ted Stansfield, Editorial Director, AnOthermag.com
“My top fashion moment of the year was Bella Hadid having a dress sprayed onto her body at Coperni, simply because I’d never seen anything like it before. It reminded me of Shalom Harlow being similarly sprayed, though by robots, at that McQueen show – for obvious reasons. But the whole thing felt so new and innovative; I can’t even begin to get my head around the technology. And the dress actually looked good! It made sense that it was on Bella who is, not to sound all Wendy Williams, the moment.”
Katie Shillingford, Fashion Director
“In September, it felt very special to be out doing all the shows again as a full team, seeing all the collections up close and discussing and dissecting them afterwards. We especially loved seeing Loewe’s shiny red Minnie Mouse shoes up close and had a brief encounter with Rei Kawakubo in the CDG showroom. We can do our jobs from afar, but it is so much more meaningful when we experience the collections in person. So I would say my best fashion moment of this season was being a team together at fashion weeks.”
Alexander Fury, Fashion Features Director
“As ever, it’s difficult to condense a fashion year to a single moment – especially given how multi-faceted (or perhaps fragmented) fashion feels at the moment. So I have three … or maybe five, if we break one of them apart. The connection between all of them, for me, is a link to history – not a general history, but my own very particular memories of fashion. As a child of the 1990s, an obvious fashion moment for me was the long-awaited return of Linda Evangelista to the catwalk, courtesy of Kim Jones and Marc Jacobs at Fendi’s September show in New York. I adore many models – Shalom! Naomi! Kate! – but Linda has always been my favourite, from the Too Funky video [by George Michael] to her star turn in Isaac Mizrahi’s Autumn/Winter 1994 show, captured in Unzipped (Linda’s rant about lints and her epic side-eye is a staggering work of unparalleled genius). So to see her prowl in a Tiffany blue silk cape-coat, cracking that million-watt grin, took me right back to why I fell in love with fashion in the first place.
“Another link back was the trinity of shows Antony Vaccarello staged for Saint Laurent: his menswear in July, and those February and September shows in front of the Eiffel Tower, a venue now inextricably linked with Saint Laurent. And owning a landmark like that is a fuck-you power move straight out of the Pierre Berge playbook. Remember those YSL perfume adverts for ‘Paris’ whirring around the tower’s apex? Again, right out of my childhood. Vaccarello’s two Saint Laurent womenswear shows this season were extraordinary for the power of the women they depicted, alongside the strength of the clothes – wide-shouldered tailoring, slender hooded dresses, slipper-satin bias-cut evening gowns, and tiny details, like the heft of a cuff, the décolletage of a silk shoe, or the perfect denier of sheer black tights. They spoke about elegance and sophistication in a way we haven’t seen for years. Add to that the remarkable menswear show staged in the desert outside of Marrakech – true Saint Laurent country – and the gender-blurring élan of that collection’s tailoring, the slip-streaming of pieces from menswear, to womenswear, and back again, and this year demonstrated Vaccarello’s virtuoso grasp on one of the trickiest legacies in fashion history. It’s one close to my heart, and I adore what he is doing.
“Love leads us to Valentino – and to my final choice, Pierpaolo Piccioli’s couture show staged on the Spanish Steps in Rome in July. It was an occasion where I feel not only privileged to do what I do, but pause in a moment of slight disbelief that I’m actually there witnessing it at all. If I ever get blasé or cynical about this job, moments like that knock it out of you like a suckerpunch. Throughout the course of this year I had the joy of working alongside Pierpaolo on the exhibition Forever Valentino – and to see his mind and eye inspired by the archives we had been pawing through, with such affection and respect, was incredibly emotional. This wasn’t an homage to Mr Valentino’s work, but it seemed a love-letter to his life, his adoration of women and of beauty, which was here all the more remarkable because, rather than a static reflection, it was an evolution, a progression. It vibrated with emotion, in every stitch - the emotion of the founder, of its new creator, and of the seamstresses who sewed it all together. In short, it totally blew me away. And that’s always my measure of great fashion. Luckily, it still happens plenty.”
Dominique Sisley, Senior Editor, AnOthermag.com
“‘Isn’t it the case that with each new outfit, Rihanna erects a monument, sends out a flare and lights up group texts?’ These words, from Durga Chew Bose’s Dazed cover story in September 2021, would prove to be particularly pertinent just a few months later. The singer’s pregnancy announcement felt like the first big fashion moment of 2022: a dramatic thunderbolt of sparkling metals and electric pink, breaking up the grey monotony of January. The references felt biblical, with Rihanna strolling along the overcast streets of Paris like a modern-day Virgin Madonna – her hair tousled, her expression serene, and her bump adorned with opulent vintage jewels from Dior and LaCroix. And to finish it off with an easy Autumn/Winter 1996 Chanel puffer and some ripped jeans? Praise be to God, the flare was lit.”
Ellie Grace Cumming, Fashion Director
“My favourite fashion moment of 2022 was working on (styling) the Dior Men’s Fall show in December in Cairo. It was an incredible experience with a cast of 75 models celebrating 75 years of Dior, with a set of the Great Pyramids of Giza, a soundtrack scored by Jeff Mills, and the most beautiful collection designed by Kim Jones. It was a dream to be part of – not many fashion moments happen on one of the seven wonders of the world! After the show finale had finished, Max Richter played his brilliant The Four Seasons with a live orchestra and a laser light show; there were many tears, it was a mythical moment.”
Sophie Bew, Editor
“John Galliano’s Cinema Inferno – a theatre-production-cum-film-cum-runway-show for Maison Margiela Artisanal Autumn/Winter 2022 in July, earlier this year – was a feat of genre-blurring beauty. The Andrew Wyeth landscape, the campy acting, the ruby slippers, latex caps and foam cowboy hats offered a technicolour feast to ceremony-starved viewers. The couture volumes, humongous back bows, plumed veiled masks and surgical scrubs: it was delectable and a bit bonkers. A welcome reminder that there’s still so much new ground for fashion to break.”
George Pistachio, Social Media Editor, AnOthermag.com
“I feel as though the era of the movie star is returning. This year has brought such great cinema – both arthouse and mainstream – and the awards ceremonies have felt more buzzy than ever. So when Nicole Kidman arrived at the catwalk for Balenciaga’s 51st couture show, looking red-carpet-ready as ever, it just seemed to make sense. From Moulin Rouge to The Portrait of a Lady, Kidman and her taut forehead are completely unforgettable, and now her seductive swaggering through Balenciaga’s Parisian salon is now ingrained in my memory."
Rebecca Perlmutar, Fashion Editor
“Nothing will top my first Junya Watanabe show during Paris Fashion Week. Starting off what our team has dubbed ‘Comme Day’ – the Saturday of fashion week when Junya Watanabe, Noir Kei Ninomiya and Comme des Garçons all show (aka the best day) – this particular Junya show left me feeling exceptionally lucky that I get to do what I do. The show was a nod to the youth of London’s 1980s New Romantic subculture, and from the first beat of Duran Duran’s Girls on Film, when two models walked out simultaneously at just the right moment, you were taken there. To experience it in person was just so good.”
Violet Conroy, Features Editor, AnOthermag.com
“Maybe it’s a cop-out to choose a film, but my favourite fashion moment of the year was in Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II. In the previous saga, The Souvenir – which follows a young film student in 1980s London who falls in love for the first time while simultaneously grappling to find her artistic voice – the protagonist Julie (played by Honor Swinton Byrne) is naive in frumpy pink cardigans, ill-fitting shirts and pumps; an inescapable maker of her upper middle class, traditional upbringing in the British countryside.
“In the second film, after experiencing alternating tides of love and grief, Julie emerges as a chic and self-assured young artist in Vivienne Westwood, boxy Yohji Yamamoto suits and one high-powered party look – slicked back hair and a one-shouldered black minidress – that seem to channel her burgeoning sense of sexuality. Both films are autobiographical almost to the bone, with Hogg lending many of her own old clothes on screen; The Souvenir Part II is a reminder that the clothes we wear tell a subconscious story about who we are (flaws and all), evolving and maturing in tandem with age and confidence.”