Fashion, you needn’t be told, has a thing for nostalgia. Though often pitched as an engine of progress, the industry has a funny habit of looking inwards, mining and regurgitating its archive rather than striving towards newness. This season, in many cases, was no different in that respect – though what distinguished it from previous fashion months marked by rehashings of Y2K glam, logoless luxe or LCD Soundsystem sleaze was that, rather than a particular aesthetic sensibility, what designers seemed to collectively pine after was a bygone approach to – and respect for – their craft.
Of late, you’ll no doubt have many a bleak prognosis for fashion’s ‘current state’ – a litany of lamentations to the tune of, “Would Gaultier or Galliano, McQueen or Mugler have been able to make it if they were starting out today?” Perhaps not! Times change – they certainly have since any of those names have stepped out the gate, and the benchmarks that today’s designers are expected to hit can seldom be reached through honed design instincts alone. As fashion has become the corporate behemoth it now is, the responsibility for designers to simultaneously perform as master marketers, production-oriented merchandisers and tactful corporate communicators is now taken as a given. There are exceptions to this rule, but the general result has been a notably muted landscape in which much of the fashion we see amounts to little more than insipid – and often insultingly expensive – product design, rather than the dream fuel we look back on.
This season, a number of collections showed signs of turning tides. Of course, the first major sign came with that Maison Margiela show by John Galliano, the house’s Artisanal 2024 show staged in the murky underpass of the Pont Alexandre III. A unanimously declared fashion moment, AnOther fashion features director, Alexander Fury, described it as “a cavalcade of technique and experimentation and creative expression”. That sentiment wasn’t the preserve of those sat on the front row, as the show’s viral traction well proved.
How that show’s impact would spill over – in a sort The Devil Wears Prada cerulean belt sort of way – was a question many industry observers had been asking since. Suggestions came through a series of prestigious appointments ahead of this season’s start – like Haider Ackermann to Tom Ford, or Sarah Burton to Givenchy. While very different designers, both are hailed as masters of their respective craft, steadfast in their commitment to a design-driven vision.
On the runway, the bellwether moment came before the season had officially bowed, with Pieter Mulier’s Alaïa show, held at the heart of the Guggenheim Museum’s iconic spiral ramp. Of course, Mulier is a designer who has passionately flown the flag for capital ‘F’ fashion – both since taking up his post at Alaïa and long before – but his exquisite ode to the greats of the American design canon roused spirits for the long month ahead. Elsewhere in New York, Proenza Schouler, a brand that, in recent seasons, had taken a muted backfoot, lavished in idiosyncratic draping, delicate crepe gathers and fronds of hand-cut fringe, bringing an expressive tactility to the fore. Even Khaite – a byword for a decidedly sober vision of America – embraced a craftiness, presenting macramé shift dresses and halter tops composed of twisting organza. But, for me, it was Willy Chavarria and Luar – arguably now two of New York Fashion Week’s current flagships – that the point was hammered home. In both cases, their shows were standouts not just for the powerful narratives they purvey and the communities they have built around them, but for their ability to create clothes that distil, embody and reflect the values they espouse.
London, as is often the case, delivered show after show that displayed a gleefully nerdy obsession with clothesmaking. London Fashion Week’s new establishment – in particular Erdem, who notably collaborated with Sextons of Savile Row for the collection’s delicately embroidered tailoring, and Simone Rocha – continued to prove the possibility of commensurating a craft-centred approach with commercial plausibility, an intuition that was adamantly felt among the city’s burgeoning crop of talents. It was there in the car seat cover beading at SS Daley; the tumbling draped and slashed natural-dyed linens at Paolo Carzana; the hardware heavy smocks and bubble skirts at Chopova Lowena, jangling with each model’s stomp; the stoic glamour of Standing Ground’s beaded velvet gowns.
Similar glimmers of hope for fashion’s hope appeared across Milan – quite literally at Marni, where Francesco Risso offset ever-so-slightly off-kilter tailoring and chic, laminated cotton blouses with glimmering tea dresses that puffed with paper-like cutouts, expressing the childish whimsy that the designer has made his preserve. A similar sensibility informed Bottega Veneta, where, along a catwalk lined with a barnyard menagerie rendered as plush leather beanbag chairs, Matthieu Blazy explored the notion of children playing dress-up through the overblown proportion of ‘grown up’ suits, orange wedge bags in leather intrecciato and fronded leather wigs. And, while it wasn’t necessarily a cited source at Prada, there was a similar spirit of dressing box zaniness to one of the most deliciously weird collections that Mrs Prada and Raf Simons have put out under their collaborative tenure – which spanned hardcore hardware appliques on abraded leather skirts, rainproof anoraks over evening shift dresses encrusted with mirrors, or fluttering with coque plumes, and enough archival shoe re-issues to make fans of any Prada era swoon.
As can reasonably be expected, Paris brought a number of heavy-hitting collections where a razor focus on a spirit of fashion for fashion’s sake prevailed – with a notable number of designers almost seeking to prove themselves worthy of the legacies they’ve inherited. Saint Laurent’s ode to the preferred boxy suiting of one of the greatest designers of them all – rounded out by jewel-toned tip of the hat to Loulou de la Falaise, one of Saint Laurent’s greatest muses – was a vindication of Anthony Vaccarello’s status as a modern master of cut and colour, while Courrèges’ monotone suite of seemingly wind-blown sculptural looks was convincing proof that Nicolas di Felice’s patternmaking skills match up to those of the man who one cut for Cristóbal Balenciaga. At Loewe, Jonathan Anderson presented fluted coats composed of layered iridescent ‘feathers’ that were actually hand-cut mother-of-pearl, and Mozart ‘band tees’ with motifs hand-painted on actual plumes. We don’t need to say more than that, but you can see why the collection set tongues wagging about what the designer’s next big move could be.
Of course, these are all names that enjoy the benefits of support from some of fashion’s deepest pockets – pushing the boundaries of fashion creativity is something that should almost be expected of them. Some of the Paris-presenting designers that did that most convincingly, though, were number names like LVMH Prize winner Hodakova, Marie Adam Leenaerdt, Duran Lantink and Torishéju who each catered to an appetite for clothes that feel uncompromising in both their conceptual remit and their execution – clothes for people that don’t want their wardrobes dumbed down.
None of this is to say that collections that stuck to ‘wardrobe proposals’ or ‘elevating the everyday’ were neither valid nor without charm. After all, on the daily, most of us are probably more inclined toward an ample cashmere sweater and a wool crepe skirt than a Comme des Garçons cloche dress. But what takes fashion beyond service-oriented product design is its ability to elicit an ineffable sense of wanting that goes beyond the practicalities of quotidian dressing. Looking back on this season with a perhaps giddy optimism, it seemed to indicate a turn towards less rational territory; towards a collective nurturing of the values of craft and directional creativity that fashion, at its best, is rooted in.