Photography MARCO IMPERATORE
Styling EMIL REBEK

Photography MARCO IMPERATORE
Styling EMIL REBEK

Photography MARCO IMPERATORE
Styling EMIL REBEK

Photography MARCO IMPERATORE
Styling EMIL REBEK

Photography LAURA MARIE CIEPLIK
Art Direction KADURI ELYASHAR
Fashion DIOR

Photography FILIP KOLUDROVIC
Styling GIOVANNI BEDA
Model YULIAN ANTUKH  
Casting REMI FELIPE
Grooming FEDERICA CANCIAN
Executive Producer JUSTIN GERBINO
Producer MIKE GERBINO
Production PBJ

Photography LAURA MARIE CIEPLIK
Art Direction KADURI ELYASHAR
Grooming JÉSSICA CARVALHO
Casting REMI FELIPE

Photography JAIME CABRERA
Styling BEN PERRIERA

Photography PABLO SÁEZ
Styling GABRIELLA NORBERG
Grooming ANDRE CUETO
Set Design AYMERIC ARNOULD

Anthony Vaccarello’s tribute to the late Yves Saint Laurent's enduring love affair with Marrakech comes full circle with a powerful statement of the future that lies ahead for the venerable French fashion house.

By HASSAN AL-SALEH

The circle is a universal symbol with inextricable meaning. It has no beginning and no end. It represents evolution as a process of transformation. It symbolizes, eternity, infinity, unity, totality, timelessness, the self. It is omnipresent.

In many ways, Anthony Vaccarello’s presentation of the men’s Spring-Summer 2023 collection for the illustrious house of Saint Laurent came full circle. It was held for the first time in the majestic and ancient desert city of Marrakech, a place of particular resonance for the late Yves Saint Laurent - a spiritual escape where he found inspiration and solitude. The collection was a beautiful, moving and mesmerising exploration of fashion where the lines of masculinity and femininity elegantly dissolved - firmly set in the future but harking back to a bygone era of timeless elegance entirely devoid of clichés.

The show was visceral and profound with the juxtaposition of the dramatic rocky landscape of the Agafay desert and the futuristic set designed in collaboration with London-based artist and designer Es Devlin, which included a vast illuminating disk emerging from a pool of water in a makeshift oasis as a metaphor for life’s fascinating complexity. Otherworldly by any measure.

In the words of American writer and composer Paul Bowles in his novel of alienation and existential despair, The Sheltering Sky, “We think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

Limitless. Limitless bounds of possibility was precisely what Vaccarello displayed. A powerful statement of the future that lies ahead, in rhythmic and cyclical movement.

Hoor Al Qasimi is pushing boundaries with renewed vigor and purpose as the physical and philosophical heir to the Qasimi brand.

By LAURA BOLT
Photography MOUS LAMRABAT

It’s been said that talent runs in the family, and the Al Qasmi twins are certainly evidence that that may just be true. Born to Emirati royalty, both Khalid Al Qasimi and his twin sister Hoor were and are creative forces in their own way. Hoor made her name as a powerhouse in the art world, shaping the artistic legacy of Sharjah. The Central Saint Martins educated Khalid, meanwhile, had been making waves in the fashion industry for over a decade with his eponymous line Qasimi, which explored concepts like identity, politics, and culture through sharply designed clothing and his romantically hopeful vision of the Middle East’s future.

Khalid’s label was a proud representation of his country and heritage, as well a platform for the designer to explore issues of home, representation, and poetry. “Qasimi is a way for me to discuss what's going on around us, whether it is politics or economics,” he once said, later adding that “there are always different ways of viewing things. With my background, politics is very much embedded within our situation in the Middle East. We are always discussing politics, at home, over dinner, it’s present in conversation all the time. That’s something that I don’t necessarily see in fashion: politics within the clothes, translating politics and history into fashion.”

Unfortunately, a dream realized became a dream deferred when Khalid Al Qasimi died unexpectedly in 2019 at the age of 39. Still in mourning, Hoor Al Qasimi vowed to keep her brother’s vision alive by seeing to it that his work at Qasimi hasn’t been in vain. With the caveat that, “It will always be my brother’s office, my brother’s team, and my brother’s label,” Hoor took the reins of Qasimi as Creative Director and is now honoring her brother’s legacy while building a future for the brand that is distinctly her own.

“His aura is still present at our London studio, with his original sketches lying around. It’s a strange feeling knowing that your twin is longer with you,” says Al Qasimi. “So, occasionally, I’ll scroll back to our log of phone messages and revisit references that he was heavily inspired by.” She relied heavily on the existing team while infusing the work with her own sensibilities. The challenge was to create a living memorial and honoring clothing, techniques, and certainly people from the past, while firmly stepping into the future.

When she began to work on the label, Al Qasimi admitted that the steep learning curve was easier to navigate due to her connection to her late brother, saying that, “Fashion is new to me. So, one of the biggest challenges will be to learn and absorb as much about the industry as I possibly can. Luckily, Khalid and I always played as a sounding board for each other in our separate endeavors, him for me with art, and myself for him in fashion – so I feel well connected to it.”

As she explored a new realm of creative potential, Al Qasimi expanded not just her mind, but also the brand, introducing a new womenswear collection to the label. For Hoor, “​​Rather than a couple, the Qasimi woman is very much a soulmate to the Qasimi man. They are two parts of one story.” It was a move that felt poetic, representing the new feminine energy that flowed through the house, proof that the end of a life can still open the door to expansion and the power of memory doesn’t have to fade.

Under Hoor’s tutelage, the brand found its stride by taking inspiration from the past to build it’s future. “The brand wanted to look back at its cultural heritage, more specifically textiles from the Arabian Peninsula”, she said of her debut. “We used it as patchwork in the jersey collection and on accessories, as well as entire pieces of outerwear, trousers and headwear. Like the weavers, at Qasimi we also interpret the world around us to try to make sense of things, imparting our own creative input into the garments we design.”

While she’s undertaken the new endeavor with courage and vigor, Hoor has remained faithful to her background in the art world, using her knowledge as inspiration for her work. A constant champion for underrepresented groups and political activism, Hoor has built a career advocating for and highlighting artists that speak truth to power and aren’t afraid to ask tough questions. Judging by her work so far, it’s a passion she intends to bring to her role at Qasimi.

In fact, it was her experience directing the Sharjah Biennial which led to a collaboration with American artist Nari Ward, for which Ward created a rap dubbed We The People that evoked themes of racism and youth culture. “The overarching concept of the collection is about diversity and change through unity, civil responsibility and equality,” she said of the inspiration for the collaboration. “So once the protests against anti-black racism began, the collection started to take on a new, more profound meaning, reinforcing the brand’s mission to address political and social issues.”

Addressing social issues has always been central to the DNA of the Qasimi brand. In a past “False Flags” collection, Khalid experimented with ideas about immigration, militarism, and globalization, imbuing his clothes with a deeper message than simply looking smart. Speaking of his boundary-pushing designs, Khalid once remarked “It’s very easy to self-reference in my opinion, and whilst I touched on Middle Eastern style… it really wasn’t so much about my background as it was about ideas of movement. The idea of mixing two opposing ideas together goes a bit deeper than myself. There was this idea of pacifying military clothing, minimalizing it. At the risk of a touchy subject, there were ideas of terrorism as well. This is more about the state that we’re in and the symbolism of certain things. To a Western person, some aspects of traditional Middle Eastern clothing are perhaps seen as aggressive or threatening, but if you look at it from the other point of view, the traditional Western military outfit could be much more threatening, or indeed terrorizing. It’s about how you view things and the ways we create meaning.”

Ultimately, creating meaning remains the throughline of Qasimi, no matter which Al Qasimi twin’s hand is driving that meaning. Aligned in their mutual curiosity, artistic and worldly upbringing, and confidence to stand up for what they believe in, it’s become clear that Hoor is truly both the physical and philosophical heir to the Creative Director throne.

The East-meets-West dichotomy is another brand fixture that Hoor intends to continue to explore, noting that “the brand’s connection with both the West and East epitomizes Khalid’s (and my own) identity. We grew up between the two worlds and so London was home to my brother and therefore a big part of Qasimi’s identity.” It's a logical step for a woman who once said about a biennale, “Why country representation? Nobody’s from one country!” It seems that for both Al Qasimi twins, at the end of the day, pushing boundaries is just another way of making connections.

Only time will tell what Hoor will dream up at Qasimi, though it's a safe bet that weaving traditional Middle Eastern fabrications and styling with a global slant will always be part of the brand. Just as she had to let go of her brother, it’s clear that Hoor has a uniquely deep understanding of the ideas of permanence and legacy. “I don't like the word permanent very much,'' she has said. “For example, with monuments that you walk past every day – at some point you end up not noticing them anymore. They just become a normal part of the landscape. So if you're trying to engage with your audience, it is more interesting to have thought-provoking interventions.”

It is a heavy task, stewarding the vision of someone you have loved and lost, while also steering towards continued relevance in the ever-changing world of fashion. “I don’t feel like he’s gone sometimes, and I often dream of Khalid,” Hoor has said. Now that his dream is one they both share, it’s only fitting that he continues to have a place in hers. Qasimi will no doubt continue to be a compelling presence with a rich and complicated past, present, and future, but if there is one thing that will remain true, it’s that where love is concerned, some dreams will never die.

Virgil Abloh dared to dream big and succeeded in remaking the luxury fashion landscape in the process. A tribute a creative force of his generation, and the next.

By JON ROTH

Let’s begin at the end.

On November 30, 2021, a fleet of drones spelled these words out in the sky above Miami:

VIRGIL WAS HERE.

The same phrase would soon appear on Louis Vuitton storefronts across the globe.

Two days earlier, Virgil Abloh, artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton, founder and CEO of Off-White, architect, furniture designer, DJ, a compulsive collaborator and tireless advocate for bringing in talent from the margins, died in Chicago, Illinois of a rare form of heart cancer. Abloh had kept his illness quiet after his diagnosis in 2019, and so the news came as a shock not just to the fashion world, but the world in general – Abloh was more than a fashion designer, he was a force that transcended disciplines. His sudden death at 41 cut short a profoundly creative trajectory, and could have been the end of a cultural moment.

If you are holding this magazine, you almost certainly know all this already. The ripples of Abloh’s influence are wide and deep, and even those unfamiliar with his name learned it in 2018, when his appointment as Louis Vuitton’s men’s artistic director made headlines across the world – “the first African-American man to head a French luxury house.”

Still, it helps to revisit the context, to list out Abloh’s accomplishments, to isolate what we know about his life and career. It is impossible to read the arc of a person’s life as it happens – especially someone like Virgil Abloh, whose boundless energy seemed to spin into countless new partnerships and projects every day. But when that person passes and the dust begins to settle, the major plot points start to become clearer. Themes stand out more starkly, certain words and phrases start to echo. It becomes easier to find the thesis.

Talk to any one of Abloh’s many, many fans and they will have their own take on his mission. One through line in his work and his words is that he was a man enamored of possibility. Someone who saw potential where other people would never look, and took pleasure in asking questions.

What if we lifted up kids from the margins and gave them the tools they needed to make change at the center?

What if we remixed and remade it all, collaborating, cross-pollinating, appropriating and improving everything all with gleeful, kid-in-a-candy-shop abandon?

What if we were kids again? What if we maintained that wide-eyed optimism and curiosity.

This last question also brings up a corollary to Abloh’s preoccupation with possibility: wonder. Possibility is a concept. Wonder is the feeling it elicits. Again and again, he returns to this feeling:

“I’ve been on this focus of getting adults to behave like children again. That they go back into this sense of wonderment. They stop using their mind and they start using their imagination.”

“I start from the wonderment of boys. When you’re a boy there’s one thing that adults ask you: What do you want to be when you grow up? And you say artist, lawyer, doctor, football player, fighter pilot. But then, if I ask what does a doctor look like? There’s a knee-jerk. That’s where we can learn.”

“I’m going to… continue this feeling of the whole freedom of being a child, still learning. I’m changing my pace drastically.”

Why shouldn’t Abloh come from this place of possibility and wonder? After all, his story proves that dreams can, in fact, come true.

The designer himself has acknowledged in interviews that his trajectory is unbelievable. “To come from designing a graphic t-shirt in 2012 to making it to a house to design a collection... As a young black kid from Rockford, Illinois, from immigrant parents from Ghana, West Africa, that was like, impossible, you know?”

He did it anyway.

A little background to ground ourselves in where Abloh came from, and where he was going: He was born outside Chicago. His father Nee managed a painting company and his mother Eunice was a seamstress (she taught Abloh how to sew). He got a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. An art history class in senior year inspired him to pursue a Masters in architecture in 2003. He was fascinated by architecture, particularly the work of Rem Koolhaas, and the idea that architecture isn’t just about buildings, it’s about systems. During this time, he wrote about fashion for website The Brilliance, and he designed clothes, too. Through connections at a Chicago screen printing shop, he entered the orbit of rapper/entrepreneur/provocateur Kanye West, and Abloh’s life entered a kind of hyperspeed.

Working with West, Abloh joined a small brain trust of the musician’s collaborators. He became a kind of walking encyclopedia of design history, always rooted in his eclectic affection for artists like Caravaggio and Mies van der Rohe, Koolhaas and the Bauhaus. “Kanye wasn't going to put his art form in the hands of the art department at the record label. So he was like, ‘I am going to hire you, and let's literally work on this 24–7, laptop in hand, nonstop,’” Abloh has said. “So more than any title, I was just his assistant creatively. I believed that this was going to be another chapter in hip-hop.”

As West’s interest in fashion grew, so did Abloh’s, and the two attended Paris Fashion Week in 2009 with a group of collaborators including Don C and Fonzworth Bentley. It was an eye-opening moment for Abloh, who saw an opportunity in what felt like an airless fashion scene. “When Kanye and I were first going to fashion shows, there was no one outside the shows,” Abloh has said. “Streetwear wasn't on anyone's radar, but the sort of chatter at dinners after shows was like “Fashion needs something new. It's stagnant. What's the new thing going to be?” That was the timeline on which I was crafting my ideas.”

In short order Abloh and West become interns at Fendi, where Abloh meets Michael Burke, CEO of Louis Vuitton, for the first time. Not long after that Abloh launched a boutique called Pyrex Vision, buying up Champion product and deadstock Ralph Lauren Rugby pieces, screen printing over them, and selling them at a huge mark-up. More an art project than a viable brand, he dropped Pyrex to found Off-White in 2013. That brand, informed by the ironic sensibility of quotation marks, zip ties and ‘Caution’ tape, quickly disproved detractors claiming it was a derivative streetwear brand. Year over year, the concepts and designs grew increasingly refined, so that by 2018 the Lyst Index reported Off-White had surpassed Gucci in terms of brand heat. Meanwhile, Abloh is collaborating with the likes of IKEA, Evian, Rimowa, Nike, and Jenny Holzer - just a few topline names in a list of partnerships that goes on and on.

All of this – the studies in architecture, the education alongside Kanye, the fashion houses – feel like rungs on the ladder that finally brought Abloh to March 25, 2018, when he accepted the role of men’s artistic director at Louis Vuitton. It was the kind of historic first that made headlines around the globe, and even better, generated massive buzz among Abloh’s fandom, particularly the enthusiastic cohort of boys and young men who followed Abloh’s every move. Of the appointment, the designer said: "It is an honor for me to accept this position. I find the heritage and creative integrity of the house are key inspirations and will look to reference them both while drawing parallels to modern times".

If Abloh’s work at Off-White was defined by a clever irony, his work at Louis Vuitton felt more earnest and optimistic, both naive and elegant. His debut show in 2018 at Paris’ Palais-Royal Gardens, titled ‘We are the World,’ featured a rainbow ombre runway, a profusion of white suiting, and a cast of models made up partly of his friends. After the show, Abloh would post a photo of himself taking a bow, with a caption designed to galvanize aspiring creatives: “You can do it too.” Followers continue to leave comments on this post years later.

Over the eight collections Abloh produced during his time at Louis Vuitton, he would turn out designs that felt both commercial and innovative, guaranteed to inspire the young cohort he counted among his greatest influences, all underpinned with the immaculate construction and attention to detail one comes to expect from a French luxury house. Always a prolific designer, Abloh had two more collections mostly completed at the time of his death, but the ‘Virgil was here’ show in Miami, presented just two days after his passing, had a particular memorial quality. At the close of that presentation, Abloh’s voice rumbled through the speakers again, saying: “There’s no limit. Life is so short, that you can’t waste even a day subscribing to what someone thinks you can do, versus knowing what you can do.”

In exploring the possible, Abloh made sure to show others their potential, too. A famously open-minded, open-sourced artist, Abloh took pride in sharing “cheat codes” with his followers, tips and tricks he wanted to pass along to the next generation. He did this with talks at Harvard and Columbia, on a website called ‘Free Game’ that provides a masterclass in brand-building, and in a career retrospective exhibit, Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech,” which has traveled the world and reappears in the Brooklyn Museum this summer. Then there is his “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund, designed to present Black students with opportunities in the fashion industry – a fund that has raised $1 million to date. Much of this legacy will continue to be handled by Virgil Abloh Securities, a creative and philanthropic foundation headed by Abloh’s wife Shannon.

Even while his time was running out, Abloh continued to imagine, to innovate, and to lay the groundwork for the creatives who would come afterwards. “The next version of me literally works on my team today. You know, didn’t go to fashion school either, highly ambitious, super creative. And I know maybe 50 of them,” Abloh has said. “They will take my position, they will be the head of Louis Vuitton next, they will start another version of Off-White or a media company or whatever…I know my community is special, and that’s what I’m an advocate for.”

Yes, Virgil was here. And he’s still here - in his designs, in his philanthropic initiatives, and he’s especially here in that next crop of young creatives, in all those young Virgils he helped shape and inspire through his life and work. He was a visionary, a trailblazer, and a lot of other words that can lose currency over time, but maybe most of all Abloh was the spark that lit up the next generation.

Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli is making romanticism an achingly personal expression of identity and individuality. 

By MAX BERLINGER

Photography MICHAEL BAILEY GATES

Valentino is often thought of in terms of dazzling dresses or flowing couture gowns but lately the Roman brand is taking its designs out of the salons and the ornately designer, grandiose buildings and into the public square. One can’t help but ask – Is Valentino coming down from its ivory tower? 

Well, yes and no. 

Creative director, Pierpaolo Piccioli has proven a master at injecting a sense of swooning romance into everyday clothes and, conversely, designing ready-to-wear that’s glamorous yet feels as comfortable as a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. His clothes are intentional, celebratory, and lack any pretense of snobbery. It’s this tension that gives the brand a frisson of excitement and grounds it in the realities of modern life. His fashion is a dream, but it’s meant for waking life.

How does Piccioli, who has been in charge of the brand since 2008, and where he worked on the designs jointly with Maria Grazia Chiuri until 2016, resolve these two opposing forces – the romance of fashion and its reality? “I feel that romanticism is an individual approach to life,” he explained. “I don’t think romanticism is about prettiness. For me, romanticism is something that is not objective, just subjective. An individual approach, of course, is about yourself, is personal, is intimate. Sometimes, you cannot explain the reason for your choices – because it’s not objective. But I think that today it is most important to express yourself, to be yourself, to be very close to your identity. That’s the only thing that makes you different.”

Valentino has long been synonymous with an Old World charm – it brings to mind drawing rooms on the Upper East Side or Mayfair populated with socialites and their paramours and its suave founder, with his slicked hair and tan skin. Those days are gone, and Piccioli’s Valentino acknowledges that with clothing that has a relaxed, nonchalant elegance. It’s made not for dinner parties and charity events, but for our busy lives. And yet it’s not devoid of a certain classic glamour – the lush colors, the vivid prints, the dramatic shapes. It shows how one can take the legacy of a brand and move it into contemporary times. Piccioli’s work is a master class of using a brand’s archive to set down a firm foundation for the future.

That sense of playful individuality and expressing oneself has been the animating force of Piccioli’s recent collections, be it in the rarefied worlds of couture, where the everyday uniform is elevated to the highest form of craftsmanship, or his ready-to-wear collections that possess a sense of casual, off-handed elegance. This is a demonstration of the brand’s signature savoir-faire and discernment, yet made for a youthful, cool consumer. A window into how Piccioli is able to bring together the extremes of fashion, the dream of glamor married to the beauty of daily life. 

In his work, Piccioli deals mostly with aesthetics – searching for and creating beauty for its own sake. But that doesn’t mean his designs don’t rub up against more metaphysical, philosophical concerns. “I feel that beauty is about grace,” he said. “Grace is not something you can describe, it’s something else – a perception. When I talk with my premières, I never say, ‘I want a centimetre less.’ I say, ‘I would like the dress to move this way, to give this kind of sensation.’ They are so good at their job, they can translate my intention, my idea.” 

Interestingly, Valentino has been able to cut through the noise of the social media age with designs that feel achingly personal – the airiness of his couture designs are begging to be touched while the sensual shapes in his ready-to-wear are made to be worn, not just gazed at on a smartphone screen. “To me, luxury is closest to the idea of humanity,” Piccioli explained. That’s the perfect word – humanity. His work feels, at its core, about the wearer, about creating not just a look, but a feeling for the human wearing the clothes. “We are looking for emotional connections much more than any expensive fabric,” he continued. “I don't think that's the big concern. It's something that gives you emotion. And when we talked about exclusivity, it didn’t make sense to me. And neither does inclusivity as just a word. I feel that the image has a power and has a strength. And you use your own language. So fashion is my language.”

The idea of individuality and inclusivity have been an important part of Piccioli’s work in recent years. His runways have been filled not just with models, but characters, interesting personalities who range in ethnicity, age, body type and appearance. This casting choice that’s not only a push for diversity, but an expansion of who Valentino is for – seemingly, these days it's for every type of person. 

“As a fashion designer, I want to use my voice to send messages and values that I believe in,” he said, elucidating how a fashion brand can, in its way, move culture. “Through the beauty of the clothes, you can invite people to express themselves however they want to be, wherever they want to be. As a designer, I never want to be what people expect me to be. Wanting to be very faithful to my identity and being different became a value. Now, as the creative director of Valentino, I’m still the same, more or less. I still feel as though every collection is an opportunity to tell something.” 

Perhaps that’s what gives Piccioli’s Valentino so much power – his desire to “tell something” as he calls it. His sense of story or narrative imbues the clothing with a drama that’s then brought to life by the diverse assortment of models he uses. These are his characters and the costumes they would wear, this seems to say. And as this story unfolds, beneath the beauty, a stirring message comes through.  

This is all by design, of course. “I have political thoughts,” he said. “And I need to tell them, through my language, which is fashion. So, images. If I were a politician, I would be using words. I chose to be a fashion designer, and I want to use my voice to deliver my values. But I think to be relevant is to do it through images because sometimes you can be even more assertive. Not talking, not writing, but through image, through fashion. It’s like a book and a movie – when you read, you have your imagination, you create your own world. With a movie, it’s already there. Fashion can be super-powerful, like a movie – it’s already there.”

These past few years have been trying times for many – the entire world has gone through a vast amount of change. Fashion can sometimes feel superfluous and yet, to dream is to be human. Even in the darkest times, we dream. Piccioli knows his medium – fashion – and his message – to dream. On the Valentino runway, dreams are always present, in dazzling technicolor, in the most luxurious fabrics, made in sweeping, sensual silhouettes. But what we’re left with the most is the stirring emotion. Or as he explained it, “Art is for art's sake and fashion has to do with the body. But what they have in common is that you can create beauty, and you can create curiosity and interest. You can generate emotions that create thoughts.”

Designer Jonthan Anderson and photographer David Sims express a new visual paradigm where freedom is the ultimate experience of life.

By LAURA BOLT
Photography DAVID SIMS

For a man who once said, “I'm not here to please an industry, I'm here to challenge it," Jonathan Anderson has certainly succeeded at defying expectations. Through his own eponymous line and at the helm of Loewe, the Creative Director has found himself part of the constellation of young designers who are reinventing and redefining the industry with fresh takes on form, gender, luxury, and the future.

Anderson, who originally hails from Northern Ireland, has spoken of his work as such: “When I first joined Loewe I went to the Prado, and I walked down this incredibly long corridor of some of the greatest works in history from the Royal collection. There was a Reubens and a Titian, side by side, both of Adam and Eve. They looked identical. But they were by Reubens and Titian. I went through a phase where I didn’t believe that fashion was art, but I do believe that it is a reflection of society, so, therefore it is an art form. It is an interpretation, and it is fine to reinvent. If Reubens can reinvent Titian, then this is fine. For me, that’s the history of the universe there, because ultimately it is about the passing of information.”

Almost two decades older than Anderson, British photographer David Sims is an indelible and undeniable part of the art world, pushing the boundaries of what fashion photography can be. His contributions to publications like The Face and i-D have helped create the aesthetic foundation of British style in the 1990s, and he has also helped push the limits of what brands like Prada, Givenchy, and Valentino could be presented as.

“Most of what inspires what I do is a sort of misremembered event in my life,” he has said of his style. “I’m good at writing myth around myself and I might think of myself as having more emotion at one time, so I tap into some of what the echo of that is.”

In a joint project where Sims photographed Anderson’s work for Loewe in a special edition book, the world has the opportunity to see what happens when two powerful forces collide. The duo found a fortuitous time to collaborate, with the world experiencing unprecedented tumult on a multitude of fronts. Sims’ photographs unapologetically harken back to a time of freedom, release, and hedonism. Inspired by rave culture, Sim’s work with Loewe is insouciant, unexpected, youthful, and ultimately, imbued with a sense of hope and joy that can be hard to come by in both the fashion industry, and in the world at large.

It should perhaps come as no surprise that Sims looked to the rave scene to provide the inspirational underpinnings of his latest work. While fashion and music have always been familiar bedfellows, Sims’ approach to – and participation in – subcultures has become a defining characteristic of his work. Coming to prominence in London during the early 90’s, Sims had a front row seat to the influence of glam, punk, shoegaze, and brit pop – as well as their respective fashions. “It seemed to present something which was more descriptive of a feeling or an emotion or a narrative. The big shift was the subject matter and how that changed the traditional outline of beauty. People want to get back to that,” he has said. “It’s a slightly fascistic thing that was all about presenting power and sex, whereas the grunge image is all about feeling and melancholy. They’re two opposite schools of thought. I think the younger generation want to go back to the latter.”

The music scene provides its own pulse to the work, a sensation that clothes haven’t just been designed, but are being animated and lived in, adding color, shape, and movement set to a syncopated beat. Speaking of his previous work, Sims has said, “We’ve made this journey without ever having left the room. Because the options are limitless, the technique becomes less important. The idea itself is the singular exponent.”

This moment has provided unique ways to interpret a designer’s vision and restructure reality, not just in their creations, but in the ways in which they bring them to fruition. In a time marked by restrictions and constraint, Anderson surprisingly found a sense of freedom in his – and society’s – newfound limitations, reflecting that “limitations can actually be really freeing.” One is reminded of the combination of freedom and constriction experienced during a vivid dream, a dream in which you might be speaking a language you don’t understand, limbs heavy and out of your command, but immersed in a landscape you never thought possible. “Nocturnal is a great word,” Anderson has said when discussing his aesthetic. “This is where we are able to see people when they are free. It’s not a work environment, it’s where you express yourself, where you let go.”

In this dreamscape that Anderson and Sims have created, there is a sense of intimacy and the particular kind of self-expression that feels endemic to a time in one’s life when there is nothing but the future ahead of you. While the idea of luxury generally conjures up images of sumptuous fabrics, rare stones, and detailed craftsmanship, it seems that for Anderson and Sims, it is freedom itself that is the ultimate luxury.

“I find romance in humdrum places,” Sims has said. “I’ve striven to create romantic images, to describe things “romantically.”

To view Sims’ photographs of Anderson’s work is to peer into a world that seems both ecstatic and fleeting, secret, but inviting. It is impossible to deny a certain precocious romance in the unfinished basements, trespassed chain link fences, and crowded bedrooms of the photos. The characters are both inspirational and aspirational, with Sims’ touch presenting them more as memories of friends than models. This approach seems to be an ideal match for Anderson’s design ethos, of which he has said, “I have always approached clothing with this idea that it’s not about genderless clothing and it’s not about sexuality, but it’s just about the individual somehow, almost like you are proposing an individual who has no sort of like place in time,” he explains. “I like building a series of looks because they become different animations of that one character’s attitude. It sort of opens this door where you have to pose something for someone to react against or for yourself to react against. I think for me, it is about the empowerment of a silhouette, which ultimately becomes the intrigue.”

One of the gifts that Anderson and Sims’ collaboration offers the viewer is the chance not to simply admire their art, but to be invited into that world of intrigue, to imbue it with your own experiences, hopes, fears, and secrets. “Life is a spoken mirror and we’re now in a moment where the mirror is incredibly muddied,” Anderson has said. There have been times when the role of art was to hold up that mirror and reflect truth, but these days, it seems more apropos to hold up a mirror in which we can take ourselves through the looking glass into a place that feels altogether new.

“We’re at this very strange moment where it is the beginning of a chapter and I don’t know where we’re going ultimately, which is kind of exciting,” said Anderson. It seems that there has never been a time where our sense of the future seems murkier, but instead of approaching that uncertainty with fear, spending time in the world that Anderson and Sims have created is nudging us to see the potential in that – potential for desire, for change, for beauty, and hopefully, for growth. Ultimately, a world we don’t recognize doesn’t have to be one that doesn’t feel like home.

It is perhaps due to a shared relationship to their work that Sims and Anderson have been able to create a collaboration that feels vivid, of-the-moment, and so satisfyingly able to be imbued with our own desires and memories. “I don’t go out to say that I started something and I own it; I just work with things, Anderson said several years ago. “I think this idea of ownership of design is just ridiculous. I don’t own anything. I make it, I put it out there. That’s it. I move on.” Sims would appear to agree. “You present and re-present your pictures and they gain new significance,” he said. “Just to see it again is a pleasure, but you can’t hold on to it. I let go all the time.” Conspiring, creating, letting go – now there’s a dream we can all share.

With his eponymous knitwear line, Archie Alled-Martinez reimagines queer history and takes desire to a whole new level.

By JON ROTH
Photography JORGE PEREZ ORTIZ

Sunset, by a secluded lake. A muscled young man in a gauzy top and shimmering pants strips in the wilderness. Someone is watching, but we can’t tell who – we only see his shadow.

Nighttime, on the side of a highway. Two men have pulled their car over onto the shoulder and walk together toward the hood. Headlights blazing, one leans back on the car while the other kneels before him.

Daylight, by the docks. A tanned young man has left his girlfriend in bed to meet a stranger behind the shipping containers. After a stolen moment, he walks away with a handful of cash.

Afternoon at a high school. One boy teases another, and suddenly they are wrestling on the ground, circled by classmates in gym shorts and tank tops, shouting, jeering, egging them on.

These are snapshots from the mind of Archie Alled-Martinez, a knitwear designer with an uncanny ability to zero in on the fraught, erotic tensions that underlie so much of the gay experience. Call them rewritten histories, gay fantasias, wet dreams – in his collections, and his campaign films and photography, the designer couches his clothing in rich historical and cultural contexts, and draws compelling contradictions between the aristocratic, aspirational world of high-end fashion and the secret, sexy, cruisy world of the gay underground. Those contrasts – and of course the clothes themselves: slinky, elegant, cleverly referential – have established Alled-Martinez as a rapidly rising talent.

Which is a bit funny, because at the start Alled-Martinez didn’t even know what knitwear was. Born in Barcelona but having spent much of his young life in England, the designer always knew Central Saint Martins would be the school for him. “I started loving high fashion as a consumer when I was only 14. It’s an age when you start making decisions about what you want to be as an adult,” he has said. “I knew that it had to be London and it had to be Central Saint Martins. I stole my dad’s credit card and I booked a short course there first.” One day as part of these courses, the students were given an introduction to knitwear, and Alled-Martinez says he had to Google what exactly it was.

Once he learned the foundations of the craft, he took to it immediately, relishing the somewhat mechanical work, and the ability to create yard after yard of material, almost by magic. Though he attests he’s not wild about ‘traditional’ knits – "I hate a cable, I hate a jumper; I hate all of that,” – he was quickly able to find his own creative outlet within the form. Partly this was practical: he had to learn the techniques to create the super-fine weaves that are one of his hallmarks. The other part was more of a cultural education, thanks to a book recommendation from one of his professors.

“Fabio [Piras] recommended I read The Beautiful Fall by Alicia Drake. It was all about glamour, the perverse dandy who I’m really attracted to,” Alled-Martinez has said. “That’s really the motor of it. When you have a substantial body of research, of references and imagery, that answers all your questions.”

This in turn led the young designer down a rabbit-hole of research, particularly focused on gay men who captured a zeitgeist, whether in fashion, criticism or nightlife. He’s mentioned Roy Halston, Hal Fischer, and Fabrice Emaer in interviews, but Alled-Martinez’s biggest muse to date has likely been Jacques de Bascher, a patrician Parisian dandy who moved with sinuous grace between the upper echelons of society and the demimonde, along the way capturing the affection of both Karl Lagerfeld and (more briefly) Yves Saint Laurent. In de Bascher the young designer may have seen the same themes and contradictions that inform much of his own work: a swinging ‘70s sensibility, a fine line between luxe and louche, a beauty driven by a fierce underlying sexual magnetism. And, of course, de Bascher drove him to dive deeper into his research of queer culture in that era, a history inextricably bound up with the tragedy of AIDS, and the hedonistic pinnacle that immediately preceded it. “The scenario was super clear: it’s only about 4 years, from ‘78 until ‘82, ’83,” Alled-Martinez has said. “In 1983, Fabrice Emaer died, Le Palace shut down and the whole AIDS epidemic spread. It was such a small amount of time, the peak before the cataclysm.”

As his references grew richer and richer, Alled-Martinez’s designs developed in tandem. In 2018, the year he graduated from Central Saint Martins with an MA in Knitwear, he was also awarded the LVMH Graduate Prize for his collection, a series of garments cunningly rendered to mimic denim, wool, and other tailored materials, but entirely in knits. The award secured the designer a mentorship at Givenchy under Clare Waight Keller, with whom he says he connected instantly. Here he continued to hone his techniques in advance of his first solo presentation in 2020, a fall collection with lots of high-waisted, disco shimmer.

Since then, the Alled-Martinez collections have refined year over year, sometimes playing in the sensual ‘70s space that feels like the brand’s core, other times leaning more into surrealism, or glamor, or sport. In almost every collection there is a carefully conceived narrative that helps drive the designs – narratives that often chart neatly onto pivotal moments in queer history.

Take the designer’s ‘Unsung Heroes’ collection, which featured the names of men like Roy Halston and Jacques de Bascher who had died of AIDS, and the age of their passing. “I didn’t want the names to be gimmicky – maybe people won’t understand what it’s about,” Alled-Martinez has said, while acknowledging, “It’s impactful when you get it.” Impactful, yes, and poignant, and defiant, to bring back the names of gay men who died too young of a disease most of the world ignored at the time. With simple details like this – a name, a number – the designer revives the memory of a generation that is largely lost to us.

Other designs have an outspoken, confrontational edge. One reads “BOTTOMS AND TOPS WE ALL HATE COPS,” a chant that became especially popular during Pride marches in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Another, reading “HETEROSEXUALS ARE A PROVEN SECURITY RISK,” echoes a protest sign from the National March on Washington for Lesbian & Gay Rights from 1987. Both sentiments can be carried even further back, to the 1969 Stonewall riots, when a police raid of gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village sparked a confrontation that ignited the modern Pride movement. These reinterpretations and provocations are welcome messages of affirmation for a community that’s often had to speak softly, or in codes, in order to get their point across.

The references are more recent, too. Allied-Martinez’s latest collection explored the low-slung jeans, exposed boxer shorts, and tiny tee shirts of the early aughts, and is inspired by the high school scene of the designer’s youth. He remembers homophobia being pervasive in schools as he was growing up, and wanted to reimagine his youth with those hateful overtones stripped away. “I was wondering what would it be like to have been openly gay during high school,” he said, “and how difficult it was for people in my generation to be themselves growing up.” Even now, queer youth face immense hurdles depending on where they live, so Alled-Martinez’s vision provides a welcome antidote to struggles that continue today.

As his brand grows, Archie Alled-Martinez proves that expertly crafted garments will get you far, but a thoughtful, nuanced point of view will take you even further. It is one thing to collect Instagram followers and dress celebrities based on the viral appeal of a trending shape or color. It is another to craft collections around a story, so that the individual pieces combine into a greater arc.

The goal here is to influence the audience, not just convert them to customers. “If you’re only doing cute clothes and following a trend, it’s only going to last for so long,” the designer has said. “But if you do a collection to create an impact, you might only reach a small audience who will understand the art, but you will get people to think more about a certain subject you find important.”

With designs that immediately spark desire, and stories that chart that desire in new directions, Alled-Martinez is creating with each collection blueprints for a better world, one that acknowledges the hard-fought battles of the past, and points to a way forward. His vision of the future suggests we leave taboos behind, embrace sexual expression, and most of all live freely, as our authentic selves, no matter what the cost. That’s a dream worth fighting for.

Korean photographer captures the transformative power of nature for the latest installment of Saint Laurent’s expressive Self project.

By HASSAN AL-SALEH
Photography DAESUNG LEE

An expression of individuality through the work of photographers, artists and filmmakers, Self, curated by Saint Laurent’s creative director Anthony Vaccarello, is an ongoing collaborative project that synthesizes different aspects of the Saint Laurent personality. For its seventh installment, Vaccarello has collaborated with six photographers across six opinion-forming cities including Los Angeles, Paris, London, Seoul and Tokyo. An artistic commentary on society, the artistic exchange is free from pretense and hypocrisy.

In Seoul, Self 07 is viewed through the lens of Korean photographer Daesung Lee. Growing up in a rural village, he was fascinated by nature from an early age and has since become a passionate environmentalist. As an artist, he adopts a conceptual approach in documentary photography, playing between fiction and reality through an enigmatic visualization.

“Spring 2020 was surreal but real. The whole world stopped. No one could easily describe such a feeling in words,” says Lee. “Ironically, nature revived and came back to us once we stopped being indoors. Nature gave us back all the forgotten senses. The sky was so blue, more than ever, birds were singing so loudly out of my apartment window and the leaves of the trees in the streets were greener than ever. It was such a surreal experience. Since then, I no longer see the world in the same way.”

In what can be described as being lost but found, Lee explains, “For the Self project, I attempted to visualize that strange experience during lockdown. An imaginary nature, that you can only see in your inner self, that you can only feel in your own senses. We all lived in our own universe in that time. I hope that you find yourself in these images.”


DAESUNG LEE, MAGNUM PHOTOS GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER FOR SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO.

Photography MARCO IMPERATORE
Styling EMIL REBEK

Model Mamuor Majeng at Elite Model Management
Hair Stylist Pierpaolo Lai at Julian Watson Agency
Make Up Artist Elena Bettanello at Julian Watson Agency
Casting Director Simone Bart Rocchietti at Simobart Casting
Set Designer Maria Giulia Riva
Set 001 ert chair by studioutte
Photo Assistants Fabio Firenze, Andrea Re
Fashion Assistants Alessandro Ferrari, Flavio Crespi
Executive Producer Justin Gerbino
Retoucher Cristian Buonomo
Production PBJ

Photography FEDERICA SIMONI
Styling RICCARDO TERZO

Model Mohammed Saliu at Boom
Make Up Artist Simone Gammino at Julian Watson Agency
Set Designer Laura Tocchet
Photo Assistant Luca Soncini 
Fashion Assistants Vittoria Santarelli, Aurora Mandelli
Casting WeDoCasting
Post Production Ton sur Ton Retouching 
Production Tristan Godefroy 

Photography PAUL PHUNG
Styling KARLMOND TANG

Models Loulou Westlake and Evan Garcia at Chapter Management, Nonso Ojukwu at Elite Model Management, Jinfeng Liu at MiLK Management

Dancers Max Cookward, Oscar Li, Lesya Tyminska, Louisa Fernando
Hair Stylist Moe Mukai
Make Up Artist Chie Fujimoto
Set Designer Sam McDermott
Movement Director Max Cookward
Casting Director Marquee Miller
Photo Assistants Jan-Micheal Stasiuk, Vasily Agrenenko, Jon Riera-Egaña, Ry Francis
Fashion Assistants Megan Harrison, Vedrana Savic
Hair Assistants Nao Sato, Myuji Sato
Make Up Assistant Natsumi Yamamoto
Set Assistants William Green, Ella Fox

Designer Demna Gvasalia looks to the past and the future with equal measure for the re-birth of couture at the illustrious French maison of Balenciaga. 

By MAX BERLINGER
Photography MARK BORTHWICK


There is no type of fashion more personal, more individual, than couture. By its definition, it is a design made to a single body’s specifications, fitted on the individual to help highlight their unique dimensions. At its best, it’s an artform that underscores a person’s sense of self, to show the distinctive aspects of their physical identity, and perhaps something a bit deeper and more nuanced. To reveal who they are, and who they want to be. 

It had been 53 years since the luxury brand Balenciaga showed couture, until July of 2021, when the current creative director, Demna Gvasalia, revived the practice. It was the first time since the house’s founder, Cristobal Balenciaga, passed away, that Balenciaga couture made its way down the catwalk. “Over half a century later, I see it as my creative duty to the unique heritage of Mr. Balenciaga to bring couture back to this house,” Gvasalia explained. “It is the very foundation of this century-old maison.”

It was worth the wait. Gvasalia bridged the gap between the collections shown in 1968 and now. He took couture - a type of making clothes that is heavily influenced by the past - and brought it boldly into the present. At the same time, he charted a path for its future, forging a new sense of identity and understanding. As Gvasalia describes it, “a very personal vision of the essence of fashion.”

When Monsieur Balenciaga was designing for his house, ballgowns and opera coats were the traditional fare of the couture. He was known for his exacting eye and ability to create new, exciting, and surprising silhouettes from tulle and chiffon. It’s why Christian Dior once said of Balenciaga, “He is the master of us all.” It’s the reason why the brand continues to enchant and seduce us all these years later. 

Gvasalia has a similarly brilliant mind, and one attuned to the ways that fashion is quickly evolving, trying to keep up with the never-ending speed of the Internet. He has understood, for instance, that hoodies and sneakers are the most culturally relevant clothing for young people, and has built a large part of his work at Balenciaga around these pieces. More than that, though, he’s created a certain mood for the brand, one that’s based on new, exciting, and surprising silhouettes – the same thing Balenciaga built his reputation on – but this time it’s parkas with bold shoulders, soupy, flowing track pants, and casual sneakers of enormous size. Over that, he’s imparted a sly irony and a foreboding sense of angst. It perfectly reflects the strange, off-kilter times in which we find ourselves. “It completes my multi-layered vision for Balenciaga the brand which ranges all the way up from streetwear into conceptual fashion and wardrobe and ultimately into one-of-a-kind, made-to-measure couture pieces.”

His debut couture collection carried that thread on from stark, meticulous tailoring that reimagined suiting not as sleek and body skimming but hulking and imposing to the dresses that were shapely and voluminous, beaded and embellished, a call back to the days of Balenciaga’s work. Many of the designs were directly referencing pieces from the archive, Gvasalia said. 

“We cannot only look to the future,” he said. “We have to look into the past to see where we’re going.” He continued, “Clothes have a psychological impact on me. I realized they make me happy – and I realized that’s the purpose of fashion. It’s not about the frenzy and buzz – and the white noise, I call it, of the digital mayhem we’re living through. The essence of it is my passion and the tools. I realized that couture is the best way to manifest it. And this is what really turns me on.”

In other words, Gvasalia is making clothing that’s not about posting on social media for likes though plenty of people do that, but to help you align with your truer self – for you to build your identity from the outside in. For the couture collection, that meant everything from oversized suits to sportswear to enormous party dresses, but more than that, it meant pursuing beauty at its highest form. “Couture is above trends, fashion and industrial dressmaking,” he said. “It is a timeless and pure expression of craft and architecture of silhouette that gives a wearer the strongest notion of elegance and sophistication.”  

At its core, couture is an artform that is about craftsmanship and integrity, and Gvasalia was able to infuse those ideas into even the most common of garments. T-shirts, for example, were made from a padded silk and, Gvasalia said, required multiple fittings. There were even blue jeans, but with the denim made in Japan and lined in silk. “Couture is the highest level of garment construction, that is not only relevant in today’s mass productive industry, but even absolutely necessary for the survival and further evolution of modern fashion.”

Some collections are beautiful and wearable, but this did something more. It spoke to the way clothing reflects the zeitgeist, revealing something about who we are right now. It spoke to our post-pandemic era, where we are all looking for clothing that is hopeful, good for the planet, and expresses something about ourselves. 

Gvasalia laid-out his plans for the couture, simply and succinctly, “It’s a trench coat. It’s a tailored suit. I will even have a couture T-shirt. I need to extend it. For couture to be modern, it has to be a wardrobe. We cannot get locked into the ballroom.”

Well, Gvasalia has certainly freed us from the confines of the ballroom. His couture collection is one made for the streets, made for real life, for real people. But that doesn’t ignore the artistry and skill that’s demanded of the couture artform, a history that is passed down through the hands of artisans who create these garments that dare to dream about beauty and life in the most whimsical and wonderful ways. It helps tell our history in jackets and pants. 

“For me, it was the beginning of a new era. I’m not talking about Balenciaga, but about myself as a designer. It was a moment I have been looking forward to and been quite afraid of.”

And then he added, “I feel at peace.”





Gucci’s series of endless births over the last century embody and embrace an interdisciplinary understanding of gender and identity where everything connects to anything.

By MAX BERLINGER


At 100 years old, Gucci is not just surviving amid a time of unprecedented change, but thriving. The internet, social media, the aftermath of the pandemic, and widespread sociopolitical growing pains are just some of the sweeping events that have upended the fashion business over the past two years. And yet Gucci has chugged along, creating beauty and desire for generation after generation. As the brand reaches this important milestone, its powers to intoxicate consumers may well be at their peak.  

Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s exuberant creative director since 2015, has redefined the look of the Italian label, injecting it with a maximalist eccentricity. Today, the brand is known for its nerdy-chic, gender-fluid, and poetic look, full of romantic blouses, logo-strewn sportswear, and sexy, 1970s inspired tailoring. His collections have become sprawling sartorial universes, that offer goodies for any style archetype. Granny chic, sylphlike tailoring, flashy sportswear, restrained elegance – it’s all there for the picking. It’s not dogmatic, but mutable, in line with the way that Gen Z has embraced a fluid approach to fashion, gender, and life. Michele’s Gucci unapologetically embraces the notion that identity is not a static construct - it is dynamic and contextual. It says that there is a Gucci for every type of person in the world, that there is a place for everyone in its tribe.

As American journalist Frank Bruni succinctly puts it, “Michele’s Gucci is engaged in a consistently spirited and occasionally profound conversation with the zeitgeist, drawing from it, adding to it and revolutionizing fashion in the process. Young consumers plant their flags and sculpt their images on social media, so Gucci, under Michele, does too. They expand and even explode the old parameters around gender, sexual identity, race and nationality, and Michele takes that journey with them, even leads them on it, giving them a uniform for it, a visual vocabulary with which to express it. The emotional genius of what he has done is to affirm their searching.”

Gucci was originally founded in Florence as a luggage shop, by the enterprising Guccio Gucci. His store sold imported travel bags but, crucially, had its own workshop onsite that made custom luggage. Eventually that business became the core of the Gucci empire. Under Guccio’s son Aldo, the brand’s reach expanded, becoming an empire known across the world. A string of hit products – the Bamboo bag, its signature loafers, the “Jackie” bag and its Flora scarf – made Gucci a go-to for the fashion cognoscenti, and provided a design foundation that remains central to the brand. These items are reinterpreted again and again and remain part of the current roster of covetable products. The brand opened stores internationally and became part of the firmament of luxury brands.

During the 1980s, contentious family drama played out behind-the-scenes as the brand continued to flourish, but it was during the 1990s that the brand’s superstar status was cemented by the designer Tom Ford. Ford, a stealthy American, brought an unabashed, swaggering sensuality to the label. Later, the Italian designer Frida Giannini added a more feminine, romantic touch, and after she left, Michele, who worked under her, was promoted. He put an immediate maximalist stamp on the brand, blending Ford’s sensuality and Giannini’s romance, but adding an over-the-top, eccentric sense of Italian rococo. Today, the brand is for those who value individuality, and embrace fashion as a means of expressing their strangest, most outlandish desires.

“Going through the hour when everything originated is a great responsibility for me, and a joyful privilege,” Michele said in his typically florid style. “It means being able to open the locks of history and linger over the edge of the beginning. It means soaking in that natal source to relive the dawn and the coming into view.”

“The whole spirit of it was a complete revolution, a deep change.” Adrian Joffe, the president of Comme des Garçons and the store Dover Street Market, said of Michele’s revolution. “Alessandro tells a story.” 

Michele’s story is often inspired by Italian culture and history, like a Renaissance painting and dreamy poetry. But in his work you can see a sponge-like brain that pulls from everything – pop culture, theatre, film, music, events from the recent past or from eons ago. Michele is known in the fashion world as a sort of philosopher of clothing, someone who ruminates deeply on what we wear and what it all means. “In Italian, we can say that beauty is something that you create – that you create the illusion of your life,” he said. “It is to believe in something that doesn’t exist, like a magician, or a wizard. The purpose of fashion is to give an illusion. I think that everybody can create their masterpiece, if you build your life how you want it. Just to create that illusion of your life – this is beautiful.”

Under his watch, the brand has exploded – it’s seen in magazines, on red carpets, and, perhaps most importantly, on regular people wishing to communicate some secret part of themselves to the world. It has experienced its own Renaissance of sorts, one that perfectly dovetails with the brand's big anniversary. “I wouldn’t like to sentimentalize a biography though,” Michele said. “Gucci’s long history can’t be contained within a single inaugural act. As any other existence, its destiny is marked by a long series of endless births and constant regenerations. In this persistent movement, life challenges the mystery of death. In this hunger for birth, we have learnt how to dwell the time.” 

He added, “I felt like celebrating 100 years of Gucci, which is not only fashion, it’s the essence of fashion, it’s life and its great strength is being so popular. Gucci is a film, a song, a world, a character from a movie, a pop star.”

That’s not typical talk from a designer, but it does reveal a bit about why Michele’s work is so powerful, and so popular. Beyond the glitz and glamour, there’s a certain elegiac ache, a nostalgia, and a little bit of sadness. While most designers traffic in sex and glamour, there’s something so potent about garments that, together, conjure a wide spectrum of human emotions, as Michele does. Michele’s work isn’t two-dimensional, but represents the complexities and contradictions of life. Perhaps the most impressive feat that Michele executes is to stuff his collections with many references and inspirations, but never allow the looks to be weighed down under them. “In my work, I caress the roots of the past to create unexpected inflorescences, carving the matter through grafting and pruning,” he explains. “I appeal to such ability to reinhabit what has already been given. And to the blending, the transitions, the fractures, the concatenations. To escape the reactionary cages of purity, I pursue a poetics of the illegitimate.”

That takes a sharp mind, a light touch, and a bit of dazzling genius. These are things Michele has proven to be collection after collection. “An alchemical factory of contaminations where everything connects to anything,” as Michele describes it in his own words.

Even 100 years on, Michele still sees the brand as “an infant that is constantly reborn and recreated. It’s incredible how Gucci has gone through multiple lives and continues to be so popular.” Gucci’s “natural rebirth”, according to Michele, is “a sign that fashion is not finished and will never finish - independently of any fashion week. Fashion is a representation of life and can self manage.”

But as Michele reminds us, “The promise of a never-ending birth is only renewed through an evolving capacity.”

Imprinting multiple identities onto Louis Vuitton’s iconic creation pays tribute to its founder’s visionary soul.

By RADHINA COUTINHO


If one ever had to choose a fitting metaphor for the mind of a creative genius, a trunk could serve as a strong contender. A repository of your most personal items, indispensable necessities for a journey – whether physical, emotional or spiritual – selected to accompany you as you voyage through every new chapter in your life.

For Louis Vuitton it’s perhaps fitting that his most emblematic creation – the LV trunk– was chosen by the eponymous house he founded in 1854 as the vehicle to celebrate his visionary spirit during his bicentennial year.

The LV trunk was reimagined hundreds of times by its original creator – somehow managing to be both iconic yet undisputedly individual. Louis was called upon to create carrying cases to encase items that were true extensions of their owners’ selves – from famed conductor Pierre Sechiari’s precious Stradivarius to portable libraries designed for lengthy Transatlantic journeys, providing travelers with both intellectual sustenance and companionship on the long days on the waves. His beautiful creations served to both conceal and protect their owners’ most personal possessions, while simultaneously signaling to the world that they were precious enough to warrant the creation of a made-to-measure carry case.

Each owner imprinted his or her own identity on their trunk – and therein lay the seed of 200th year celebrations, marking the birth of the house’s visionary founder in 1821.

With Louis 200, the venerated French fashion house asked 200 creative minds to reimagine the form of an LV trunk in a manner that pays homage to Louis Vuitton’s synergetic spirit. The creative endeavor also salutes the many, truly revolutionary collaborations that have marked the tenure of a brand that today is synonymous with true luxury – collaborations with proven genius as well as exploratory endeavors with emerging talent.

“Imagine having a conversation with not just one visionary, but 200,” said Faye McLeod, Louis Vuitton’s visual image director. “There’s an exceptional energy that emanates from them – this constant flow of creativity. People will really sense the feeling of celebration,” he added.

The collaborative call out has been effusively embraced by individuals who have made their mark on a myriad of artistic avenues – everyone from Susan Miller, astrologer to Hollywood’s biggest stars, to yo-yo world champion Gentry Stein have attempted to distill their interpretation of originality into the form of the iconic LV trunk. The resulting 200 creations perhaps best reveal that magical quality of a traveler’s trunk – a relatively non-descript item that can hold within it all manner of unimaginable beauty, often only hinted at by its individual form.

This quality of simultaneously concealing and revealing is perhaps one of the reasons why Syrian-born Swedish conceptual artist Jwan Yosef was invited to lend his unique perspective to the project. It’s a subject that he revisits regularly in his work. Representation features strongly in his repertoire – one element standing in place of another – whether this be old family photographs or powerful cult images that contain the emotion of collective memory.

Speaking about his contribution “A Study for Touch” to the Louis 200 celebration of creativity, Yosef says it was all about “revealing what was not meant to be seen, almost undressing an object”. With the trunk itself he chose to play with the canvas, painting large portraits using sweeping bold brushstrokes, stretching them up and then unravelling them before draping them onto a trunk shape, in a way revealing the rawness of the object that is not meant to be seen. “It’s a play of choosing to cover, or to dress, and in this way I think it became undressed?” says Yosef.

This play of hidden, often mystical influences on the creative spirit is what revered astrologer Miller, too, chose to focus when creating her unusual LV trunk. The interior of her trunk features a to-scale representation of the solar system as it looked at the time Louis Vuitton was born on August 4th 1821, in the early hours of the morning.

According to Miller, Vuitton was destined for greatness from birth, with a brilliant chart that revealed enormous creativity, a quest for excellence in quality and detail, and the ability to encourage greatness in others. Her unusual interpretation of Vuitton’s well-aligned stars serves to underscore the mercurial mix of talent, luck, timing and foresight that tend to mark the life of any great maverick. Like the artistic drive itself, the opportunity for interpretation of the brief has proved truly limitless, stepping back into the trunk’s heritage as well as daring to imagine its bold future.

Take LA-based interiors and entertainment designer Willo Perron’s response. "I wanted to take the form of this object that was created 200 years ago and transform it into something contemporary and futuristic,” says Perron. “Will the trunk of the future walk itself to its destination? Will it open up and unpack and then re-pack itself? When it’s not being used, can it live as a beautiful object that sits in your home? How do you take such an iconic object and transform it for the future?"

Perron’s answer involved the creation of a solid aluminum box – a very simple, polished object from the outside that opens to reveal a dramatic robotic-like interior filled with mobile parts that almost “dance” together, in Perron’s own words – a nod to his background in the performance arts, visually almost resembling the rigging of a concert stage.

If Perron’s creation imagines the future of the trunk, others such as Lebanese composer Zad Moultaka, delved deep into their own pasts for inspiration. His “wonder trunk” recalls the innocent magic of a simple fairground staple.

“Fifty years ago, in my grandmother’s village, I see myself running again with other children, 25 piastres in my hand behind an old man dragging a ‘wonder box’ on a roulette wheel. 25 piastres for a ticket gave us the right to look through the two holes inside the trunk, for a few minutes. All kinds of images scrolled slowly and carried us to a magical journey that emerged in front of our amazed eyes. What is more challenging and poetic than to recall this memory to celebrate the two hundred years of Louis Vuitton?” says Moultaka.

Moultaka went back to Vuitton’s portrait to complete the concept. “Using Vuitton’s eyes as the main element to imagine the outside of the trunk was obvious,” he continues. “The motif of Vuitton’s eyes is duplicated and repeated in a particular rhythm to create a feeling of dreamlike dizziness and hallucination.”

Moultaka’s trunk features two holes – representing the pupils, meant to “sharpen our curiosity as ‘voyeurs’ and induce us to look and discover what is happening inside the trunk. Poetic landscapes scroll slowly in front of our eyes, they are made from fabrics, clothing and other traveler’s belongings filmed in close‐ups, becoming sea, dunes and mysterious mountains. When the trunk opens a little melody is played like a music box conducting the magic of this intimate journey,” concludes Moultaka.

This amalgamation of past, present and future – intertwining dreams and hopes with a philanthropic spirit for a better tomorrow – is the common thread that runs through the 200-year celebration; not just finding its voice in the charitable element that lies at the heart of the project that will enable young individuals from across the globe to discover the arts, but also in the reimagination of the trunks themselves.

French sculptural artist Amande Haeghen’s LV trunk personifies this idea of time, layering, imprinting. Haeghen built up layers – each bearing the imprint of the previous one – by mixing materials such as earth, glass, metal, plaster, and pieces of wood. The structure so created is reminiscent of that of a trunk, “crystallizing this notion of time and imprint of the past but also on the future,” she says.

"200 years remind us that against time, no one can do anything. The realization of this passing time, sedimentation, a process in which particles of any matter gradually stop moving and come together in layers. These layers that are created, year after year, to form a universal memory, that of the earth and our imprint. So many thicknesses, like the pages of a book telling us the story, our story. It is in this spirit of accumulating experiences and exchanges that I deeply believe in exploring this idea of sedimentation of memory and mimesis,” says Haeghen.

The idea of imprinting of identities is something that has run through Louis Vuitton’s illustrious heritage – finding its voice in the many avant-garde and unexpected collaborations that have punctuated the house’s history through the ages, and marking its ability to reinvent and transmute itself to appeal to an ever-wider audience – one that stretches across borders, stylistic persuasions and senses of selves.

From Marc Jacobs and Sprouse’s landmark reinvention of the sacrosanct LV logo, imprinting Sprouse’s own trademark acid pink graffiti scrawl on its iconic form, to the many iterations of the LV trunk that have embodied their creators’ artistic drives, this synergistic exercise has once again underscored how the notion of creativity and identity can be unpacked in many different ways.

Somehow it feels like Louis would have approved.

Photography JAVIER CASTÁN
Styling GABRIELLA NORBERG
Fashion LOUIS VUITTON

Model Momo Ndiaye at The Claw Models
Dancers Alpha Bcz, Aaron Comino, Ignacio Gimenez, Manuel Monró
Hair and Make Up Artist Paca Navarro at Kasteel Management
Casting Director David Chen
Movement Director Ester Guntín
Set Designers Indra Zabala, Adrià Escribano
Photo Assistant Pablo Rincón
Fashion Assistant Sara Biriukov
Set Assistant Joan Bustos

French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus tells a timeless story of pastoral beauty and simple pleasures, one image at a time.

By JON ROTH
Photography SIMON PORTE JACQUEMUS


The first time you came in contact with Jacquemus, it almost certainly happened on Instagram. Maybe you scrolled past a sun-struck country field, or a bowl of citrus, or a handsome, smiling man looking directly at the camera. Maybe you even saw a garment or accessory from the French fashion house – a very tiny bag, for example, or a wildly oversized hat. You may not have made the connection between the field of wheat or the bowl of lemons and the growing brand behind it, but the image likely spoke to you all the same, conjuring happy memories of warm places, and so in that first encounter, Simon Porte Jacquemus had already achieved his goal: to make you smile.

There is a formula of sorts to Instagram success, and it’s easy enough to learn: bright pops of color, beautiful people and beautiful places, a hint (but just a hint) of sex, simple, straightforward images, and just enough humor so everyone knows you’re not taking this too seriously. Simple enough for an individual to recreate, and yet few fashion brands can pull it off without seeming stiff, or corporate, or try-hard. Jacquemus, still a relatively young brand, only makes it seem effortless thanks to the steady vision of 31-year-old founder Simon Porte Jacquemus, a man with a singular talent for image-making.

We are all image-makers, even if we don’t paint or design. Everyone is caught up in the daily creation of their own image – the persona that they present to the world. A person’s identity and their image aren’t quite identical, but they are closely bound. The first is the essence of the self, the second is the part of themselves they choose to share – and increasingly, what we share of ourselves, we share on social media. Whether it is true or not, Jacquemus the man suggests his image and his identity are the same. He seems to have no filters, or pretenses, or affectations. He unapologetically savors simple pleasures. And this approach has made him a fashion favorite.

To follow Jacquemus’ story in new clippings over the years is to see his follower count climb exponentially. At press time, he has 3.8 million followers on Instagram. Reporters rarely fail to mention those numbers, because so much of the brand’s appeal comes through on the account. Sure, detractors could claim that Jacquemus is only image, without the substance to back it up, but then fashion is all about selling us on an image. And Jacquemus sells extremely well – the designer estimated his business at around 25 million euros in 2019.

What is it about the Jacquemus image, specifically, that resonates so strongly? It’s that warm, sunny feeling. The artlessness, mixed with sexiness, mixed with a certain viral je ne sais quoi the designer seems born with, but has likely honed over years as an Internet native. Above all, the Jacquemus vision is joyful. It doesn’t ask much of its audience, except that they take pleasure in what they are seeing - and hopefully, eventually, wearing - and that alone is at odds with the fashion world at large, where the current trends toward the dark, the edgy, the intellectually difficult. Where many other brands seem to offer a puzzle, Jacquemus presents a dream you can take part in.

The history of Jacquemus is that of one happy success after another, all instigated by a tragedy. Born in Salon-de-Provence and raised in Mallemort, Simon Porte Jacquemus came to Paris at 18 and began studying fashion design at Paris’ ESMOD. Three months later, his mother Valérie was killed in a car accident, and the designer’s life was changed forever. Stricken by the loss, but also driven by a desire to realize his dreams and make his late mother proud, the teenager added Valérie’s maiden name, Jacquemus, to his own surname, dropped out of fashion school, and laid plans to launch his own brand.

The story of the first Jacquemus garment has something of a storybook quality. First, the young designer spies a seamstress in the window of a curtain shop. Then he approaches her, “I asked her how much would it cost to make a skirt,” he has said. “She told me 150. I asked her, please could she make it for 100. The next day I came back with the fabric and the drawing of the skirt. This was how I started my first collection.” It’s all there in this origin story: the spontaneity, the scrappiness, the optimism, that still sustain the brand today. It’s fitting, too, that the first Jacquemus piece should be a skirt. The young designer has often related the first garment he ever made: a skirt made from curtains, created when he was seven years old as a gift to his mother. “She brought me to school wearing it,” he said, still remembering how proud he felt in that moment.

As Jacquemus’ designs took shape, he helped fund their production through a job at Comme des Garçons, along the way securing the support of Adrian Joffe, founder of Dover Street Market and husband to Rei Kawakubo. Born with a marketer’s mind for self-promotion, Jacquemus has had an innate talent for generating buzz from the beginning: dressing his friends in Jacquemus designs during Paris’ Fashion’s Night Out, and staging a happening outside a Dior show in 2010. He’s shown a knack for cultivating community, too – bringing in creatives like Fabien Joubert, his former roommate and now his brand director, Jeanne Damas, a model, influencer and muse, and Gordon von Steiner, a former boyfriend who’s created several of his fashion films. This team, alongside Jacquemus’ addictive Instagram, worked together to create the story and images that helped catapult awareness of the brand. “At the beginning, when I had no money to make clothes that were really precise, the storytelling was stronger than the clothing,” the designer has said.

That storytelling was enough to secure Jacquemus a coveted slot on the Paris Fashion Week schedule in 2012 – making him one of the youngest designers ever to do so. Fresh off an ANDAM fashion award nomination, his first collection offered simple, pared-back and sometimes flesh-baring mesh dresses and skirt suits in white, black and orange. For his fall-winter follow up, La Piscine, the designer dressed his own friends in designs that already show a refining sensibility, leaning into French tropes like red, white and blue colorways, plenty of Breton-inspired stripes, and playful trompe l’oeil overlays of bathing suit shapes on ready-to-wear. Reviewers said the collections had a “naive appeal,” which is exactly as Jacquemus likes it. “I am obsessed with the way children see life,” he has said. “My collections are never conceptual; they’re about a little boy wanting to dress up.”

His approach resonated almost instantly with the fashion community, making the designer a finalist for the LVMH Prize in 2014, and in 2015 a winner of LVMH’s Special Jury Prize, which secured him a substantial €150,000 to grow his business, along with a year of mentorship from LVMH. His adviser Sophie Brocart, who’s long had an eye for up-and-coming talent, suggested Jacquemus lean into his gifts as an image-maker and devote his talents toward becoming the face and CEO of the brand, while investing in a team with the technical skill to execute his vision in the best way possible.

The awards paved the way, but if there is a single moment Jacquemus truly “arrived” on the fashion scene, it was in 2018 with his “La Bomba” collection. Always inspired by his late mother, Jacquemus took particular inspiration from her in this outing, and the collection was peppered with accessories that would soon appear on style-conscious tastemakers around the globe. Specifically: the La Bomba, a straw hat with an almost comically wide brim, and Le Chiquito, a leather bag so tiny it could barely fit a cell phone. In playing with dramatic extremes of scale, Jacquemus had devised two must-have pieces with viral staying power. “People were like, ‘Simon, it’s never going to sell; you can just put some cards and keys in it,’” Jacquemus has said of the ultra-petite bag. “I was like, ‘Mmm, I’m sure it’s going to sell. It’s too cute and too viral not to.’” He has since released an even tinier module, the Mini Le Chiquito, which is more jewelry than bag.

As his designs drive sales, the worlds Jacquemus builds around his collections make headlines. He has lured fashion editors out of Paris and into the bucolic lavender and wheat fields of the South of France for shows that combine a country outing, a fashion show, and an art installation. In 2018, inspired by a new romance, he expanded in menswear design. He has opened two restaurants with Caviar Kaspia, Citron and Oursin, and a pop-up flower shop, too. His short films capture the playful energy of the brands in impactful, minute-long bursts, and he’s released three books to date, all testaments to his talent as a curator. The first featured photography by Bertrand Le Pluard, while the second was produced in collaboration with a group of photographers including Pierre-Ange Carlotti, David Luraschi, Agathe Zaerpour and Philippine Chaumont.

His latest book, “Images”, is his most personal – a collection of 321 photos culled down from the roughly 85,000 on the designer’s iPhone. In it you can sometimes see the evolution of Jacquemus the fashion brand, but the book conveys most clearly the mood behind Jacquemus – that effortless, sun-soaked, laughing attitude. “There is not so much fashion in the book,” the designer said. “It’s about the lifestyle, the vision, the everyday poetry of life.”

This has always been the singular goal for Simon Porte Jacquemus: to realize his distinct vision, steeped in nostalgia for a joyous, country childhood, free from the dour intellectualism that characterizes so much of capital-F Fashion. Much of the appeal of his work comes from the honesty of his images: there isn’t much to interpret about a seaside scene, or an embracing couple. What you see is what you get – it’s true of the brand, and key to the identity of the man himself.

Jacquemus approaches life openly, without guile. This attitude has brought him strong reviews, healthy sales, an ever-growing social media following, and most recently a CFDA nomination for International Women's Designer of the Year, but you get the sense that he’s happiest of all because so many people - millions and counting - respond so joyfully to what he creates, even if that just means liking a photo on Instagram. “I think fashion is primarily about image, how to tell a story,” the designer has said. “To create a brand, to create a lifestyle, a story, you have to be obsessed by image.”

Liverpudlian designer Steven Stokey-Daley deconstructs the English public school fantasy, and builds new communities along the way.

By JON ROTH
Photography WILLIAM WATERWORTH


There once was a boy who felt like an outsider. After some searching, he thought he’d found his place in the theater, but then changed his mind. He pursued fashion instead. As he studied, he became enamored of an entirely different culture, one worlds removed from his Liverpool upbringing. He looked to the touchstones of the English elite: their public schools, their universities, their strange rituals and costumes, and the books and films that enshrined them.

He was fascinated, though not quite admiring, of this other world, and he decided to reinvent it for his graduate fashion collection. He paid homage to the old costumes, but he picked them apart, too, making them feel fresh, subversive, exciting.

As soon as he presented his collection, the world shut itself up, fending off sickness. Back home, the boy – now a man – worked furiously. People had seen his clothes, and they wanted more, more, more. By the time things opened back up, and he could present his collections as intended, the fashion world took note, stood up, applauded, and invited the outsider in.

That is the fairy tale version of the Steven Stokey-Daley story. There is something about the 24-year-old British designer’s journey that evokes that mode: maybe it is his sudden, skyrocketing ascent from student designer to toast of London’s fashion crowd, or maybe it is the sense of romance and nostalgia he imbues in his own collections. But there is more to tell here than fits in a fable. Let’s start back at the beginning, as Stokey-Daley tells it.

As a boy, the designer grew up on ex-council housing outside the city of Liverpool. He describes himself as proudly working class, but admits he didn’t really resonate with the environment around him – specifically, the clothes. “The uniforms and the clothes of the people around me when I was growing up had cognitions of toxic masculinity and heteronormativity that we were all taught at school,” he says. “I never felt as if I belonged to any of that. I missed the lack of male glamour in the day-to-day uniforms of the people around me. It would be head-to-toe single-color sportswear and it would always be a black tracksuit and it never rang any bells for me.”

If there was a sartorial and cultural disconnect around him, Stokey-Daley found an escape, and an opportunity for creativity and play, in the theater. At 16 he became a member of Great Britain’s National Youth Theatre, an arts program that provides young people ages 14-25 with opportunities both onstage and backstage. Of the experience, Stokey-Daley has said, “It was the first time I met like-minded people, my lifeline to culture that opened up the possibilities of what I could do.”

But theater would be a springboard, not an end point for Stokey-Daley. Two days before he was set to leave home for a graduate degree in English literature and theater, he changed his mind, applied instead for an art foundation, and found himself involved in design. This last-minute change of heart would eventually bring him to University of Westminster’s fashion program, where the designer began to focus on menswear. Immersing himself in this new world, Stokey-Daley uncovered an abiding interest in the English public school system, looking both outward – to the boys at Harrow School, processing to class in their straw boaters and blazers – as well as deep within the archives of the university. At one point, the designer has said, "I came across images of a regatta, and I had never seen anything like it before.” After growing up in the relatively rough-and-ready North, Stokey-Daley was fascinated by this alternate universe of pomp and circumstance, flowery dress, and strange customs. “There is something inherently feminine about that hyper-masculine culture,” he said.

From these twin views of the same, alien world – the present-day school boys and the antique photograph – the designer delved deep into an extremely rich vein. Through both archival sources and fictional accounts, there’s no shortage of references for a young designer looking to unpack the subtleties and strangeness of elite, English academe. It’s a world steeped in money and power, masculine aggression, subjugation, strict class divisions, and the bizarre customs that tend to spring up in such rigidly artificial environments. Stokey-Daley often makes references to novels and films like “Brideshead Revisited”, “Maurice”, and “Another Country”, the work of famed photographer and all-around aesthete Cecil Beaton, and the British Royal Family – often as seen through the lens of Netflix’s “The Crown” – to name a few.

This canon of references has some influence over much of the English-speaking world – a vestige of Great Britain’s past imperial power. But what about it appeals so much to Stokey-Daley, an Englishman himself? “It’s super interesting to look at it from the outside. That’s why there’s so much obsession internationally with British traditionalism,” he says. “For me, I felt a little bit like an outsider when I looked into it also, because I never had access to any of that when I grew up. It wasn’t something that we came by where I’m from. I almost felt like I had to have that outsider obsession that the world seems to have with Britishness. I’m not too sure what makes me so obsessed to be honest. I think it’s a world of complete frivolity and femininity that generally is an end product of hyper masculine and heteronormative.”

The designer’s Liverpudlian, working-class remove keeps him so fascinated by this other world – one that exists on the same island, but feels light-years away. No one could deconstruct these upper-class conventions in quite the way Stokey-Daley has, because his own sense of self is both at odds with, and adjacent to, his subject.

There is also an aspect of social commentary to his work, as Stokey-Daley is quick to point out. “I’m unpicking the lines that guard the barriers between classes and an observation of these two aesthetically different worlds,” he says. “It’s all about access to higher education and culture and the disparity between the classes and the access.”

All heady and important stuff, but how does it come to life in an S.S. Daley collection? Picture an antique photo album from Eton or Harrow, as seen through the looking glass, or a snapshot of those same students in fancy dress, staging an impromptu tableau. All the fundamentals of the public school wardrobe are there – the wide, pleated pants, the bedecked boater hats, the union suits and knits and dressing gowns – but they take on an exaggerated, romantic quality under Stokey-Daley’s artful hand. The pants, for instance, have ballooned to a volume that feels avant-garde, not old-school. Shirtsleeves flounce out in extravagant bell shapes, and hats are festooned so elaborately they take on a Bacchic abundance. Everywhere there are snippets of tapestry, ribbons, and embroidered tablecloths given new life. These are not carbon copies of old clothes, but fantasies on that theme. S.S. Daley pieces shake up these seemingly stolid garments of another era, presenting us with daring new interpretations.

We look to the next generation to interrogate the status quo, and Stokey-Daley doesn’t stop asking questions once he’s completed a collection. He holds strong opinions on the pace of the current fashion cycle, which he thinks ought to break away from a seasonal calendar, and on sustainability, too – a topic heavy-hitting corporations tackle with uneven results, but a smaller house like Stokey-Daley’s can work into its philosophy more naturally. “I think we see a lot more people and bigger companies using sustainability as a ‘green washing’ sort of thing, which is why I’m careful when I speak about sustainability,” the designer says. “I make a very conscious effort to do my best.” While he caveats that fashion can’t ever be 100% sustainable, he doesn’t use any synthetic fibers and ensures upwards of a third of his collections are made up of upcycled, one-of-a-kind pieces. Sourcing these reusable materials is one of the designer’s favorite activities: hitting up Portobello Road and other markets across the country, north and south, finding fabrics that were once drapes in a manor house, or slip-covers for cruise ship chairs. “We then have the whole process of making the most of the material and cutting them into garments, and finishing them in a way that is respectful to how the original piece was made,” he says.

S.S. Daley pieces have been in demand almost since his graduation from his university – thanks to his creative-but-wearable designs, some crucial endorsements from bold-faced names, and possibly our pandemic penchant for romantic statement pieces even if we’re just wearing them from home. In 2021, MatchesFashion brought S. S. Daley into their Innovators program, which offers mentorship and content support to up-and-coming designers, in addition to stocking their pieces on the site. The program also provided an opportunity for Stokey-Daley to sit down for a conversation with one of his fashion heroes, Thom Browne – a designer who has cornered Americana in much the same way Stokey-Daley is owning and upending a certain sartorial Britishness.

All this success has meant Stokey-Daley has had to ramp up his production in an incredibly short amount of time. He’s gone from sewing at university and in his childhood home to enlisting a small team to help produce his garments, most of them within his hometown, many of them friends of his grandmother, who used to work in a clothing factory but now helps out in a more managerial capacity. “We’re sort of forming a small localized production setup that brings them back to do what they love to do,” the designer has said of his team. He’s taken pains to encourage local industry when it comes to fabrication, too, citing custom-woven silk he sources from a family that’s been based in the United Kingdom since 1805. “It’s about sustaining traditional heritage modes of the industry,” he says.

As he continues to build out the S.S. Daley universe, Steven Stokey-Daley seems excited about the idea of community in its many forms. He is creating an immersive world for his customers, of course, but he is finding new connections all along the way: bridging theater and fashion with his runway presentations, and enlisting aid from hometown experts as demand for his garments grows. The designer may draw inspiration from his outsider’s view of the tightly guarded, exclusive world of the English upper class, but he’s proving again and again that sometimes the most fruitful work happens when we shake off old partitions and work together to build our vision instead.

Photography ALLAN HAMITOUCHE
Styling GIOVANNI BEDA

Models Mats Engel, Thomas Todd at New Madison, Isaac Taylor at Success Models, Yvonne Bevanda at Women Management, Adel Bouteldja at Rock Men, Alejandro Albaladejo, Jullian Culas, Timothe Jan, Elhadji Mar at M Management
Grooming Shaila Moran
Fashion Assistant Mattia Bruscella
Casting Director Remi Felipe
Producer Reda Madjid

With the paisley design its trademark and color and prints in general its playground, ETRO is narrating a tale of love and beauty as told by Kean, son of the founder of the Italian fashion brand that bears his family's name.

By HASSAN AL-SALEH

The paisley, an organic and ornamental teardrop-shaped textile motif of Persian origin symbolizing fertility. A popular design in fashion for centuries with depth and complexity that has become shorthand for sophisticated, arty bohemianism. While it has been used decoratively for centuries, it is firmly ingrained in ETRO’s persona, a brand established in 1968 by Gerolamo “Gimmo” Etro, an Italian textile expert, avid traveller and father of four who looked to other cultures for print inspiration.

It has become an ironclad signature which is central to ETRO’s past, present and future. Now, the unofficial crest of the Etro family and brand. A legacy that is today being preserved by Gimmo’s children; Veronica who oversees the women’s collections Kean the menswear collections, and Jacopo the home collections. Together, they are reinforcing and protecting a singular vision first started by their father not only by re-interpreting and pushing the boundaries of the paisley but by sharing their love for Italian culture as an expression of local crafts and dialectal craftsmanship.

Fascinated by folklore, anthropology and ethnology, Kean considers himself more of a storyteller than a designer both in identity and spirit. At ETRO, he narrates a story of love and beauty; faithful by following his heart and surrounding himself, and us, with beauty.

ETRO is not a stereotypical Italian brand. Where does your passion for color, distinctive design and eclecticism stem from?
Passion for color, distinctive design, craftsmanship, and eclecticism are elements that are part of ETRO’s DNA since its foundation in 1968. 

My father, Gimmo Etro, had a strong passion for travel, art, and culture. He frequently flew overseas exploring faraway lands to discover and collect exotic treasures. On one of these journeys, an early 19th century Kashmir collection of Paisley shawls sparked his lifetime love for the design that has come to identify ETRO’s iconic and timeless aesthetic spanning 50 years of history.

But you are also profoundly and proudly Italian. How do you merge the two stark aesthetics and sensibilities to create your own?
I have always considered myself a supporter of “Made in Italy”, and particularly, I cherish all that is made with love and wisdom. When the exotic aesthetics merge with Italian craftsmanship the result is a world of color, liveliness and prints, connected to travel, to the encounter with nature, and the desire for freedom. Designs meet the contemporary, and craftsmanship allies with innovation.

How would you describe ETRO’s identity and how has it evolved under your creative stewardship?
I joined the company very young and at the beginning, everything was quite experimental. I always looked to create something more poetic, for me, it is never just about the clothing. I want to tell stories, to capture emotions, to deliver sensations. 

ETRO has very strong values and a defined identity that has evolved through time. Paisley, that has always been a symbol of ETRO, is the perfect example: each season is presented in a different way, experimenting with new techniques, combining it with unexpected patterns and prints, and playing with its shapes. 

What aspects of your own identity are you infusing into the brand?
It is an overall mixture. I bring together emotions, sensations, and ideas based on what I feel in the moment. I don’t like setting limits for myself…creativity has no limits. We, as human beings, continue to evolve, and so does our identity. It is a never-ending process of continuous discovery, and we might end up surprised by the person we turn out to be. This is what I try to infuse into the brand, a sense of continuity yet of unceasing disclosure. Of course, it is a journey of experimenting and exploring, where passion and creativity are the most important companions.

Do you believe that identity alone can ensure relevancy in a rapidly changing culture and market? What does it take?
In a rapidly-changing world, identity is key. We need to remain true to ourselves in order to transmit our values and beliefs in the most authentic way possible. We need to remain faithful to our past self to excel the future. But we never know what future holds for us, and so it is also vital being able to adapt to the new trends and needs of our society. For this reason, I believe that versatility and innovation are also essential to ensure relevancy. At ETRO, our mission is to deliver new unique pieces in order to satisfy the desires of new generations while at the same time reaming faithful to our values and heritage.

You pay particular attention to tradition and ancestry. How do you weave together these influences to create a modern vernacular?
Tradition and modernity can coexist, or better they need to do so, otherwise, we lose legitimacy. Since I joined the company, it has always been a priority for me to preserve and cultivate the beliefs and stylistic codes, outlined by my father and passed upon me and my brothers. Our ultimate goal is to improve and create timeless and quality pieces, focusing on innovation while remaining faithful to our heritage and searching for new sustainable techniques and materials.

Color has its own language. What does color mean to your personally? How are you using color to narrate your own story at ETRO? 
Color is a positive vibe; it is what makes our brand different from the others because we work on emphasizing it and stressing its importance. 

I would like to define color as a vibration of light, something that can change based on the perspective used. My idea is to enhance the way in which the customer can express himself wearing our products. I like creating garments with different nuances that never come as granted to our eyes.

I believe wearing color is self-empowering and it is a duty of mine to make our clients feel comfortable, confident and bold, just like the shades of colors we choose. 

Sustainability has long been the center of your practice. How is ETRO championing sustainability in fashion and what more does the industry need to do to close the gap?
At ETRO, sustainability is an issue close to our hearts. We are working hard on this aspect. We deeply understand the importance of being green and respectful towards the planet. There is still a lot to do and to work on. Somethings have been done already but sustainability practices should become a commitment of the entire fashion system to make it a value proposition of the brand. More work should be focused both on the use of recycled fabrics and in giving new life to deadstock through the upcycling process.

Working with family has its own set of advantages and challenges. Talk to us about some of them. How do you separate family relations from professional business relations?
We don’t. We have always been very close as a family and as a company, of course, this has helped us to cope with multiple situations. 

Nobody pushed us to join the company, this wish came from ourselves. We all understood the importance of continuing to grow what our father created and improve it as much as possible. During the pandemic, this kind of relationship grew even stronger, and so did our creativity. Perhaps our secret lies in the nuances of our personalities that come together like a puzzle to create something unexpected.

How do you keep your father’s legacy alive today while building your own?
I keep studying what he did, it is my starting point, and then I add my own vision of the world. I believe the heritage must be preserved, it represents our roots, but at the same time, we have to renovate, adapt to the time and understand that everything around us is constantly moving and that we need to go with the flow. When I start thinking about a new collection, I do bear in mind the fabrics of our archive and then I merge them with my ideas, my “craziness” and my impulsiveness. This sector needs audacity and bravery.

What do you hope to instill in future generations at ETRO?
ETRO has always relied on craftsmanship and “Made in Italy”. My goal is to pass the importance of these aspects to the younger generation, not only to enhance our brand but also for our country, a fulcrum of culture and artisanry that must be maintained and preserved. I aim to continue the values and beliefs of my family, celebrating the work started by my parents, and pass on the techniques and knowledge to the new generation. What I learned from my family is precious.

Photography PABLO SÁEZ
Styling GABRIELLA NORBERG
Hair EDUARDO BRAVO

Models Nima Machado, Simon Zugetta at The Claw Models, Guiaume, Warren at Tomorrow Is Another Day, Loris Mascarel, Isaac Taylor, Melvin Termini, Robin Termini at Success Models, Adam Von Beetzen, Yechan Yoo at Select Model Management
Make Up Artist Valentine Perrin Morali at Artists Unit
Photo Assistant Valentino Berbieri
Fashion Assistant Tala Haddad
Hair Assistant Anastasiia Gryniuka
Production Lighthouse Production
Post Production Arena

Taher Asad-Bahktiari creates an avant-garde reinterpretation of ancient weaving techniques to forge a contemporary identity.

By CHRISTINA MAKRIS


Taher Asad-Bahktiari is a textile artist for whom various identities, disciplines and forms are not just there to be ignored, but instead, woven into an artistic practice that gives him a dexterity to reach a wide range of admirers and collectors. As he prepares for the next phase of his oeuvre, post-pandemic, the artist pauses to reflect on his identity as an artist, how he welcomes serendipity as part of his methodology, how he finds beauty in unexpected places like construction sites, how he upholds a sustainable artistic practice, and shares his thoughts on how we should all slowdown in order to live more artfully.

He is a rising star whose tapestries and other works, such as his crude oil barrels from his “Barrels, Reclaimed series”, grace the lounges of A-Lister homes, and his innovative approach to weaving, has the international art and design set waiting to see just what he will apply his eye and hand to next.

The Iranian-born artist, who spends his time between Tehran, Dubai and New York, hails from a creative family and has ancestral links to the Bakhtiari tribe, who are traditional master weavers. He recently exhibited his Tribal Weave Project at New York Met Breurer, where he worked with nomadic Iranian women on his signature high-pile geometric and abstract shaped gabbeh carpets and kilims, using metallic thread, lace, and shimmering polythurane weaves to update the heritage.

There is an increasing blurring of boundaries of art, design, and craft. Audiences now collect a wide range of coveted objects of beauty; ranging from fashion to fine art to design. In this pursuit of self-expression and identity, Taher’s tapestries and sculptures help discerning collectors explore how expressions of identity can work when they blend time-worn tradition with contemporary living.

Identity is not just about where you live or how many passports you have, it is an attitude, a philosophy. Artists are often perceived as having a specific identity to everybody else. What is your identity as an artist?
I actually think of everybody as being an artist. Every person does something or makes a craft in the context of their own lives. Through this, they convey a message in why they choose to do what to do, how they present themselves in life to others, and we all respond to this. I see myself as an artist because I see everybody else as an artist. I see a surgeon as an artist. I see a dentist as an artist. Of course, in different professions and fields, they call themselves different things. At the end of the day, I think everyone is an artist and how you live your life is your own personal art form.

Everybody is an artist because we make certain choices over others in the pursuit of a good life, a healthy life, a happy life, usually involving beauty. Whether you are a professional, or a mother in a house who raises her family, or whether you are an artisan in a workshop – is everybody an artist because everybody goes through life constantly making choices to do one thing over another?
It is about how you execute the choices you make, and I think each person has an art of life. The love you give to everything that you do, everything that you have, all your belongings, everything that you consume and you use, when you do this with love and do it consciously and authentically, that becomes your lived art. Obviously, some people live it better, some people have a better know-how of how to live artfully and how to maneuver in life to be artful, and to create the beauty they want to create. That is what makes the difference between good dentists and bad dentists because good dentists craft their work in such a beautiful way that they effectively make a sculpture on your teeth. The artful person pays attention to detail and to the methods they use in what they do. That’s what makes you a good professional. It comes down to how finely you do what you do.

In your own artful life, you make certain choices to work with certain traditions, such as the tribal heritage brought into a contemporary context. What would you wish for your audience to understand about this mix?
I want to find an international language. In my art, I do not want to simply use reductive, traditional ethnic motifs, because coming from the Middle East, people may assume my work should be Middle Eastern and ornamental on a surface level. When I am working with Middle Eastern craftmanship, the de facto to my whole way of making is to bring contemporary relevance to it. This new contemporary identity means people can experience my work devoid of a specific label or tradition. A lot of people tell me they do not necessarily know or think the work is from Iran – they think the pieces could be made by an African artist, or anybody from any culture that uses geometric shapes and triangles. For me, it is very important to isolate the work as an object of beauty in itself, with no context. I try to do this by exploring form through use of color. My shapes and my textures do not really change much but my colors do through the serendipity of weaving methods. When I weave, sometimes I will use a loose weave, sometimes a tighter weave and the colors change through this process. It is fascinating to me to play with the methodology and achieve a different effect every time. The method of making can be more interesting than the end-product. I work with the weave and bring different textures into the weave and let it take me on a journey, instead of planning the work as just being a decorative object of design. There is an element of chance. There have been so many masters and so many beautiful carpets of designs and weaves, but no one has really placed lace in a carpet or shown the skeleton of the carpet, how it’s done, how it’s woven. By showing this, I bring contemporary relevance to weaving.

Creating pieces that enrich the environment of your collectors even suggests portals to a different realm because of the traditional methods they are made by, as in some other cultural traditions, like, mingei in Japan, where a simple folk object like a teapot can perform an important part of the ritual of how you live your everyday life. Do you think your works are shorthand for these traditions, influences and rituals and can take collectors to a different time and place?
When you visit museums of design and craft, you can see that craftsmanship and artistic technique was practiced on simple, everyday objects. Plates, pottery, beds, furniture – this was the canvas for that artist. Arts and craft permeated every element of daily existence, in every object. Historically, home interiors were so intricately and carefully crafted, and artists used that craftmanship and that personalized taste and beauty into their entire lifestyle.

The pandemic has been a good opportunity for people to take stock of what they live with and the objects they surround themselves with. Our choices in what we collect have stuck with us through the good days and the bad days of lockdowns and so much uncertainty. Have you seen an uptake in demand or commissions or requests as a result of people staying in one place for so long?
There is a major shift happening. For years fashion was the most important factor of people’s self-expression. It was the way we expressed ourselves to other people and would reinforce our identity. Now, expressions of identity are moving inwards to interior design. And as you can see, for example, everybody talks as much about Kanye West’s style of house or wants to take inspiration from Kim Kardashian’s house as much as her fashion looks. Because your house and interiors are now part of your personal brand. Look at Rick Owens. He started from a fashion label and now the brand has all these interior objects that are just so gorgeous. And it is total 360 immersion: you can wear his clothes, you can own his furniture, and you can have the entire lifestyle.

This means interiors must be as good as fashion for the connoisseur. People now not only care about what they wear but what they want to surround themselves with in their home. There is a new-found respect and attention to your home.

This phenomenon pursuing a total aesthetic life, also suggests the maturation of the consumer. Consumers are becoming more discerning, and they are living what they shop. Just like an art collection is always in a self-portrait of the collector, interior design is also a reflection of the collector. Why do you think it is important to surround our homes with well-made pieces of design?
For everybody, taste eventually evolves. Even with your interiors, even with your clothes. We evolve as people, so taste will, too. Surrounding yourself with timeless pieces is the first step to building your interior’s identity. I believe keeping your aesthetic minimal is the foundation, and then you add pieces that not only speak to you, but are very well crafted. Unless you are the type of collector who say only collects 1960s furniture and you want to collect it for scholarly or historical reasons. Otherwise, you should choose an object to collect wisely, like it will be there for the long run and duration of your life, not a fad.

Design is for life, and that is an important message in our contemporary times where sustainability is now a permanent consideration. What do you do to uphold a sustainable practice?
What I make is actually very sustainable because I work with semi-nomadic people, the women, weavers – it is all hand-made, using all-natural dyes. It is a lengthy process to create these pieces. This longevity infuses the work with a sense of permanence. There is beauty in this, it is lengthy, it comes from a natural place. My artisans raise their own flocks of sheep and once a year they shave the hairs and then they hand-spin the wool. Then they meticulously color it. It is all made by hand, so very slowly. It is a natural, beautiful process which in itself is a green practice. These communities and their way of life are increasingly disappearing. By choosing to work with it, I give it a new look and relevance and maybe the craftmanship can stay with us a little longer. It is green craftmanship.

It almost becomes a form of biodynamic practice because the full ecosystem is there for you to work with. Just like there is a Slow Food movement in cuisine, here you suggest a slow art movement. A big part of sustainability is not just using recycled materials, it is changing the mindset to embrace longevity. To accept that something is going to be part of our life and even beyond that to be passed down the generations. This psychological shift is an important factor in sustainability. Craftmanship is not just for life, it is for many lives. You also use found objects and encountered objects. Why is this important in your creative practice?
Construction site barrels have been a recent source of fascination. I find them in building sites, where they have already had a life, and I upcycle them. They form this interesting, corroded rust color, and they are usually banged up, almost destroyed. I then put layers of resin on them and turn them into side table stools. They have become a signature piece and my gallery in New York and Los Angeles represents them exclusively and they came to international attention when Beyonce bought and was photographed with one.

Something that is just so beaten and battered in the present was originally made for crude oil, it was used by workers for construction who then lit fires in them, carried water in them, even used them as ladders. After all this multi-function it is just left in buildings and over time it loses its use and becomes less precious for the workers because it ages. But then I give them a new look and then I send them off to a new life. Then it ends up in Beyonce’s house.

This is certainly sustainability par excellence, however there is also something ironic about this signature piece. They are after all, oil barrels, vessels of the petrodollar, the global oil industry. Are you making a statement here, whether it is completely intentional or not?
There is an element of that, however, my intentions are not always present when I work. Often, I work with materials or objects like the barrels here, and somehow, they lend me their voice. They have somehow told me what to do and how to do it. For example, I did not really think about the philosophy behind these barrels when I started collecting them and started turning them into side tables and stools. Then realizing the barrels could attain a new function if I gave them a new look. They become brand new again.

You give it a new identity because you can see the potential in the object. You see the object with its future in mind as well, not just its past and not just its present. As an artist, when people read into your work and they report back, are you ever surprised at some of the reactions to your work?
Everyone has their own take on my work, which is important to me. My tapestries for instance, are multifunctional. I don’t like things to be a certain thing, to have one fixed identity. You are not one thing; you are many things. As soon as you become one thing then you are just that one thing – one type of object, and you have turned into a specific something. My tapestries are not one thing. They have lace in them, the skeleton in the works is exposed. Many users do not know what to do with it, but at the same time, that is my message as well. Do what you want with it. If you want to put it on the floor, you can put it on the floor. If you want to put it on the wall, you can put it on the wall. It is multifunctional.

You leave it to the user to assign it an identity. You make it and release it. Does this mean the categories of ‘art’, ‘design’ and ‘craft’ are not of concern to you?
Yes, it is up to them to use my pieces. Some will say to me, the piece is not solid enough for the ground, what if it rips? I say that is exactly the concept, that is exactly what I want, I want it to eventually rip underneath your feet. Old rugs in Iran are often ripped, they will all rip anyway because they are so delicate and thin. The more holes the rug has the cooler it becomes, the more stories it must tell. So, my message to anybody who wants to buy my work is: they have to dare to actually use them. Of course, they can go on the wall, that is the easiest option. However, I want them to explore placing artworks on the floor. Not every artwork has to lack function. Any object can be an art piece. Your bed can be an art piece. Your sheets can be art, your glasses that you drink from, everything can become an artwork.

You advocate things to moving from just being craft or folk or design and to attain a status of art. This assigns aesthetic and critical importance to objects, like a Picasso hanging on a gallery wall. In recent years, weaving and textiles have shifted from being regarded as just decoration to becoming an artistic form in their own right. Museums and institutions in the West are finally paying attention - for instance, the Tate in London had major exhibitions of Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Anni Albers before the pandemic. In the United States, artists such as Faith Ringgold work with weaving and textiles and you see work with quilts. Of course, in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, these methods have a very long history and a very long language, even functioning as a currency. What do you think the art world and contemporary collectors can learn from those processes that have been in the Middle East for generations, for centuries?
Recently I have realized how as human beings we are so advanced in some ways, but still so primitive as well in a way. When you think about the state of human rights today, when you think about LGBT rights, certainly some advancements have been made in the last ten years or so, but so much is still so new in the context of history.

When we were younger, we did not understand it but now sometimes it still takes me by surprise that human beings have not really evolved much. And no matter what changes happen in a particular society, craftmanship has always been around, steady and flowing in the background. There is now a new spotlight on craftmanship. There is an importance on paying attention to and using older methods of craft, methods that seem traditional and old fashioned for our advanced societies, and it is amazing that people are now getting into it, from the art world and from the design world.

For example, my great aunt, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian worked with mirrors and glass. She introduced that craftmanship to her own contemporary audiences in the 1970s and it helped to legitimize traditional Iranian craftsmanship in the international art market. When artists bring this to international attention, it revives and allows the traditional craftmanship to evolve and survive.

It is a very interesting point that craft has always been there despite human social history – the pace of evolution for both is very different. Something being made by a skilled hand using craftmanship offers important accessibility to the user, because to understand for instance, a triptych in like a Baroque Italian from an Old Master, you probably have to have grown up in that tradition to know what the significance of the figures is and all of that. But to appreciate something that is on a table that you touch and you feel and you eat off it and you sit at, that experience undercuts cultures and influences. It is more immediate; it does not require levels of concepts. You just experience it with your senses. Do you think this pre-conceptual immediacy is something that craftmanship can bring to the artistic audiences and collectors?
It has been overlooked, but it is coming back now. So many designers are interested in creating their own kinds of craftmanship. Artists and designers are taking craftmanship to another level. It used to be okay to mass produce the same object for a number of collectors, everything was the same in every home. Now designers are thinking about the individual piece they want to make and how that particular piece can be unique and gain its own identity when it becomes part of the collector’s collection.

In terms of your own identity, who are you, and where are you going to next?
What I know about my identity is that I am going very slow. I do not want to rush things; I do not want to do things fast. I will never settle for being just a tapestry maker or an artist or a one-sided individual. I like to be able to maneuver in whichever direction I like to go; why should I close any options for myself? I do not want to be greedy with shows or with attention. I discover my identity through a free-flowing style. In the future I may do many things, perhaps take a creative directorship or make more objects, or hold different shows, perhaps interiors, even architecture, possibly fashion – as you can see, it can go in any direction. I like to be free; I like to be everything.

Power design duo Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana express and satisfy man’s true hidden desires.

By HASSAN AL-SALEH


Two names, one powerhouse brand that is synonymous with bold Italian glamor. That is Dolce & Gabbana, the brainchild of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana founded in 1985.

Together, the Sicilian design duo have built an enduring billion-dollar global empire driven by their love of their homeland. Today, it remains fiercely independent to preserve the brand’s authenticity and creative integrity.

While the brand has evolved with the times, it has never forgotten its roots, crafting an unmistakable identity for itself. Perhaps nothing captures Dolce & Gabbana’s dreamy Mediterranean aesthetic, innovation and the finest of craftsmanship so spectacularly than the brand’s very own Alta Sartoria, a men’s collection that combines the artisan-meets-atelier values of couture with the bespoke philosophy of fine tailoring.

It is the pursuit of la dolce vita. Otherworldly opulence that enraptures the sensuality of lavish ornamentation drawing on centuries of artisanal skill to celebrate all things Italian.

You were one of the very first brands to launch couture for men with Alta Sartoria in 2015. What compelled you to take such a bold move?

DD: After having presented the first Alta Moda collection in Taormina in 2012 and having embarked on a long journey made of beauty and love for fashion, even the husbands of our customers started to show us their interest in special, unique garments, tailor-made for them in order to satisfy their hidden desires.

SG: History teaches us that man, by nature, has always chosen to celebrate time, a particular moment, by picking a special outfit. We saw it with the aristocracy, princes and maharajahs. Similarly, with Alta Sartoria we want to satisfy man's desire to feel unique with a proposal that is consistent with the DNA and values of Dolce&Gabbana.

Was it difficult to convince men to accept and adopt the concept?

DD: Not at all! Men, as much as women, dress primarily for themselves, to please themselves. Alta Sartoria is a pure expression of oneself, a dream made of fabric. Even if there are now fewer opportunities to show off evening dresses, we believe that in their private lives people will continue to seek, perhaps even more than before, a beautiful story, a dress or accessory that makes them feel at ease.

SG: Unlike women who approach Alta Moda for a special and unique occasion, men prefer to build a personal wardrobe, made of clothes that satisfy and talk about their lifestyle, their dreams.

Usually, men approach Alta Sartoria asking for a traditional suit, perhaps characterized by particular details. However, when the client relaxes and feels at ease, his personality and hedonism come out and it is in this moment that he really begins to appreciate the project and to ask for clothes, or accessories, in line with his passions and needs.

How does Alta Sartoria embolden your identity as an Italian fashion house?

DD: Alta Sartoria is not just a parade of beautiful dresses. It is a special moment, it is history, it is culture, it is a lifestyle, it is pure Italian spirit. Alta Sartoria represents the union of the traits that distinguishes and elevates Italy combining Italian artisan heritage, made up of tradition and local workers, unique in their kind and inimitable.

SG: For us, craftsmanship and tailoring are the most important values ​​of our work. It’s part of our roots, our DNA. Besides our ready to wear collections, in 2014 we created our service of Sartoria su Misura. Then, with Alta Sartoria, we fused creativity and invention into one-of-a-kind pieces. What lies behind the purchase of these garments is not the necessity to dress, but the search for personal fulfilment...it is a completely different need.

How different is Alta Sartoria from made-to-measure? How has it evolved since you first launched?

DD: We think that “made-to-measure” leads to a well-made product yet industrialized. The approach to Alta Sartoria is different: we try to connect with the customer, to understand what he needs. It's a good conversation…it's based on a relationship of trust, on the dialogue that originates between the customer and our team - from the style to the tailor. It is all so mesmerizing.

SG: It is an intimate relationship, of comparison, almost a confession, through which we get to know the client and his world and he himself learns something new about himself. With Alta Sartoria we give space to the imagination and discover many very different styles. In addition, over time, we have forged a solid bond with them, and it is always a thrill to see each of our customers again during Alta Moda events, often accompanied by their children.

Talk to us about some of the specialized technical skills required to produce a couture garment for men.

DD: Alta Moda and Alta Sartoria are synonymous with experimentation. This has led us, over time, to expand our tailoring and to acquire a highly specialized workforce. With the Alta Moda project, we wish to give visibility to our country’s artisanal excellences. For this reason, in the places where we choose to show, we search for a manufacturer or a particular technique to work on.

SG: For example, for the collection presented in Venice, we worked with new materials and techniques, including new embroidery, patchwork, the use of satin, crystals, murrine and Bevilacqua fabrics. In addition, the prints evoke the landscape of Venice with breathtaking colors, mosaics of San Marco, and paintings of Canaletto.

What excites you the most about couture for men?

DD: Total freedom of expression. Alta Sartoria, as much as Alta Moda, allows us to experiment with new techniques, do research and always discover something new. It is a great stimulus for our creativity, to tell our experiences through clothes, to offer a dream, a memory. We like to communicate a lifestyle, a feeling and live it with our customers, now our friends, who participate in our events and who, year after year, love to reunite again.

What do you believe lies for the future of men’s couture in general and for Alta Sartoria specifically?

DD: Today, more than ever, fashion is an expression of the social changes and cultural advances we are experiencing. All the pieces of our Alta Moda and Alta Sartoria Collections are real forms of art that, with our work, we try to make known and pass on to future generations. Our desire is, first of all, to educate the young generations and then allow them to appreciate the huge work that these collections require: precious raw materials, attention to every single detail and the inspiration behind all the pieces, which comes from our roots, are what makes us dream.

You have been narrating your rich Sicilian roots for nearly four decades. How do you come up with different iterations of your heritage for the changing times of today?

DD: Through the combination of multiple elements: the harmony of opposites, femininity and masculinity, sensuality and austerity, black and the use of color, the sacred and the profane, the most eccentric print, simplicity, lace; we are all of this. Attention to detail, shapes and proportions are all aspects of our aesthetics and the plot of a story that began more than thirty years ago. We believe that, without a past and solid roots, there can be no future.

SG: Domenico and I observe very much what happens in the world. The reality itself requires us to evolve, and that’s normal. People change and so do their desires and needs. Everything changes and transforms itself in some way. The important thing is to never forget where you come from and which are the values ​​behind your path. In this way we try to keep up with the times, still remaining faithful to our DNA.

Photography MARCO IMPERATORE
Styling EMIL REBEK

Models Evelyn Nagy at Monster Management, Malick Bodian at Success Models
Hair Stylist Pierpaolo Lai at Julian Watson Agency
Make Up Artist Luciano Chiarello at Julian Watson Agency
Casting Director Simone Bart Rocchietti at Simobart Casting
Photo Assistants Francesco Colombo, Andrea Re
Fashion Assistants Alessandro Ferrari, Giovanni Aiuto
Executive Producer Justin Gerbino
Production PBJ
Location La Mia Terra, Angera, Italy

Hermès perfumer Christine Nagel formulates modern masculinity in movement and fluidity as an expression of our time.

By HASSAN AL-SALEH
Photography POLLY BROWN

Scents have a transformative power to unlock memories, transport us back to a different time and place, and connect us to people. The power to change the way we feel and our perceptions of the world we live in. In a day and age where traditional constructs of masculinity and the male identity are constantly being challenged and redefined, perfumery seems like a surprising and unlikely medium for discourse.

Not for Swiss-born perfumer Christine Nagel who set out to create a fragrance that eschews masculine stereotypes yet establishes a new sensory identity for today’s Hermès man. Her latest creation H24, draws on the Maison’s venerable history, incarnates its values, and bridges tradition and modernity with nature and technology.

In a profession that demands high sensitivity, a curiosity about the world, and an open-mindedness, Nagel has an ingenious ability to take the familiar into unfamiliar territory with mind and emotion.

Talk to us about a defining and transformative moment that you have experienced that has shaped who you are as a person today.
When I was told, “No, you can’t be a perfumer” simply because I was a woman. When I started, it was an almost exclusively male profession. I belong to a generation where there were very few female perfumers. At that time, being a woman and a perfumer were totally incompatible. I had to overcome many obstacles to become a perfumer, but not only because I was a woman. I also had to overcome the fact that I was not the daughter of a perfumer and was not born in Grasse, in the South of France. That said, if I had to establish a hierarchy of the size of obstacles I had to overcome, being a woman was undoubtedly the biggest.

But I have a tenacious character. Extremely tenacious. I was absolutely and intimately convinced that this would be my profession. The more people opposed it, the more determined I became. The thing that has always motivated me is the drive to prove my ability and make the most of it. To be chosen for my creativity and my signature, and to put these things before everything else without any other considerations, especially those related to gender.

Scents have a powerful way of triggering memories and emotions. What are some of the scents that are dear to your heart?
You are perfectly right. Scents are so personal. We all have a different vision of perfume, and if you and I wear the same perfume, it wouldn't be exactly the same. This is really linked to our lives and the way we were raised.

For me, some scents are really important in my life. There are two, actually. The first one is the smell of an Italian talc called Borotalco. It is a talc powder that my mother used for my little brother, and I really remember it very well. What really surprised me is that all these smells come from my childhood and that in every single country you have different childhood scents. In Spain, for example, you have Nenuco. In the United States, it is Johnson & Johnson. In France, it is a brand called Mustela. These are specific scents used for babies, and it is very reassuring for all of us. The Borotalco can be found in many Italian perfumes.

There is another scent that is always linked to my childhood. I remember the scent of my grandmother's handbag very well. At the time, women used powder and carried it with them. When she opened her bag, I could smell the powder as well as the leather, and this is actually linked to my own history because I used this to produce the first perfume for Hermès.

So, what is the scent that you remember from your own childhood?

For me personally it was my mom's lipsticks. I remember I used to always go to her cosmetics counter and open up her lipsticks, and the lipsticks had a very particular smell in those days. This is in the early '80s. Whenever I smell anything that resembles that, it conjures up beautiful memories of my childhood and particularly of my mother who I share a very special connection with.

Exactly, and that is why I was so happy to work on the scent of the lipsticks and new beauty objects that are now part of Hermès Beauté. It is the same line that you can follow from one product to the other. It is continuous. It is arnica, sandalwood. It is very special, but I agree with you, there is a special scent in lipsticks.

You’ve established a reputation for taking the familiar into unfamiliar territory. Where does that stem from?
I must still be a child at heart because I never tire of surprises. I’m happy when I surprise and am surprised.

Naturally curious, all scents and raw materials interest me. And when I discover a material, I want to take it as far as possible, knead it, work it, experiment with it. I want to take it wherever I like, coaxing it and pushing its limits. So yes, I like to make green notes warm, woods liquid, and flowers hostile.

There is a real sense of connectivity between fashion and beauty in your work. How did this fragrance come to fruition?
Well, it all started from the vision I have of the Hermès man, and this vision was deeply inspired by Hermès Men’s Universe Artistic Director Véronique Nichanian’s work. I have watched her work closely because what she does really touches me, and I find a lot of similarities between what she does and what I do.

Véronique likes to work with hi-tech materials. She works a lot on zips, for example, and at the same time likes to work with her materials by using all the Japanese weaving looms. I, myself, really like to work in the same way that brings together high technology and tradition.

What many people have described as “physical perfumery”.

It is very difficult to explain, but when it comes to Véronique’s collections, I can actually touch the materials just by using my eyes. With my own eyes, I can feel the texture of the fabrics and the leathers that she uses - it’s really extraordinary.

So, when I work with materials I like to talk about textures when describing my perfumes. In her clothes, she likes to work in little hidden details. For example, in some trousers she adds pockets made out of lambskin. It is just for fun, actually. The customer gets this sensual feeling when he puts his own hands in his pockets. I really like this way of doing things.

So, when I work, I also like to add details, tactile details, and the Hermès man is a man who is very urban and he is living in his own time. He is in motion, and when we see him, he is very fluid. For me, it was immediately obvious. I didn’t want to work on woody scents like most of the men's fragrances in general. I wanted to start from a botanical base because it has real strength.

I had the same picture coming back over and over again in my mind. I could see little shoots of plants breaking through the earth, very, very fragile, but growing very suddenly, very quickly. I believe the Hermès man has this botanical strength and this is what is expressed in the perfume.

What opportunities have you explored with the freedom Hermès has granted you and how has it changed you as a perfumer?
I create perfumes which uphold all the values of Hermès and I focus on the materials because here in Hermès, material is really at the center of what we do.

I can honestly say that in the world today, I am one of the only perfumers who is really doing the work of a genuine perfumer. I am free because I am not briefed, I am not asked to create a specific perfume in such-and-such a way. All I am told is, "What about thinking of a garden or a perfume for men?", and that is it.

I am also free when it comes to costs. I am free to choose the materials I want to use. I can go and get them anywhere in the world, I am never told no, but what is maybe most important and what really distinguishes Hermès, is the fact that I really have the time and the perfume is ready once it is ready and not before. So never, ever are there any market studies or focus groups on the perfumes that I create.

What is a market test anyway? You have a choice between two perfumes, you ask people to smell the two perfumes, and they say what they think of them. Then you choose the perfume that actually satisfies most people. So very often, you take away the little touches that make a perfume special. I always say that the most perfect man or woman in the world is not always the person we remember. Who do we remember? We remember the person with the small details that distinguishes him or her from all the others. This small difference is what I am given, and I embrace it and I enjoy total freedom while creating.

Masculinity and the male identity have evolved particularly over the last few years. How is this fragrance contributing to the dialogue?
I firmly believe that fragrances have no gender, any more than colors, sounds and tastes do. They are works of art, and as such are not created specifically for women or for men, but for humanity. Society has created codes that we find it very difficult to escape from. These codes are frames of reference that help us live in a world that is becoming increasingly complex. In oriental and Indian cultures, rose or patchouli are worn abundantly by men. And it’s beautiful. It is not the fragrance that dictates the gender, because a fragrance becomes masculine on a man’s skin and feminine on a woman’s skin. It exists in itself, not in relation to its destination. We just have to dare to be bold, trust our instincts and try things out.

So, I would be happy if H24 was worn by a woman.

How is technology transforming the industry and the creative process?
First of all, I don’t want to pit the natural against the synthetic. Man and nature coexist in fragrance in the same way that man coexists with innovative technology today. Disruption, revolution and transformation are all part of everyday life. New methods for extracting materials, new molecules and tools for understanding and analyzing materials have shaken up the way fragrance is designed. The analogy with textiles is interesting in this respect. If we compare it to the work of a dressmaker, it’s like the creator who will only use silk, wool, linen or cotton - all the most natural of materials. These collections, these clothes would not have the same hold, or the same volumes and lines. Synthetics bring another rhythm, a true modernity, a different drape and feel.

Today, H24 expresses its potential through natural materials combined with synthetic notes that are recreated by biotechnology with the greatest respect for nature. We can no longer sidestep social or environmental concerns. That much is certain. I therefore consider this progress as a real opportunity for creativity and a truly virtuous choice.

How have current world events changed your perspective on life and have they made you re-think your role as a perfumer and your creative approach in any way?
My job is the best one in the world. It is the most beautiful profession in the world. It has nothing to do with reasoning, but it is so full of life.

I create in my own head so whether I am confined, whether there is a lockdown or not, I think of a smell and I write down a formula. So, I can create continuously anywhere, whatever the circumstances.

I am not limited by confinement, but today sense can bear another meaning because, first of all, we are all wearing masks, we are hidden behind masks and perfume is very important because it expresses who you are without being visible.

You are not deterred by challenges and difficulties. What are some of the challenges you have set for yourself for the future?
When I blend materials, I always try to find new textures, new sensations, a third smell, and it is sort of a quest and I am not done yet. I am always really excited about my profession.

So, what are my challenges? Creating something beautiful - there are no miracles. I don't want to do anything just to be seen as being original. We are all human beings, I create for human beings, and I want people to say, "I feel good", "I need it", "It talks to me", "It speaks to me", and when I have no more ideas I will just stop. The nose is beautiful because it is the only organ of the whole body which never gets old. The cells in the nose keep regenerating.

What is the underlying message you want to convey with all your creations?
I think perfume is very important because it is reassuring, it is invisible and it is linked to instinct. Unfortunately, today we don't use our own senses enough, and I think that we should use our instincts more to live. I think perfume can help us.

Riccardo Tisci is changing our perception of modern masculinity through the vernacular of British heritage brand Burberry.

By LAURA BOLT

Recently, the fashion world has been pondering a serious question: Are brands truly reflecting what it means to be a modern man? That query is one that designers are still wrestling with today. Masculinity, and the idea of what it means to be a man, is perhaps most easily, at least in terms of visual shorthand, expressed through one’s clothing. Of course, the rise of streetwear has had a democratizing effect on menswear, but while the proliferation of high-end casualwear was a defining moment in the industry, it was more of a challenge to traditional ideas of luxury and class than it was to conventional notions of masculinity.

Icons like David Bowie, and more recently, Harry Styles, have pushed the boundaries of what a man could wear and even be, but while they have been able to reach the echelons of iconoclasm, their gender fluid style has yet to be reflected in the closets of the average male consumer. It could be argued that the ideals impressed upon women have often trickled down from fashion into the mainstream, but the current moment in menswear seems to be moving in the opposite direction, with more flexible ideas coming out of broader social reforms concerning what men can and should wear beginning to affect the industry. Modern technology, especially social media, where anyone with a mobile device and a Wi-Fi connection can be a brand unto themselves, is slowly remodeling what is possible in menswear. Designers are now opening new parts of their imagination to envision something totally new: the 21st century man.

One designer who has been at the forefront of this reimagining throughout most of his career is Riccardo Tisci, the former Givenchy Creative Director who is now running the show at Burberry as Chief Creative Officer. During his time at Givenchy, Tisci revolutionized the brand with his cutting-edge sensibilities and unconventional ideas of beauty. He also helped to put the house’s menswear offerings on the map, juxtaposing hard streetwear lines and tailoring with delicate fabrics like fuchsia lace - an impressive feat for a designer who has admitted that menswear wasn’t in his original plan. While he may not have envisioned that he would have such an impact on the menswear world, masculinity and a playful approach to gender was always present in his work. Tisci said, “I never made a dress that’s super, 100 percent feminine. You always have, like, a twist, something that’s masculine.”

Androgyny has come more slowly to the menswear world, proof that traditional ideas of gender run deep, even in progressive fashion circles. The idea of “being a man” is often impressed upon boys early in life, with increasing pressure to speak, feel, and of course dress, in a way that affirms their status as strong individuals. Whereas women are generally allowed a wider berth when it comes to androgyny, many men struggle to continually establish traditional notions of masculinity into adult life.

When it comes to gender fluid representation, the fashion industry has not been immune to confusing messaging about what makes a man. Mainstream marketing presents a fairly cohesive narrative about masculinity, yet surveys conducted by CSMM found that only 7 percent of men across the globe relate to version of masculinity they see in the media. But where there’s a problem, there is also an opportunity.

During his time at Givenchy, Tisci was known for his playful approaches to dressing men, including much talked about leather skirts. Subverted masculinity, proving that a man could look just as strong in a skirt as a suit. Tisci’s work inspires many descriptors, including “baroque,” “goth,” and “full of bravado”. One adjective that deserves equal attention might be “boundless,” something that can be readily applied to his views on gender. In Tisci’s world, lace can be as powerful as leather, and the fewer labels the better.

When it came time to take the reins at Burberry, Tisci was met with excitement, and some trepidation. After all, Tisci’s designs were famously dark, ornate, and perhaps more appropriate for the cover of a gothic romance novel than high tea. Burberry however, was a heritage brand, dating back to 1856. If you think about the future of gender-bending men’s style, Burberry might not be it. The quintessentially British brand seemed an oddly sedate arena for Tisci to play in, with its ubiquitous trenches, polos, and classic suiting conjuring up the very image of English propriety. However, it’s important to remember that Tisci is designing in a post-Brexit world, where boundaries are blurring and the sense of what is possible is ballooning as not only a sign of the times, but as a reaction to conservative ideals.

It’s worth noting that Bowie and Styles, along with English designers like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, prove that there is a little more creativity in British heritage than we give it credit for. “For me, Britishness is an attitude, a strength, a confidence and a freedom,” said Tisci. “All these British men they’ve always been very chic, very elegant, very free in the way they express themselves but very eccentric.” 

Tisci’s work is a testament to how organically - and monumentally - a brand can shift to match the values of the time. After all, when you think about Givenchy post-Tisci, it’s just as easy to associate the brand with Kanye West’s graphic printed Rottweiler tee as Audrey Hepburn’s sleek little black dress. Tisci understands the fragile process of respecting history while bringing it boldly into the modern world. And when it comes to his vision for men in the future, Tisci’s work is already showing us that anything is possible.

According to Tisci, his approach to redefining masculinity as less of a gendered construct has been simmering for a while. “Today you can talk about genderless, but at the time you had menswear for gay people and menswear for straight people. And I was like, ‘I’m gay and I’m not ashamed of it, but I love fashion and I like to wear clothes in these sort of ways, which is very normal, which people call straight,’ which was very stupid for me. So, I started to build around the idea of being confident of your sexuality. A woman can wear men’s suits during the day and a guy can wear a lace shirt - it’s not about the look, it’s about your confidence.”

Tisci lived up to that notion when he opted to use both male and female models to present his latest Burberry menswear collection. He explains, “The women are not there just because I wanted to put girls in the show. But also because I’ve learned that, at Burberry, women buy womenswear, but they also buy the men’s. I found that very interesting - and I am a veteran of that idea, of championing that fluidity. For me, masculinity is the confidence that a man should have in his sexuality, so he doesn’t have to fight or justify his femininity. Being proud and living with his own sexuality.”

Many of Tisci’s ideas about gender are also expressed in several new collaborators he has tapped to join his new creative world and showcase his collections. He has worked with models including performance artist and musician Arca, who defines herself as both “non-binary and a trans-Latina woman,” and LGBTQ pioneer Ladyfag. In fact, Tisci’s embrace of the trans community isn’t just on trend - one of his first muses was Lea T, a trans fit model who he cast in early shows and who has made a successful career for herself as a mainstream model.

With his modeling choices, Tisci not only creates clothes meant for a less gendered future, but also presents the world in which they will be worn. Tisci said that his casting process is about more than just what’s on the outside, and that he favors “a form of strength” over other aesthetic attributes. This approach carefully divorces the idea of strength from “traditional” masculinity, and redefines it at an innate quality that isn’t dependent on your sexuality or visual presentation. In this way, the full range of design options becomes available and able to create a new standard of dressing, no matter how you identify.

Experiencing Tisci’s work is a fascinating reminder that one can recognize elements of tradition, and with them, the past, while arranging them in a way that seems not just current, but also a glimpse into the future. “What for me is very important with Burberry is the fact that this country, in history, is the most representative country of duality,” he said. “You have the Queen, aristocracy, culture, intellectually, the elegance, the perfection. Then you always have this other side. First the punk, then the skinhead. That is the beauty. That is the first thing I want to build at Burberry: [the idea] that Britishness is these two very strong identities. Now that I’m living here, I live in this history. I feel it.” That duality also extends to the idea of masculinity and femininity, two formerly distinct concepts that can become stronger when you remove their constraints and let them mingle together.

“For me today what’s very important is the fluidity of a man and a woman. Men that like playing with their femininity and masculinity,” said Tisci. Only time will tell what fashions he will present to the world, and how far he will push the boundaries he has been already redefining for years. If there’s one thing we can count on, Tisci’s man will continue to surprise, delight, and challenge our ideas about what makes a man to include concepts like kindness, courage, and yes - even femininity.

Designer Matthew Williams is bringing a distinctly modern perspective to one of the most illustrious French couture houses, Givenchy.

By LAURA BOLT

It is said that some things never change, but while that might be true in some instances, the world of fashion is not one of them. As an industry, fashion’s lifeblood is in its ability to transform, to innovate, and to reflect the ideas of the present while helping us envision a new future. Even iconic brands are tasked with reinventing themselves to maintain not just relevancy, but trailblazing ability. Case in point? Givenchy, a label that seems to undergo a transformation with each new Creative Director. With upstart designer Matthew Williams taking the reins, what does the future look like for one of couture’s most legendary houses?

Givenchy is already a brand with a storied and illustrious past. Founded in 1952 by Hubert de Givenchy, it didn’t take long for the fledgling brand to attract devotees. Givenchy has been a power player for over 60 years, dominating the catwalk and seen notably on iconic figures like Jacqueline Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn. In fact, the latter’s “little black dress” in Breakfast At Tiffany’s cemented Givenchy’s reputation as chic, modern, and elegant. Over the years, creative leadership at the brand changed hands several times - including brief but memorable appearances by John Galliano and Alexander McQueen - but seemed to truly come into its own again when Riccardo Tisci took over in 2005. During his tenure, he imbued Givenchy with a newfound sensuality and a sense of dark romanticism with more than a hint of gothic inspiration. Under Tisci, the label seemed vibrant again, even youthful, especially buoyed by a Nike collaboration that highlighted Tisci’s appreciation for streetwear and kept them on par with the dominating trend in the industry. His menswear designs echoed those themes, and added a sense of whimsy and gender fluidity that brought Givenchy firmly into the 21st Century. Clare Waight Keller took over in 2017, and brought her own ideas to the table. She dialed down Tisci’s baroque sensibilities in favor of a more classic sense of femininity, but she also brought an unexpected eclecticism to Givenchy’s menswear program, which highlighted a high-end feel with a youthful insouciance. Despite positive reviews, Keller’s departure in 2020 ushered in a new age of Givenchy under Matthew Williams.

On the surface, Matthew Williams seems like a curious choice for a brand that has epitomized European high-fashion for the better part of a century. Born in Chicago and bred amongst California skate culture, Williams’ background is worlds away from the more classically trained “establishment” designers that preceded him. After a rejection from Parsons early in his career, the self-taught Williams found his way into fashion through roads less traveled. In fact, Williams’ first major creative efforts came not from being behind a fashion label, but overseeing the creative worlds of celebrities. After a number of collaborations with Kanye West, Williams worked as Creative Director for Lady Gaga, fashioning both her costumes and music videos.

Williams’ relationship to the world of celebrity gives him a distinct viewpoint, and one that harkens more to Tisci’s work than Kellers. In 2021, celebrities like Gaga and West are not only entertainers, but CEOs of their own brand, from social media to merchandise. “Fashion in general is a collaboration,” he said. “For me, my education was really costume design and collaborating with designers and photographers through the musicians I worked for.” Working with celebrities was more than just synthesizing their work into visual elements, it was an exercise in branding, world building, and how to keep your finger on the pulse of society.

While Williams’ background certainly gives him a unique vision, his perspective is undoubtedly also influenced by his relative youth. Williams represents a new breed of designer, one that found their first inspiration on the internet in the days of Tumblr and Myspace. His pre-Givenchy work includes streetwear inspired Been Trill with fellow designers Heron Preston and Virgil Abloh, and hard lined, craft-oriented label 1017 Alyx 9SM. Williams represents the kind of designer that seems uniquely bred for this moment, with clearly defined tastes, a knack for pop culture, and appreciation for hip-hop. He designs for the men who, although not necessarily athletic themselves, are excited by the idea of sports and streetwear, while still being unafraid to indulge a more flamboyant side.

Overall, one could argue that Williams’ relationship with the entertainment world and club-couture over the traditional fashion establishment was an asset to his appointment, and a sign that luxury brands are acknowledging that the future is not just inspiration and skill, but the ability to absorb and reflect a time when the zeitgeist means continually hitting the refresh button. To succeed now, let alone become a visionary, inspiration must be not a point, but a panopticon.

Williams’ unconventional background gives him a radically different perspective, and affords him a fresh sensibility that is tailor-made to help him break free of any sense of overwhelming devotion to tradition he might have felt taking over a legendary brand. Because of his age, Williams is more likely to see modern designers like McQueen, Galliano, and Tisci as his inspirations over the original Givenchy, evidence that being referential means something different to a designer who was brought up online. From his vantage point, you can respect the past without needing to repeat it.

“I am looking forward to working together with its ateliers and teams, to move it into a new era, based on modernity and inclusivity. In these unprecedented times for the world, I want to send a message of hope, together with my community and colleagues, and intend to contribute toward positive change,” said Williams. Inclusivity will likely play a major role in both his designs and castings, where he will have the opportunity to build the kind of worlds he did when working with his celebrity collaborators.

Most of Williams’ future at Givenchy may be ahead of him, but if there is one thing he’s made clear already, it’s that he intends to focus on craftsmanship. “Craftsmanship is one of the most beautiful things about making clothing. I want to make clothing that has emotions and soul and feels like it’s been touched by the human hand, not that it’s been spit out by a machine or a computer or something like that. I want these pieces to feel like they’ve been worked,” he said.

Perhaps it’s the streetwear underpinnings, or the experience that creating clothes for musicians means they must be performance ready, but Williams seems poised to make Givenchy a brand that people are excited to live in. While the idea of craftsmanship and the inherent focus on artistry and manufacturing tends to tie brands to their roots, Williams also has an eye towards technology that grounds him in the digital age.

Unfortunately, while his imagination may be limitless, Williams has had to contend with parameters that no designer has been able to escape - working during a global pandemic. Without the usual fanfare that would accompany his new work, Williams has been able to make his star studded history work in his favor, with new designs debuting on some famous fans, including Lady Gaga at President Biden’s inauguration, and The Weeknd, who wore a crystal emblazoned Givenchy jacket that reportedly took over 250 hours to create at the 2021 Super Bowl. Being able to rely on his role in, and relationship to, pop culture, has given Williams a unique way to share his vision. As his new Givenchy designs began to trickle out via Instagram, it became clear that Williams is the perfect designer for this moment, savvy enough to present his vision for a new Givenchy on a monumental stage without the conventional strategies.

Reflecting on the pandemic, Williams said, “I like this idea that fashion can give us some kind of escape, and beauty, and imagination for the future that we’ll have, but still have moments of reality that ground us, in terms of clothing we want to wear and use today...You know, I think maybe subconsciously I’m just wanting security and comfort, knowing that there’s so much chaos all around. Warmth, comfort, ease.” Millennials are often cited for being a generation of increased sensitivity, individuality, and open mindedness, all qualities that reflect in Williams’ work. In a behemoth industry that has been challenged by COVID-19 to rethink core issues of sustainability, access, inclusivity, and technology, Givenchy under Matthew Williams might just spearhead a new path forward.

We’re still in the early stages of judging not just Williams’ legacy, but how powerful the incarnation of Givenchy he leads will be. As the world begins to see more of what Williams has to offer, only time will tell whether he becomes a touchstone for the next generation of designers. If his output so far is any indication however, perhaps the best is yet to come.

The mother of reinvention and a continual bellwether, Miuccia Prada has accomplished the greatest transformation of all.

By JON ROTH
Photography JOANNA PIOTROWSKA

It was the kind of news that sends shockwaves through the fashion industry and out into the culture at large. In February of 2020, Prada announced that Raf Simons would be joining Miuccia Prada as Co-Creative Director of the fashion house. In an era when designers often make revolving-door entrances and exits at the top brands, the idea of a co-directorship between two of fashion’s heaviest hitters was met with excitement, intrigue, and lots of speculation. No doubt, Prada and Simons share a heady intellectualism and a disinterested cool that’s always appealed to serious students of style. But how would they work together. What would “new Prada” really look like?

Then again, has Prada ever really felt old?

Like any fashion house, Prada has changed with the times. Not every look from decades past could step seamlessly into the world of today. But it would be difficult to single out any collections that felt stale from the start. That’s part of the genius of Miuccia Prada. The designer is never one to churn out more of the same year after year. Instead, she’s in a constant cycle of reinvention, always altering and adjusting the house codes she’s created. A woman allergic to what’s “expected”, Prada has kept her family’s house in the top tier of the fashion world for more than four decades by following a simple formula: always tweak the formula.

Prada as we know it today began with Miuccia, who came to her grandfather’s company in 1970 and inherited it in 1978. Prior to her reign, the house was largely known as a leather goods company and an importer of British steamer trunks. Founded in 1913, it was named official supplier to the Italian Royal Household. Then, in a move that presaged a lifetime of risk-taking, Miuccia decided to turn Prada’s upscale history upside down.

“Back then, I didn’t really like anything I saw,” she said. “It all just looked so old and bourgeois and boring. Back then, I just wanted to search for the absolute opposite of what was already out there.” So instead of leaning into the luxury of leather, she instead chose to create bags and backpacks with nylon - specifically pocono, a military-grade material. Her Vela backpack, made from this tactical, water-proof, synthetic silk alternative, set the tone for a new chapter for the house. Rather than rest on the laurels of the past, Miuccia had staked her claim to a new kind of fashion: one with industrial roots, minimal leanings, and a decided irreverence toward what had come before.

In the years to come, Miuccia’s risk-taking would pay off. The house moved from backpacks to bags to womenswear, seeking out wholesale accounts and opening up boutiques across the world. Arriving on the heels of the psychedelic ‘60s and disco ‘70s, Miuccia’s designs appealed for their difference; they were streamlined, structured, often rendered in basic black and white. By the 1990s this anti-fashion approach to fashion truly hit its stride, and Prada became the last word in subtly subversive dressing.

The apotheosis of that subversion came in 1996, when the designer decided to switch gears again. Her women’s runway show that year replaced uber-minimal severity with a retro-inspired, buttoned-up sexlessness. The colors were lime green and muddy tan, the patterns were blown-up faux tweed, and florals and checks that recalled hotel upholstery. The shoes were chunky and functional. The reviewers called it “ugly chic,” and this new proposition helped push the zeitgeist in a new direction. Miuccia had traded industrial simplicity for an unexpected nerdiness so uncool it circled right back around to cutting edge.

If Prada is a bellwether for fashion, it’s because Miuccia takes stock of the prevailing winds, and immediately heads in the other direction. “Instinctively, I go the opposite way to consensus,” she has said. “I’m deeply against cliché or the usual or what everybody else does. If I see a black dress, I want to do red, if I see red, I want to do black. The opposite of beauty is ugliness, so I’d do ugly.”

This aversion to sameness puts the house of Prada in a constant state of flux, even when it’s simply reacting against itself. This makes it hard to pin down the exact brand DNA. It’s very difficult to define “Prada-ness”. “Sometimes I’ve been criticized by the company,” Miuccia said. “They said, ‘Valentino is Valentino, Hermès is Hermès. Clear, simple, one idea.’ So I said, ‘Change the designer then.'”

No one is interested in calling that bluff. So rather than try to define the Prada aesthetic, Miuccia chooses to refract it through the lens of her collaborators. Historically, it’s rare for her to collaborate on a Prada collection, but in terms of presenting the clothing, Prada’s collaborative nature has deep roots. When it comes to physical spaces, this includes a long working relationship with architect Rem Koolhaas and his OMA/AMO agency. The firm created the Fondazione Prada in Milan, Prada’s ‘Transformer’ space in Seoul, and sets for many of their recent runway shows. A cineaste as well, Prada has commissioned directors like David O. Russell, Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola to create films for the house.

After a decades-long relationship with photographer Stephen Meisel, Prada’s campaign photography has changed course as well with the introduction of Willy Vanderperre in 2017, to help lens the brands newly diversified Prada365 marketing effort, and again in 2020, when five photographer and directors were enlisted to capture Miuccia’s final solo collection, ‘The Show that Never Happened’. Vanderperre, along with Juergen Teller, Joanna Piotrowksa, Martine Syms and Terence Nance, each captured that moment in their own style, again underscoring the multiplicity of the Prada look.

All this teamwork, and yet Miuccia has maintained firm control over design duties at the house. “I want to be good myself. I don’t want to collaborate in my job,” she has said. Which is why her partnership with Raf Simons came as a surprise to so many. But then, she is a woman enamored of change, and what bigger change, after decades designing alone, than to invite someone else to join her?

“We like each other, we respect each other,” Miuccia said of the new partnership with Simons, then added drily, “I was sometimes criticized for not doing collaborations, so now I am doing one.” The two designers already have a long relationship. When Jil Sander was still a part of the Prada Group, Prada offered Simons creative directorship of the brand of which he credits the role for introducing him to womenswear. And there’s an affinity to their tastes that suggests a fruitful partnership in the offing: both take an intellectual approach to fashion, and both have an abiding love for modern art. Even so, neither is particularly used to compromise, which had industry veterans wondering how successful, or long-lived, this collaboration would really be.

Early indications are very promising with an exciting display of unity of vision, and also a new energy: the kind of fashion frisson that comes off two creative forces rubbing shoulders. Old favorites came back to light: nylon, of course, but now in an updated, recycled version called Re-Nylon. And the ugly chic upholstery patterns made a second bow as well. And the shared loves of both designers - a deft hand with clutch coats, and bomber jackets, for example - now shine especially bright.

What about fashion’s constant desire for the next, new thing? “New is the nightmare of every single designer, probably,” Miuccia said, before adding that the obsession seemed to fall back during our year of COVID-19. Simons picked up the thread, “I think when you are in it for a long time, let’s say a few decades, it’s important to be able to refresh your own body of work.”

Savvy as ever, Miuccia must have known the time was right to bring about this ultimate refresh at the house of Prada. It’s no coincidence that change, alteration, and adjustment are now front and center at the house. “We play with the idea of the classic - we subvert it, we trans-mutate it,” Miuccia said. “Often, it is very simple - through new materials, a different cut or context, something obvious, eternal, normal - with a simple gesture, it can transform. That is what I truly love, in fashion.” In fashion, and in life as well.

Photography ALLAN HAMITOUCHE
Styling JÉRÉMIE CHEGRANE BACQUÉ

Model Braien Vaiksaar at Success Models
Set Designer Marion Di Dio
Hair Stylist Eduardo Bravo
Makeup Artist Thierry Do Nascimento
Lighting Assistant Clemens Klenk
Stylist Assistant Alexia Giteau
Casting William Lhoest

Photography FERRY VAN DER NAT
Styling GIOVANNI BEDA

Model Paul Hameline at Success Models
Digital Tech Daniele Seda
1st Photo Assistant Koen Vernimmen
Hair Stylist Yumiko Hikage
Makeup Artist Isabelle Pain
Manicurist Sally Derbali
Assistant Stylist Isaac Perez Solano
Producer Yasmin Guerrucci at Unit C.M.A.
Casting William Lhoest

Daniel Lee has radically reinvented the luxury label Bottega Veneta by going against the grain with a kind of stillness and quiet that cuts through all the noise.

By MAX BERLINGER
Photography WALTER PFEIFFER

The luxury Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta has always been built on an idea of discretion, a certain mystique and gravitas. It’s guiding mantra was once “When your own initials are enough,” meaning that its customers were of the elegant, low-key variety. It was for the in-the-know, not flashy luxury consumers bedecked in logos, chasing the latest “it” item. 

Still it was surprising, even for a label this understated, when Bottega Veneta did away with its social media accounts earlier this year. In the midst of an ongoing pandemic where most fashion companies have only one way to connect with consumers - online - Bottega Veneta made a radical decision: it vanished into the ether, leaving no digital trace to be found.  

But this all fits in with the dramatic renovation the brand has undergone since it appointed the British designer Daniel Lee as Creative Director in June of 2018. The 35-year-old was a relative unknown but came with excellent credentials - he had been in charge of ready-to-wear designs at the French label Celine under the beloved designer Phoebe Philo. So, it was a calculated risk to take Lee and give him the top job at one of the most recognizable fashion houses in the world. 

The risk is paying off. Under Lee, the brand has received a tremendous amount of renewed attention. Just a few seasons in and he’s created product hits like his bulbous quilted bags, its funky rubber boots, square-toed heels, and, perhaps most of all, his unexpected but alluring ready-to-wear. 

Cool and commercial is a tough balance to strike, but Lee seems to have achieved it. “My job is to really make Bottega Veneta part of the fashion conversation,” the designer has said. “But this is a true heritage house, and that is something that moves a lot slower and in a very different way to something that’s ‘fashion.’ Trying to change this house into a fashion brand is a huge task.” 

That may be true but Lee did it almost instantly, with his first collection exuding an immediate sense of palpable cool. The men’s looks, in particular, were austere and yet sophisticated. Lee also took the brand’s signature design motif, the interlacing woven leather called “intrecciato” and blew it up, making carryall tote bags of huge, interlocking panels of contrasting leather. 

“Fashion, for me - it’s a conversation with the world,” Lee explains of his design process. “You take in everything around you, you process that, and you regurgitate it into whatever you choose. I don’t think a designer works in isolation in a room and reads a book, and then says, ‘Hey, presto, here’s a collection.’ To me, it’s really about a conversation with the team, it’s about simulation and seeing and feeling a bit of the action and energy on the street.” 

Since his first runway show for Fall 2018, Lee has brought the raw, dynamic energy of the club scene to the runway. One can glimpse hints of Berlin’s hardcore dance-all-night vibe in those quilted, tough leather pieces while the entwined panels of sweaters recall the sensual knitwear favored by classical dances - they also happen to be another nod to the maison’s intrecciato pattern. There were leather biker pants and the oversized Chelsea boots that became instant items of desire. Lee has spoken about his love of dancing, and particularly the freedom he found at clubs, as a source of inspiration, a pastime he would partake in during his time at school. “It felt so freeing to go from an environment that was very studious and serious into such a hedonistic space, '' he said. “I loved that sense of the unpredictable. I loved spending time with people who really didn’t care what others thought of them. As a young child, you’re very aware of what people think of you, and then in your teenage years you start to realize there is power in being as individual as you can possibly be.” 

Since those early collections, Lee has continued to develop a clear point-of-view about what Bottega Veneta means today - a brand that is both luxurious and makes products that are unexpected and utterly desirable. “What Bottega represents is an idea of true luxury that I really don’t feel is so much around right now,” he said shortly after being appointed the label’s creative director. “We speak about quality, a timeless elegance, an almost quiet confidence, which I think is the opposite to all the noise we see around us.”

Lee was born and raised in Bradford, in Northern England, raised by a mechanic father and stay-at-home mother. The oldest of three says, “I didn’t really know that much about fashion. There is no fashion where I’m from,” and remembers himself as an academic, nerdy child. Still, he loved making things, and that led him to Central Saint Martins, in London, and then to internships at storied brands like Maison Margiela and Balenciaga, under the designer Nicolas Ghesquière. 

But before Bottega, his most influential job was at Celine. “The biggest thing I learned? To always push harder and try and make things as best you can. At Celine, we definitely pushed it as far as we could. You know, I’ve had some great mentorships. I’ve worked with some amazing creative directors in the past, and each one has taught me many things. But I think you have to stay true to yourself and work from the gut.”

Bottega Veneta - which in Italian, roughly translates to “venetian shop” - was founded in 1966 and had garnered a reputation as being luxurious, beautiful, but a bit safe - or as Lee has called it, “a sleeping giant.” It has the benefit of its recognizable intrecciato weave, a dedicated customer, a healthy leather goods business, and the long-time dedication of the designer Tomas Maier. With things going well, it’s always a risk to change things up, but Kering, the company that owns Bottega Veneta, brought in Lee with an eye for repositioning the brand with younger consumers. 

It’s definitely worked but Lee insists he’s not big on strategy and more of a designer that works from instinct. “I think over-strategizing can kill creativity,” he said. “You don’t know what’s going to work. And what will work is what’s not already there.” He points to a hit clutch bag that’s puffy and oddly proportioned but spread like wildfire on Instagram. “You look at the Pouch bag: there’s no logo, there’s no shoulder strap, it’s not particularly practical and from any logistical, strategic way of thinking it wouldn’t be a success. But it is. You can’t always put your finger on why that is.”  

That ineffable quality has led to a boost in sales, and accolades from the fashion establishment - in 2019 he won an unprecedented four awards at the British Fashion Awards, including designer and brand of the year. He amassed celebrity followers like the members of the K-Pop band BTS, who allegedly love the brand so much they buy the clothes out of pocket. Rihanna and Kylie Jenner are fans. 

A year in lockdown hasn’t dampened the Bottega Veneta renaissance currently underway, and with the possibility of life post-COVID on the horizon, the luxury brand is poised to remain at the head of the fashion pack. But don’t expect that to mean some big splashy event or show - as Lee has proven, going against the grain can work in your favor. 

“Bottega is a brand that talks about sophisticated elegance,” said Lee. “It’s almost about being quiet. A silence in all the noise. A kind of stillness. For me, life is really all about living in the moment. I don’t have social media. I try and use my cell phone as little as possible. I definitely prefer human interaction.” Human interaction in an age of digital is a radical notion, but Lee is an unexpectedly radical thinker. “Design is also about living in the moment. It’s about working with whatever you have at hand and making the best of a situation.”

Photography Claisse Tom
Art Direction Karina Rikun
Styling Vanessa Giudici
Stylist Assistant Sarah Chervet

Photography Laura Marie Cieplik
Styling Gabriella Norberg
Fashion Dior Men 


With one foot in tradition and one foot in the future, Kris Van Assche has boldly taken Berluti into the 21st century.

By HASSAN AL-SALEH
Photography VALENTIN B. GIACOBETTI

Belgian designer Kris Van Assche, known for his minimalistic aesthetic and luxury urban designs, is a veteran in the fashion industry. A graduate from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, he interned at Yves Saint Laurent where he worked for Hedi Slimane, who he then followed to Dior, before starting his namesake label. As fate would have it, he returned to Dior in 2007 to replace his mentor Slimane at the helm.

After an 11 year tenure at Dior, marked by a balance of heritage and innovation, he was appointed Artistic Director of Berluti, which he succeeded from Haider Ackermann, and before him Alessandro Sartori. Originally founded as a luxury shoe maker in 1895, Van Assche has imbued the heritage brand with a newfound street-cool edge that only a clear-cut contemporary designer can bring, proving that craftsmanship does not apply only to the traditional or the classic.

During his three-year tenure, Van Assche embraced the future with a playful take on the past. He crafted new luxury at Berluti that crossed generations by taking sartorial creations into unexplored territory.

What instinctively attracted you to Berluti?
Luxury is on another level at Berluti. There is a huge sense of craft and tradition, which I aimed to keep but also make more modern and creative. Craft, luxury and creativity can go hand-in-hand, and that has definitely been my leitmotif.

Berluti is of course about leather and patina, and patina means color. This has had a major influence on my work as a designer and never before were my collections this colorful.

Did you discover anything surprising about the brand DNA?
Three years ago, at my arrival at Berluti, patina was used only for shoes and leather goods. I immediately challenged the teams to find ways we could adapt that craft to ready to wear. Not an easy task - a lot of technical issues needed to be solved - but we managed to do it. If the leathers were a little stiff at first, we are now perfectly capable of making soft, fluid patina leathers suitable even for shirts!

It must be incredibly daunting but equally exciting to be working with a maison whose archives are literally pairs of shoes. Talk to us about your creative process.

When I first asked to visit Berluti’s archives - because that’s what we always did at Dior - my assistant’s response was simply to put a shoe on my desk. I quickly saw the liberating aspect of it, the potential it offered us to grow and create something new. 

Historically, Berluti attracted artists from all over the world who would come to Paris and have their shoes made to measure. They were looking for quality, of course, but also for a pair of shoes that stood out. This has been my leitmotif while designing the collections: the right balance within high-end creativity.

How have you transformed the sartorial history of Berluti into a more relevant context?
Berluti is foremost about shoes, leather and patina. So, it is normal for my silhouette to always start with an idea for the shoes. Shoes define the attitude of a silhouette.

After feeling comfortable about the silhouette and finding the right tone for my collections, I introduced a collaboration with LA-based artist Brian Rochefort for Summer 2021 and with contemporary artist Lev Khesin for Winter 2021-2022. His bold use of color offered the new kind of challenges I am always looking for to reinforce the DNA of Berluti.

Collaborations help to challenge the brand’s DNA, to question it and make it stronger. Tradition and craft are great but in order to keep them relevant, I like to kind of ‘clash’ them with contemporary art.

In what ways have you balanced the heritage of the brand with your own personal aesthetic as a designer?
The way I would describe my work is that I have one foot in tradition and one foot in the future. It’s a balance I’ve been fine-tuning and refining since I first got here.

Your use of bold and vibrant colors has been an unexpected yet welcomed addition to your vernacular. Where does that stem from? Anyone who knows me knows that color is quite a new thing for me. It comes from Berluti’s DNA, from the patina.

When you go to the manifattura, you meet these colorists who put the patina onto the shoes, layer after layer. They have an incredible range of shades, and two pairs of shoes are never really identical.

The Berluti man is very different today than he was in the past. Who is he in your perspective?
Whatever his age, he has a youthful spirit, a sense of energy, power and freedom.

Today, the more traditional client and the more adventurous one go hand-in-hand, sometimes even blend. I used to think it was a generation thing, a little like a father and his son. But the truth is, you never really know who will be buying the more creative or the more traditional pieces.

Craftsmanship is a defining quality of Berluti. How have you translated this across your designs and collections?
The use of patina on garments has been key since my arrival at the brand. Our patinated leather suits look like they could come straight from the archives, yet they employ an altogether new technique because the patina as we knew it was not suitable for use on clothes. It took us eight months to develop that specific craftsmanship, because the standards for leather jackets here are beyond anything I’ve seen before.

I have an enormous respect for tradition and craft, but I am also convinced it is my role to reinvent it, to push it into new research, new directions, in order to keep it relevant and interesting; to prepare it for the future. A craft that doesn’t ever evolve will end up disappearing! That is why I have been bringing these creative collaborations. A contemporary artist working color in a similar spirit to the craftsmen at Berluti will give a fresh eye on things and open new doors.

How did the partnership with François Laffanour to revive a collection of Pierre Jeanneret furniture pieces come about? Is this what inspired the creation of a Home and Office Objects collection as a new area of expression?
François Laffanour and I have a long history together. I met him thanks to my passion for 20th century design. I actually thought of this collaboration when I first heard of the offer to join Berluti. The link between the use of color on these design pieces that I love from the ‘50s and Berluti’s patina is easy to see. It made for a strong creative starting point in my head and a bridge to this new heritage that I was not acquainted with.

The Home and Office Objects are an evolution of this first project and in keeping with Berluti’s tradition. The project started out of my desire to collaborate with other makers with a decades-long tradition of craftsmanship.

Women borrowing pieces from a man’s wardrobe has been a narrative you first introduced during your debut show and continues until today. Where did that idea come from?
It’s really a response to a specific market demand. Smaller men’s sizes are often bought by women at Berluti. They’re even the first to sell out. Which makes sense: a perfectly cut suit, perhaps worn with a pair of sneakers, is attractive regardless of gender.

How has the latest introduction of The Essentials collection help you further formulate your vision of Berluti?
The Essentials is a timeless, permanent collection, an edit of modern classics and elevated basics comprising all the must-have pieces that should be in every man’s wardrobe. The idea is for those understated pieces to complement the more creative pieces of the collection.

We have lived through unprecedented times over the last year. Has it changed your views on your role as a designer?
In a way, it has been a total reset for me. For the past 20 years, I’ve had a fashion show every six months! But what I’ve come to realize is that the human side of things, the craft way, the artisanal way, the limited-edition rarity of what we do at Berluti, as a contrast to the relentless pre-pandemic rhythm of the fashion industry, is going to become even more important. In a world where everything is virtual, there is something very special about going back to the magic of the senses, the touch of leather, the look of an exquisite detail.

In what ways do you think you contributed to the legacy of such a venerable maison?
All I aimed for is for luxury to be modern, and for craft to have a future.

Photography MARCO IMPERATORE
Styling EMIL REBEK

Model Luca Lemaire at Hakim Model Management
Hair Stylist Alessandro Squarza at Green Apple
Make Up Giuly Valent at Green Apple 
Photographer Assistants Fabio Firenze, Davide Sartori
Stylist Assistants Alessandro Ferrari, Simone Baggio
Executive Producer Justin Gerbino at PBJ
Producer Ali Kiblawi at PBJ

Valentino Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli is daringly blurring boundaries and fearlessly breaking convention with haute couture for men.

By JON ROTH
Photography ANDRÉ LUCAT

To a certain set of fashion-minded people, the words “haute couture” call up a heady cloud of rarified associations. There are the clients, all wealthy, all women, who think nothing of paying unthinkable sums for the one-of-a-kind pieces they will wear to weddings, to galas, to the opera, or just out to lunch. There is the designer and his white-coated team, moving from studio to fitting room to workroom as they collaborate on the latest creation. And above all there are the gowns: elegant or outrageous, depending on the client and the house, but always exquisitely hand-assembled, cut and sewn to the wearer’s exact tastes and proportions. Gowns that are, unquestionably, works of art.

What happens to haute couture, then, when the gowns go out the window? What happens to couture when it is made for men?

Valentino Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli has showed us exactly what that looks like, debuting a boundary-breaking haute couture collection designed for men and women in equal measure. This is the first time Valentino has offered men’s couture in its almost 60-year history, and one of the only instances of true men’s couture at any house, ever.

Yet Piccioli explained his decision with characteristic understatement, “It’s for the very first time, but couture is for people,” he said. “I don’t care about gendered fashion.”

The designer may downplay his foray into men’s couture, but the fact remains he’s subverting age-old fashion tradition. Haute couture as a designation originated in the mid-1800s with the dressmaker Charles Worth, and any garment claiming the title has to meet an extremely strict set of requirements: they must be fitted to a client’s exact measurements over a series of meetings with the designer and his team, and created entirely by hand at an atelier in Paris. Valentino, which is based in Rome, is a Correspondent member of the exclusive Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture that determines which houses can claim the haute couture title.

Of course, it’s easy for men to procure custom-made clothes. The commonly touted male equivalent to a haute couture gown would be a bespoke, Savile Row suit, which is cut and sewn in an intensive process involving the selection of patterns, fabric, and repeated fittings. But a Savile Row suit, or similar garment from any qualified tailor, is still an entirely different undertaking: more workmanlike, less artistic. It takes a different set of skills, and produces a more uniform product.

But lately, men seem to be tiring of anything too uniform, preferring instead to push at the boundaries of traditionally “masculine” apparel. After a long history of women’s fashion borrowing from the codes of menswear - think tailored suiting, military, and sport-inspired designs - many men are finally taking a survey of women’s closets: adopting softer silhouettes, plush fabrics, and vibrant colors that fall far outside the definition of traditional masculine fashion as we’ve known it for at least the past 200 years.

What’s inspired this new sartorial curiosity? Some might ascribe it to a very slow swing of the pendulum, a reaction to the past two centuries of uniform, dark suiting. Look a little further back in fashion history, say before the Industrial Revolution, and men who could afford it wore clothing at least as brilliant and bright as their feminine counterparts: a parade of colorful silks, gown-like overcoats, and glittering accessories. Centuries later, the desire to peacock may have simply resurfaced. Or perhaps the desire has been there all along, and it’s only today that we’ve felt comfortable expressing it. Each generation pushes the fashion envelope further, but especially today there’s a newfound comfort in blurring the boundaries between gender, and a fearlessness in breaking convention that could come from growing up in a hyper-connected world, where men with a taste for more luxurious styles can see they’re not outliers, but part of a community.

Now Piccioli is catering to that audience, offering clothes that could still be coded traditionally “male”, but constructed with an artful grace and attention to detail that’s usually reserved for female customers. Piccioli said he intended to “reset and re-program in a couture of today that updates classic rituals and processes through garments designed to express oneself, as anyone desires. Women, men: naturally, smoothly.” Titled “Code Temporal,” the central conceit of the collection was about breaking down barriers: between eras, between genders, between the designer, the craftspeople, and the wearer. The result was something of a transformation for Valentino as a fashion house. In tossing aside labels, the collection felt of-the-moment and futuristic, all at once.

With this collection, Piccioli is throwing open the windows on the sometimes airless world of haute couture, inviting innovation and cross-pollination. “I really want Valentino to be a couture house of today,” he said. “To meld couture and street; to do T-shirts and opera coats with the same care.” The designer has noted that his first collection of haute couture for men and women includes more “daywear” than his usual offerings, meaning “casual clothes”. This, too, contributes to the contemporary feel of the collection: more of us are wearing T-shirts than opera coats, these days. Why can’t haute couture evolve along with us?

“My idea is to witness the moment,” Piccioli said. “This is now. This is the future. No gender boundaries. No boundaries at all.” And in our current moment, there’s a real appetite for infusing romance into everyday things.

Having spent 22 years at Valentino, and five years as the brand’s sole Creative Director, Piccioli seems uniquely suited to bring haute couture into new territory. Unbound by restrictive traditions, the designer has an open-minded, easygoing quality. He is famously open to the input of his team, particularly his younger employees, and he pays close attention to where the culture is headed.

“When I observe new generations, I see an incredible strength and assertiveness,” Piccioli said. “They don’t need to specify what they are wearing, they pick up what they like, whether it’s a men’s or a women’s piece.”

Early responses to Valentino’s men’s couture support Piccioli’s observation. The fashion house says there has been an enthusiastic reception from male customers - especially those based in Europe, the United States, and in China - and there are plans to take a couture team across the globe to meet with interested clients. This should come as no surprise: the majority of the garments that fall under the “men’s couture” designation fit within the realm of possibility for even conservative-minded men. Not corsets or skirts, but trousers, shorts and sweaters: traditionally male-coded pieces, now executed with the same artistry and attention that might be lavished on a ball gown. Some men may avoid overly feminine clothes, but few are afraid to avail themselves of the very finest design and craft, provided it fits their tastes and finances.

If Valentino’s first foray into haute couture for men seems to be a success, what does it mean for the future of men’s fashion at large? It’s a difficult question to answer. Ultimately very few people actually purchase couture clothing, but the designs have an outsize impact, both in terms of red carpet visibility, and in the trickle-down effect that comes when couture designs are reimagined at a mass scale. So even if Piccioli’s work here has little practical outlet, it still widens the aperture of possibility for men, injecting a sense of beauty and artistry into a menswear world that often treats utility as the ultimate goal.

This is Piccioli’s proposition for Valentino: to retain the romance of the past while adapting to the demands of the present. He is a designer who can venerate the exquisite workmanship of couture while at the same time acknowledging these pieces will now appear in new situations, and on different bodies, than the originators of haute couture may have imagined. He puts forth a singular vision: that we can be romantic and also practical. Graceful and modern. The duality of Piccioli’s approach makes space for once-transgressive concepts like men’s couture, because he believes the power of the garment lies as much in the creator as the wearer. “The essence of couture is in the intrinsic nature of its execution, and it is something that doesn’t need to have any gender limitation,” he said. “Beauty has no gender, beauty is.”

Rather than codify the feminine and the masculine, Piccioli aims to put the two in conversation. He does this to fulfil his own creative urge, but also answer the needs of a new type of client, and a new generation that defies convention: refusing to don the garments of the past just because that’s what tradition dictates. There is a new fearlessness to how men dress themselves, and the designer is ready to help create clothes for those who know how to embrace beauty.

As Piccioli put it, “There are not two labels, there is just one - couture - and a new generation of people who wear menswear and womenswear with no boundaries.”

Alan Crocetti’s innovative, unexpected designs don’t just chart a new territory for fine jewelry, but for a more fluid, post-gender future that celebrates individuality.

By JON ROTH

How do you pack a manifesto into an earring or a charm? How do you communicate a world view with a bracelet? It’s no easy task, and while designer Alan Crocetti may not claim that all his pieces have a credo, it’s clear there’s a well-founded philosophy behind his fine jewelry line. It’s one thing to come up with the season’s must-have signet ring or statement necklace. Jewelry trends easily: because it’s worn daily, because it’s front-and-center on the head, neck and hands. But in the past five years, Crocetti’s work has bucked trends in favor of a well-defined doctrine: self-presentation is self-preservation.

In fact, it’s built into the brand’s tagline: “Love your vessel, find your armor.”

Crocetti’s given that line quite a bit of thought, and he expounds on it easily. “There’s nothing more empowering to me than a sense of self-awareness and self-love. In my experience, finding our armor helps us to stay in touch with those feelings,” Crocetti says. “That’s how I see jewelry. My pieces ground those feelings in the material, in something we can see and touch. They become true extensions of our bodies.”

There is an element of self-love in the act of adornment, especially if you are adorning yourself with Crocetti’s jewelry: precious gold and silver pieces that range from darkly sexual, to alien, to delicate, to reptilian. But then, unabashed adornment isn’t something many men have felt comfortable with for most of recent history. A watch and a wedding band is one thing. But a silver rose earring with a stem that grazes the wearer’s jawline? A set of silver hoops spiked like spurs? Designs like these - artful, outré, unapologetically decorative - have popped in and out of men’s fashion in decades past, but remain resolutely women’s territory.

Crocetti has no interest in which jewelry ‘belongs’ to which gender. He designs for human bodies, and leaves the definitions to others. “I want people to understand that gender, sex, sexuality and beauty are not static and can be constructed and reshaped,” he says. “It’s time we stop putting humans into boxes constraining the kind of relationships they can or cannot have with each other. I want people to feel free.”

Photography BENOIT AUGUSTE
Styling NICHOLAS GALETTI
Fashion HERMÈS

Model Jeremiah Berko at Supa Model Management
Hair Stylist & Make Up Artist Clément Riesen

The unlikely collaboration between Ermenegildo Zegna and Fear of God connects two separate and distinct worlds on a new harmonious plane of contrasts.

By RADHINA ALMEIDA COUTINHO
Photography HENRY RUGGERI

What happens when two different worlds connect rather than collide? That’s the space Ermenegildo Zegna’s Alessandro Sartori and Jerry Lorenzo of LA-based Fear of God sought to inhabit when they began exploring a collection of easy and accessible menswear that weaves together the DNA of their two distinct brands - one an Italian mainstay with a legacy of over a century of tailored craftmanship, and the other a 21st century LA label that embraces everything that has come to represent the fresh face of America - varsity athleticism, California skater culture and high school garage bands.

The worlds could not appear more distinct, yet the vision appears unusually aligned - to tear down the walls separating formal suiting and laidback loungewear. While Ermenegildo Zegna has, for more than a century, retained its ties to fine wool provenance and meticulously cut and crafted suits, Lorenzo’s Fear of God label has in recent years attracted a cult following among global music and sports icons with its celebration of counter culture and anti-heroes embodied in luxe but comfortably draped and layered styles, repurposed vintage military fabrics, in addition to 80s and 90s British streetwear.

With an emphasis on tactile luxury and a stylistic grammar borrowed from both fine tailoring as well as louche living, the new Fear of God collection exclusively for Ermenegildo Zegna has succeeded in creating a remarkably fresh new sartorial language that treads that elusive line between pulled-together style and relaxed, rakish comfort.

“While our backgrounds are vastly different, the goal was the same and what we are trying to achieve is exceptionality in physical form. Fusing the idea of the new American luxury with the 110 years of heritage of Zegna’s craftsmanship towards tailoring, all accomplished with humility and honesty. I don't want to take credit for making suiting comfortable - other designers have put their approach on suiting before. The difference is that this gap is intrinsically ours and ours only. One of the things that gives you the right to an opinion is when you see things differently, and that was the underlying driving force of this collection: this gap.”

Craig Green’s cerebral designs walk the line between fashion and art and inject soulful poetry into the realities of everyday life.

By MAX BERLINGER
Photography AMY GWATKIN

British designer Craig Green walks a fine line. His work is somehow both, thoroughly grounded in reality and a thought-provoking fantasy. It’s not uncommon for the more extreme examples of his work to look like bubble wrap, or be covered in gravity-defying straps that protrude straight out from the body, or feature hulking wood sculptures that envelop the body like an on-the-go construction site. But no matter what he does, his work demands to be looked at and, more importantly, ruminated on.

Green grew up among craftspeople and builders, and studied fine art in school before venturing into fashion, training at the legendary Central Saint Martins in London, where everyone from Alexander McQueen to John Galliano to Phoebe Philo matriculated. This mix of disciplines shows in his design work, which embraces fashion straight on, but also looks at the possibilities beyond garment-making in the literal sense. The results are, at times, unnerving, confounding, cerebral, and often poetic and elegiac in their beauty and longing for community. Community, in fact, is a central part of Green’s work - an ongoing obsession is uniforms and how they connect people to a sense of belonging. 

Green’s brand is just shy of 10 years and yet its reverberations throughout the menswear scene have been strong. His point of view is truly original, one that exists outside of the current archetypes of streetwear or tailoring, looking instead to elevate common utilitarian garments and imbue them with a sense of romance.

Green is quite humble for a man who perhaps best represents the new guard of British fashion. The designer has mixed feelings about the long-standing debate over art versus fashion and has seen an era of tremendous change over his short but impactful career. “Everything can happen and nothing can happen in the space of three months,” he said. “Which is why it’s an exciting and energetic industry to work in.” And yet his work connects with people on many levels - in the strictly sartorial sense, of course, but on a deeper level. It’s the reason why he’s been able to build a thriving business in a relatively short time, as well as work with fashion behemoths like Adidas and Moncler.  

“I’m not sure I see myself as a fashion designer or an artist. I don’t think it’s art… I guess it is fashion more than art. It’s a hard thing to distinguish. I’ve just always liked to make things. That’s where it comes from. I get as excited about textiles as I do building something as I do making a jacket. That’s why I’ve always had an excitement to do fashion, because it can be all of those things. One week you can be working with a commercial brand, helping interpret their aesthetic, the next week you’re making a jacket from scratch. I’ve always been curious about how things work. I shy away from the idea of being an artist and then I wonder if I’m a fashion designer. So, somewhere in between? Maybe you can be both.”

Designer Kim Jones synthesizes the contemporary zeitgeist with Christian Dior’s venerable legacy to revive the golden age of fashion.

By HASSAN AL-SALEH
Photography MARK LEBON & HUGO SCOTT

British-born designer, art collector and voracious international explorer Kim Jones is one of the most influential figures reshaping modern menswear. Always on the cutting edge, he is a formidable force to be reckoned with not only because of his boundless creativity, but because of his innate ability to tap into the zeitgeist with a profound understanding of the business of fashion.

After a seven-year tenure at Louis Vuitton that reimagined the brand into a major global menswear player and set the benchmark for cross-genre brand collaborations, Jones was appointed to creatively helm Dior Men in 2018. Since then, his deft approach at Dior that mines the illustrious heritage of the house and reinterprets the couturier’s signature design codes - like the Bar Suit for men - has imbued the brand with a renewed sense of relevance, vitality, modernity and desirability. One that harks back to the renaissance of couture with a modern vernacular of a global cultural vision that transcends fashion and style.

While Jones is heralded as a contemporary fashion innovator and one of the world’s most prescient designers of our time for catapulting streetwear into the luxury stratosphere, reinvigorating tailoring and engineering legendary collaborations, one thing he makes very clear is that at Dior, Mr. Christian Dior is and always will be the protagonist.

“I’m interested in what’s happening in modern culture. I’m much more into culture than fashion in terms of the way things reach people, how people like to look at stuff. For me, that’s interesting. Fashion’s really great and I love working with it, but I think nowadays you need a bit more than that. That’s something I look at. I look at people from all over the world.”

Photography MARIANO VIVANCO

Photography MARCELLO ARENA
Styling GIOVANNI BEDA

Talent Jordan Crawford at Fusion Management, Sam Dilkies at Chapter Management, Josh Harriette at Milk Management
Make Up Artist Mattia Andreoli
Hair Stylist Yu Nagamoto
Casting Director Irene Manicone
Photo Assistant Alessandro Biasotto
Stylist Assistant Lucrezia Cuccagna

Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Serhat Isik of the German label GmbH channel their multicultural backgrounds and love of uniforms into progressive and transgressive fashion in a fight for dignity, equality and humanity. 

By MAX BERLINGER
Photography BENJAMIN ALEXANDER HUSEBY

Designers Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Serhat Isik met in a Berlin club through mutual friends and that first encounter sums up much about their clothing brand. Called GmbH, which translates roughly into “financial limited liability” - a generic term that refers to a corporation or business - it takes its cues from Berlin’s ecstatic club and vibrant cultural scene and their tight-knit group of friends which they consider their chosen family. 

The choice to use GmbH as their brand name is a sly one. A quick look at the four-year-old brand’s best-sellers - shiny PVC trousers, harness-inspired tops, second-skin rashguard-style shirts, zippered biker pants - are a far cry from anything that could be called buttoned-up or corporate. Also, it cloaked the brand in a bit of mystique and allowed for the designers to remain anonymous.

Isik, a designer by trade, and Alexander, a fashion photographer, together found a common language that reflects a new, digital generation.The duo draw on their mixed heritage as inspiration: Huseby is Pakistani-Norwegian and Isik is Turkish-German. Additionally, they have an eye on sustainability: many of their fabrics are either recycled or deadstock, to avoid overproduction. They’ve built collections around everything from the symbol of the evil eye, the dying earth, and the primordial goo from which the entire universe grew. Sharp tailoring and slouchy, relaxed sportswear collide in exciting, surprising ways - it’s heady stuff but always made with an eye on the celebratory and sensual. It’s the reason retailers such as Voo Store in Berlin, Ssense in Montreal, and LN-CC in London stock the label and why they were shortlisted for the LVMH Prize in 2018, just two years after launching. 

In other words, GmbH is a brand that perfectly encapsulates this moment. From the way their cultural histories inform their current obsessions to the way they let the energy of their community propel their work forward to the way they freely mix visual references from different subcultures, Huseby and Isik are representatives of a new generation. Together with their brand, they embody the changing nature of beauty, individuality, and freedom in all its forms. 

What were your childhoods like? 

BH: Our childhoods were so different. Serhat grew up in the industrial heartland of West Germany, with a strong immigrant community, while I grew up on the countryside in Norway, surrounded by forests and fields...and always as the only non-white person. 

SI: But still we found so much connecting us, a lot based on having Muslim immigrant parents. The industrial and natural are two really important elements of GmbH. 

Both of you are from mixed descent. Does that inform the way you see the world and how you design? 

SI: Absolutely. We definitely have this appreciation of our parents' homelands, which we try to embrace with our diasporic perspective through GmbH.

BH: It can be historic research into ornaments and symbols, but we also once started a collection by interviewing our mothers about their experiences of racism in Europe.

What’s your first memory of fashion or clothing? 

SI: I remember knitting clothes for stuffed animals at a very young age. My grandparents led a farm life back in Turkey therefore handcrafting is deeply rooted in my memories. From crochet to patchwork, both my grandmas and my mother were great artisans. 

BH: My mum made most of my clothes and I remember this one time she worked on a patchwork vest for so long that I outgrew it before it was ready. My father on the other hand was obsessed with Italian designer clothes.

What made you want to be a fashion designer? 

SI: I was not so drawn to fashion, but more the craft of working and sculpting with textiles and yarns. So, it was the only way I could see myself getting to do exactly that. Still to this day I cut all patterns for GmbH and the crafting aspect is deeply rooted for both myself and Benjamin.

BH: I was really drawn to fashion through photography, music, and club culture - the way I would see it in magazines like i-D and The Face. But even as a child I drew superhero costumes, and I started making my own clothes as a teenager, as I couldn’t find the clothes I wanted for fashion shoots I would do with my friends.

There’s a rumor you two met on the dance floor. Is that true? 

SI: We just met through friends in a club. There’s no special story to it, as some might assume.

How did the idea of a clothing line come up? What made you think that you two would work well together? 

BH: Serhat was already a designer with his own studio. I first shared some ideas he had for a project I wanted help with developing and we just realized our ideas were so similar it made sense to join forces. 

I read part of the reason you named the brand GmbH is to maintain your anonymity. Why is that important to you? 

SI: We didn’t really want the brand to be about us, as we’re not interested in being famous. We wanted it to be about the message and the design. Along the way we saw people were more interested in the message when they could see us, and that we would also speak about our own personal experiences of, for instance, racism. 

BH: So we sacrificed our anonymity to be able to tell our stories. 

Your work takes its cues from the Berlin club scene. What about that scene do you want to express through your clothing? 

BH: It’s not that what we do is directly inspired by the club scene. It would be more correct to say that music and the culture we live in - essentially our lives - is what inspires us. 

SI: It just so happens that club culture is part of that. 

What do you hope people take away from seeing your clothing? What do you want people to feel when they wear your clothing? 

SI: We want our clothes to empower and protect. 

To my eye, your collections are becoming more elegant and mature - less club, more sophisticated tailoring. Is that on purpose? How has the direction of the brand evolved over the years? 

SI: We don’t really think in those terms. Our work progresses organically. It’s not a strategy. 

Taking uniforms and reworking them in surprising, subversive ways is a common theme in your work. Can you tell me a bit more about that? 

BH: We like the subversive codes of dressing, often seen in archetypes or uniforms. Fashion is essentially about obsessions and fetishes, why else would people be so excited about clothes?

Do you think your clothing has any political message especially in today’s charged climate? 

BH: Clothes have always been political, and used both to suppress and revolt. Think of the first women wearing trousers, which was once seen as revolutionary.

SI: Especially women’s bodies have been politicized through what they wear, whether it’s for control or freedom.

What’s the hardest thing about what you do? What’s the most rewarding part?

BH: The hardest part of doing this is the lack of time. 

SI: The most rewarding part is when people feel sexy wearing our clothes. 

The idea of family comes up a lot for you. Why do you think the ideas of “choosing your family” or “choosing your tribe” are important to you? 

SI: We know many people who have had to leave their communities, and sometimes even their families, to find like-minded people. Or because they have been ostracized for who they are. So, we get to choose our families, or even have an ‘extra’ family in addition to our birth families. GmbH is that.

Tell me about your use of deadstock fabrics. Why did you decide to use them and what do they represent? 

BH: When we started it was purely pragmatic, as we could not afford producing new materials. But it quickly became clear to us that using materials that already exist is a less wasteful way to work.

You've said that “GmbH clothes are not just made for dancing; they are also designed for a fight”. What are you fighting for? 

SI: Dignity, equality and humanity.

What has been the biggest challenge in running the business during the pandemic and quarantine?

BH: The biggest challenge is that there is so much uncertainty, none of us really know how long this will last.

SI: They’ve been some intense months, but for the moment we feel we have come out of it, with a much clearer purpose and vision.

Have you had any realizations during this time? Did it make you think differently about your approach to clothing? 

SI: Maybe not with clothes, exactly, but more with the industry. We realized we can do anything the way we want it, and not to listen to what people tell us is right or wrong.

Looking forward, what do you want GmbH to stand for? What do you want people to think of when they think of the brand?

BH: We see GmbH as being more than just fashion - it’s a platform where ideas around music, art, culture, politics and yes, fashion come together. It’s where they meet to help progress, social reform and equality.

Photography LUIS SANCHIS
Styling JOANNE BLADES

Models Dominik Sadoch at Soul Artist Management, Amelia Rami at Heroes Models, Samuel Londe at New York Model Management
Hair Stylist Brent Lawler at Lowe & Co
Make Up Artist Souhi at Lowe & Co
Manicurist Dawn Sterling at Statement Artists
Set Designer Colin Lytton at The Industry Management
Digital Tech Liz Mooney
Photo Assistant Addison Wemyss
Stylist Assistant Tawnee Clifton
Set Assistant Blas Bruce

All paths lead to a new whole for Salvatore Ferragamo’s Creative Director, Paul Andrew.

By RADHINA COUTINHO
Photography JACK DAVISON

Paul Andrew is a master at convergence. Whether it’s reconciling archival design with contemporary aesthetics, borrowing the functional form of accessory design to re-imagine garment construction, or marrying the vastly contrasting identities of the fashion world’s increasingly global customer, Andrew seems adept at confidently taking it in his stride.

His beginnings in footwear design have shaped his self-coined ‘toe-to-head’ approach - a defining link between Ferragamo’s legendary founder Salvatore and Andrew’ own beginnings as a footwear designer for Narciso Rodriguez, Alexander McQueen, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan before starting his own eponymous shoe line in 2012.

Known for its innovative approach to both design and use of unusual materials of construction such as strips of rainbow-hued suede and leather uppers made to resemble fish scales, the house of Ferragamo under the stewardship of founder Salvatore, wrote its name permanently into the annals of 20th century footwear history with the creation of iconic designs such as the cork wedge and the cage heel and a little black book of the brightest stars of Hollywood’s golden age, including Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn and Greta Garbo. Over the decades, as the Italian fashion house’s horizons expanded to include luxury leather goods, eyewear, accessories, watches, perfumes and ready-to-wear collections for both men and women, Ferragamo has had to simultaneously expand its creative and inspirational repertoire – often revisiting its early utilitarian forays and always celebrating its effusive love of color.

The results have been overwhelmingly successful, bar a few recent chequered patches during a period marked by a series of creative appointments at the helm just before Andrew appearance on the scene.

Perhaps it’s serendipity that Andrew arrived at Ferragamo at a point in time when the classic Italian fashion house began exploring a new aesthetic direction. From Design Director of Women’s Footwear at Ferragamo in 2016, to Design Director of Women’s Ready-to-Wear in 2017 and the brand’s Creative Director since February 2019, Andrew seems determined to lead the brand down reassuringly familiar - yet decidedly fresh - paths.

Menswear has taken a clear turn down the path of streetwear and sportswear in the past decade. You have expressed quite decisively that this isn’t your vision of luxury. How do you translate a refined elegance to a growing preference for a more relaxed luxury aesthetic?

What’s interesting is that the two paths converge like the tributaries of a river. One of those tributaries stems from what Salvatore Ferragamo is all about: exactly as you say - it’s a feeling of refinement and elegance as well as craft, heritage, culture and quality. The other tributary you could describe as “streetwear” - although it’s an inadequate term I think, and a bit problematic - that is clothes worn on the street that come from a tradition of sportswear and which are often made of synthetic materials. Absolutely decisively - again as you say - that is not my vision of luxury.

However, that does not mean what we design and craft is not “relaxed”, in fact the opposite is true. For example, one of my favorite pieces in the Spring-Summer 2020 collection is a hoodie. It’s unlike any other hoodie you can buy in that its cut in ultra-light and ultra-soft nappa leather in this amazing burnt orange color. It’s a zip up in fact, with a drawstring detail at the collar based on an archival military piece that makes it a really utilitarian protective garment. So it's relaxed, refined, luxurious… and rugged too. It will last you for life, and probably be cherished by your son too. And what we are seeing increasingly is that guys who have become engaged with fashion through the rise of so-called “streetwear” are increasingly growing to appreciate depth as well as surface. Ferragamo is about surface, however we are also about depth. And the reason I don’t think “streetwear” is an adequate term is that for me Salvatore Ferragamo is very much streetwear too! We have been producing streetwear for decades - our kind of streetwear.

You have moved away from a highly visible usage of the logo to favor the clothes themselves showcasing the Ferragamo identity. What is the essence of the Ferragamo look for you today?

This goes back to the relation of surface and depth, really - having a holistic approach to qualities and aesthetics based on the idea that a “look” is partially defined by a “feel” on behalf of the wearer. Personally I’m a 90s kid, so I’m naturally drawn to a clean minimalism because that’s the context in which my own aesthetic was formed. I’m also very serious about the clothes being functionally appealing to inhabit. That’s probably because my own path is rooted in shoe design, and making sure your design is comfortable is the first non-negotiable quality every shoe must have. In terms of logos, we prefer not to use them too much. For me a big logo is the equivalent of wearing a name card at a big function: it is soulless. But we do use the gancino hardware, a hook based on a real piece of ironwork in our home palazzo in Florence, as a more subtle punctuation mark.

You have been tasked with cultivating a new generation of Ferragamo customer. Who do you think this is?

We exclude nobody and welcome everybody. What we do is offer the best expression of the qualities of excellence and refinement that we can create each season, using all the resources and expertise our artisans possess to create remarkable and unique shoes, belts, bags and of course, garments. The upshot is that we are simultaneously inclusive in our philosophy and exclusive in the quality of our products.

Fashion today is no longer dominated by the aesthetic of the classic Italian or European legacy houses. It’s overwhelmingly global. How do you respond to this greater diversity - evident in everything from the age and generation of your customers, to their race, culture, lifestyle and gender identity?

I totally agree with you about the global nature of the fashion aesthetic and audience, and the diversity contained in that audience, and I think it’s great. When building our collections I think in terms of a “patchwork of characters” - both in the audience we are designing for and in the diversity of our references and sources. Our starting point is always Florence and our own identity, and our intention - our destination - is always to reflect the world and appeal to the world. One rather wonderful thing about being at a house where the core original product is shoes is that we all wear shoes! Shoes are a point of human connection in a world teeming with individuals of every creed, culture, and orientation - so this allows us to express our inclusive exclusivity.

You’ve developed a reputation for breathing new life into Ferragamo’s legacy of using a palette of richly evocative colors. How important is color in helping your customers connect with the soul of the Ferragamo brand?

Color is a powerful and enriching evocative consideration for every design. Sometimes color can be as much about not saying something as it is about saying it - I love the cool restraint and confidence of white and black. And then sometimes color helps you embody a different kind of confidence, like the burnt orange of that hoodie I mentioned earlier - that articulates both a total self-possession and a sense of joy. Everywhere I go, from New York to New Mexico, from the Middle East to the middle of the Italian countryside brings me inspiration in this regard.

How does your own “toe-to-head” approach connect to the brand’s own beginnings in luxury shoemaking?

The story of Salvatore Ferragamo the man is incredible - he was to footwear what Steve Jobs was to computing. He grew up in very poor circumstances in the South of Italy and began making shoes before the age of ten as an apprentice to a village shoemaker. It quickly became apparent he had an almost freakish talent and an extraordinary eye. He went to Naples, then New York and eventually Hollywood where he set up a business providing shoes to movie productions and movie stars. He invented the wedge shoe, developed his own sizing and fitting techniques, and filed literally hundreds of patents for his inventions. Then he decided to return to Italy and came to Florence, where he purchased a building and started building what would become Salvatore Ferragamo the house. So to be part of a story that starts with him is a real honor - and it speaks to my own vocation as a shoe designer of course. The “toe-to-head” approach is a way of reminding ourselves that everything at Salvatore Ferragamo begins with the shoe, but that we also consider every aspect of our customers’ needs.

Do you think a deep background in luxury accessories shapes your vision for ready-to-wear? Does it confer any advantages on you and other designers who have a similar career trajectory over those who evolve purely within a tradition of garment design?

I work with an excellent team and we have ready-to-wear specialists who have a deep, deep knowledge of garment design - which is vitally important, obviously! As per the “toe-to-head” philosophy, our garments and other accessories are created to harmoniously reflect and connect with the footwear. I don’t think coming from a background in footwear and accessories creates an advantage - it’s simply a different perspective.

How does Ferragamo’s historic commitment to innovative materials and craftsmanship techniques translate into today’s collections?

We have a huge workforce of craftsmen and craftswomen who make our products here in Italy. Some of them are knitters or specialist crochet makers who work from their homes in the hills, while others are specialist shoemakers who come to our factories and workshops. They are all part of the culture of this company and they all possess knowledge and skills that have been handed down to them and which they will hand down to others. The leathers, fabrics, cork and other materials that they shape by hand into products are always of the highest quality, and we are constantly researching both new materials and also the refinement and improvement of the materials in which we are specialists.

You’ve expressed a desire to move towards a more sustainably-inclined model of production at Ferragamo. How do you reconcile what is essentially an extravagant industry with the concerns of a more environmentally-conscious customer?

What I would say to an environmentally-conscious customer is that our leathers are by-products and if you choose to walk every day in the same pair of shoes and thus reduce your consumption and impact, then a pair of Salvatore Ferragamo oxfords, say, or combat boots will absolutely last a lifetime, at least via several resolings. Also, we are increasingly using up-cycled leathers - for instance in the woven bags and shoes for Fall-Winter 2020.

How do you connect the classic heritage of Ferragamo’s Florentine roots to the more edgy and international influences in your own career from Alexander McQueen to Calvin Klein and Donna Karen?

Lee McQueen, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan expressed their invention through the re-invention and re-contextualisation of classical influences - whether in sportswear or Savile Row tailoring or mid-century French couture. Ferragamo is in the pantheon of classic fashion, as you say. He invented so much. Here my opportunity is to take what I’ve learned from the designers I’ve worked under and apply and adapt their mindsets to mine, as I work to service and further the house of Salvatore Ferragamo. Everything connects.

Ferragamo has a very deep archive of creative ideas and innovative approaches. Where will the Ferragamo of the future look for inspiration? Where do you look for it personally?

Personally, I think you have to look at the world around you, consider your role in it, and do your best to improve the world through your actions. I think the Ferragamo of the future will strive to invent new ways of expressing its heritage, culture and history in a manner that reflects the world and all the changes in the world.

What your customers think about, value and cherish would have seen dramatic shifts with the events of the past few months and what are likely to be several more months of unimagined change. How will this have an impact of your view of the world and Ferragamo's place in it?

We have all had time to reflect, worry, hope and wonder at the effects of COVID-19 - which has set off an astonishing domino effect of events that previously seemed impossible - almost daily. The last few months feel like they've contained a decade's worth of history! And while they have been totally turbulent, they have not been totally terrible - the lesson I've taken from managing rapid change that’s beyond my control is that there can be further rapid change we do control.

Many are predicting the death of consumerism and globalization as we know it and the return of hyperpolarization and the value of simple pleasures. Do you think what the world - especially countries like Italy - has experienced in the past few months will really change the way people live? How will it change the way you do business as a company?

I think that we are going to see different groups react in different ways, but am sure that overall, the new Twenties are going to be a decade of sweeping changes. I think some will hold simpler and serious values close to their hearts, while others will return to joyfulness and frivolity just as soon as they get the chance! One thing that won't change is the diversity of humanity. I think we have to strive as a company to a sustainability that is both social and environmental.

How have you personally sought to stay connected with what you value and what inspires you during the past few months and how have you maintained Ferragamo's connectivity with the soul of your customers?

When I was in isolation, it was a solitary confinement here in Florence. Apart from work, I used the time to research art, read fiction, work out a lot and expand my cooking abilities - it was a routine designed to feed me, body and soul! That time of looking inwards made me determined to value the world and people around me even more once we are free to connect again. I think that resolution is pretty universal, and I plan to reflect it through what we do here at Ferragamo.

How do you tap into the soul of your customers today - what they think about, celebrate, lust after or mourn? How does this translate into your creative vision for Ferragamo?

Design is all about providing answers to questions that come from the soul and I think now people are thinking about community, identity, their place in the world and their philosophy of action. I think that philosophy is increasingly going to be about the pursuit of excellence and responsibility as a marker of quality and as a path to happiness and fulfilment. Salvatore Ferragamo is a family company and I think expanding the dynamics of the family - a network of individuals unified by their love and respect and support for each other - is going to be an answer to some of our questions. We can make things better - and make better things - together.

Photography SERGE LEBLON
Styling MICHAEL MARSON
Fashion LOUIS VUITTON

Models Joshua Bering and Mats Vandenbosch at Unit Model Management, Banko at Rebel Management
Make Up Artist Jenneke Croubels
Hair Stylist Ed Moelands
Set Designer Justine Verplanck
Casting Director Willian Lhoest at WL Casting
Photo Assistant Nicolas Kengen

Bruno Sialelli’s youthful energy is ushering in a contemporary new era at the oldest and longest-running French couture house Lanvin.

By HASSAN AL-SALEH

Bruno Sialelli may be yet a relatively unknown designer, but what is for certain is that he has taken the haute Parisian house of Lanvin in a pivotal new direction with his singular and very personal vision. The French designer was appointed as Creative Director in 2019 after stints at Balenciaga, Acne Studios, Paco Rabanne and most recently Loewe. 

The son of a French father and a Tunisian mother, Sialelli grew up between the South of France and Morocco and started his humble beginnings as an apprentice in the costume department of Opéra de Marseille before moving to Paris and enrolling in fashion design school. Today, the designer is tasked with reinvigorating the storied house of Lanvin and propelling the brand to new frontiers - while honoring its 130-year-old legacy.

He does not appear phased by the pressure. His approach, while reverential and intuitive, is youthful and playful - creating a modern vernacular that speaks to a new generation.

You've had a multifaceted fashion schooling, first interning at Opéra de Marseille and then working for a number of statement brands. Talk to us about your journey.

I sort of instinctively always knew that I would work in or for fashion, even if I did not have a clear sense of the notion of fashion as I see and do it today. I don’t come from a proper fashion background, but I was surrounded by it in some ways all of my life through my family. I understood the purpose of it before learning the application of it. Each step of my career, starting with the apprenticeship in Marseille, is key to me. It is an on-going learning process, from the things I do, to the people I work with. My entire process if based on empiricism and interaction.

Reinventing a historic house such as Lanvin is an overwhelming and mammoth task. In what ways are you connecting your own vision of the brand’s future with its past?

First, it comes with an immense respect for this unique legacy. Then, I am interested in the genesis of it, and the people behind it. It is mandatory to understand why and how it came to life. It gives me some roots on which to build and project my own vision. I truly feel that I started a dialogue with Jeanne Lanvin as I deeply understand what she did. Then, my role is to “talk” with my own language, in my own context, my age, my time, my references. I process what I see and feel from the 130 years of archives to project it into today - through my own filters and my understanding of my time.

The Lanvin of today is different from the Lanvin of Alber Elbaz and Lucas Ossendrijver and most certainly of the stately couture of Jeanne Lanvin. How are you defining the brand’s new identity?

I do respect every step of Lanvin’s history, from Jeanne to Alber. So many talented designers worked for this house and each of them brought something to it in their own way. My mission is to put Lanvin back where it should be today as one of the greatest French fashion houses. Jeanne Lanvin was so prolific and smart on how to brand its name that I decided to list what I feel are the key elements, the key references, the key images and archive elements. Then, I am bringing my vision and my projection as a creative in today’s world. It is being rational on one hand, to create a clear system of references, and intuitive on the other hand, to let my inspirations take its space within my own universe.

Your work is closely connected to your childhood and things that you have a close affinity with. How do you honor the brand’s legacy and heritage in a way that resonates with your own artistic expression? Where does your kooky personality come into play?

My dialogue with Jeanne Lanvin is a real dialogue. It is the meeting of two personalities in two different contexts. Jeanne defined the pillars from which I am projecting my vision, both rationally and intuitively. I am not so interested in childhood for what it is but, mainly, for what it allows. Childhood is made of fantasies, some kind of poetry and stories, peopled by characters. All those characters are numerous, from comic strips, to movies, to music, to real life heroes. Also, I am interested in childhood as it resonates when you grow up and become an adult. I was lucky enough to be born in between two eras, in the late 80s. So, as a kid, I grew up without digital being a part of my daily life. I had time to let my spirit escape, to be bored, to create stories based on the characters surrounding me. This comes naturally to me until today, even if digital is now everywhere in my life. Childhood was also what brought Jeanne to create Lanvin as we know it, from the love of her own daughter Marguerite, from her fascination for this child and her childhood to which Jeanne wanted to be part of to the point where the most iconic emblem of Lanvin is the “mother and daughter” logo that we still use today.

What has been your approach to building a new era at Lanvin and how will you be taking it forward? Are you a proponent of evolutions or revolutions?

My approach is to be able, at once, to rationally dig into the archives and the deep history of the house to define what I feel are the key references, and to let my instinct bring my own vision and projection. Also, I feel that my main duty is to maintain Lanvin, making it alive and relevant in today’s époque and to pass over the reins when the time will come - I hope in a long, long time! I am proud to write a new chapter for this amazing storied house. So, I would really focus on evolution in the way we work, how we do and create things, to adapt to today’s world. Rather than revolution, Lanvin is a house of proposition.

In what ways are you bringing back Jeanne Lanvin’s enterprising, forward-looking vision?

There is not much we know about Jeanne Lanvin as she was very discreet and never really placed herself in the front line of media and social exercises. However, we clearly know that she was a real entrepreneur. Being a woman, that young, to build her own company, coming from a modest family, shows that she had the energy and the intelligence for it. She created what the fashion system is today: a strong name from which we build an entire lifestyle - somehow, she used marketing way in advance. As Jeanne Lanvin became a reference, both in style and as a company, she extended her business - launching perfumes, sportswear, decoration, hats, kidswear and so on. She also had the biggest ateliers at the time and applied a lot of social advancements in human resources. Today, we still have - more than ever - the entrepreneurial spirit, looking for innovative ideas, questioning processes, finding new solutions. It is our duty to re-think the way we are working while keeping what’s working. I feel that, as part of my generation, it is my duty to redefine things - not only in my professional life, but also in my personal life.

One of the positive outcomes of this pandemic is that it has forced many of us to self-reflect during quarantine. Has it made you re-think your role as a designer in a wider context?

My hope is the ability for my generation to make things change or, at least, to stand for it. I understand my role and my responsibilities in both my professional and personal lives. Not only through the pandemic, but mainly through the awareness of our society’s challenges, I can use my voice and my work to make things evolve in the right direction. It is not about being political but being connected to the world we live in and to the world we want the next generations to live in. Coming from where I come from, I grew up looking at things, whether positive or negative, and to give them a sense. Being in my position today, I know now that I have a forum to express my views directly or indirectly, and I acknowledge the responsibility that comes with it.

Do you think the crisis will fix the fashion system and change fashion for the better?

Partly, yes. I guess some questions - notably diversity and sustainability - are now at the center of everyone’s attention. Also, these changes come with a change of generation within the industry. Younger designers, younger CEOs, younger people at executive jobs…being young is not the answer to everything, it just shows that references are no longer the same and that a new paradigm is under construction. I feel very humble as I do not have all the answers, nobody does, but we are moving collectively in the same direction with the same purpose: making this world a better place.

What are you looking forward to in the future for both yourself and for Lanvin?

First of all, to continue to be surrounded by people I love living and working with. I do feel really lucky to be in such a position today. Then, I wish Lanvin will become again one of the main references of French fashion. This name, this legacy, deserves to be understood for what it really is and represents.

Photography LAURA MARIE CIEPLIK
Styling GABRIELLA NORBERG
Fashion FENDI

Model Paul Boche at Bananas Models
Hair Stylist Quentin Guyen at Bryant Artists
1st Photo Assistant Cyril Chateau
2nd Photo Assistant Maud Ralliere
Fashion Assistant Kenza Hamdi

Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli brings us together when we’ve never been further apart.

By LAURA BOLT

Nothing has gone as planned this year. As we all grappled with isolation and anxiety, learned what it means to live in the time of a pandemic, and saw the dawn of a new era of social justice, it’s only natural that we began to ask ourselves questions about the nature of fashion and our relationship to it. Now, we wear masks to protect ourselves, and others, as a guard against an invisible threat. This time last year, the clothing we wore to leave the house functioned as a mask of a different kind - showing others who we are and who we want to be, displaying everything from power, to cultural heritage, to artistic loyalty. Fashion initiated conversations and told stories without ever exchanging a word. In 2020, the act of getting dressed is driven by a new sense of practicality, but some people have found these new constrictions to be a powerful tool for self-reflection. Who are you when no one is there to see? How do you want to look if you aren’t defined by an office, a party, or a catwalk? What do you want to wear to find a sense of comfort and peace in a world that is harder and harder to recognize? As we start to shift our ideas of who we are and what we need, we might find that some things we took for granted are no longer available to us - but maybe that’s a positive thing. 

As time goes on as we settle into a new normal, we look for ways to translate our old skills and ideas about the world into its current incarnation, one which we’ve never seen before. Fashion is no exception. What is the role of design now? Has our perspective and our idea of what’s important shifted beyond fashion? 

These are all questions that Pierpaolo Piccioli has been thinking about during these unprecedented times. The Creative Director of Valentino has shifted his focus to empathy centered design that highlights our humanity and how fashion can connect us during this unfathomable time of social distancing. Reflecting on how his mindset has shifted this year, Piccioli says, “I feel the responsibility of transmitting my idea of the world through an aesthetic code, the only one I have. Now more than ever, we designers should rethink our priorities and make this critical reflection immediately active. Less numbers, more value to human creativity and emotions.”

For Piccioli, the role of empathy in fashion is more important than ever. “Empathy means being able to perceive other people’s feelings and acting consequentially. This leads to respect, solidarity, sharing of ideas. I cannot imagine anything more positive than this,” he says. “We should stop looking at our small single realities as divided from others which are apparently far from us. The pandemic in itself has proved a universality of the human experience we should all recognize. Sharing a common purpose makes this purpose more achievable, we are not islands.”

Of course, empathy has always been an important part of the designer’s toolkit. While pure artistic inspiration is always a driving force, understanding how and why people dress is the key to creating collections that strike a chord and become part of people’s lives in a considerable way. Generally speaking, designers don’t produce their work in a vacuum, but instead as part of a symbiotic relationship with their customers. There have been few times in history when so many people across the globe are experiencing the same fears and challenges - certainly we can use this common jumping off point to find a greater level of understanding and compassion for others. 

As we navigate the realities of social distancing, we, like Piccioli, can begin to see design as a tool for connection. Design gives us a common language to work from, and serves as a connective fiber of discussion, reference, and inspiration. Fashion can spark and foster conversation, and help remind us of a larger sense of togetherness.

Just because we’re re-evaluating our priorities doesn’t mean that fashion has gone by the wayside. Instead, this global pandemic has given us the opportunity to use our clothes to display values that clothes had no way to express before. Wearing a mask in public shows empathy and respect for others, characteristics that deserve to be as contagious as the virus. Dressing for yourself has power - it’s one small thing you can control in an ever-changing world. It can connect you to who you were before, and redefine who you would like to be when the world finds its way back to normal eventually. 

In other words, it’s time to get back to the basics. The old adage that “necessity is the mother of invention” rings especially true this year. “The pandemic has not changed my creative process in itself, but it surely reinforced the centrality of human resources, since the technical ones were necessarily limited in terms of production,” says Piccioli. “This has brought me back to a more romantic idea of designing. I drew a lot, enjoyed a special kind of concentration which had been hard to achieve in during the last years, and reconciled myself with my natural habitat in any possible way.” Whether it’s clothing, family, or culturally, connecting to your roots can be a powerful way to stay grounded during unstable times. 

Going back to the basics can be a blessing in fashion, reminding designers and consumers of the origins of the brands they love. One potential silver lining is the chance to re-evaluate some of the practices that held the industry back. The system of producing items in a collection and then manufacturing them for a retail selling months later now seems outdated and irresponsible - especially in an industry that has been known to overproduce by as much as 40% each season. As consumers become more thoughtful and economically conservative, fast fashion and traditional collections need to evolve with the times. In an age where time, resources, and manufacturing are limited, we see an opportunity to really listen to what people want and how to produce those items in a more effective and responsible way.

Limited options also mean finding new solutions when it comes to creating other aspects of fashion. We’ve already seen examples of artists, models, and influencers creating content in collaboration with brands from their own homes, imbuing them with a sense of individuality and unexpected perspectives. Instead of a limiting force, it can be a testament to how connection and collaboration can rise above circumstances, showing that we can still find ways to come together to create beauty in the world. Piccioli explains, “Some processes which were already active in my mind were indeed boosted and intensified by the pandemic experience. It was a confirmation more than a revelation and it strengthened my self-consciousness about what is really important to me: people. During this hard time our main obstacle has been the lack of human contact, but we managed to overcome it pretty well by keeping our everyday interaction active and more fruitful than ever. Once again, I realized the power of creativity.”

Creativity has taken on a new meaning where new constrictions provide unexpected opportunities to create. Inspiration can be found in the most unexpected places - and it often has to be. Designers are being given a chance to solve new problems and answer different questions than they’ve been faced with before. What kind of design cultivates the perfect harmony between finding comfort in a new atmosphere, while also inspiring hope and confidence? And finally, how does design need to function to match form and function for safety?

When we don’t have answers about the present or the future, it opens up an infinite canvas on which to imagine the future. With a pandemic forcing us to focus on our ideal priorities and a resurgence of social justice, we can look through the cracks of chaos to see the light of change. When it comes to the potential of design to influence positive change, Piccioli finds a sense of hope and optimism, saying “I confide in a more inclusive society with equal opportunities for everyone. The communities that have resisted through time and space should be enhanced and encouraged, enlarged and enriched. I am confident the Valentino community will be one of them.”

When you start from a point of empathy in design, you can imagine connections that weren’t possible before, and designers, artists, and brands can help outfit a different kind of tomorrow and continue to be part of important conversations that change and define our relationships with each other and the world around us. Seeing fashion as a tool for change is a valuable way for the industry to find their footing again and be part of the landscape of the future. Piccioli answers this design dilemma “by dreaming bigger than ever. The dialogue between rationality and fantasy gives interesting results only if continuously challenged. From my point of view this uncertainty, although caused by an incredibly traumatic event, may also become a good friend of ours.”

We can’t control change, but we can control our reaction to it. What would happen if we met fear with compassion, uncertainty with hope, and destruction with art? What does a future that’s built on compassion look like? If we can follow Valentino’s lead and ask those questions from a place of empathy, the answers might be exactly what we need. 

Photography JOSS MCKINLEY
Set Design LYDIA CHAN

Model Jose Luis at Next Models
Hair Stylist Marcia Lee at One Represents
1st Photo Assistant Garth McKee
2nd Photo Assistant Martins Melecis
Set Assistant Evelyn Tsang

With his dedication to craftsmanship, his spare aesthetic and above all his eye for unapologetic sensuality, Ludovic de Saint Sernin is sparking a sexual revolution in menswear.

By JON ROTH

The way men dress is changing. It’s trickling down from runways and red carpets, and it’s bubbling up from a new generation of fashion-conscious men on the street. It’s not a question of streetwear-versus-tailoring, and it’s not the evolution of some new silhouette. It’s bigger than that. 

For the first time in a long time, menswear is sexy. And not just sexy - sensual. 

You see it in the sheer harem pants and off-the-shoulder tops at Saint Laurent, and in the reimagined Louis Vuitton harnesses. Suddenly, men are considering clothes that invite appraisal, that venerate the body, that provoke desire. At the vanguard of the movement is a relative upstart. His name is Ludovic de Saint Sernin, and he’s drawing the blueprint for a new age of sexiness.

In the three years since founding his eponymous label, Saint Sernin has earned his fandom by reintroducing a stripped-down sensuality that feeds the intellect of the fashion critics and the eros of his customers. His carefully crafted looks are not ostentatious, overdone, or try-hard. They spring to life only on the bodies of his muses, who show us that a tube top, for instance, on a broad-shouldered torso, somehow becomes something new and strange and appealing. In an era steeped in over-the-top maximalism, he reminds us that minimalism can be sexy, and sexy can be elegant - and that gender is really just a game we’ve all agreed to play.

Even today, it’s a gamble to stake your business on making men the objects of desire. To do it the way that Saint Sernin does - with clothes that are often soft, fragile and feminine - is riskier still. But it’s served him well so far. He’s already an ANDAM Award winner and an LVMH Prize finalist, and was recently inducted to Business of Fashion’s BoF 500. He’s collaborated with Swarovski and Sunspel, and his clothes have appeared on boundary-pushing artists like Casey Fischer and Solange Knowles. All those endorsements, plus his legions of fans of both genders, suggest Saint Sernin’s gamble is paying off. 

Born with a name that’s already legendary, Stella McCartney’s brave fashion choices define a legacy of her own.

BY RADHINA ALMEIDA COUTINHO

For decades, the name McCartney has been synonymous with one person.

So it must be strange for his daughter to realise there’s a whole generation today who know Sir Paul McCartney not as one of the legendary Beatles, but as the father of Stella McCartney.

The original poster child of sustainable fashion, Stella McCartney stepped out of her famous parents’ shadow many years ago, but not before taking a leaf out of their activist book. Stella took what could have been a commercially punishing stand and refused to work with leather, fur, glue and other animal products right from the very start, before fashion labels began wearing their new-found social consciences on their sleeves. Many deemed it career suicide in an industry where skin has always been in.

Stella vocally maintains leather is one of the “worst offenders” in terms of carbon emissions and environmentally degrading agricultural practices – this is apart from the obvious aspect of animal cruelty. It’s a stance that has led her to constantly look for fashion-forward alternatives. Fake fur made from corn, silk made from yeast and leather made from mushroom roots are some of the truly revolutionary materials that have found favour within McCartney’s supply chain.

The fashion industry’s sins are many and mounting. Fast fashion is believed to be the second most polluting industry in the world – contaminating water, causing living creatures to injest microplastics and carcinogens, and filling landfills with mountains of non-biodegradable waste. Taking on the task of changing an industry could be seen as daunting or even defeatist. But McCartney remains practical not preachy, admitting her company is not perfect. She is striving instead to set an example that she hopes other fashion brands will follow.

For years she has focused not just on reducing the environmental impact of her business, but on operating it in a way that actively drives positive change. Stella employs a sustainability and innovations team that works hard to embrace regenerative agricultural practices and fight carbon emissions from within the entire supply chain.

She is also leading the conversation within luxury circles on looking at the full lifecycle of a fashion product. She regularly talks about the value of vintage, upcycled and recycled materials – considered anathema for a long time within luxury fashion. 

Her motto? People should purchase luxury items as investment pieces rather than trendy acquisitions meant to be used just for a season. 

“I would really love is for Stella McCartney to be a zero-impact brand, which we are working towards. I want to lead by example, and in order for that to happen, the core of it is design and how we communicate what we do and our message to the rest of the world.”

PHOTOGRAPHY EMMA DALZELL-KHAN
STYLING TONY COOK 

Riccardo Tisci’s playful and subversive eye gives new life to England’s most cherished heritage brand, Burberry. 

BY MAX BERLINGER
PHOTOGRAPHY STELLA ASIA CONSONNI
STYLING THOMAS LIAM DAVIS

For an industry obsessed with the future, fashion can’t help but get caught up in the past. Brands that cast the longest shadows - those with the most formidable legacies - are often the ones with the most respect, not to mention the biggest profit margins. And yet there’s always a new generation of les enfants terribles ready to dismantle what came before them, to tear it all down, rip it apart and then lovingly rebuild it with an eye for contemporary tastes.  

Few people are better at this task than Riccardo Tisci, the Italian fashion designer who previously reinvented the French label Givenchy, using the brand’s rich legacy as a foundation to bring haute streetwear to the luxury sector. His graphic T-shirts, nods to athleisure, and embrace of sportswear in the high-end world were revolutionary. Some people clutched their pearls and tsk-tsked such a movement, but many others - mostly young people - discovered that the posh label suddenly spoke to them in a language they understood innately.

Now he’s Chief Creative Officer of the sprawling heritage brand Burberry. Since taking the reins, he’s been looking at the label, synonymous to many with British fashion, and reimagining it for the digital age.

“Both professionally and personally I also hope people would remember me for being a champion of inclusivity. This has been something close to my heart from the very beginning, I grew up feeling like an outsider and this made me passionate about not letting anyone ever feel left out. There should be no barriers because of race, sexuality, age or anything else - and it is something I continue to champion in everything I do both personally and professionally at Burberry.”

As John Lobb’s first-ever Artistic Director, Paula Gerbase’srespectful disrespect for tradition is redesigning the British shoemaker’s creative footprint.

BY HASSAN AL-SALEH
PHOTOGRAPHY PAULA GERBASE

It is said that behind every great man is a woman. For English shoemaker John Lobb, that woman is Paula Gerbase, appointed as the brand’s very first Artistic Director in 2014. 

Gerbase’s design sensibility has always been tailored to menswear. A graduate of Central Saint Martins in London, she built her career in tailoring at Savile Row - one of very few women to do so - at Hardy Amies and Kilgour, before assuming the role of Creative Director at British sportswear brand Sunspel. 

With no prior experience in shoe-making, Gerbase uses her highly-curated eye for style and detail and insatiable curiosity for new materials and construction techniques to steer the creative evolution of John Lobb. 

Sharing Lobb’s sense of adventure and love of nature and the outdoors, ease of movement informs her creative process. Over the past five years, she has developed new manufacturing processes, reimagining historical styles and reintroducing a women’s ready-to-wear collection. Simply put, her tenure is a celebration of innovation and unparalleled quality and craftsmanship. 

An opponent of the fashion system, she believes that preservation and a respect for heritage is sometimes even more vital than the new. One key distinguishing factor is marrying a sense of timelessness with effortless modernity that she has brought to what is fundamentally a heritage brand. What’s more contemporary than that?

“I definitely knew it wasn’t going to be something that I needed to put my stamp on. It was going to be much more like archaeology. Dusting off beautiful things that had come from that past and bringing them forward.”

PHOTOGRAPHY THOMAS GOLDBLUM
STYLING JONATHAN HUGUET 

PHOTOGRAPHY ALESSIO BONI
STYLING EMIL REBEK

PHOTOGRAPHY STELLA ASIA CONSONNI
STYLING THOMAS LIAM DAVIS

Designer Mark Weston is embracing a modern vision of Britishness at Dunhill by expressing a new energy and dynamism for the venerable house.

BY HASSAN AL-SALEH

It is a true measure of success to be able to revitalize a storied menswear brand for the modern era. In a short span of two years, Mark Weston, Creative Director of the quintessential British label Dunhill, has injected bold new energy into the 125-year-old brand, astutely balancing heritage and innovation to reinvent what he describes as “discreet sophistication” for the 21st century.

Honing and elevating world-class brands and their design identity have become Weston’s métier. Formerly the Senior Vice President of Menswear at Burberry, he brings an innate understanding of menswear and product design to lead Dunhill’s creative vision for the future. 

With menswear accelerating at a phenomenal rate over the past few years, Weston says this is Dunhill’s moment to redefine sophistication. He is provocatively yet respectfully subverting traditional menswear codes while honoring Dunhill’s innovative and design-driven heritage. By doing so, he hopes to awaken a sleeping giant and create a fluid exchange between classic formality and casual nonchalance.   

We live in the age of disruption. What does it mean for a fashion house to exist in the 21^st century?
It’s a really interesting moment. I've been thinking a lot about it recently and talking to a lot of friends and collaborators. I think fashion has become so fashionable now. 

Whereas I remember when I got into the world of fashion, it was a different moment. It was about fighting against things, or creating an identity, or not following everyone, and being independent, and making a statement, having a voice. I think fashion always should be about that.

But, like I said, today it’s become fashionable, in a way. It’s become much more democratized. Which in some ways isn’t a bad thing, but I think it’s all become a bit too celebrity! Do you know what I mean?

How it’s portrayed, and how accessible it is, and how it’s almost become one level now. Anyway, that’s my challenge with fashion. But I think it’s what drives me, and how I work with the team, and how we talk about how we move forward. 

I don’t really see us as a fashion company, which is why I struggle a bit with the word fashion in relation to Dunhill. 

Because I think fashion is such a big word now, with the diversity of fashion companies and the amount of choice of what people call fashion. You’ve got fast fashion at one end, and you’ve got luxury fashion at one end. It’s so broad. And between men’s and women’s it’s an incredible amount of choice for someone. Even as a customer you think, “Where do I want to go?” 

I think in terms of being able to stand out as a fashion company, or even just as a strong brand or identity, you need a clear tone of voice. You need a sense of uniqueness. You need a, “What are you about?” 

So I think fashion brands have the challenge of needing to be able to cut through. And it’s not just paid media anymore and advertising billboards. It’s social. It’s digital. It’s so many different ways of talking to people that you’ve got to be so clear on that message, and it’s got to be so linked and so consistent. 

In some ways it’s got to be quite strong and almost - not necessarily hammered - but I think there’s something about the purity, and the consistency and insistency of what you need to be doing, to be able to cut through the rest of the noise and reach an audience. 

But I think that for me, and for Dunhill, it’s not really the tone that represents who we are. When I think of Dunhill I think of sophistication. I think of a certain discretion and understatement. That leads a bit into what you think about Britishness. 

I think it’s a tough one, because there are some great brands that are very popular now, like Gucci. They're very much setting the tone of the times, and that’s one of amplification. 

Whereas what we do, and the specificity of what we do, and the intention of what we do here, it’s much more discrete. The challenge really is how you behave and keep true to what you believe in, but also message strongly with something unique.  

I think it’s that you don’t always have to shout loudly to have a point of view. I think strength of confidence and a clear message will actually cut through as well. 

If you don’t define Dunhill as a fashion brand, what do you define it as?
Well, I've used the term ‘style’ before, which is a bit of a loose term. Which is a tough one, again, because it’s, “What does that really mean?” 

Again, I deliberately don’t use that word ‘fashion’. Fashion for Dunhill makes us appear like we’ve got a propensity for constant change. Constant change, and flippant change, and trend driven. 

Even though that’s part of the market, and you follow waves, and in any design movement they’ll be an evolution. But I think there has to be a certain sense of almost timelessness, or longevity, quality, confidence, or at least the goal of trying to create something that is to some degree what we all might call perfection.

We all have something in our wardrobes that, “Oh, it’s the perfect denim jacket, and I love it because it fits me in a certain way.” For me, that’s what I love. It’s constantly there. It’s almost those cherished pieces that you find, you discover, and you want to hold on to. But also, as customers, you want to go back. You want a new version of it, but you want to know that it’s still there. 

I guess, what I'm saying is, I think there’s a consistency, and attention to detail, specification. Which for me comes under the world of style more than it does fashion. Even though we do fashion shows. 

I'm not contradicting myself there, but just to give clarity we’ve deliberately gone to Paris to showcase ourselves on essentially a great platform, a universal platform. To say, “This is the new Dunhill. This is what the guys look like.” 

It’s very cosmopolitan in the casting. It’s a representation of London. It’s a representation of Mayfair and what is much more relevant and contemporary.

Then again, within that you’ll have elements which are codes, and textures, or graphics that are somewhat seasonal, yes, but they're there for storytelling as well. So it’s as much storytelling as provocation. 

But fundamentally, it’s about having a business that is consistent but has things that become icons, and that become cherished, and become almost top of mind for our customers. 

Do you think that makes it more sustainable?
I think so. If you look at successful companies that have stood the test of time, they’ve got a strong identity. 

Essentially, if it’s a fashion company, or a clothing or luxury brand, they’ve got something that immediately you know you can trust there. You can go there and you can find the epitome of what they stand for. I do think there’s something to be said of that. 

And what do you think Dunhill stands for today?
I think it’s very clear that I think Dunhill has an esteem, a real strong esteem and feeling. When I joined two years ago, I spent a lot of time looking, watching, listening, talking to people, and understanding the different regions and different parts of the world, because it’s an international business. We have a very strong business in Japan and China. You get a sense of, “What does it really stand for?” 

Dunhill is a very masculine brand. There’s a real sense of tradition. I also think there is a real trust in quality. There’s almost an assuredness there. 

Again, with looking over the last couple of years and moving forward, it’s standing for leather goods. It’s standing for tailoring, but not in its traditional sense. We still do that, but it’s also about giving it a sense of modernity - or I shouldn’t say modern really - a more relevant style, a more contemporary lifestyle, I think. 

Alfred Dunhill responded to trends and changes in the way that people wanted to live their lives. In what ways are you responding to these changes and trends today?
It was very progressive for that time. And it was quite amazing understanding that when you're looking through the archive. It’s something that I hold on to actually. It’s always in the back of my mind.

It’s not so much about the nostalgic elements - those are still there to choose as we see fit and it helps our storytelling - but the fact of how progressive it is. You are looking ahead and almost creating things for people before they even know they want it. 

Going from being harness makers, and then in a couple of months stopping it, because Alfred Dunhill believed in the dawn of the motor car and all the elements around it that customers may need. So he was very innovative. That’s the most singular thing that I take from it. 

I think we’ve got to behave in that way, but very genuinely, and understand what men want now, and how tailoring evolved, and how leather goods evolved. How do men use them nowadays that feels contemporary? What  can we put our phones in for instance? 

Really looking at that to guide how we create each of our categories, and build on leather goods, and what that really means. I think it’s trying to use that sensibility to push forward.

What do you think men want today? There’s a big focus on athleisure and sportswear in menswear, could we see that entering into the Dunhill universe as well? Is that what they want today, less of the traditional, clean-cut suits, or a balance between the two?
I think it is definitely a balance. You’ve got a certain sense of tradition where it is about impeccable tailoring. It’s about taste. 

And I love that. It comes back to very rigorous thoughts and approaches that we talk about in design, and I think it’s about balancing it for the needs of a man today. 

There are situations where men need an impeccably fitting suit that’s comfortable but cut really well. Consideration of cloth, quality of cloth manufacture, and everything else that goes with that in that world. There are men who want that. 

There are also men that want to have a contemporary sense of sportswear and that term ‘athleisure’ that you used.  

A bit of weird label for me. I think if you flip too much, and if you only go for one customer that is a much more, like I say, sportswear-orientated customer I think it’s not clear for people. 

Dunhill is about these contradictions, I find. It is this traditional element, but there’s also the very progressive element to it as well. 

There’s a lot of thought that goes into the process of it that tries to emulate this whole idea of contradiction. It’s a very British thing. It’s very much ingrained in Dunhill as well. 

Dunhill is an iconic British brand and I think what you said about contradiction is very pertinent to everything that’s happening in the UK right now. What does it really mean to be British, and how are you translating that in your design process?
That’s such a big question, isn’t it? 

It means different things to different people. What I usually distil it down to - as much as you can do - is I think it’s almost a bit of an attitude. 

If I think about style, British style is very different from an Italian style. It’s very different to a French style. Even just taking men in that scenario. Italians are very particular. It’s very precise all the way through. The French have a bit of an ease to it. 

With Britishness I think there is that slight irreverence. It’s much less precious, I think. There’s almost a bit of ease with it, and almost a much more confident, “Take me as I am,” kind of thing. But there is still a love for a really sophisticated, well-tailored piece. 

Mixing the high and the low, and actually just throwing on a pair of sneakers or a slide with an amazing cashmere raincoat, and a track pant. It’s the mix of those elements. That’s what I talk about that helps to form a sense of Britishness, I think. 

Then using some of those elements through the design. Whether it be in, let’s say, a city stripe in shirting, or a pinstripe suiting, where they talk to a certain Britishness - just purely because of their fabrication and their codification. 

And that’s what’s really interesting to play with, and I love that. I always have done. It’s very ingrained in me. You could call it a fascination. It’s kind of stuck with me, and it’s part of how I think, and how I love to twist things and put things together, contradict through clothing and cultures.

I think there’s a lot of rich references - particularly in British style culture. The last show there was Sloane Ranger and Eaton Terrace casual. It was those two ends. Where actually, there was almost a love of country wear but two very different appropriations of it, and how you then mesh them together.

That’s where the tension becomes really interesting and the conversation becomes much more pertinent and much more engaging. Talking about youth, and establishment, and how they can go together or how they can mix together. 

Is that your point of departure for your collections? 
Yes. It’s an ongoing thing. It’s not as linear as start and stop. It’s an evolution. It’s a journey. Along a pretty stable path, no doubt, but it’s then how other influences come in. 

It might be a photography book that I start to research or come across, or another style reference. Or it could be music. It could be a color or a combination of colors. Something that starts to influence the collection further. 

It’s never always starting at one point, because it goes through styling. It’s how everything starts to come together. 

If it was a chronology of the season and you had everything laid out, it would probably look very diverse and almost contradictory, but I think that’s the exciting part of it. There’s a rationale to them. 

It’s then how you put them together. That’s when the magic starts to happen. It starts to become exciting, and you build on that energy, and then it culminates in the market or the show. 

It’s been about two years now for you here at Dunhill. What have been some of the most surprising things that you’ve discovered along your journey?
I think the surprising parts have been what I've discovered in the archive. the realization how progressive the company was. First of all, as we’ve talked about, at the founding moment, this real point of creating a direction where Alfred Dunhill wanted to go.

But then when I started to assess the archive as a whole, and I started to look through imagery and old catalogues. Some of the pieces in the ‘70s and ‘80s are just phenomenal. I was just blown away! 

You kind of freeze when you start to see these things that, “Oh, my God. I didn’t realize the company had done that.” And you think, “To have done that strengthened uniqueness of design.” Whether it would be in a table lighter, or a rollagas covered in jewels, or an eagle head lighter on a rollagas. These really quite sculptural, incredible things. 

And the thought process and the design intent behind it was really innovative at the time. I think then - just stepping back and looking at it from a higher level - it has gone through different journeys, and different leadership, and lost its way a bit, it feels. 

But to have that in an archive and a breadth of research is incredible to look at and think, “What feels right? What doesn’t feel right?” I think it’s that thing that resonates of, “What feels right for today? What feels relevant?” And actually also feeling quite strongly, and emotionally, and instinctually the things that really just don’t feel right. 

The other part I think is the speed that we’ve been able to make the change that we can see today. We’re about to approach our fourth show. 

I felt really strongly, “No, we shouldn’t be doing a show. Let’s just say for now we shouldn’t be doing a show.” I think it came back to this ‘fashion’ point. I felt  it should be just about being the best British men’s luxury brand. No-one else really has that legitimacy, I believe. And why would you need to do it that way? 

Then when we were looking at it for the next six months we were thinking, “You know what? Maybe we do need to do a show.” Not to become a fashion company again. Talking with the team it was like, “We need to tell this message, and how do we do this in a genuine way? How do we do it in a holistic way, where we can talk about the guys?” 

And I say ‘guys’. Not just one man. It’s not one man like it has been portrayed before. 

“How do we convey this real sense of cosmopolitan, relevant London energy and masculinity, in our way, and how this universe of the Dunhill man is now in this new chapter?” And a show is the best way to do that. 

So the investment there was the right investment. I still really strongly believe in that. Because of what you can create in that visually, but it’s also a body of work – it’s the music, the environment, and the feeling you can get from people in a live event.

I think that’s quite unique now that everything we look at is on a screen. It’s so disposable in so many ways, and clicks and likes, and there’s such an overload. I try and distance myself from that. But only to not get absorbed by it, because it’s hugely fascinating as well.

But a show allows you to give that clear message to people very quickly – “It’s a new day at Dunhill, and this is where we’re going.” 

In your overall master plan, what does the future look like for Dunhill?
It’s an evolution of where we are now or where we’re moving to. I don’t feel an immediate need for us to be radical, but I think that’s important, that it’s a long-term view. It’s not a short-term view. 

I never think short term. I think you never get where you want to on a short-term fix. I think you have to be smart with what you're doing and play well the cards you're dealt. Looking at what you have and how you make the best of it. 

I think that’s also a design challenge, that it’s about finding solutions. There’s a responsibility in that. 

But in terms of building a business I think you have to play the long game. “What do you want to stand for? How do we behave? How do we deliver that message? What’s the tone of voice? Who are we building a community with? Who do we want to aspire to be part of the Dunhill world?” 

I think it’s about planning, but also there will be surprises. I can tell that for sure. There will be surprises, because as much as being consistent is great, if it lacks surprise or lacks energy it becomes a bit dull, in a way. 

Lackluster, yes. 
I think it’s the right balance of how you evolve but also surprise at the same time. 

Like many brands steeped in history, the Dunhill archives are a treasure trove and are a very important part of the consideration. Do you think nostalgia is detrimental or beneficial to the whole creative process?
It’s a fine balance. I think it’s a real fine balance. 

I love working with parameters. I love working with a house that has a certain tradition. Whether it’s strongly defined and it’s adding to that and building something from it, or whether it’s defining something new. 

I always am very careful of not being shackled by it, because I think if you're a slave to too much to it you become obsessed with just looking back to look forward. 

It happens in a lot of creative spheres, particularly music as well. You’ve got to be able to have a freedom to pull and push, push and pull, to see what you really want to take from it. 

Some seasons and some moments are correct for really solidifying or being a strong reflection of where you’ve come from - to give a foundation - and other times we need to be channeling something new. 

So I think it really is a fine balance. Because with a strong history, and identity and legacy, you’ve got to be able to move forward but not lose what’s come before. You’ve just got to be really careful how you play with it. 

But, like I say, I love that kind of challenge, the fact of creating identity, but for me it’s rarely an obvious one. It might be an obvious one where it really works in the context of everything, but generally I love to abstract, because I think that’s what makes it relevant. That’s what makes it contemporary. That’s what makes it exciting. 

What excites you the most about designing for men today?  
What does excite me is the evolution of it and the freedom, where menswear has accelerated and what men find quite normal now. 

Like super skinny jeans for example, it blew me away when it just was everywhere. Because when I was growing up and you’d wear a skinny jean you’d be kind of, “What’s going on there?” But now it’s everywhere. To the point of spray on jeans. So, it’s kind of gone to the extremes. 

But in a way that’s exciting, the fact that it’s going now to the extreme, where a lot of things are, “Why not?” Pushing down boundaries of expectation or traditional notions of what masculinity is. And that’s what’s quite exciting about the industry today. 

I think the ability to be able to play now and to push is not such a challenge anymore. I think there’s an acceptance, and I think men love to look at that now and consider new ways to wear something. 

But it’s got to work. Otherwise it’s not genuine.

What do you think has resulted in this freedom, in terms of men being more expressive?
I think there’s been a lot more honesty and acceptance of things, I think. I think generationally people are now saying, “You know what? No, I'm not going to follow that outdated notion of certain things. We believe in this.” 

I think there’s been a louder voice. I think there’s people not standing for things that feel outdated or that feel disrespectful. I think it’s become a real moment for calling that out, and I think that’s a really good thing.

In a general way, but I think that’s filtered into, “Well, why do I have to dress this way?” or, “Why am I perceived this way? I can be my own person. Whether you like it or not, here I am.” I think that’s a really empowering thing to do, yes. 

If we look at all your collections to date, detail is a key consideration for you in particular. What is it about the details that you think bring to life the narrative that you're trying to create? 

Detail and specificity just run through what Dunhill’s always been about, I think. Being very particular about its engineering of its pieces. 

It’s just something that for me is a very personal approach to design. And I think that’s where this specificity and detail-obsessiveness comes through into the work. But I think it’s also about showcasing to the person or to the type of customer that I feel will be attracted to the brand.

It is detail orientated. It should be about that. I think when you're creating sophisticated products and pieces to a certain value there needs to be attention to detail. It can’t just be ill considered. It has to be pored over. It has to really be looked at.

The cut of a jacket. The proportion of a jacket. I use a jacket just as one clear example. “What does the fabric do? How does it fit the body? How does it correlate with other pieces in your wardrobe? How does it fit into that lifestyle?”

The simplest things are actually the hardest things to make, right? And that’s where it comes back to that whole idea of perfection and insistence that it’s got to be the best. “What does the best mean to you?” It is that constant push for, “It needs to be great.” It’s almost a bit uncompromising in that sense. 

How have customers responded to all these changes so far?
Really positively. I guess that’s been another surprise.  

Even the more conservative customers?
Yes. I think people get it. I think that’s where it is about the balance. If I’d have come in, “It’s all about sportswear,” and turned it on its head, I think it would have been a very different conversation. That would be have been a different question to answer. 

But I think it has been that balance, where it’s respecting a certain tradition but it’s also bringing relevance for now. And it can be done in various different ways, but for me it’s never about being gimmicky. It’s got to be true. It’s got to be authentic.

And it takes time to do that. It takes the right mindset and the right team, not just in design but in a company, to understand where something’s going, and actually getting behind that, and the whole moving in one direction. 

And the energy here is phenomenal, in our new space, as you’ve seen, in terms of the architecture, and the transparency, and almost the sense of community here. The energy here is great. And it’s a real surprise. 

These are still very early days, but what kind of legacy do you want to build at Dunhill? 
It’s a hard question. I don’t think about legacies and all that kind of thing. For me, Dunhill is about Dunhill. It’s not Mark Weston for Dunhill. It’s first and foremost the brand. Dunhill lives and dies by its name. I really believe that. 

I guess what would make me feel like I've done my job is that I've set up a foundation now for a successful and a thriving house in the years to come. In another 125 years we’re still here, with an incredibly strong identity and an evolution of where we’ve started today. 

PHOTOGRAPHY KERRY J. DEAN
STYLING GIULIO VENTISEI

Designer Federico Curradi mixes romance and restraint to establish new codes for the menswear line at the legendary Parisian fashion house Rochas. 

BY MAX BERLINGER

PORTRAIT AMIT ISRAELI
PHOTOGRAPHY KEVIN OHANA 

After a short hiatus, the French label Rochas has revived its menswear line this time with Italian designer Federico Curradi at the helm. Rochas is a quintessentially Parisian label, founded in 1925 by Marcel Rochas and has subsequently become synonymous with a rarefied and romantic way of dressing. Mostly known for its sensual femininity - think lace and satin - it launched a men’s line for the first time in 2017. Curradi, who comes from brands known for their sense of distinctly Italian swagger - labels like Ermanno Scervino, Iceberg, and Roberto Cavalli - and designs his own namesake line of romantic ready-to-wear as well, has been brought in to give the men’s offering a modern look and a new perspective. 

Curradi, who has a virile energy, athletic frame, and tattooed arms, lives in the Florentine countryside with a menagerie of farm animals that includes horses and, believe it or not, wolves. His aesthetic is imbued with a rugged masculinity, mixed with appealing louche bohemianism. With an eye on rich, opulent fabrics and elegant, graceful silhouettes, Curradi’s aesthetic is artsy and undeniably sexy. At first glance, he’s an unexpected choice for Rochas, a brand known for its delicate, supremely feminine womenswear. Still, with virtually no history of men’s designs, Curradi was able to conjure and create his idea of who the Rochas man was from scratch, basing his first collection on the designer, Marcel Rochas, himself, as well as the 1956 photo book “Love on the Left Bank” which depicted Paris’ sensual, artistic bohemian scene. 

His debut was reserved and tasteful, a perfect balance of his unrestrained look and Rochas’ more buttoned-up, poised reputation.

Tell me about your childhood. Where did you grow up? 
I grew up in Florence and moved to the Tuscan countryside like 15 years ago. I live there with my animals. I like country life. I think it’s good to get some rest in the middle of nowhere, you know? 

Animals? What kind? How many? 
Oh, I have a lot of animals, it’s like a zoo. I have horses, I have cows, I have chickens and cats. 

It sounds like a farm!

It’s a pleasure farm, not for business. 

But can you milk the cows or have eggs from the chickens? 
Oh yeah. That’s one of the benefits of having a farm. I have a whole supermarket at home. Especially in the summertime, I don’t even have to go to the grocery store. 

When you were a little boy, when did you first think about designing fashion? 
I went to art school, and then had a chance to work with a tailor in Florence and that’s where I discovered my passion for clothing. That’s where I learned how to make them. It has turned into true love. I learned how to do this job the old school way. I discovered that it’s really close to the arts and you get to meet a lot of interesting people, people who are different, who are unusual, which I find interesting. I like to share my life because in fashion, in a way, you’re putting your life into your work. It’s very lucky if you’re able to do something that you love and allows you to express yourself. 

So did you go to design school or you learned everything from the tailor? 
No, I just worked with the tailor. I recommend this to everyone because it’s very tough, much harder than school. You can learn much more. My story, how I got into this line of work, it’s very different than other people who went to school. I created my own line, under my own name, when I was around 22. And then at 25, I was the head designer at Ermanno Scervino, which is a Florentine brand, it’s huge here. I did the first season for the men’s line. I was also designing some sportswear, especially denim, for women. It was really successful and that’s how my career took off. 

Why did you start your career with your own line? That seems hard. 
Because working with men’s tailors was good but, in a way, it was quite boring. Always the same, always working with older people, and if they are young they are old inside, you know? I had to keep my point of view about clothing inside me. When you’re young you want to do show pieces, but you don’t understand the balance of also creating wearable things. The new things, they are super-cool, but they were probably only cool to me. 

You don’t know how to create a business unless you can make real things, you know what I mean? It was really hard and I had to do a lot of things wrong to discover my taste. It’s a long process. Every day I learn something, especially me, I see something wrong in everything. Everything I see, I see something wrong, but that’s part of the job. 

When you design for another brand and not for yourself, does that help you create the balance you’re talking about? 
Yeah, sure. When you work with other brands, it’s important to understand the brand DNA and to try to find a way to consider its heritage. To find the balance between what the brand is and what you can bring to it. In my opinion, that’s the balance of the brand. For example, I love to work with different fabrics. I bring that to the brand. 

Fashion is thought of as something that’s made every six months. But for me, I spend a lot of time thinking and working. So to think that it ends every six months, I try to make pieces that are more beautiful. Real pieces that people will buy and can reuse after one or two years. That’s what I love to do. I have some stuff in the closet that I can wear in different ways. That’s something I like to do, to make something that’s not just for one season. That’s my idea of fashion. 

So tell me about your position at Rochas. 
With this job, I would say I’m so happy to work for a very important Parisian brand like Rochas. Also to start the men’s collection. The Fall-Winter 2019 collection, which was my first collection, was like a blank page. It was a cool opportunity but there was a lot of pressure, because everyone was asking what I was going to do. 

The idea was to express a new way of luxury. Something wearable that you can wear it in the daytime, nighttime, and even 24-hours a day. I love the idea of how we express our feelings, and to find the balance between the artsy guy in Paris and modernity. We also had to find the heritage and bring it into this moment. Part of that was this idea of not using any plastic and to make the packaging recyclable, which is really great. 

It was a lot of ingredients. I’m really happy with how we went around the idea of poetry, how we wanted to explain the ideas of the bohemian, intellectual, Parisian soul. An expression of Parisian nonchalance. 

Because there wasn’t a men’s collection, how did you get your ideas? 
I did a lot of research on Marcel Rochas the man and on the brand itself. When you think of Rochas you think of luxury, of haute couture. I started thinking about what real luxury means for a man today. To me, it’s when you feel really comfortable with your outfit. I like it when people put their personality first before their outfit. I thought it was cool to represent the more artistic side of Marcel Rochas, rather than the haute couture. His creative side more than his clothing. For a woman it’s more like the history of the brand, but for the man, it’s more like Mr. Rochas himself, his feeling for the arts, how he got his inspirations, the vibe of Paris, the environment around him. I looked at the book “Love on the Left Bank.” I thought it was really good to get the suggestions and references from it. I love the reportage. This book is from the late 1950s, but it’s so modern, it feels very right now. I also looked at a lot of Modigliani for the color palette. He’s Italian and moved to Paris, I love him a lot. I wish for his talent.

So what’s happening next? 
For my second collection, we want to explore the same man, the same nonchalance, the same artsy guy, but wanted to explain more. We went to Paris in the mid-1940s, after the end of the second World War. There’s this book, it’s German, and it’s from the first female reporter from World War II and so it’s this reference between tailoring, really masculine and formal suits, and also … well, it’s a lot of other things. But in the end, it’s quite real and infused with a lot of creativity and art. So we can be less angry. 

Was the second collection harder or easier to design? Easier, I think. I like that it’s about a maker, an artistic guy but with a touch of military, but also with feminine embroidery. I like when there’s a lot of weird things that come together. Not everything has to be beautiful, not everything has to be pretty. I like it when you find your own perspective, like when you take so many things and add them together and find your own balance. 

Going forward, what do you want people to think of when they think of the Rochas man? 
I want them to them to think it’s a modern brand. Not because it’s synthetic or because it’s sharp, modern because it’s luxury, because it’s wearable, because we take care of the environment, because it represents what a man needs right now. It’s not just a brand that does things for show, but it has a soul. 

To find that soul, is it important to look into the past? 
Oh yes, really important. Rochas should have a heritage. It’s really important to look to the past to create something new. You have to understand the past. Fashion has changed and the ideas of beauty have changed, you know? In a world where everything is on social media and everything gets old very quickly - you put a picture on Instagram and it’s gone - it’s not how it was 15 years ago. I think that it’s important to look at the past to make the brand authentic, relevant and believable. 

PHOTOGRAPHY ZEB DAEMEN 
STYLING GABRIELLA NORBERG 

Kris Van Assche is bringing the past into the future at Berluti with a fresh, street-smart take on luxury.

BY LAURA BOLT
PHOTOGRAPHY BENOIT AUGUSTE 

When you think about what it means to be timeless, it’s easy to imagine classic clothes that wouldn’t be out of place fifty years ago or in a shop window today. But what if timeless meant designing without time, incorporating a sense of history into the imaginary look of the future? This might just be the case with Kris Van Assche, who has redefined the Berluti look of late. Since joining the brand in 2018, Van Assche has transformed the Berluti man into his own vision of timeless masculinity, one that knows where he came from and where he is going. “My work has always been about building bridges between youth and their culture, and a more traditional, elegant, and luxurious world,” he said. “I truly believe I made young kids look differently at tailoring and luxury in general. At the same time, I have always worked on making luxury and tradition modern. It’s definitely a two-way bridge.”

After ten years as Creative Director of Dior Homme, the Belgian designer has immediately won praise for his fresh perspective on Berluti, a melange of luxury materials and edgy styling that he achieves with help from Italian stylist Mauricio Nardi. Van Assche took over from Haider Ackermann, who had imbued with Berluti with a sense of luxury and romanticism. Ackermann’s tenure at Berluti was marked by a sense of bohemian romanticism, the look of poets and renaissance men. Van Assche meanwhile, has struck a more minimalist tone, roughed up with the streetwear inspired aesthetic that has become such a powerful force in today’s menswear. 

Van Assche has taken a “from the ground up” approach to his work at Berluti, a nod to the brands origins as a footwear company. Before his Berluti debut, he acknowledged that “If my previous work always started with a black suit, I can definitely say that here it starts with the shoes.” In fact, without a historical archive to pull from in terms of menswear, shoes have been the only throughline to the brand’s past that Van Assche has had to pull inspiration from. This has created an opportunity to play with ideas about how to translate a focus on strong manufacturing with clothes that have a wearable, and modern, edge. 

Even though the only archival material was footwear, Van Assche still started his design journey by going back to the source. “We took a flight to the manifattura in Ferrara which is the factory where the shoes are made. And that was something that blew me away. It’s a new territory for me, kind of. The factory is really super-modern and super-sophisticated, but there is also this really traditional handcraft element that is key to the products they make. And so the contrast between the super-contemporary and a hand-crafted sensibility was a really nice starting point for me,” he explained. The resulting high patina and sharp lined shoes move boldly into the future, creating a strong building block that forms the foundations of his clothing. 

In the mid 1980s, six upstart designers from Belgium turned the fashion world on its head with an avant garde sensibility that spoke to a sense of youthful rebellion. Dubbed the Antwerp Six, these young designers (Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk Van Saene, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs and Marina Yee) collectively put  Belgium on the map as a fashion destination on par with London and New York. Thanks to their influence, for the last 30 years Belgian design has been synonymous with modern, cutting edge fashion. Van Assche is part of that lineage, bringing a disruptive edge to classic menswear. 

Van Assche is part of a growing community of menswear designers who are bringing streetwear style to the runway. Like Dior’s Kim Jones and Louis Vuitton’s Virgil Abloh, Van Assche’s work has an undeniable sense of power and movement, pairing in your face sneakers with sleek suiting, and offsetting classic silhouettes with graphic prints. There is an appreciation for the past, but with a sense of adventure and the insouciance of youth. “This adventurous man will explore various lifestyles, it's a man that takes the best of all worlds. It's about freedom. It's about knowing the rules and messing them up a little, it’s about broken suits, leather pants and wool knits. The Berluti man is a rebellious free-spirited man, he does things his own way...Also, it's about a love for a new Berluti man, who is more interested in seduction than my previous men,” he said. That seduction seems to be rooted in the idea of translating an echo of the past into a flirtation with the future. It’s a way of redefining masculinity by merging hard and soft, minimalism and whimsy. 

It’s no wonder that Van Assche has brought new fans to the brand, including rapper and style icon A$AP Rocky and Oscar winner Rami Malek, who debuted the first Van Assche for Berluti design on the red carpet last year. Both men embody the kind of forward thinking design Van Assche has become known for. The “Berluti man” contains multitudes, refusing to be pinned down. “Berluti is about freedom,” Van Assche expalins. “People often try to put menswear in boxes. And because luxury menswear is supposed to be timeless and therefore it tends to be neutral, as well. But I am convinced that at Berluti obviously while it is supposed to be a high end luxury it is also supposed to be really remarkable: look twice clothes.” 

With sophisticated tailoring and luxury materials meeting edgy new wave sensibility, it’s fair to say that if Van Assche continues his exploration of fusing past and present, the Berluti of the future will be commanding attention for years to come. 

In the design-led arts, the search for beauty unfolds as a constant dialogue between the creator, the created and the receiver.

By RADHINA ALMEIDA COUTINHO

Photography LUKE GILFORD & ERICK FAULKNER

In the world of fashion, architecture, spatial engineering, jewelry and textile design, photography, painting or sculpture, the creation of beauty hovers between one hailed as a worthy pursuit or a fool’s chase of a mercurial idea. 

Defining beauty is elusive, but it has never stopped people from trying. The classical ideals of beauty have often been celebrated, but they’ve been just as regularly rejected by proponents of the avant-garde and other counter culture movements through the ages. In the 21st century, the pursuit of beauty has truly evolved into the ultimate expression of individualism. But what does this mean to artists expressing their vision through their work? And what does it mean for those who need to strike that delicate balance between broad appeal and the allure of what speaks specifically to each person?

MATCHESFASHION.COM’S new retail, broadcast and experiential hub, 5 Carlos Place, which opened late last year and is set in an elegant Queen Anne-style townhouse in Mayfair, aims to encapsulate those myriads of expressions under one roof. 

Chief Executive Officer of MATCHESFASHION.COM Ulric Jerome, Peter and Philip Joseph, Creative Directors of architectural and interior design firm P Joseph, Nick Hornby, the artist behind the extruded hanging sculpture of Michelangelo’s David suspended within the house’s central stairwell, and Alan Crocetti, whose unconventional unisex jewelry collection is but one example of the individualistic designs one might find at 5 Carlos Place, share their musings on the concepts of beauty and masculinity and their views on sensory expression within an evolving retail experience.

Fashion, architecture, sculpture and art are all disciplines that revolve in some way around how different individuals express and perceive beauty. What makes something beautiful to you?

JEROME: Beauty is something that comes from the right place. Something that is genuine and with passion. And I think ultimately it has to trigger curiosity and conversation. 

CROCETTI: There’s a lot of conflict in the word ‘beauty’ alone.  I often find beauty in the unconventional, maybe even in things defined as ‘ugly’. However, I also tend to find ugliness in what is conventionally defined as beautiful. I feel like it’s important to pay attention to how things move you in a way. 

JOSEPH: I find beauty in balance, proportion, harmony – in a space or an object or image, the combination of materials, forms, elements in perfect balance. Nothing superfluous and all coming together to create a wonderful feeling of rightness and timelessness.

HORNBY: It so depends on context – a line, a pause, a shape, an idea. But I think beauty is an incredibly controversial idea. The Greeks were obsessed with it, and it was entangled with goodness, but in the last 100 years, traditional beauty was turned on its head - rejected and problematized, along with ideals, subjectivity and absolutes.  

In your opinion, what qualities make a piece of clothing, a physical space or a sculpture masculine?

HORNBY: I think masculinity shifts in meaning in different periods and different places. Heracles, 18th century aristocrats with wigs and makeup, The Dandy, Superman, RuPaul…today the idea of gender is less binary. 

JOSEPH: I think one person’s perception of a feeling of masculinity and what that means to them is very different to another, regardless of gender. I think today, thankfully, gender stereotypes and codes are being swept away and we don’t have to place these limits on creativity.

CROCETTI: We have always been fed ideas of masculinity and femininity from birth, so it’s imbedded in our brains from a young age. I questioned it a lot in my teen years. The whole idea of masculinity being related to strength and femininity to fragility is a patriarchal ideology that unfortunately has lasted for far too long… so I don’t really have an answer to this question.

Do you think the concept of beauty - and masculine beauty in particular - has become more fluid over the years?

JEROME: The real question is ‘what is beauty?’ We actually never mention beauty in our business. We talk about taste, lifestyle, the aesthetic of certain trends but we leave beauty – and the definition of it – to the interpretation of the individual. Personally, I think that we all interpret and define gender in our own way. 

CROCETTI: Yes, there’s still a lot of room for growth but I’m happy to see people getting more and more unattached to these past historical values.

5 Carlos Place encapsulates that all important tangible and sensory aspect of luxury fashion and lifestyle experience. How big a role does the sensory aspect play in the perception of beauty, especially in the era of digitization and virtual reality?

JOSEPH: At 5 Carlos Place, we wanted to design the entire experience to feel more like being in someone’s home than a store. We wanted all necessary conventional ‘store’ components to recess into the background to allow the curated contents and pieces such as furniture, artwork, textiles or plants to come to the fore. We wanted to create a space that felt great to be in first and foremost – the focus is shifted and the space feels less transactional, more experiential and curated.

JEROME: We have always tried to emotionally connect with our audience so the balance of physical and digital is very much part of our foundations. Whether this is via fashion shoots, video content, a podcast…all of these enhance the personal approach. The way we try to trigger the sensory aspect is through storytelling, and the beauty for us isn’t about one item or moment but about the story. That’s beauty for us – building a narrative around our products, projects and business. 

HORNBY: Yes, I agree - Carlos place is a wonderfully tactile experience – the floor, the banisters, the transparency surfaces.  The sensory – as you call it – plays a critical role in my perception: how a viewer empathizes with an object…via its size, material, surface. For example, Brancusi’s Bird in Space – an uncanny object – where the surface has been smoothed to a mirror.  A sculpture is entrenched with narratives, a polished surface tells a different story to a rough construction.

How do you seek to create a sensory reaction to your work? Whether it is creating a digital shopping platform or a bricks and mortar space, a sculpture, a piece of jewelry or an art installation?

HORNBY: Your relationship to a sculpture is always in comparison to your own body. When you look at a smooth door handle, you know how it will feel, and what it means…the same is true with a sculpture, you empathize with how it fits against the surface of your body. 

JEROME: We are all about sensory reaction. We try to bring exclusive content and events and products, but we want to show it to the world in a very inclusive way which means that the first sensory reaction is that it should be participative and that’s how fashion should be. 

CROCETTI: I love working with different artists and medias because my brand is not just a product. It has an identity and a world surrounding it. I have worked with musicians, sculptors, digital artists, set designers and so on.  It also makes so much sense to me the idea of taking my pieces out of my own context and integrating with someone else’s. The possibilities are endless and the appeal is magnetic.

JOSEPH: We find we can elicit an emotional connection to our work when we have a strong story to tell.  We are always interested to uncover the story of the place and how that place has come to be. Whether that be a building, a street, a neighborhood…we then work on the narrative surrounding the people who will be there. Who are they? How would he or she experience this space? What music do they listen to? What art do they collect? What would they want to feel under their feet? 

I believe that the well-designed sensory experience is very much driven by a sensitivity or awareness of who he or she is. 

A lot of contemporary art, fashion, photography and architecture re-imagines classical concepts or ideals of beauty from previous eras. Do you think the concept of beauty remains static at its core?

JEROME: We live in a constant cycle and things always come back. Nothing is static. What is the norm today may not be tomorrow and beauty reflects life. The interpretation is different from one individual to another and the nuances change as time does. 

HORNBY: Artists often look back in time to various past eras and some historic ideas can seem to transcend their time of creation. We always experience artworks in the present.  We are naked to the present.   

CROCETTI: Beauty evolves with the ephemerality of life. We are now more than ever able to acknowledge the beauty of ageing, the beauty of diverse forms and deformities. So in this case, it’s a wider understanding of what beauty entails. It transcends acceptance, because it’s not about accepting that people are different but it’s about celebrating everyone’s individuality and that also promotes integration.

Do you think men have dominated the creation of ideals of beauty?

CROCETTI: 100%. The whole idea regarding the aesthetics surrounding gender identity where women are regarded as vulnerable and their only power is linked to sensuality came from men to silence women and make them submissive.

JEROME: I think to say that would also mean that men have dominated the appreciation of beauty and that is not the case. Aesthetic beauty is a by-product of the time, the culture, the community and even the politics of the moment and none of this exists as one gender. 

JOSEPH: Of course, across the world ideals of beauty vary hugely and I don’t think men have dominated their creation. Rather I think they are born out of an expression of what individuals, communities, cultures consider at that moment in time to be beautiful. 

Do you think men and women perceive beauty in different ways? Is this something you think about when you work and does it influence your creative output?

JEROME: I’ve always felt that beauty is perceived differently by everyone. It’s not down to gender. It’s in the eye and in the senses and in the context of your experience. In terms of our output at MATCHESFASHION.COM we work incredibly collaboratively across teams so the end product whether a shoot, an event or a special collection is not just the result of a single vision. 

JOSEPH: In terms of our output at P Joseph as Design Architects we always try to avoid perpetuating gender stereotypes and rather have an unencumbered freedom of expression in the pursuit of beauty which is blind to gender. 

CROCETTI: I don’t think men and women perceive beauty in different ways. Individuals do. That’s the subjectivity and the beauty of beauty. It never influenced my work because I don’t design with the intent to appeal to a certain demographic and I design pieces that come from a place that is completely unrelatable to gender norms. My brand is true to who I am as a person and as a designer, for everyone who identifies and appreciates them regardless of gender, sexuality, belief or race.

HORNBY: I think every human perceives the world in different ways.  I don’t think about the gender of my audience - only that each person brings their own biography with them - which I can’t control… and that’s great! It’s incredibly enriching and this is where the work is made… in each person’s interpretation.  

Ermenegildo Zegna’s Alessandro Sartori celebrates fashion’s move from a statement of a man’s status to an expression of his core identity.

BY RADHINA ALMEIDA COUTINHO

For centuries man has desired to blend in, to belong. 

“To be truly elegant one should not be noticed,” Regency dandy Beau Brumell famously said of what any well-dressed man should aspire to. Ornamentation and making a statement was a pursuit best left to the fairer sex.

Woe the man who chose not to conform, or worse, deliberately chose to stand out. The risk of embarrassment in wearing a flamboyant bow tie when it should have been black, tails when a dinner jacket would have sufficed, or loafers instead of oxfords would have dissuaded even the most expressive young man who retained any desire to maintain his social standing.

Today, things are different. Something Ermenegildo Zegna’s Artistic Director Alessandro Sartori says he and Zegna applaud.

“What I see today is very similar to what women have always been doing and what men didn’t. It’s related to the styling and self expression – so the possibility to wear garments in your own way, whatever this means. From simple things like rolling your sleeves or changing the shape of a collar, perhaps it was fitted and you want it standing. Or the way you button or unbutton a blouson or zip or unzip a coat … that personal one-to-one idea which is not a cliché is very similar to what women have always been doing. I like that. And at Zegna we like that, and we do it.”

According to Sartori, styling is the biggest actor on today’s fashion stage and it’s a force that’s both driven by and driving a larger trend towards freedom of expression. 

“There are macro trends, but there are also a lot of brands that are quite strong in doing things that are very peculiar and far removed from macro trends. I think this is particularly important and reflects another layer which relates to you – who you are, the type of feelings and emotions you have, how they relate to your life and all the values you want to embody,” says Sartori. 

“I see very strong parallelisms between these two different points. On one side, personally we need to be free to feel our own emotions and to have our own opinions; and at the same time we need to feel free to express ourselves and to find the best and the most beautiful outfit, or garment that expresses who we are.” 

He continues: “And this is a very big step and the main difference compared to the past – when stereotypes of masculinity like the macho man or of distinct seasonal trends were particularly strong and had an influence in a very universal way. Today it is different, and as far as Zegna is concerned, we are following this idea of a very strong connection between the pure craft and the idea of giving our customers a variety of options. This extends from the clothing we create to everything we do such as the casting of the talent in our shows and campaigns.”

According to Sartori, men’s fashion has moved confidently towards greater elaboration and experimentation. And brands are having to evolve to give men the tools to express the myriad facets of their individual personalities and emotional profiles.

“I just think the modern time is more about an approach where you adapt to individuals rather than telling them ‘Listen! This season it’s just about this.’ So yes, there are trends and in Zegna we have our own, but we like the idea of this very personalized approach. I am attracted to but I am not attached to a specific thing, and I don’t dictate a particular silhouette for each season. I think to be able to elaborate, to create a lot of different possibilities, to go deeper into the one-to-one approach is more important than ever.”

“Today there isn’t just one definition of masculinity anymore because we see brands who are expressing elements such as very big shoulders with a lot of bold garments and bold colors, whereas other brands are the opposite and fragility becomes much more a value. It is a point that was never considered or that we didn’t consider much before,” says Sartori.

Some may feel that giving voice to self-expression, multiplicity and male fragility has already been done to death; if not in the hallowed world of heritage Italian menswear - where the optics of a suave, clean shaven, wool and cashmere draped gentleman continue to dominate - then definitely on the high street which has embraced and championed individuality and a sympathetic treatment of diversity for years. 

Sartori says for Zegna, it was important to place themselves within this conversation. 

The brand has done so decisively by eliciting the talents of two-time Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali and Hong Kong actor and singer Nicholas Tse to confront traditional ideas of masculinity with an openness to question one’s identity and demonstrate vulnerability and sensitivity.

“It is a big step forward because we are exposing ourselves to – I don’t want to say judgement – but for sure when we start a conversation with people, that can also be the starting point of criticism or an expression of different opinions,” says Sartori. “At the same time though, we think that it is particularly important to have an opinion, to have a possibility to spread the word.”

He adds: “We want to open a conversation around masculinity. We don’t want to create a diktat or a rule because there isn’t just one definition.”

According to Sartori, it’s a conversation men around the world are getting more comfortable having, and this openness is being reflected in the choice of formal menswear and a pivot from the classic silhouettes, fabrics and color palettes of the golden era of 50s and 60s fashion that continue to be admired as the pinnacle of fine style.

“Definitely, the core principles of classic menswear are still very, very important - beautiful fabrics, beautiful construction, certain expressions of beautiful tailoring - such as the idea of a bespoke made-to-measure garment are important. But are the concepts as rigid as they were at the time? No.”

Functionality is starting to play a strong hand, as is sustainability.

“For sure we are seeing more technical fabrics in tailoring - and I don’t mean only nylon or synthetic fibers - I also mean technical wool, technical cashmere and so on, I see a lot of this performance-driven approach entering into materials. Of course, we first seek beautiful design and beautiful style, but when we buy a garment today, we look for real value and functionality and for sure this trend is going to be very important in the future,” says Sartori. 

Recycled fibers are today also proudly worn as badges of honor. Supporting a production cycle that favors zero waste is starting to inform customer and corporate choices, including Zegna’s commitment towards sustainable wool farming and fiber re-use.

But punctuating almost every trend forecast Sartori discusses, is the element of individuality, layering ideas and experimentation.

“Mixing proportions, mixing sportswear and tailoring, mixing technical and natural fabrics is the main approach for the men we have in mind,” he says.

With regards to silhouettes Sartori sees a role for both rigidity and fluidity. “When I style big shapes for which I need very heavy fabrics, it is a nice idea to layer them with very fluid materials. This idea of layering different surfaces is a mega trend.”

He also sees a more varied color palette becoming a mainstay in classic formalwear.

“There are a lot of beautiful shades of neutral colors today that are as important as before - such as blue, or gray or black.  But if you think of green as an example - I don’t want to say it was a forbidden color before, but in a way it was. Today khaki green or a gray green is as important as gray or brown, so there are a lot of new layers and trends even in the color palette. For sure, there are colors that we use now that were not used as much before – pink is another example. So, we definitely have a more elaborated color palette.”

According to Sartori, it is not so much a question of constantly breaking the rules as it is about making them your own. He credits the highly visual culture of social media with helping men find the image they most identify with.

“In my opinion there is more freedom but also a lot more knowledge, so actually because of the media, because of digital platforms, because of all what we see in the pictures - whether it is of ordinary people, influencers, celebrities, actors and so on - it is very different from what it was ten years ago. Today we have the possibility to express ourselves but also to see other people and recognize part of what we would like to be, or to wear according to how we feel and the persons we are.”

“So yes, there is very strong knowledge about the rules but also much more freedom to express ourselves in a very personal way. And this goes down to selecting the garment, the styling, or the association we have with different products and brands.”

“The goal is to open yourself to new possibilities. Because if you stick to the rules that you had ten years ago, it’s impossible.” 

For Sartori, the man of today is akin to society at large - an entity in flux, one that is constantly shifting, evolving, crystalizing and unraveling, while all the time trying to stay true to its core identity.

“I like the idea of collecting garments and being able to mix different things from different seasons in your own wardrobe, that to me is particularly important. You create a new shape, you create a new silhouette, you create a new idea - but it’s working also with the last couple of seasons.  This is a creative approach where we collect pieces - as we all do honestly - and we don’t throw away all we’ve bought just to wear new stuff. New pieces are important because your image is refreshed and so is your style, but why not be able to mix that with garments from previous seasons?”

The legacy of traditional ideals of masculinity in fashion is similarly not stagnant but one that is free to evolve into something that feels less anachronistic and more authentic. Fashion after all has always been used as an identity signaling device. But today it’s much less prescribed and much more subscribed.

Sébastien Meunier’s restrained yet edgy designs are leading a quiet revolution to push the boundaries of individual expression without going over the edge.

By HASSAN AL-SALEH

Photography MATTEO CARCELLI

Power is silence. It may sound like an oxymoron, but not for French fashion designer Sébastien Meunier. For the Creative Director of cult Belgian brand Ann Demeulemeester, his silence is steeped in symbolism, and hypnotically speaks volumes on the contemporary yearning for romantic androgyny and poetic nostalgia.

In 2014, Meunier took over the reigns from the label’s namesake founder Ann Demeulemeester – one of the iconic “Antwerp Six” – who founded the brand in 1985 and carved her own niche and remained fiercely independent with her punk rock, romantic spirit. Imbued with emotion and personal purity, today Meunier continues the exploration of humanity’s soul, allowing its beauty to authoritatively speak the transcendent language of time and eternity.  

“Romanticism is something that comes from centuries and millennia and it has always shown the softness of humanity. A kind of poetry that expresses a warm, precious and educated life. At the end, it’s about love. I would like people to live together with the freedom of being who and what they are.”

Photography MARIE SCHULLER

Styling CHRISTOPHER MAUL

Kim Jones’ deft synthesis of insouciant streetwear and couture craftsmanship is redefining what it means to be a man today and tomorrow.

By LAURA BOLT

Photography SOPHIE CARRE

Few menswear designers these days generate quite as much attention and critical acclaim as Dior’s Kim Jones. At just 39 years old, Jones has already achieved icon status thanks to a visionary style that’s redefining masculinity and what it means for couture fashion to hit the street. He is bringing Dior into the future with bold innovation and quiet confidence, while paying homage to its illustrious past.

Before taking the helm at Dior, Jones earned his stripes at luxury brands like Dunhill and Alexander McQueen. It was through his tenure running menswear at Louis Vuitton, however, that he truly came into his own, infusing the heritage brand with a dose of streetwear cool.  

“‘Streetwear is sometimes used as a dirty word”, he has said, “but these things are better made than lots of designer stuff.” 

Jones’ artful combination of street style and high fashion has created a moment in men’s fashion that is impossible to ignore. In his world, boundaries seem to blur, with feminine florals meeting masculine tailoring, and insouciant comic book-inspired prints mingling with futuristic metallics. Looking at Jones’ work, it’s easy to tell that his  appreciation for skatewear runs deep, but his appreciation for beauty runs deeper. 

Growing up, Jones had something of a magpie mentality which continues to inform his work at Dior today. He collects everything from toys to art to avant-garde club clothes from the 1970s, worn by underground luminaries like Leigh Bowery. “Everything you have in life passes through you,” he said. “ You’re only here for a short amount of time.”

This appreciation for the past and how it influences the future makes Jones the perfect poster boy to reflect a generation of men who have all knowledge at their fingertips, a generation that has every past trend available to them to mash up and reimagine. “That excites me, that mix of classic and youth culture. I’ll take something old, take something new, mix it together and see what you get.” 

It has become clear that what you get is something incredibly special. Jones’ vision for Dior is something that is informed by the classic sophistication of the past, imbued with bold, graphic, and playful touches of a man who has spent decades collecting and came of age in the era where street style reigns supreme. The mélange of influences Jones has brought to the brand have manifested as a kaleidoscope of old meets new, from sharp-cut suits created using an innovated “metalized” technique that had never beforebeen used on fabric, to graphic oversized bumblebee icons that nod to Dior’s classic logo, and bright florals.

Jones has acknowledged that he uses womenswear as an inspiration for his work at Dior, “We’re looking at women’s wear references, but you pull those forward and they reflect masculine influences...The rest is about tailoring, but you do need to have that element that lifts you up, away from your competitors. What makes Dior Dior is that it’s a couture house.” 

With so much attention and money in fast fashion, designers who put in the work are quietly revolutionary, providing a new way of appreciating the art of fabrication and what it means to take pride in your clothes. The conversation about the art of construction in menswear is no longer relegated to discussions about Saville Row, but has been expanded into the street. For Jones, “the skills of artisans working in the Dior atelier are a source of my energy. I’m always thinking of the atelier and the craftspeople. And of course, we’re closely connected with factories where items are also produced, but the work of the craftspeople is indeed extraordinary.”

One other notable aspect of Jones’ work, and the one that’s most reminiscent of renowned womenswear couture, is how he expands the idea of fashion into the expression of an art form. 

It’s an old trope that high fashion is wearable, moveable art, but menswear has traditionally been bound by a sense of formality or functionality. Jones, however, takes inspiration from Dior’s rich history in the art world. Christian Dior himself “was a gallerist who worked with Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and lots of artists who were famous while alive. I wanted to do that for the digital generation,” he said. 

Jones, who studied photography at Camberwell College of Arts in London before attending Central Saint Martins for menswear design, also works with contemporary artists to both inspire and capture the zeitgeist in his designs. At Dior, he has collaborated with punk provocateur Raymond Pettibon, an illustrator who has worked with bands like Black Flag and Sonic Youth. Emblazoned on shirts, jackets, and beaded vests, the juxtaposition of Pettibon’s graphic novel-style illustrations create a sense of brash romanticism that is typical of Jones’ work. Before Pettibon, Jones worked with street artist KAWS and futuristic illustrator Hajime Sorayama. The carefully curated work that Jones does feels born not just of respect, but a genuine sense of almost adolescent fandom and enthusiasm. As a designer, he has wisely taken advantage the modern culture of collaboration, but infused it with Dior’s history of artistic exploration. 

Jones’ work at Dior has made him a trailblazer in a moment when men’s fashion is being taken more seriously than ever. The blend of high technique and streetwear inspiration both elevates and democratizes fashion for men, proving that there is art to be made out of the shifting male identity. It points to a philosophy of abiding respect for tradition and craftsmanship, but with an eye that brings couture out of the ivory tower. 

In the world of fashion, accessible is rarely synonymous with desirable but Alexandre Mattiussi’s AMI is breaking the mold.

By JON ROTH

You know those people you see on the street: talking together under the eaves of apartment entrances, sprawled across cafe chairs, barreling off on bicycles toward their next appointment. They are young, and beautifully dressed, but they’re never trying too hard. Their knit caps are tilted just so, their jackets are oversized, their pants are loose, tapered, and perfectly cropped. They don’t radiate the buffed and highlighted polish of Instagram influencers. They don’t have the edgy, alien gawkiness of most runway models. They’re just kids with an ineffable, easy-going style you can’t quite reproduce. Many of them are wearing AMI.

That’s the fashion house founded by Alexandre Mattiussi- the Normandy native who’s managed to distill the unstudied cool of Parisian style into an export that’s adored the world over. Those kids in the cafes are his tribe - muses that inform his designs because in many ways he is one of them: a handsome 39 year old man with an unpretentious attitude, an apartment in the buzzy Pigalle district and a trademark red knit woolen cap. He speaks with the straightforward approach of a merchant. He is here to make clothes for you to wear, not to incite a fashion revolution. And because of that, he’s become something of a oracle all the same.

To look at his resume, you wouldn’t expect Mattiussi to design for the everyman. At 24, he was already working at Dior - creating looks for the storied house’s 30 Avenue Montaigne line, a sedate counterpart to the razor-thin suits Hedi Slimane was turning out at the time. After that, he moved on to Givenchy, another house with a long history and a luxury cache. Then it was to Marc Jacobs - more accessible, but still wrapped up in a jet-set lifestyle that traded on glamour, wealth, and exclusivity. It was there that Mattiussi had his own personal revelation. He was designing a sweater that he wouldn’t be able to afford himself, and that felt wrong to him.  He didn’t just shrug and keep sketching. He decided to try something new. 

Mattiussi decided to make clothes for everyone. He founded AMI (the name combines his initials, but also means ‘friend’ in French) based on a simple proposition: that men, by and large, don’t yearn for edgy, conceptual fashion. They want handsome clothes that are cut beautifully and don’t necessarily raise eyebrows. He took his inspiration from those cool kids he’d pass on the street, and he turned out a line based in beautiful-but-unpretentious overcoats, easygoing knits, and roomy trousers and denim. He cast his models from the sidewalk, and he adjusted his looks to fit their personal style. The fashion world, perhaps fatigued with menswear designers that reliably made too much of too little, responded to Mattiussi’s work with near-unanimous acclaim. 

Reviewers have described the clothes as “artfully thrown-together” and “masculine,” “comfy” but also rooted in a “progressive classicism.” And all along, AMI has maintained price points that make it possible for his inspiration - those fast-talking, easy-going, chic-but-friendly kids - to actually afford his pieces.  Eight years since the founding of AMI, Mattiussi’s label is only growing stronger.

Inspired by the droves of women who entered his stores to purchase menswear, last year he decided to introduce AMI’s “menswear for women” concept - a line of clothing that’s firmly rooted in the core men’s line but adjusted ever-so-slightly to fit the shapes and sensibilities of women. If there is a groundswell now toward familiar, comfortable, easy dressing, then Mattiussi is certainly at the forefront. He has been for years. He recognizes that beautiful clothing doesn’t have to be weird, or challenging, or rarefied. He knows it can be found in the everyday, subtly improved. 

Who is the man you design clothes for? What is his relationship to his clothes?

AMI offers everyday menswear that can be worn by all types of guys. The AMI guy is myself, my friend, the guy I see walking in the street. I’m proud of the fact that the end customers are from a very broad age bracket. His relationship to his clothes is neither intellectual nor too conceptual. 

We often think of ‘beauty’ as something that’s rare. Can beauty be for everyone? 

Beauty for me is anything that is awe-inspiring. It can be rare insomuch that it can be very commonplace. Beauty in nature being an example of that. Ironically, I think a platform like Instagram has shown us that you can find beauty in even the most mundane of objects. 

I think of the AMI man as being very self-aware and comfortable in his own skin. Whether he frames that as beauty or not is secondary to this sense of confidence. 

What to you is the mark of beautiful dressing?

Something that is elegant and casual at the same time in which the person feels at ease. 

Your clothes are more wearable than they are ‘conceptual’ but are there ways in which you stretch men’s perceptions of what they could wear?

The AMI wardrobe plays on the tension between timeless classics and more fashionable, seasonal pieces. We like to challenge the guy who walks into the boutique to find a T-shirt or sweatshirt, by proposing him our carrot-fit pants or an oversized jacket. Getting people outside their comfort zone is the challenge but once they are there, they tend to like it! So, if we are stretching perceptions, it’s at a very comfortable pace, one step at a time. 

You’re a native of Normandy. Is there a particular style native to that region? Has it influenced your designs?

Our Spring-Summer 2019 collection, currently in store, is inspired by Normandy. I felt like taking a pause from Paris; going back to my roots for some fresh air. There is so much going on in fashion, so much noise. I wanted to do something more poised, quieter, considered. The show was set in the enormous field of wheat; it had a really poetic feel about it. 

Dressing like a ‘cool Parisian guy’ has become a goal for men across the world. What is it about Parisian style that men find so appealing? 

I am constantly inspired by Paris so I’m naturally influenced by its streets, its people and its energy. I think people find Parisian style so appealing because it’s so honest and genuine, and never forced or exaggerated. There is a nonchalance, or coolness without the sense of trying too hard.  

What governs your women’s designs? Is it truly menswear for women? 

My menswear for women designs are a declination of men’s looks, adapted and adjusted with female clientele in mind. It’s really about researching the structure of the garment, the silhouette. Keeping that AMI ‘easiness’ that translates into a relaxed yet elegant silhouette on a woman.

Why is it that we find men’s clothing on a woman so appealing?

For me, the strength of seeing a woman wearing menswear is in the attitude that comes from men’s clothes. I also think that womenswear is getting more comfortable and relaxed too: sneakers, backpacks, and a movement towards less restrictive ready-to-wear means that the men’s market is now an on-trend option for women too. 

Who, to you, is the epitome of male beauty? Female beauty?

I find beauty in every single person. It’s hard for me to name one person as more ‘beautiful’ than another. 

What to you is a beautiful work of art?

Art for me is something that stirs emotion, incites a reaction. A beautiful work? Something that lifts  me.  

If you were not a designer, what would you be doing?

I’d be dancing. I started dancing at a very young age but stopped at around 14 after an audition at Opéra de Palais Garnier, when I realized that type of competitive environment wasn’t for me. But the love of spectacle and the theatrical ambiance rubbed off on me. Particularly the costumes and set design. Fashion for me was a natural extension of that world. 

What was the most important thing you learned at the houses where you worked in the past?

The importance of quality and longevity of a garment. Something that is not only beautiful, but that is constructed to last. But I also learnt the importance with connecting with what you are designing – it needs to be relevant to you. If it’s something too detached from your own reality, for me it loses purpose. 

In your opinion, how has fashion changed our understanding of beauty and masculinity? 

It’s hard to say whether fashion is a cause or a result, but there are definitely boundaries being broken down between men’s and women’s fashion so that beauty is becoming more of a gender-neutral concept.  

What’s one thing you’ve done in the past year to make your life better?

I’ve been listening to my intuition more. 

What’s something you think we should all do to make the world more beautiful?

Be grateful for what we have. 

Photography MARIUS W. HANSEN

Set Design THOMAS BIRD

Photography EMMA DALZELL-KHAN

Creative Direction JORDAN ROBSON

Styling LOUISE FORD

For artist and photographer Mustafa Sabbagh, real beauty stands witness to personal stories - it touches, stings and cuts but does not reassure.

By RADHINA ALMEIDA COUTINHO

Photography MUSTAFA SABBAGH

Uncomfortable. There’s no other way to describe a photograph by Mustafa Sabbagh. No matter how exquisite the body in the image, it’s not quite beauty that draws your eye. It’s a visual oxymoron – classical poses placed cheek by jowl with fetishist symbols, perfectly sculptured muscles engulfed by a limp teddy bear suit or vulnerable bodies constrained in corsets and gimp masks.

For an artist born in Amman, Jordan – in a region steeped in a tradition of non-objectification of the human body in art and ornamentation – Sabbagh’s eye seems permanently drawn towards the human form. 

“The body is not an object but a message; making each body a story – sometimes, even an erotic one – gives us the chance to become a masterpiece ourselves,” says Sabbagh. “The body is a democratic act, bearer of personal stories. Denying his imperfection is like erasing his past.” 

Mustafa Sabbagh’s preoccupation with the human body has led his images to be considered among the 70 most beautiful photography portraits of all time, as immortalized in the publication Faces - curated by renowned photography historian Peter Weiermair. 

His artworks are included in several sold-out monographs, such as About Skin acquired by the permanent book collection of London’s Tate Gallery and a place at the Musee de L’Elysee, a veritable temple of photography. Sabbagh’s work is showcased in several permanent private and public collections in Italy and around the world - including the historical Farnesina Art Collection, the Orestiadi Foundation Collection and as part of the permanent contemporary art collection of MAXXI – The National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome.  A former assistant of Richard Avedon, teacher at the Central St. Martin College of Art in London and considered by many to be a polymath of fashion photography, Sabbagh’s own distinctive style and prolific body of work has unsurprisingly earned him a well-deserved place among the 100 most influential photographers in the world and one of the top 40 most important nude portraitists of our time.

Sabbagh may have made his name as a fashion photographer, but he says that he is no longer interested in what a person wears but why they wear it. “The naked body tells its story, it has few veils, it is less hypocritical. A dressed body is a lie, and I always look for the truth,” says Sabbagh.

For Sabbagh, vestments and props are symbolic – whether it’s a police constable’s hat or an army helmet, a louche cigarette dangling from the fingertips, a bandage or a black bridal veil – they serve as emblems that add context to the image.

The dense symbolism of Sabbagh’s pieces sometimes makes attempting to appreciate his work feel overwhelming. 

The Italian-Palestinian artist’s creations reveal a multitude of layers almost impenetrable to the conscious mind. Sabbagh has likened his creative process to a theory of psychology that involves assimilation of a galaxy of influences – from frames in a movie, to classical sculpture, religious motifs, mythology and epic poetry, line drawings, music and multi-lingual literature. What Sabbagh creates when he stands behind a lens – or styles what’s in front of it –has been fed by an unconscious that is well-nourished by years of consuming numerous visual influences and imbibing classical and cultural references. 

The result are images and clips of video art that consistently depict a riveting dance between the beautiful and the grotesque. 

Sabbagh has said that for him, perfection represents the true nightmare of contemporary man. What his images present time and time again is the desecration of perfection to reveal virtually limitless idiosyncrasies and variations. 

“Dark circles from too much work, or too much pleasure. Veins pulsing life. That rough, raw beauty between Caravaggio and Pasolini. I do not like flat faces, I do not like flat things, I don’t like flat life,” says Sabbagh. “I do not like things that cannot sting me, cut me, touch me deeply. That’s why, to me, real beauty hurts: real beauty does not reassure. It’s uncomfortable.” 

Nowhere is this ethos of disturbing beauty more strongly expressed than in Sabbagh’s repeated destruction of gender stereotypes. His subjects consistently flirt with gender fluidity – men strut proudly in tulle skirts, women wear their hair closely cropped, female chests are bandaged flat while men’s bodies are draped in poses that highlight voluptuous curves.

“Accepting the other as an integral part of our being. Contemporary beauty does not feed on appearance but on essence. Living through truthful gestures, perceiving time as passage, rather than as decay. Beauty is looking into ourselves to comprehend the world around us with both temporal and ethical value.”

According to Sabbagh, each gender must be celebrated “but thinking that the human being is a reproductive organ is the mere negation of humanistic progress.” He says: “Feeling yourself in your own body is the first step towards happiness. Diversity stands as the real sine qua non of the modern man. I feel man or woman in a way beyond these two polarities. The only way is to see eroticism is through their habitat: their house is their skin, their dress is their desire.”

So how does Sabbagh approach the depiction of this complex enigma that is the human body?

“Exactly like Lucio Fontana’s canvases,” says Sabbagh. “Through a few gestures I arrive at the perfect cut.” 

Photography YUMNA AL-ARASHI

Styling GABRIELLA NORBERG

Designer Rick Owens blends the strange and alluring, creating a world that’s truly one-of-a-kind. 

By MAX BERLINGER 

With his angular features, long, straight black hair, and his gym-chiseled frame cocooned in his own Grecian-Galactic ready-to-wear, Rick Owens is a sight to behold. The iconoclastic designer has been creating visual feasts—fashion as sculpture, clothes as armor - for more than twenty years, and today has a reputation in the fashion industry that hovers somewhere between cult mainstay and boundary-pushing elder statesman. His vision of glamour is unexpected and stark, yet at the same time, it transcends typical ideas of beauty to present something darker and transfixing; a more inclusive and exciting vision of what fashion can ask of its wearer. 

Mr. Owens was born in Porterville, California and studied painting and sculpture in Los Angeles before moving into the world of fashion design, learning pattern making and draping and creating a ready-to-wear collection in 1994. In 2002, he presented his first collection at New York Fashion Week, a manifesto of moody glamour and hard-edged rock ’n’ roll cool that has been at the heart of his work ever since. He subsequently left the West Coast for Paris where his company is currently based. In recent years his work with its languid silhouettes, dramatic draping, and asymmetrical lines have made his runway shows the most anticipated of the Paris leg of fashion week. His look both foretold the current mania for streetwear and the sporty aesthetic currently dominating the industry but also pushed it forward in an intelligent, expansive way. One thing he’s always done, though, is create a look that is utterly unique and completely recognizable. 

“There is an earnestness to what I do. It can be corny, that I would probably make fun of, but it’s about genuinely connecting with people who believe in a certain kind of rigorous pursuit of a certain aesthetic. It’s a very specific aesthetic that I’ve been very loyal to and I think people have responded to that. They respect somebody who has a very strong opinion on something. And this opinion is inclusive and tolerant and affectionate and has a fair amount of drama—and everybody loves a little drama.” 

Photography KATJA MAYER

Styling VICTORIA BAIN

Photography EMIL PABON

Styling KOEN T. HENDRIKS

John Galliano embarks on a journey to help us discover a new sensuality and a new sexuality by breaking down preconceived ideas of what is masculine and what is feminine. 

By MAX BERLINGER

Photography JASON LLOYD-EVANS 

Maison Margiela’s first Artisanal Collection signified an unrestricted foray into the territory of haute couture for men in conversation with a new masculinity in motion. Reflecting on the streetwear culture of the current menswear climate, John Galliano exercised his pyramidical approach to creation through an exploration of new values. It was an appreciation of the current evolution of male dress codes, and the desire to take it to unexplored places of craftsmanship for a young generation.  

Balanced on the dangerous edge of tradition and avant-garde aesthetics, it served as a bridge from ideologies of style that we all known and are familiar and comfortable with, but then pushing those concepts into the unknown, toward the outer edges of imagination. That being said, it was rooted in something real and understandable, a form of dressing that is recognizable - but then questioned. 

Galliano explodes archetypes of masculinity and gender while showing off his virtuosity of tailoring and design. His ability to combine romance and tradition is nonpareil, the results are certainly beautiful, but not in any conventional way - which only adds to their allure. 

“What is sexy today?” Galliano asks. “It’s a moment to collectively redefine what it means, what it could mean today. The millennials and the Z generation - gay marriage is history, the abolition of abortion rights is history. For them. It’s like old news. So their view of the world is completely different. Of course one understands it. You can’t put yourself in those shoes of these people.”   

The garments are so layered, so nuanced, that they require a deeper look. Not only that, they ask of the request that you reorient yourself and your relationship to what fashion is, what it’s used for, how it’s made, and what it means. The intricacy, techniques and time inherent to haute couture are applied to traditional ideas of male dress in a transcendence of gender-specific uniforms. It is the experimental proposal of a reimagined sexuality, sensuality and individuality for a new mentality.

“The philosophy of this Artisanal man is a proposal of how one could consider bespoke for today,” Galliano says. “That’s rooted in authenticity and that can perhaps redefine what is a new masculinity - or even femininity - through cutting.” It’s wonderful to hear the designer think about big picture ideas concerning our culture and humanity, but also bring those ideas back to his craft of cutting and storytelling through cloth. Galliano remembers a collection he made in 1996 called ‘Fallen Angels’ where he cut the sleeves on an arc, which led to a cowling on the arm. It was at that time that someone explained to him cutting on the bias, which led him to the work of Madeleine Vionnet. “I did and a whole new world opened up.” 

While it’s often used in womenswear, it’s not used as much in men’s clothing. Galliano manipulates it for his own purposes, to inject a glamour into his clothes. “It’s liberating, it’s light, it gives you an illustrative line, it’s relaxed looking, sensual, louche.” 

Not only did he conjure that energy, he used it to question ideas we have about modern dressing. “That street culture will always be an inspiration and an influence on us all because that’s where the energy is, that’s where the kids are, when their backs are against the wall, that energy has always influenced creation - always. It’s often effected by politics, society, it has a huge influence. It will help to shape what we consider masculine or feminine, formal or informal, in the future.” 

He expressed that idea beautifully with fantastical and intricate designs both in their scope and construction. Full body rubber wader coveralls and a satin kimono shirt, a coat enclosed in plastic or a slick black leather jacket with hand-picked vents, landing finally with a crystal-embroidered silk jacquard jacket with a corset and wool trousers and sneakers festooned with glittering gemstones. It was beautiful and otherworldly. It was utterly unique, a nod to historic but also completely separate from it. It was truly forward thinking and in our world of sameness and homogeneity, it was an image and garments worth stopping to look at, closely, deeply: clothing that gives you something to think about for a long, long time. 

“What I am showing is just an example of what we can achieve. I’m just trying to exercise the craft of dressmaking. We call it men’s but traditionally I’ve used it for women’s but hey, why not? Preordained conformist ideas of masculinity and femininity, what is masculine today and what is feminine today really?” explains Galliano. “I hope this is the beginning of a journey to help us discover a new sensuality, a new sexuality. Breaking down preconceived ideas of what is masculine and what is feminine through cutting skills that I have learned and I am still learning.”

Hedi Slimane’s vision for Celine is completed by casting austere yet delicate models to illuminate the archetypes behind the clothes.

By MAX BERLINGER

Photography HEDI SLIMANE  

The fashion industry is one where every detail counts, from the buttons down to the shoe laces. As such, each creative choice is not desultory but part of a larger statement about the comprehensive and all-encompassing vision of a brand, from the sweep of a model’s hair to the color of his or her eyes. In fact, contrary to popular belief, the model isn’t merely a human hanger, but a living embodiment of what the brand strives for, for the type of person who is supposed to live a life in these particular clothes. It’s no mistake that some runways are populated with beefy muscle-bound men who bring to mind sun-kissed Greek gods, while others feature willowy, brooding boys who look just this side of adolescence. These are choices that have been thought out to an obsessive degree. The model is, in a way, a substitute for the viewer. It’s saying that yes, these are the clothes you should wear, but, more importantly, this is the person you will become when you wear them. What more tantalizing dream of fashion, of beauty, is there? 

Hedi Slimane is perhaps one of the most prolific brand builders and image makers of our time. From his attenuated silhouettes and his vintage rock-n-roll garments, he’s created collections that evoke entire worlds of out-all-night nightlife denizens, incredibly chic and aloof partygoers who are as effortless as they are unflappable. The clothes, with their sharp silhouettes, penchant for black and a blunt straightforwardness have been instrumental, of course, but so has the models he casts in his seasonal campaigns, especially in his recent years at Saint Laurent, and now as Creative Director at Celine. 

“You arrive with a story, a culture, a personal language that is different from those of the house. You have to be yourself, against all odds.” 

Photography KATJA MAYER

Styling EMIL REBEK

Model LUC DEFONT SAVIARD at SUCCESS MODELS

Grooming PIERPAOLO LAI at JULIAN WATSON AGENCY

Set Design MIGUEL BENTO at STREETERS

Floral Artist YAN SKATES

Photo Assistant DAMIEN FRY

Digital Operator KADARÉADU

Stylist’s Assistants LUCA BALZARINI and EMILIE BEYUERE

Set Assistant AMELIA STEVENS

Eight years after Lee Alexander McQueen’s untimely death, designer Sarah Burton continues to move his beautiful legacy forward into the light. 

By MAX BERLINGER

Photography CHLOÉ LE DREZEN

When Lee Alexander McQueen took his own life in 2010, the fashion community not only mourned the loss of a complex and deeply brilliant man, they mourned the loss of a singular talent. During the course of his too-short career, McQueen channeled his turbulent moods and rebellious spirit into clothing that was shockingly modern, darkly intelligent, and stunningly beautiful. He made incredible clothing, yes, but he also made fashion that reflected the strangeness of the world, and pointed toward a new future. 

When it was announced that then-unheard-of Sarah Burton, McQueen’s longtime colleague and head of womenswear at his brand since 2010, would take over the house as creative director, some had to ask: Who? It was risky to appoint a relative unknown to head up a brand that traded on runway revolutions, but also one that made sense. In her former position, Burton was intimately acquainted to McQueen’s creative process for many years and was, in many ways, the one tasked to transform his dramatic impulses into wearable works of art. 

In the time since she’s taken over, the McQueen brand has flourished — she was responsible for Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress — and no place is that more clear than in the brand’s invigorated, exciting menswear offering. 

The Alexander McQueen brand, of course, is quintessentially British at its core, and Burton honors that and mines the rich history of things like Savile Row and punk, but is never too deferential or self-serious. Slim suits with cinched waists and flared pants in traditional men’s patterns — windowpane checks, businessman pinstripes, argyle schoolboy sweater vests — have an undeniable McQueen swagger. Overblown paisleys and grandma florals are proof that the renegade spirit is still alive, and a cheeky one at that. 

“I think what’s amazing about McQueen and what was amazing about Lee was that he created this process where it was never really about fashion,” Burton said. ‘It was always about a feeling and telling a story. And I think he sort of trained us all— trained me—to try to tell a story and to find a world that doesn’t necessarily relate to what everybody else is doing and to believe in your own instincts. And that went for everything. Lee really did believe in creating things that were unique to him and very special to the house. A lot of the prints and embroideries and jacquards are specifically designed not just for the collection, but for each garment.”

That feeling of specialness has moved from the women’s offerings — which is the heart of the brand — and transcended to mens in recent years. Burton mixes classic menswear with more forward-thinking fare with references as diverse as the tailors of Savile Row to the styles favored by the kids of Ireland. It’s a sensual journey of the elegant modernism of the British male where the classic British wardrobe is subverted and the codes of tailoring are renewed featuring romantic hand-painted English roses inspired by folkloric florals and a magnified monochrome paisley jacquard. Together, it has that aching beauty and sense of wistfulness that McQueen is known for. 

It’s eight years later and Burton has more than proven she’s up for the task of taking McQueen’s brand and moving it into the future, deftly blending traditional menswear with more eccentric styles, creating a full wardrobe for the modern man, no matter how he dresses. And while she’s already done so much, it sounds like Burton has much, much more planned. “Fashion will never stagnate so long as there are teams of people willing to tackle the soul of the culture. That’s what we do here at McQueen, that’s what we’ve always done.” 

Taking over for one designer and making a name for yourself under his name makes one thing of legacies, remembrance, and heritage — how could you not. It’s something that has weighed heavily on Burton’s mind. “Lee was very much his own person so it's impossible to know quite what he would have thought but part of the reason for me staying is that I believe he always wanted this to be a house that would be here forever, that he never wanted his name not to mean anything any more,” she said. “And I want that too. I want Alexander McQueen to continue. Then, in a hundred years time, there will still be this house that he created, this great place that represents modernity and creativity and beauty and romance and all of those things. That, I think, would be amazing."

Boasting an illustrious career spanning over 40 years, Giorgio Armani is one of the most influential designers of our time. At 84 years old he continues to make lasting contributions to the fashion industry through his codes of sophisticated, subtle simplicity.

By HASSAN AL-SALEH

There are not many designers who have endured the test of time the way that Giorgio Armani has. He has proven, time and time again, to be an unstoppable force in the fashion industry. He is the powerhouse behind one of the world’s most successful independent fashion labels that today has become a fully-fledged, global lifestyle empire. As other elder statesmen take diminished roles at their companies, Mr. Armani, at the age of 84, still oversees every single detail. 

Working as a window dresser at a department store during his formative years, before securing a menswear design role at Nino Cerruti, it was only at the age of 40 that he truly found his calling. He reinvented himself into the man he is today by founding his eponymous brand in 1975 thanks to the encouragement of his partner, Sergio Galeotti. With no formal fashion education, it has always been his innate talent that has carried him to reach the highest echelon of the industry. 

Today, the celebrated designer is known for his trademark minimalism and fluid, unstructured tailoring and credits his success to both consistency and innovation. His approach to fashion is pragmatic; not inventing new collections, each inspired by different themes, but rather creating something that people desire and need for life. 

Armani has always seen his work as a reactionto the time we live in, because as he rightly says, clothes affect people’s behavior and attitudes.  We sat down with the polymath of fashion to learn more. 

How do you stay lively and curious for over four decades?

I think curiosity is something you are born with. I have always wanted to know about things – about different cultures, about people, about film, art, photography, architecture, sport, all sorts of things. As for lively, I believe that is related to curiosity. If you have energy and a love for what you do, you will always be active, engaged, and inquisitive.

What new perspective has time given you?

That a work ethic can get you so far, but that you need the love and support of friends and family too. If I have one regret, it is that I have not spent enough time with those I love.

What is the biggest change you have seen in fashion throughout your career?

In some ways fashion has changed beyond all recognition, and in others it is the same as it ever was. What has changed is the speed with which products come to market and the rise of the big groups, that sometimes neglect individual creativity. The Internet too, of course, has changed the way in which people communicate about fashion, and the way in which they purchase it. But what has not changed is that fashion is still fundamentally about someone finding something that they want to wear, and that will make them look and feel good. In this sense, no matter how much marketing and fast fashion and digital buzz there is, fashion still concerns the relationship between a designer and his customer.

How has your role as a designer changed? Does it get easier with time?

Actually, apart from becoming busier as we expand the areas that Armani works in – to include more accessories, interiors, hotels, beauty, even chocolates – the job has remained the same. It is about having a clear vision and making decisions based on that vision. It doesn’t get any easier, but it remains just as satisfying and rewarding, — and exciting of course.

What era do you find most fascinating and why?

Today. Always today. I am, of course, inspired by the past, as is every creative person, and there are periods in history that hold a particular fascination for me. For example, America in the Forties and Fifties, when Hollywood started to exert its pull on the collective imagination. And then there is the Eighties, the decade in which my name became known internationally. But I have always been someone who looks forward. I am committed to evolving, to developing new manufacturing techniques and new fabric technologies. I ask myself constantly, what do my customers want today? And tomorrow? That is how you stay relevant as a designer.

What is your response to fashion’s constant need for “newness”?

There is good newness, and deceptive newness. Good newness requires you to be open minded to change, and to strive for progress. Deceptive newness is to do with trends for the sake of trends – change for the sake of change, not driven by any need, any cultural shift. Many designers chase trends, and if you do, I believe you can easily lose your way.

You have said that avoiding excess at all costs is your rule. Can you please explain?

It is something I learnt from my mother. She taught me that if you wish to create beauty, only do what is necessary, and no more. For example, one piece of advice I always give to women, is that when they go out for an evening, they should take a look in the mirror and ask themselves whether there is something that they could remove. It may make them look more elegant. Excess for me is often a way of disguising the personality. I want people’s personalities to shine through.

In your opinion, what is your greatest contribution to fashion?

Almost certainly the realization in the late Seventies that we could change the nature of tailored clothes to make them more comfortable. At that time, we were still thinking of tailoring as our grandfathers had done, and using very similar materials and techniques to make it. With the advances in fabric technology, I wanted to make jackets more lightweight and comfortable, without giving up elegance and a perfect cut. I saw comfort as being a modern quality in clothing. This really was a revolution, and I am very proud of the fact that today people take comfort as a given in their clothing.

To who or what do you attribute your success? How have you been able to stand the test of time?

To my great passion. To my work ethic and drive. To my family and friends. To my team. And to my conviction that the success of any fashion business depends on people actually wearing the clothes. I have always put the customer’s needs first.

What is the most important lesson you have learned along the way?

That fashion only becomes fashion if people buy it and wear it. If it stays on the catwalk or magazine pages, or indeed, folded up, or on a hangar, in store, not bought and enjoyed and worn, then it is not fashion. Maybe it is something else – art? A vanity project? But it is not fashion.

Looking back, would you do anything differently?

Maybe I’d take a bit more time off to recharge more regularly. But I know myself well enough now to acknowledge that I am a workaholic.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Life is an adventure. Enjoy it.

What is your secret to longevity in fashion?

Stick to your personal vision, hold your personal beliefs with passion. Do not get distracted. Do not listen to too many people and differing opinions and advice. Stay focused. Believe in yourself.

How is Armani, both designer and brand, embracing the future?

With hope, determination, energy and, as always, a whole barrage of creative ideas!

A partnership between Gucci and the legendary Harlem designer Dapper Dan bridges past and future, and revives the storied culture of a New York neighborhood 

By MAX BERLINGER

Photography AN LE

Dapper Dan didn’t expect all this. When he shut down his Harlem atelier in the 1990s, he figured his work — which took the logos from high-end labels like Gucci and Louis Vuitton and made them into bold and flashy streetwear — was done. But last year the Italian luxury label announced they’d be partnering with the legendary clothier, who’s real name is Daniel Day, helping to continue his legacy and introduce it to a new generation. This was a big surprise, considering that Day’s original designs attracted unhappy attention from the luxury brands — how things have changed. 

Today, Dapper Dan’s multi-level store and studio inhabits a corner townhouse around the corner from his original store, in a neighborhood where the designer has spent the entirety of his life. On a sunny spring day, the sidewalk has a subdued energy — young people stroll past arm-in-arm while others walk along hurriedly to the nearby subway stop. Thanks to Gucci’s support, you can once again get custom clothes made by Day or shop the collaborative capsule collection, which riffs on Day’s original designs from the 1980s and ‘90s. The thing that’s so striking about the pieces is how timelessly cool they are, how Dapper Dan was truly ahead of the curve, how he saw casual street styles and integrated luxury labels with that aesthetic, long before the current streetwear mania that has swept the menswear industry. 

Day is a loquacious, welcoming host, and undeniably cool in his three-piece suit and dark shades. He sits regally in the well-appointed living room area of the townhouse, with its ornate and rich decor, happily talking about his life and worldview. He’s clearly a man who has seen a lot and knows a lot, and is happy to share.  

 “It’s not a collaboration, it’s a partnership. It involves everybody straight across the cultural platform, and I love that.”

The incomparable Donatella Versace has found strength from adversity to revive the family brand while still honoring her brother Gianni’s legacy, but in her own voice. 

By HASSAN AL-SALEH

Photography ZEB DAEMEN

Styling GABRIELLA NORBERG 

Versace is a name that will forever live in infamy. A name that tells a traumatic tale of a visionary man, of glamor, glory, tragedy, heartbreak, addiction, and rebirth.  

They say time heals all wounds. It has been more than two decades since the assassination of legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace, and now his sister Donatella, who is at the helm of one of the most renowned fashion houses, has come into her own to preserve the family legacy and bring the brand into the 21st century. 

Donatella was Gianni’s best friend, muse, confidante, and accomplice. Soon after his untimely death in July of 1997, she assumed creative control of Versace. In addition to shouldering this mammoth responsibility in the aftermath of Gianni’s murder, she was tormented by the loss of her beloved brother and was fighting demons of her own to mask her pain. 

While not all great stories have a happy ending, Donatella seems to have found her own. She is more comfortable in her own skin than ever before.  

“I discovered that I’m stronger than I thought, that I’m a fighter. I alsounderstand now that I have been my own worst enemy for a long time.”

With whimsy and wit, designer Thom Browne challenges us to open our eyes, hearts, and minds to new ideas and reimagine what the future looks like.

By LAURA BOLT

Photography THOMAS GOLDBLUM

It’s not difficult to spot a Thom Browne suit. Shorts, cropped sleeves, tight jackets—it’s wrong done right. For almost two decades, the American designer has upended our ideas of what suiting can be, playing with fit and non traditional silhouettes. His garments are as perfectly made as they are distinctive and unique, and have brought the idea of uniform dressing back to the forefront with a twist, of course. Celebrated throughout the industry for his ingenuity, Browne’s signature style is equally classic and irreverent.   

Browne’s dramatic and theatrical runway shows have always pushed viewers to think about what fashion means beyond clothing. By asking questions about identity, authenticity, and what constitutes personal style, Browne illustrates the role fashion can play in determining who we are and how we see the world.  

The Thom Browne brand has always championed the idea of uniform dressing. What does that mean to you? 

For me, the idea of uniformity and a uniform speaks to true confidence. It’s about knowing yourself very well. A true individual knows themselves well enough to be comfortable in a uniform. I’m in fashion and I design clothes, but fashion is not always so interesting to me. That’s why I like my shows, I like my collections to transcend fashion and become more important than the clothing. I think, in a way, how we represent ourselves at Thom Browne in a grey, very uniform way, I think it becomes almost like a piece of living art, which I think is more interesting and just transcends fashion.

Your SS19 show ended with the note, “See the world through my eyes.” What world do you want people to see?

Really, this collection was just showing the way I take classic ideas in reinterpret them in regards to proportion, and sometimes in ways that make things more interesting. The idea at the end of the show was about being playful and encouraging people to get along.

I hope that the world they see is one in which everyone is open to new ideas, and ideas you might not be comfortable with. A future that is more open. 

Your collection was so vivid and bright, an interesting contrast from a lot of the dark and somber clothing that was shown by other designers this season. 

It was very colorful, very open, and I hope people saw a very uplifting collection. I want to encourage people not to always take shows so literally, and just be open to interpreting it in their own way. The way I approached the collection from a design point of view, was that I wanted to make sure they’re not just seeing clothing. They’re seeing ideas that are moving things forward. Things that are relevant to the season, but also telling a story that hopefully they leave with something they remember.

Where did your inspiration come from?

It started from the idea of an East Coast American aesthetic in regards to colors, and fabrications, and iconography. I wanted to introduce the original proportion to this season’s proportions. I don’t really always think in terms of how it’s going to become reality. I think of, in a way, how it’s all going to feel right for now and how it will make the classic ideas of what I do more interesting this season. Then the reality just comes from there.

Your shows always make a statement, but at the end of the day, you also need to sell clothes. How do you balance conceptual ideas with the need to create a commercial product?

I keep them both separate in my mind. It starts with the conceptual side, and then the commercial comes from there. Everything starts with the conceptual part of what I do. The collections evolve through the season, but when it comes to translating something to the commercial side, it’s really just about taking the ideas and adapting them to represent the collection. 

How do you convince customers to buy the more conceptual, runway pieces?

The most important thing is just for people to be open to seeing different things, and to considering things differently, and not to be so stuck on just seeing things that they understand. That’s the most challenging part, especially after the show and what happens in the showroom commercially. Challenge your customers, for God’s sake. Try to make them consider something new, as opposed to just being safe and just doing the same thing. There’s nothing worse than being safe. The key is making sure that what people see is actually then being offered to them.

Do you ever struggle with self-doubt?

I would never put something in front of people that I wasn’t 100 per cent comfortable with. I like to make people think. I also like presenting something beautiful, because the collection is beautifully made and I hope people see the beauty in them. But I would be troubled if everyone loved what they were seeing, I think its important that some people don’t love it. When you want to put something in front of people that provokes a conversation, you have to expect the good and the bad. 

You’ve referenced style icons like Steve McQueen, JFK, and Cary Grant in your collections. What is it that draws you to them? 

It’s really just about how effortless they were, and how simple they were. They had such a sense of individuality and confidence in the way they lived their lives, but they were also really effortless. 

Film is also a recurring reference point in your work.

It feels like something very true to me as a person. Movies like Metropolis, or the films of Stanley Kubrick have always been an inspiration.

Could you ever see yourself going into the film industry?

I do think about it. The art world is interesting to me, the world of film is interesting to me. I would never want to take away from what I do in fashion, because there is still so much I have to do with my collections with both women’s and men’s. But I think it’s important for people to see me doing things outside of fashion.

How do you reinterpret the past in a way that feels fresh and new?

I think I forget enough about things that it makes it easier to make things my own, and relevant to the modern day. It’s easy for designers to get locked into literal references. One of the challenges that I give myself and everyone here is that I never let literal references in the studio. We don’t have things right in front of us, so we have to reinterpret them in our minds. 

Dress codes have become more relaxed today, greatly influenced by sportswear and streetwear. Has the suit lost relevance, or is it more interesting because of the sense of rarity?

I think suits will always be interesting. I there will always be an appreciation for something that is well made. I feel like I’m back to where I started 18 years ago, when no one was wearing tailored clothing. We’re kind of back in that moment again. I feel like tailored clothing is so much more interesting than everything else that’s out there, because it is so unique. The interpretation, the proportion, and the quality is what makes it interesting.

Clothing is so disposable nowadays, but there’s nothing more fashionable than something that is beautifully made. 

Have the needs of your customer changed in the past 18 years? 

I don’t think much has changed, actually. Of course the collections develop and expand, but I think that’s the reason why the business is doing so well. I’ve stayed true to what I do, and people know what to come to me for. I think that’s the reason business is as strong as it is. I think my customer is expecting more of the same.

We live in a culture that’s obsessed with Instagram and immediate gratification. How do you feel about working in social media obsessed world?

I think it is important to stay up with the times and not to fight technology and to be relevant with what’s going on. For me, however, the most important thing is that I do it my own way, and I don’t do it like anyone else. I never have. 

What do you think the role of fashion is in the larger dialogue about global affairs and how the world is changing? 

I think its different for everyone. I like it to be a more charming, under, softly spoken message than hitting people over the head. Personally, I like to put ideas in front of people that maybe aren’t even relevant for today, but speak to what might happen in the future. 

Photographer and filmmaker Yumna Al-Arashi’s work intimately captures where past and present, work and personal, public and private life intersect. 

By MAX BERLINGER

Photography YUMNA AL-ARASHI

The first picture Yumna Al-Arashi remembers having an impact on her was from 9/11, of a man falling, having jumped from New York’s Twin Towers. “That was really intense to see and so moving,” says photographer and filmmaker Al-Arashi. “I think that’s when I understood the power of a photograph to tell so many stories — to be moving.”

Ms. Al-Arashi’s work does just that — moves people — with it’s deeply personal approach and exploration of female identity, nature, sexuality, loneliness and personal connection. It also reflects a sense of time and place, and how these ideas intersect and exist simultaneously. It makes sense that this is what her work would focus on: a self-taught artist, she studied social inquiry at The New School in New York City. “The course was amix of political science, history and sociology,” she says. “It was incredibly valuable for my work.”

Identity and personal history connect her images, but also connect Ms. Al-Arashi to the viewer. A Yemeni-American, she was born in the late 1980s and was raised in the Washington DC area by her father from the age of three. “I had older siblings, much older than me, so I spent a lot of my time on my own in my own world. It was nice. We were surrounded by beautiful naturethat I’d spend a lot of time in.” The human body in nature, the connection between flesh and earth, haunts many of her images with a sort of quixotic yearning that gives so much of her work an unexpected heft. 

By being a woman, by being multi-racial, by working in a field dominated by men and the male gaze, Al-Arashi is challenging what we see when we look at an image. “What I’m more concerned with, is how we as women are on our way to being as successful as any man has the chance tobe. I want to help pave a road for our daughters, just as the women before me did.”

That she looks to her past, thinks about the foremothers that brought her to the present, is telling, and is the sort of thinking that she brings forth in her images, which often feature the female nude, but never in a predatory or suggestive way. There’s a warmth, an empathy, that she brings to the soft and muted, dusky colors. “It’s me,” she says of her sensual, dreamy aesthetic. “I’m soft and although I’d like to deny it, I’m a romantic. I love to love and I love beauty.”

That you can see beyond what she shows you — a woman’s body in nature, the curve of a flower, the deserted cobblestoned street in a village — and feel the emotion beneath, the layers of humanity contained within, is a special talent. But in a way, it’s also shockingly simple. She allows the camera to capture what she sees, who she is. “My interests lay comfortably in the seat of identity,” she said. “It’s a journey being a first generation person in a world which suddenly decides your identity is the root of all evil. Can you imagine? Being a young person, hearing the racist and war-driven rhetoric in America? My entire life has been unlearning the noise of western media — and asking everyone watching to join me on my journey.”

Al-Arashi moved to London almost two years ago, in part to escape a culture that recognized her identity but could not move past it, to see the humanity beneath. “I really needed to get out of America. It felt suffocating. The racism, the classism, the politics and exploration of Americans. I needed a break. There was a trauma my father tried to escape from in his war-torn home. He took us to America and, in turn, America felt like it was headed in the same direction. I’m learning so much away from it — but I’d be learning anywhere. That’s just a part of getting older and living life. Any form of growing would help my art. Whether in London or in Tokyo or in Yemen. Life helps my art.”

“While her images may have a hopeful, positive beauty — almost meditative in their feeling of acceptance and peace — that doesn’t obscure their more plaintive, thoughtful moments. By showing herself, complementing the beauty of nature, and then placed alongside images from her past, a portrait that is nuanced and layered emerges. It’s avisual representation of past and present, of everything that made her who she is today, and how all those facets are working together to create the harmony of selfhood. The pictures are plain in their straightforwardness, but contain a shocking feeling of profundity.  

“I’m speaking with my body and it reflects on time and ruins and change and the fragility of life. I hope people feel good when they look at them. I hope people can feel me.”

Four industrial designers express the depth and versatility of Prada’s iconic Black Nylon in a special transformative collaboration that celebrates four decades of fashion’s modern classic.

By LAURA BOLT

Photography WILLY VANDERPERRE

Miuccia Prada is and forever will be the mother of reinvention and a continual bellwether. When she joined her family’s business in 1978, she was determined to imbue her work with a sense of modernity and mobility. Values she undoubtedly continues to carry with her until today and have become the very doctrine of her global empire.

Mrs. Prada eschewed conventional luxury fabrics the brand was known for in favor of something more rugged and experimental. The young designer began playing around with nylon, at the time simply used for covering and protecting luggage. A simple rucksack dubbed Vela was born and soon the unconventional fabric substitute would be used in everything from handbags to apparel. “I wanted to do something that was nearly impossible, make nylon luxurious. But obviously it made sense to people because, if you think about it, now black nylon is everywhere,” she said.

This newfound artistic territory catapulted Prada’s reputation as a world class fashion house that understood the real lives and needs of its customers, resolute to move the old world of high fashion into the modern and technological age. Equal parts experimental and pragmatic, Prada Nylon has become as influential as Marcel DuChamp’s Fountain in shifting perspectives on fashion from luxury materials to conceptual ideas. As fashion continues to challenge our expectations of luxury and desire, we look for new ways of uniting form and function.

Today, forty years later, Prada Black Nylon has become an iconic symbol of the brand and a timeless, yet avant-garde expression of elegance for today. As we get deeper into the digital age, re-conceptualizing the structural elements of the clothes and accessories we use every day becomes more and more relevant. We are constantly evolving as a community, reflecting a diverse sense of needs, lifestyles, and challenges. Consumers look to the fashion world as a beacon, showing us what is possible and how to be a better, true version of ourselves. This conversation between our shifting technological, personal, and social needs is what fashion is all about. Prada did just that: challenging four diverse creators to reinterpret Black Nylon. 

Dubbed ‘Prada Invites’, the selection of designers and architects reflects the industrial underpinnings of both the Prada identity and the Nylon heritage. Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Konstantin Grcic, Herzog and de Meuron, and Rem Koolhaas were all tasked with designing a unique item using Black Nylon, highlighting its poetic, practical, technical, and aesthetic aspects. They were given total creative control to achieve the stylistic application of Black Nylon they felt the world needed right now, considering the ever changing demands of a modern consumer. The resulting creations are a fascinating comment on where we’ve come in the past four decades, and where we can look forward to going in the future.

A half-decade in the making, Louis Vuitton’s Les Parfumsfor men pays tribute to the fashion house’s fervor for travel. 

By ADAM HURLY

Photography SEBASTIEN ZANELLA 

Travel arouses the senses. This is the reason many fragrances are inspired by far-off lands and off-road excursions: Wanderlust simply colors the memory. The most fantastic moments from any journey remain the most vivid in our minds. Thus, the most deeply inspired and best-researched scents make a big impression on their recipient. 

Jacques Cavallier Belletrud, the Master Perfumer behind Louis Vuitton’s fragrances, took five years to create a new line of men’s fragrances for the fashion house. Recalling visits and sourcing raw materials from five continents, with stops in Calabria, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nigeria, and more, he carefully marries one sensation to another—and often in stark contrast to one another. Our minds travel with his, to a specific time and place, to experience the emotions he felt when each light bulb flicked on. 

Cavallier Belletrud conjures all of Louis Vuitton’s fragrances at Les Fontaines Parfumées in Provence, France, where the memories of his semi-annual fragrance voyages settle into his senses. These five fragrances, simply known as “Les Parfums”, are the first men’s fragrances bottled for the fashion house. The bottles are created by legendary industrial designer Marc Newsom, and are fresh on the tail of the eight women’s fragrances that Cavallier Belletrud has created for the storied French house since 2012. 

Travel has always been at the heart of Louis Vuitton. Les Parfums, is positioned in the same way: these five fragrances are each breathtaking journeys that inspire self-revelation and a boundless, pioneering spirit. 

“All my trips to discover ingredients are experiences which are necessary for refilling my emotional library,” he says, before quoting Michael Edwards, author of Fragrances of the World and Perfume Legends: “‘New places, new scents, and new impressions inspire artists, musicians, perfumers; they always did, they always shall. Fragrance and travel make great companions…What they have in common is dreams.’”

And so he dreamt up Les Parfums:“I wanted to pay homage to the adventurer on a journey of self-discovery and invoke the energy of his skin. The aim was to compose fragrances that captured the energy of this historic moment yet remain timeless.”

Noting a recent shift in men’s fashion, he says that these fragrances follow a similar trajectory: “The perfume market is full of all the stereotypes of masculinity. I wanted to break this because I believe men are ready to use their perfumes as women do: with more sophistication. Nowadays, men dare to wear colorful clothes. They are more disruptive, less classical, but still chic. Clothes and accessories are more and more creative. I think it is time for men’s perfumes to be in the same mood.” He also sees them as scents that women would love to smell on men, but also might want to wear themselves, adding that gender is not as important as it once was in perfumery. “In my opinion, smell has no sex. For the women’s collection, I noticed that a lot of men bought our fragrances for women but also for themselves.” He suspects the same will happen with these five: Women will wear them proudly. 

Cavallier Belletrud says he wants men to understand that a unique perfume adds a dimension to one’s own persona. “Creating a perfume awakens one’s most hidden thoughts, deepest recollections, it questions the most intimate and profound part of our personality,” he says of the five fragrances. 

First, there’s L’Immensité, a ginger and amber blend. It evokes boundlessness, and uses Nigerian ginger roots and Spanish labdanum. 

Next, Nouveau Mondeis a meeting point of the Middle East, a mix of oud from Assam in Bangladesh and cocoa from Ivory Coast, inspired by his visit to Guatemala.

Orage, is an ode to patchouli and the ebb and flow of a tranquil sea. To achieve this, Cavallier Belletrud combines the patchouli with notes of iris. 

Au Hasardcenters on sandalwood from Sri Lanka. Cavallier Belletrud pairs it with cardamom from Guatemala, to focus on the contrast between woody and spicy. 

Lastly, Sur la Routewas inspired by a trip to Calabria, Italy. “On the road, I discovered some citron with a fantastic smell,” he explains. Cavallier Belletrud blends the acidity of bergamot with leathery, spicy, and vanilla-tinged Peruvian balsam wood oil, which actually comes from El Salvador, not Peru.

Even the shaded color palette of these fragrances is as intentional as each ingredient: stormy gray, desert sand, cashmere beige, watery green. Together they’re harmonious, and would stand uniformly beside the brand’s eight feminine scents. And now, with a collection of 13 scents at Louis Vuitton, one of Cavallier Belletrud’s top priorities—while continually researching new scents—is to maintain relationships with the growers in each market. Doing so ensures that the ingredients for each scent are of top quality from one season to the next. Also, this means that he doesn’t have to fly to El Salvador every few months to walk five hours into the forest, climb midway up the trunk, and extract the resin himself. Even then, his job is more perpetually hands-on then one might expect: At the Calabria, Italy farm where he gets bergamot, “the fruit variesever so slightly from one orchard to the next,” he explains. “As with winegrowing, you find subtle differences in citrus trees depending on their exposure to sunlight and wind. Some bergamot is fruity; others are more unpolished or more incisive. Comparing harvests allows me to choose the one whose quality is best suited to a formula.” If he and his growers stay synchronized, the scent remains the same from one batch to the next.

Be it a repeat trip or initial expedition, Cavallier Belletrud cherishes this process, especially since it fuels his creativity. Hearing him describe his travels paints a clear understanding of why his scents are so inspired, and why he fits so comfortably in the Maison Louis Vuitton:“After a journey like this, you’re never quite the same. Experiencing the scent of Peruvian balsam in its natural environment is a memory that stays with you forever.” 

With no destination ever being the last, these scents become the essence of exploration, arousing curiosity and boundless potential: the truest spiritof travel.

Photography PHILIPPE VOGELENZANG 

Styling MARK STADMAN

Anthony Vaccarello looks to Yves Saint Laurent’s illustrious past to evoke a mood, an emotion, and an attitude as a way of living in the present. 

By HASSAN AL-SALEH

Photography ARNAUD MICHAUX

History and continuity have always been central to SaintLaurent and the same can be said for Anthony Vaccarello, who is now at the creative helm of the storied French house. The Belgian-Italian designer’s creations are composites from Saint Laurent’s rich past, fused together with his instantly recognizable modern, deft approach, to speak to the present. But for Vaccarello, it is also about liberation from the past and living in the now— which, of course, echoes the same rebellious spirit that characterized Monsieur Yves Saint Laurent himself. 

You can never re-create the past. From the very beginning, Vaccarello made it very clear that he is making Saint Laurent his own by imbuing it with the same sense of empowerment he conveyed with his namesake label: the unabashed freedom to explore and celebrate identity, gender, and sexuality. The parallels between Yves and himself are uncanny.  

Since the fabled house was established in 1961, Saint Laurent has become one of the most influential brands in the world, both creatively and culturally. Now, Vaccarello is pushing the Parisian brand forward for a new generation and keeping the spirit of its legendary founder, who revolutionized fashion as we know it, alive today.

“The point is to keep the spirit alive and to make the house and the collections relevant for today. Saint Laurent is an attitude, an effortless chicness but always with a twist, a sense of confidence.”

Photography MARIUS W. HANSEN

Set Design THOMAS BIRD

Photography SERGE LEBLON

Styling JEAN-MICHEL CLERC

Model SERGE SERGEEV at BRO MODELS

Grooming TERRY SAXON at ARTISTS UNIT 

Photo Assistant NICOLAS KENGEN

Stylist Assistant FLORENTIN GLÉMAREC

Photography MAXIME POIBLANC

Set Design David DE QUEVEDO