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Fashion of Expectation
Fashion has not moved anywhere in the past, has achieved nothing, has not changed at all and is still boring. Here is a summary of the recent pret-a-porter SS 2025 season shows. There were some great moments there and it is still relevant to talk about them.
But we already wrote about the boredom and the fact that nothing happens in fashion six months ago, everything is somewhat frozen, waiting for the next big breakthrough. The last one happened ten years ago. But in the long pause between the old and the new, waiting for the center of gravity around which everything will revolve, fashion continues to function as usual. The old heroes of fashion are still with us, and some of them have even come back to us. Again. Let's start with them.
Of course, the most anticipated show of the season was the Valentino show, and of course also because of the return of Alessandro Michele, this time in the role of artistic director. And he did not disappoint. We saw the Michele we remember at Gucci. It is clear that there is no longer the recklessness, the freedom and abandonment, and most importantly, the feeling of discovering new things and subverting old things that had been the driving force of Michele’s early days at Gucci. Instead of a tamed dragon, there was a porcelain cat instead of his wax head (Michele was always a master of such metaphors). But in general, there was nothing instead of a head, and nothing provocative or provocative at all. But there was beauty enough: a face literally adorned with jewels, delicate silk dresses that Michele always knew how to make, and even a certain disability that had not previously been characteristic of him.
Valentino of the late 1960s and 1970s stood out, but he didn't care much about heritage, but this is actually Michele's favorite era. But almost everything is already familiar to us, except that there are more bows and red in general. But few people expect to see a completely new Michele who is not like his former self. They love him as he is. He can afford to combine jeans with a black corset, but he can also wear a pillbox hat and lace gloves. All this will not resemble a brothel, but it will look soft and touching.
I usually dream of seeing him do Saint Laurent with a genuine love of the 1970s. Perhaps then it would turn out to be more alive than the almost mechanical re-creation of the main Saint Laurent clichés we see today, which Anthony Vaccarello does with a dangerous closeness to AI work.
Another hero who emerged almost simultaneously with Michele was, of course, Demna Gvasalia. Completely different, almost together, they had made a glorious fashion revolution ten years earlier. His Balenciaga was a beautiful collection, and beauty is the core meaning of everything Demna does. One of his most important achievements was not that he had learned how to use targeted and controlled mockery (though he did), or that he had been able to master the power of Margiela’s legacy (though he could), but that he had understood the laws of modern beauty. It was not simply a matter of breaking the norm by replacing Balenciaga’s opera capes with red terry gowns. Demna understood something important: modern beauty is after beauty.
Abandoned industrial environments covered in graffiti, crumbling houses with crumbling plaster and peeling paint, piles of worn-out T-shirts and sweatshirts in a street market rummaged through by children in the suburbs of Paris—all of this would be successful in some way. A fashion show. If we take cultural references, it’s Pistoletto’s “Venus in Rags” with its piles of clothes (remember when Balenciaga had one of those showcases?), or Büchel’s contemporary Venetian “Monte di Pietà” with its hypnotizingly beautiful mountains of old trash. Post-beauty is simply what remains when beauty is revealed as compromised and diminished.
All this has long existed in the current space, almost a cliché, and although it was not Gvasalia who discovered this vision (it is generally not the task of fashion to open new ideological and aesthetic horizons), he understood how the industry of large luxury brands could use it. Therefore, the most beautiful part of his collections is not even the constant heavy armored dresses or the deliberately disproportionate appearance of underwear and outerwear (in ascending order - sweater stockings, bomber jacket stockings, fur coat stockings), but the outfits are literally made up of various things, the sleeves of silk dresses hanging under the hoodies look like decorative decorations. If Margiela turned wine corks into necklaces, Demna Gvasalia practically abandoned transformations. He tied a green work gown around a model dressed in dull black, and it became a precious trim, a semantic center of the whole look. The fact that things cannot be remade, reshaped, recut, but can actually be used as they are, ready-made, is Gvasaliev's original idea and where his strength lies. And judging by the fact that Valencia just extended his contract indefinitely, the power is still with him.
Nicolas Ghesquière has been on the fashion scene for almost 30 years now — yes, it’s hard to believe, but that’s how long it’s been since his debut at Balenciaga. During this time, he has played different roles, from a golden boy to a respected master, and now, after ten years at Louis Vuitton, he has found stability in his most important quality — devotion to the pure art of fashion design. His collections always show his two great loves — historical costume and the 1980s, the time of his youth. The first love was represented this time by a men’s Renaissance costume (Ghesquière spoke about the Loire castles where he grew up), and the second — by bike shorts and tunics with abstract prints (works by French artist Laurent Grasso, who places modern images of celestial bodies and various atmospheric phenomena in a Renaissance landscape). Among the very Ghesquière combinations, we should also note the black silk trousers with one leg paired with a red leather jacket with a cinched waist, and the loose crystal tops with transparent pantaloons just below the knee. But even in the most obvious combinations - for example, an embellished waistcoat with cycling or boxer shorts - his hand erases any trace of cliché, because it is the hand of a master.
Prada usually alternates outstanding collections with simply good ones, and if the last one was from the first category, this one is from the second. Last time there was a complete coordination of two pairs of hands making things, and this time it was clear whose: huge dragonfly glasses, panama hats with transparent windows on the brim, tights with a belt and embroidered dresses - this is Miuccia Prada, and long trousers with dragging legs, shirts and heavy leather skirts with snap hooks - this is Raf Simons. These shirts and these trousers were the same echo of the men's collection that Prada always has. But above all, it was determined by the effect of clothes suddenly caught by the wind, which was created by wire inserted into the collars and cuffs of shirts, the fronts of trench coats and the hems of dresses and sarafans.
The model wore this sarafan, looking very youthful, but Prada's favorite game of masculinity and femininity (and in fact, with stereotypes of both), which was the theme of the previous collection, sounded only distantly here. And in general, this collection is quite eclectic, and the most obvious theme here is the 1960s, that is, the youth of Prada itself and its, apparently, favorite fashion designer of that time, André Courrèges: the noted panamas with windows are not the first time he has been quoted in Prada, remember the legendary fur coats in poppies from the SS 13 collection. But the lack of a single theme will not reduce the power of this collection's influence - and we can say with absolute certainty that next spring everyone will go out on the streets in these multi-colored ribbed tights with belts and skirts with snap hooks. And the originals of the shoes repeated in this collection, which were bestsellers in collections of different years, have already been taken out of their closets,
And also, over the years of observation, it has become known that if Prada’s collection was simply good in a certain season, then Miu Miu will be outstanding – and so it was this time. It seems that we have already seen everything in it – little dresses, panties, and other underwear, and vinyl coats with ties, and knee-length pleated skirts, and sweatpants. But how brilliantly it was all conceived and in what wonderful combinations it was presented! It seems that the theme of underwear as independent clothing has already been overexploited – both in general and at Miu Miu in particular. But this time Prada showed – I don’t even know what to call it – knitted bandages or long sleeves cut into strips, wound around the torsos of the models over tank tops with thin straps or short dresses – and it was extremely touching. And with the panties in this collection there were rather short (but still covering the stomach) T-shirts and several metal belts in the form of chains with pendants-charms - and this was full of irony. Well, and the signature combination of panties with small shirts and sweaters and raincoats or jackets on top was performed here in some ideal proportions.
It is impossible not to notice the pleated skirts, folded as if from two different, neat volume shorts, also two-colored, and a bow of such shorts, a small tracksuit (in general, all volumes were very restrained) and a jacket not just not voluminous, but downright small, as if one had grown out of it, shoulders a little narrow, sleeves a little short. But the most captivating and beautiful were the little dresses, as if re-made for poor orphans from old princess outfits: embroidered silk hems are cut and planted on some slightly wrinkled base, and chiffon stoles are draped over the neckline on the back. Without a doubt, one of the best collections of the season - yes, simply the best, in fact.
Nadège Vanhet’s Hermès collections have a penchant for the exceptional, sometimes even excessive, nuance. This time, the collection was dedicated to her artistic studio, filled with details that referenced it (for example, special pockets for pens and pencils on leather jackets and overalls) and various labor-intensive artisan techniques (for example, leather treated to look like velveteen, turned almost into lace and set on elastic silk mesh). This fine motor skill was balanced by the theme of sexuality as confidence and strength, which has been emerging for the second season in a row (for example, straight skirts made of transparent silk mesh with through zips worn over micro shorts, and to match them, elongated leather jackets with two-piece clasps). All the colors this time were in a gray-beige-brown range with a few flashes of fuchsia.
Hermes loves to transform the technical into the decorative and generally to derive aesthetics from functionality, and although the artist’s leather overalls look like the quintessence of luxury, one can imagine Hermes clients engaging in some kind of light-hearted artistic practice in them—precisely because of this immanent quality of theirs.
It seems that the current Bottega Veneta has everything you need: a clear silhouette with wide sloping shoulders, a trapezoid tapering downwards or with a cinched waist, and eccentric shaggy headdresses, and skirts with slits on the sides and funny tassels sewn onto them, and wide, loose trousers of a very current cut - and even trousers with one leg (that's definitely the trend of the season), with skirts sewn onto them, and stiff, voluminous shirts with stiff, pointed collars, and noble dark green and burgundy thick leather, and beautifully draped evening dresses. But overall, Bottega Veneta SS 25 leaves the feeling of a collection made by a person who worked with an outstanding designer - which, in fact, is Mathieu Blasi, who worked with Phoebe Philo. And we constantly see echoes of his work and those collections in today’s Bottega, but we don’t see the level of Celine back then.
Louise Trotter at Carven works noticeably more interestingly with volumes and silhouettes. We have already noted her first collection — let's note this one, it deserves it. Executed almost entirely in black and white, she obviously tries to distance herself from the current clichés — broad shoulders, clear geometric figures in volumes — and make everything a little thinner and a little more complex. And this means less obvious combinations of volumes (not only clear rectangles, but also some asymmetrical, as if slightly crumpled polygons), less predictable decorative moves — asymmetrical, as if accidentally sewn in unexpected places frills, drapery-appliques in the same color, but a different texture, and generally beautiful draperies. And in general, it seems that Trotter is the one who is capable of returning Carven to popularity, which this brand lost quite a few years ago.
Ruffles and flounces became the main decorative element of the current Uma Wang collection, taking the place of pillows, from which entire outfits were put together in the previous collection. There were also layers and rows of frills, gathered into large dresses or sewn vertically, like stripes on trousers. There was also a lot of drapery - for example, a blouse, tightly draped in the front and with a completely open back. There was almost no completely symmetrical outfit, but there were, for example, jackets with one sleeve, put on backwards. But in general, the decorativeness characteristic of Uma Wang was limited this time by a strict palette - almost the entire collection was made in four main shades: black, gray-beige, eggshell and berry-red. No patterns, only a play with textures - vinyl, crinkled, covered with torn fringe. So Uma's models looked like priestesses from some space odyssey.
There was another premiere - the first collection made by the Dries Van Noten studio without its retired founding father. So far, the studio has coped with its task quite well. Everything was recognizable - the silhouettes of Dries's loose dresses and skirts with peplums, his colors - gray, mint, fuchsia and grass-green, his embroideries and appliqués. But in the absence of Dries Van Noten himself, all this did not fade, but somewhat lost its purpose. His place in fashion and the brand is so unique that it will not be easy to find someone who will define a new path for the brand. And a new path and a new image are very much needed - because everything before was built largely on the personality of Dries, on the complex of qualities that this personality embodied, it was his image that was the binding composition that glued everything together into a single whole. Now everything needs to be rebuilt – and we wish Dries Van Noten every success in this difficult task of developing and preserving the brand.
Yes, in fact, there are no new names. All those whose second collections we suggested we wait for six months ago either showed them, and the conversation ended there, or did not show them because they were fired. The only one I want to talk about is Duran Lantink, whom we already praised a couple of seasons ago - he received the LVMH Prize this year. He still very wittily combines his volumetric elements - which began with lifebuoys on pseudo-beachwear in his debut collection and have now developed into different forms - with ordinary clothes. Everything we loved about him - stripes, cheerful wallpaper-linen patterns, strange and funny headdresses - is still with him. The circus striped tights and hats, reminiscent of Napoleonic, Torrero and clown clothes at once - and to me most of all they reminded me of theatrical sketches by Russian constructivists for Meyerhold or Tairov's plays - were good. But even the things in which there is nothing specially eccentric look fresh, and in general he successfully combines wit and humor, which is practically non-existent in modern fashion. The collection looks very light, integral and somehow humanistic - and even Naomi Campbell, who apparently got to him on the wave of surging fame, looks at his fashion show not monumental and pompous, as usual, but very humane. And he is the last fashion designer who still puts long dresses on guys - not out of provocation, but simply because it is beautiful.