From left: Fall looks from Balenciaga, LaQuan Smith, and Loewe.Photos: Courtesy of the designers
Listening is an underrated fashion sense. While it may be true that pictures are worth a thousand words, designers cast out pearls of wisdom through show notes, videos, and, best of all, interviews, and there’s one of those behind every Replica Handbag Store Runway review (upwards of 200 this far into the fall 2021 season).
Designer interviews are the source for the quotes gathered below, and they reveal some of the major themes animating the industry at the moment, kicking off with optimism (1–3), which is running high. There’s less consensus when it comes to embracing comfort (4–7) and whether or not to go big or go home (8–10). It’s clear that change is afoot in the industry (11–18). Also, that how you look affects how you feel; identity was a key preoccupation of the season (19–23). In anticipation of lockdowns easing up, designers focused on dress-up clothes. Note that there are options for introverts and for those with a flair for the dramatic (24–28). Sexy, we hear, is back (29–32).
Moving fashion forward, four prominent voices suggest (33–36), will require authenticity, bravery, imagination, and an appetite for discovery.
Photo: Courtesy of Prada1/36“Optimism is mounting.” —Miuccia Prada
Photo: Gregory Wikstrom / Courtesy of A. Potts2/36“The light at the end of the tunnel isn’t cliché. It’s necessary.” —Aaron Potts
Photo: Courtesy of Balenciaga3/36“We have been through dark times, but I don’t feel this darkness anymore. I feel hope. More positivity than despair. People want to get to the other side of this.... Young people are getting more spiritual in their own way. I’m part of this movement. I’ve had life coaching and therapy to overcome the traumas of my life. I meditate. We have to learn to calm down and let things go. Say goodbye to the old world. Let go of the past. A lot of new things are being born now.” —Demna Gvasalia, Balenciaga
Photo: Courtesy of Altuzarra4/36“Comfort, but make it fashion.” —Joseph Altuzarra
Photo: Courtesy of Moschino5/36“Comfort schmomfort! What we need now more than ever is fantasy and glamour and things that make you feel wonderful, and I don’t think sweatpants do that.” —Jeremy Scott, Moschino
Photo: Courtesy of Giorgio Armani6/36“We may have started to value comfort and ease more and more in our outfits. This has somehow worked in my favor, as comfort is something I have always seen as paramount to the success of my work. If you feel comfortable in your clothes, you feel confident.” —Giorgio Armani
Photo: Courtesy7/36“Women’s materials are stretch, knitwear is cozy, shoes can just be slipped on. But you still feel ‘dressed.’ It’s effortless.” —Matthew Williams, Alyx
Photo: Carlo Scarpato / Gorunway.com8/36“During times of strife, you gotta step up.” —Rick Owens
Photo: Courtesy of Thom Browne9/36“If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it. What’s the point otherwise?” —Thom Browne
Photo: Courtesy of Paco Rabanne10/36“It was so much fun to just go for it.” —Julien Dossena, Paco Rabanne
Photo: James Cochrane / Courtesy of Sharon Wauchob11/36“It felt good to be quite hands-on again. It was different; we were trying on the clothes ourselves, which is not a bad thing. You end up looking at the nuts and bolts, which sometimes you forget about when it’s a big team.” —Sharon Wauchob
Photo: Juergen Teller / Courtesy of JW Anderson12/36“I do not want to be bound by the idea that we have to show 60 looks, that we have to do this thing, that it has to be presented this way. I want to be able to have the freedom. I’m enjoying the freedom at the moment that we’re not part of the vehicle. And I didn’t want to put pressure upon pressure on my team—the last six months have been a nightmare. I said, ‘Let’s just focus on getting 19 fantastic propositions.’ I don’t want urgency. I want to just put it out when it’s ready.” —Jonathan Anderson, JW Anderson
Photo: Courtesy of Osman13/36“I can’t live in a vacuum anymore—the fashion world as it was before. It’s about community, collaboration, and coming together.” —Osman Yousefzada, Osman
Photo: Courtesy of Palomo Spain14/36“I’m really happy because it allowed us the time to rethink. It’s been a beautiful journey for getting to know and understand that there is a real community around the world who are buying us directly.” —Alejandro Gómez Palomo, Palomo Spain
Photo: Courtesy of Isabel Marant15/36“[The pandemic] is giving more time to designers to experience new ways of showing clothes and expressing different styles. More and more, I feel like there’s not one trend but different ways of approaching fashion. The more diverse it is, the more interesting it is for me.” —Isabel Marant
Photo: Kate Sears / Courtesy of Rentrayage16/36“To change the whole system requires changing what people want.” —Erin Beatty, Rentrayage
Photo: Courtesy of Zanini17/36“COVID hasn’t changed my point of view; it’s only confirmed it. Quality over quantity: Today that’s even more meaningful.” —Marco Zanini
Photo: Courtesy of Marni18/36“I hope we’re not going to forget all we’ve learned. It’s about narrowing things down and not wasting time and not making bullshit clothes. It’s about being more focused.” —Francesco Risso, Marni
Photo: Courtesy of Marine Serre19/36“What I’ve always disliked about fashion is trends. When you know who you are, you don’t need to change faces every morning.” —Marine Serre
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20/36“It’s the radical act of having the strength to be who you are; that’s what I mean by romanticism today. It’s a subjective, almost anarchic gesture, assertive of one’s own identity—exactly like punk.” —Pierpaolo Piccioli, Valentino
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Photo: Courtesy of Jil Sander21/36“It’s a time of change for everybody. To be able to achieve change, you need to feel empowered to do so. The way you dress changes the way you feel about yourself.” —Lucie Meier, Jil Sander
Photo: Courtesy of Christian Dior22/36“If you want to build your identity, don’t look yourself in the mirror. It’s something we talked about a lot. If you want to concentrate, you can’t look at your reflection.” —Maria Grazia Chiuri, Christian Dior
Photo: Courtesy of LaQuan Smith23/36“I wanted to design a collectsion that was embracing what I do and who I am. It’s a looking-good, feeling-good collectsion with the understanding and the ownership of the fact that we are a Black-owned luxury brand. So I wanted things to be as unapologetic and unique as possible, diving deeper into my truth as a designer.” —LaQuan Smith
Photo: Yiru Wang / Courtesy of Peter Do24/36“I felt like it was the right time to dress up, to be seen, to say that we’re here.” —Peter Do
Photo: Jonas Gustavsson / Courtesy of Ulla Johnson25/36“Women are going to want to look polished in public.” —Ulla Johnson
Photo: Courtesy of Petar Petrov26/36“Everybody wants to dress up, but nobody wants to show off at the moment. You want to be a bit comfortable, but you still want to look good.” —Petar Petrov
Photo: Courtesy of Brunello Cucinelli27/36“It’s not a blind sense of hope; it’s constructive hope. People want to look well, not pretentious or—God forbid!—showy. Just at ease with themselves and good-looking, elegant.” —Brunello Cucinelli
Photo: Courtesy of Loewe28/36“I think fashion is going to be important in the next while, in making people gain the confidence of going back out and dressing up again. The whole point of this collectsion is: Believe it, and it will happen.” —Jonathan Anderson, Loewe
Photo: Courtesy of Dolce & Gabbana29/36“But the starting point is different. Today ‘sexy’ is the same word but with another value. In the ’90s, you’d dress sexy for other people. Now, the young generations dress sexy for themselves, because they love it. It’s kind of a new hedonism.” —Stefano Gabbana, Dolce & Gabbana
Photo: Courtesy of Dundas30/36“More extroverted times will surely come, more celebratory of the body and of physicality.” —Peter Dundas
Photo: Courtesy of No.2131/36“We have to rehabilitate physicality, after all this forced distancing and lives lived almost only digitally.” —Alessandro Dell’Acqua, No. 21
Photo: Daniel Roseberry / Courtesy of Schiaparelli32/36“I don’t want to be precious about any part of the body; you know, it’s about kind of celebrating the whole thing.” —Daniel Roseberry, Schiaparelli
Photo: Casper Sejersen / Courtesy of Dries Van Noten33/36“I think we’ve passed the stage of pretending. We’ve all gone through something really not nice together. There’s kind of a rawness and directness also—it’s real movements, it’s real emotions.” —Dries Van Noten
Photo: Johnny Dufort / Courtesy of Miu Miu34/36“Little by little, I realized what I was trying to say: bravery. The dream to do something that’s important and difficult. The clothes are not romantic, but the spirit is.” —Miuccia Prada, Miu Miu
Photo: Oberrauch - Viero / Gorunway.com35/36“Since we are all in a motionless situation, we have to double our imagination of inventing an extraordinary journey.” —Nicolas Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton
Photo: Courtesy of Balmain36/36“I don’t know where we’re going, but I do know that we are going somewhere. The point is not the destination but the actual going—the journey, the leaving, and the escape.” —Olivier Rousteing, Balmain
Christian Lacroix is Laird Borrelli-Persson’s fashion raison d’etre; the way he combined romance and historicism set her on the path she is following today. Borrelli-Persson studied literature at Boston College, spending her junior year abroad at Oxford, where she added some art history. After graduation she moved to New York to intern ... Read More