Paris Fashion Week: Northern Irish designer puts into focus 'what is unclear right now'
Models walk the runway during the Loewe Womenswear Fall Winter 2023-2024 show as part of Paris Fashion Week. Pictures: Getty Images
Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson presented his autumn/winter 2023 collection for Spanish luxury fashion brand Loewe in a purpose-built white box at the Château de Vincennes during Paris Fashion Week on Friday morning.
The first exit was an ivory silk duchesse dress printed with a blurred image of a floral dress. The ensuing looks distorted familiar tropes like trompe l’oeil trench and faux-fur coats on silk or satin sheaths; a classic brown wool overcoat glistens with crystal embellishment; a simple t-shirt and shorts fashioned from feathers.
Anderson toyed with drapery to produce intriguing silhouettes like a fold caught midway on a red jumper; a pin gathering volume on a dress; a bag chain holding the drape on a leather dress.
In his show notes, he said he wanted to “stress that fashion, rather than being about the moment, is about the later. About putting into focus what may seem unclear right now.”
As the world reels from the cost of living crisis, designers like Anderson are bracing for a looming recession by stripping back ornamentation in his collections. The reductionist sensibility producing minimalist clothing professes the notion of ‘stealth wealth’ which previously dominated fashion in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash. Other designers in Paris have followed suit.
The son of Irish international rugby player Willie Anderson, the 38-year-old virtuoso, who took the helm of Loewe in 2013, is credited with transforming a sleepy 177-year-old heritage brand into one of the most covetable labels in fashion recognisable for its sculptural handbag designs and conceptual runway shows.
Friday’s show drew a crowd that included Northern Irish actor Jamie Dornan, supermodel Naomi Campbell, and Academy Award-nominated director Luca Guadagnino.
On day five of Paris Fashion Week, the designers in the French capital up the stakes as a month-long tour of shows prepares to draw to a close.
“Paris Fashion Week sets the tone for what we will be wearing next season. Designers such as Dries van Noten and Rick Owens are instrumental in determining what our wardrobes will look like while also offering a social commentary on the world today,” said Clodagh Cronin, director of Samui on Drawbridge Street in Cork City, which stocks eminent designers like van Noten, Owens, as well as other Paris fixtures such as Isabel Marant and Sacai.
The Rick Owens show on Thursday night was another pertinent examination of dystopian glamour. With tense political climates in mind, he contrasted luxuries like fur coats and floor-sweeping dresses with daring waist-high slits and bulbous leather forms that shield the body and coats with collars that cocooned models in a chrysalis. The collection used fashion as a method of reflecting times while challenging the parameters of what clothing can be, as many of the collections in Paris have.
Paris Fashion Week continues until Tuesday.
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