Tom Ford's sexy alien show changed my life
Plus: The most judgmental taxidermy in Paris
Between all the fashion week hullabaloo, it’s nice to think about designers who do things another way: no shows. No tricks. No celebrities. Just clothes.
So I asked Erin Wylie, co-maestro of Blackbird Spyplane and its womenswear special edition Concorde, to give us a non-fashion-week fashion report.
I always keep an eye on what comes down the runway even though I find it increasingly irrelevant. The types of clothes I actually want to wear — and the designers who make them — live far outside of the big houses. My closet is full of small, independent designers who stay true to their unique and funky visions regardless of runway trends.
Here are three great European lines whose clothes you won’t see on any runways this week but are just as important for you to know:
Belgian designer Sofie D’Hoore makes brutally practical clothes, but with clever twists that make you feel like you’re in on a joke. She’ll name the color of an extravagant woven wool top “cardboard.” The shape of a lot of her shoes reminds me of Snoopy’s nose. She styles gorgeous, evening-appropriate skirts with sensible rubber rain boots. And although she remains a cult designer, she started her label back in 1992, after graduating from the same Antwerp, Belgium, school that gave us Margiela, Dries, Demeulemeester and Demna.
The roomy cuts and calming earthy hues might first draw you to Sono, a London line co-designed by Stephanie Oberg and Simon Homes, who used to work at Lemaire and The Row. But there is expert tailoring hiding underneath the seeming ease: They produce the majority of their clothes in a French factory whose other clients include Comme des Garçons and Hermès. (Homes told me they sometimes have to ask the factories to dial back their exceptional finishing just a hair, to maintain a sense of cool.) You can build a mean pant- or skirt-suit from their collection, or activate “Julianne Moore in ‘Safe’” mode: Enrobe yourself in the rich creamy whites of untreated natural wool and cotton.
Wearing one of Paris-based designer Julia Heuer‘s hand-pleated dresses feels like walking around in your own bouncy castle — a delight! The pleating technique she uses, called arashi shibori, creates rounded, springy volumes with oomph. Julia trained as a textile designer, but always wants her prints to look a little “off.” To that end, she makes all her patterns by hand — whether through painting, collage, photography — and then messes with them digitally, until they edge into sublime chaos. She’s recently started making tie-on collars, scarves and bags, which are a great way for the more pattern-shy out there to play around with her work.
I’ve also had my eye on those collars. And: If you’re a woman who loves (and/or needs) pockets, Sofie D’Hoore is the woman for you.
I ATE A REALLY WEIRD CLEMENTINE
Back in the la-la land of Paris Fashion Week, you rarely have time to do anything real, like look at a painting or eat an actual meal or call your mom. Sometimes you just have to make time – I guess that’s the craziest part of being a human. You have to carve out time for pleasure or you go numb/dumb. One thing all the dud collections this season have in common: You get the sense the designer is living on their own planet, not really talking to anyone except texting beautiful actresses a bunch of heart emojis every couple of days.
So despite the demands of work and sleep, I decided to get a blowout Tuesday morning. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the setting, at David Mallett:
Have you ever seen such judgmental taxidermy?
The publicist Lucien Pagès said he appreciates that I “go bourgeois” for Paris. (Compliment? I hope.)
After the big Dior extravaganza, I had coffee with the photographer Tyler Mitchell. His review: “Jonny ate that.” I know what I think almost as soon as a show is over, but it’s good to try out your ideas on smart people, so that when you sit down to write, you’ve already gotten some pushback. Then you can make your argument on the page more strongly.
Later that day, after Haider Ackermann’s Tom Ford (which I think changed my life? I walked differently the next morning), I took myself out to dinner. I went to a Corsican restaurant that’s become a favorite of mine, and ate mushroom salad and cuttlefish. The dessert I always order – my favorite dessert in Paris, which means the world – is a clementine soaked in brandy. You eat the whole thing, peau and all. Then you sip the brandy from the cup. It is absolutely bonkers, and was just the weird sensual treat I needed after that sexy alien show from Ackermann.
I am reading “Madame Bovary,” because I need something classic and steadfast while fashion and society are getting spun upside-down. I love how Flaubert keeps describing the blood moving under Madame B’s pale skin, and how many characters, deplorable and tender both, are worried about living a boring, pedestrian life. It’s crazy that that was the great anxiety of the 19th-century French countryside: What is the meaning of my life, if it goes on day after day, with nothing new? And these people didn’t even have TikTok!
I read this line as I ate my drunken clementine and thought about the bonanza that fashion shows have become, with all these celebrities and hangers-on, and laughed.
AND ALSO …
So jealous of anyone who’s seen “One Battle After Another” and even more that my colleagues got to talk it over without me!!
I would like to eat the bonkers clementine
And where would find this delectable clementine dessert?