Victoria Beckham’s Eclectic, Eccentric A/W´23 Show

Victoria Beckham drew on influences as diverse as Grey Gardens’s Little Edie and the work of artist Solange Pessoa when creating her autumn/winter 2023 collection, unveiled at her sophomore show on the Paris schedule. Anders Christian Madsen – and almost all of the Beckhams – were there.

It was about the art of dressing up

When Victoria Beckham came out to take her bow in the cloisters of Val-de-Grâce, Giancarlo Giammetti – the 85-year-old legend who co-founded Valentino – gave her a standing applause. “The workmanship on your collection is as good as many couture shows,” he wrote on Instagram immediately after. Since she relocated her show to Paris last season, Beckham has been tirelessly toiling on the precision and rigour of her work. For her sophomore presentation in the city of couture, it paid off. Her collection was an exquisite exercise in deconstructed tailoring, abstract dress-making, and the kind of arcane cutting that makes a show stand out on a back-to-back schedule that easily blurs the vision. She dedicated it to the art of dressing up. “I used to watch my mum getting ready back in the ’80s when she’d sit at her dressing table and have Raffinee and Christian Dior’s Poison on her table. She wore shoulder pads and big hair and lots of Elnett and peplum waists. A more-is-more attitude,” she reminisced during a preview.

It was partly inspired by Grey Gardens

Since Beckham moved her show to Paris, she has been going back to the roots that ignited her love of fashion, and the roots of clothes-making itself. A new portrait of Drew Barrymore graced the invitation, revisiting her character of Little Edie – by way of Victoria Beckham garments – from the 2009 fictionalisation of Grey Gardens. “I’ve been inspired by that movie many times,” Beckham said. “I’m drawn to how eclectic and eccentric the character is, and how batshit crazy the styling was. Plus, I know Drew – our kids used to have playdates – and there’s something very honest about her character that I find really attractive.” The weird and infectious idea of Little Edie, a 54-year-old woman who lives with her mum and spends her days dressing up, inspired a collection founded in a tattered, twisted, decadent glamour: an exploration of subversion Beckham consistently pulled back into slick, modern silhouettes.

It balanced the beautiful and the pale

The Psycho soundtrack partly scored the show, setting the tone for the deliciously eeriness with which Beckham approached her dresses: pleats psychotically patchworked together into dramatic frocks, dresses that looked as though they were made entirely from tights, silky ’30s bridal gowns worn back-to-front, and an evening dress that unravelled into acrylic but very human-looking hair (inspired by the artist Solange Pessoa). Backed up by feathers poking out from lapels or scanned into a smoky plume print on dresses, it made for a constant balance between the beautiful and the pale. There was an air of customisation to the de- and reconstruction that imbued almost every look, which almost felt meta for Beckham, whose collections over the past 10 years have been a seasonal expression of her journey into fashion. Paris, it seems, has inspired in her a re-discovery of craftsmanship, expressed in hyper-modern tailoring hacked open with inverted lapels and revealed stitching.

There was a spirit of customisation

“I was never in a position to afford designer clothes so I used to really love creating what I could, playing and expressing myself in that way,” Beckham said, recalling her early discovery of customisation. “When I was at junior school and I wanted the main part in a play, I used to lie and say I had the costume at home. I didn’t, I just wanted the main part.” She’d go home and make it. “When I was at senior school, I came up with this trend of wearing two pairs of socks. They were kind of over-the-knee socks and I’d wear one pair over the knee and another pair on top, and I’d scrunch them down. The trend caught on and everyone was wearing two pairs of socks, and my sister and I used to fight every single morning for the socks. And Harper said to me last night – I kid you not – she said, ‘Mummy, I just bought some leg warmers on ASOS. I’m gonna wear them over my black tights and scrunch them down.’ I was like, oh my god… I started that trend!”

Nearly all the Beckhams were there

Bar her son Romeo, the entire Beckham clan was in attendance, with Brooklyn and his wife Nicola Peltz Beckham flying in from America. The love of customisation was clearly passed down through the genes: Cruz wore a custom VB-logo denim outfit, while Harper Seven was in a bespoke Victoria Beckham suit. For their mother – whose discovery of fashion is one of the most documented in recent history – her developing exploration of fashion is now expressed in her evolving runway proposals. “I used to push boundaries much more than I do now,” she said of her personal style. “But I think there was naivety then. Some of the things I used to wear when I was in the Spice Girls, you know… I was naïve and I didn’t really care. It was just about what I liked and what felt good and expressing myself.” Years on, she’s doing the same on a Parisian runway – only, instead of naivety, this collection was an illustration of the knowledge and confidence Victoria Beckham now embodies as a designer in Paris.

Schiaparelli’s First Ready-To-Wear Runway Show For A/W´23

Daniel Roseberry brought his signature flair to RTW for the first time for AW23; Anders Christian Madsen reviews the latest Schiaparelli proposition.

It was a full wardrobe

In his self-penned show notes, Daniel Roseberry gave a candid and very market-focused account of the intentions behind his first RTW runway show for Schiaparelli. Calling it a “long-planned and critical step in our ongoing revival of Elsa’s house”, he wrote: “Our mission this season was straightforward – to present an entire wardrobe, complete with everything from crisp white poplin shirts to short velvet cocktail dresses, and to infuse these classics with Schiaparelli’s trademark wit, irreverence, and drama.”

It took place in Schiaparelli’s own building

In an intimate staging in Schiaparelli’s salons on Place Vendôme – with Sade’s greatest hits on the sound system and Jared Leto in black Batman make-up in the audience – Roseberry presented his commercially viable adaption of the haute couture shows that have become Instagram gold over the last year, and catnip for a new coterie of clients who also indulge in a bit of off-the-rails fashion. “‘Quiet’ doesn’t work for our women. What they want instead are the pieces that already have become indelibly associated with the house,” he said.

It evoked the couture offering but with sportswear

Fulfilling the wishes of his clients, Roseberry presented a collection of super-sculptural coats and suits embellished with gilded hardware, moulded leather belts and cuffs, gold-buttoned denim suits, shearling outerwear with shaved-in face motifs, and similar wool manifestations with imagery achieved through stencilling. If those elements evoked his haute couture, puffer coats and jackets added a sportswear proposal to the Schiaparelli repertoire that felt decidedly St Moritz.

Roseberry debuted a new bag

Because much of Roseberry’s work for Schiaparelli is defined by surface decoration and three-dimensional elements – we all remember Kylie Jenner’s faux taxidermy lion head from January’s haute couture show – he amplified his accessory offerings. A new bag, the Schiap, adapted the house’s Shocking flacon and came with hardware coated in a 24ct gold finish. Golden-toed shoes and boots featured throughout the show, which could create a Tabi-like phenomenon for the house, if they take off.

It was pro-code and anti-logo

Throughout the show, Roseberry speckled his creations with the signature emblems of Schiaparelli: the keyhole, the measuring tape, the anatomy. “One of the challenges of making clothes now, in an age of rampant branding, is honouring Elsa’s codes while, at the same time, not reducing them to logos,” he said. In a logo-manic world, branding through symbols rather than monograms is an interesting experiment, and something Schiaparelli’s celebrity-driven profile might facilitate.

Chloé’s Renaissance-Inspired A/W´23 Show

Gabriela Hearst’s autumn/winter 2023 Chloé collection is her favourite she’s designed for the house, she told guests. Anders Christian Madsen reports from Paris Fashion Week.

It was about climate success

“This is my favourite collection I’ve done for Chloé. You can take it from the runway straight to my house,” Gabriela Hearst said backstage. The show marked her third chapter in a trilogy of collections about so-called climate success, which all comes down to one thing: “The empowerment of women. We have all the data to show that women need to be in leadership roles in order for us to execute on climate success ideas,” the designer explained. To inspire her revolution, Heart based the collection on a historical muse who lived up to the ideal: Artemisia Gentileschi.

It adapted the Renaissance wardrobe

For the collection’s main reference, Hearst set her sights on Gentileschi’s Esther and Ahasuerus, a lavish composition that brings to life the sumptuous colours, opulent draping and architectonic construction of Renaissance dress. “She truly loved clothes,” Hearst said of the painter, and it’s evident in her expression. It inspired a collection that adapted the codes of the Renaissance to the Chloé wardrobe: majestic shearling hunter’s coats, voluminous cape-like puffer coats, and tailoring structured in stripe-like strips of fabric reminiscent of men’s baroque breeches.

The muse was Artemisia Gentileschi

“I thought about it: We’re entering a new Renaissance; art and science mixing. I completely believe that it will be the artists and the scientists who will take us out of this mess – not the politicians,” Hearst said, the mess being the climate crisis. “So, we’re combining both in the muse of Artemisia Gentileschi.” The Italian painter was one of few female artists of the baroque to make it into the history books of art. A frontrunner in every way, she successfully brought a man who raped her to trial and had him convicted. “But that’s not what defines her. She made all her paintings about women when everybody else was doing historical and biblical paintings,” Hearst said.

It was all about sleeves and necklines

True to her Renaissance premise, Hearst made sleeves and necklines her erogenous zones. Dresses burst out into bishop’s, bell and trumpet sleeves, some had orbital shoulders, and others evoked the naked shoulder line of the time. It paved the way for medieval scooped necklines, heart-shaped décolletages and necks fully covered-up to the jawline. Throughout, Hearst modernised the silhouettes until the memory of the Renaissance remained only in sculptural form – an impact enhanced by plenty of leather. “The three materials that were used in the Renaissance were linen, wool and leather. They’re extremely resilient and last for thousands of years,” she said.

Accessories took medieval form

For the 13th birthday of the Marcie, Hearst transformed the Chloé bag into a leather biker jacket with matching trousers. It set the tone for leather bags informed by medieval coin purses, and new versions of the Penelope bag in box leather, suede patchwork and shearling. As a nod to Renaissance boots, she created a thigh-high rain boot that looked made to stomp through royal hunting grounds and banqueting halls. “I love the quote we put in the press release,” Hearst said, citing Gentileschi’s most famous one-liner: “I will show your lordship what a woman can do.”

Givenchy’s “New Elegance” A/W´23 Show

Matthew M Williams delved into the Givenchy archives ahead of his autumn/winter 2023 show, resulting in a medley of vintage-inspired prints and sculptural silhouettes. Read on for the lowdown on the collection.

The collection proposed a new elegance

Three years into his Givenchy tenure, Matthew M Williams is distilling and refining his ethos for the house. Following a men’s show in January that clarified his intentions, his women’s proposal followed suit. Drawing on Williams’s own experience as a millennial designer and dresses and the wardrobes of the peers that make up his community, the collection studied how we imbue the clothes people actually wear – workwear, casualwear, and yes, tailoring – with elegance. “The classic idea of elegance was informed by the virtues of the mid-century – something Hubert de Givenchy very much owned – but in a new world, how do we convey a sense of elegance?” he said before the show.

It celebrated how we actually wear clothes

The show opened with a series of tailoring looks that reflected the hallowed silhouette of our time: big bolstering shoulders and a lightly sculpted waist. Developed in Givenchy’s haute couture ateliers and structured in satin, Williams’s coats were cut with a precision that suspended them between the casual and the formal. In their hyper-luxurious simplicity, they did what he set out to do: drape one of these pieces over your shoulder and elegance is instant. The silhouette reverberated in blazers worn as minidresses – a look favoured by many a female show-goer around the fashion week landscape – as an authentic image of a contemporary view of elegance.

It formalised the casual wardrobe

“I looked at the women who surround me and the silhouettes that empower them; that make them stand a little taller and feel confident,” Williams said. “Today, those silhouettes are made up of everything from tailoring to workwear. My approach was to elevate those pieces and enhance the elegance they reflect.” He did so in looks that echoed the multi-layered silhouettes of his men’s show, composed from sweats and bondage trousers and cargo garments, but layered as a proposal for how to make that category of clothing elegant. “Today, we are looking for authenticity in what we wear: expert draping, intricate fashion treatments, the trace of the hand; elements that make the ordinary extraordinary. Those components are amplified in this collection.”

It made a case for comfort in elegance

At the heart of Williams’s interpretation of modern elegance was a message of comfort. “One of the reasons for the rise of sportswear and workwear in fashion over the past two decades is the denunciation of dress codes that compromise your comfort,” he argued. “It’s important to me to make fashion that make people feel good, which also doesn’t exclude anyone from achieving the look they want.” As a result, he researched an idea of elegant silhouettes without constricting the body. “From tailoring to separates and dresses, nearly everything is sculpted around the physique rather than on it, or imbued with stretch mechanisms, or crafted in really soft, comfortable fabrications,” Williams explained.

It had plenty of haute couture

As the show progressed, a more classic idea of elegance unfolded in cocktail and ballroom dresses created Givenchy’s haute couture ateliers. They incorporated naïve, kind of subversive prints that had already intercepted Williams’s workwear looks. “Researching the archives, I discovered floral and fish prints from the 1970s and ’80s, which somehow conveyed that feeling of glamour to me: something that draws you in, entices the eye, triggers associations and transports you,” he explained. The graphics represented the taste for high-octane, old-school glamour that still exists in Williams’s generations – the twisted kind of glamour, anyway. The gowns made for fitting conclusion to a terrific collection that demonstrated the designer’s evolution at Givenchy and his future trajectory.

Rick Owens’s Hyper-Elegant A/W´23 Show

Rick Owens’s AW23 offering was guided by thoughts of Ukraine; Anders Christian Madsen breaks down the biggest takeaways from the elevated collection.

It was about elegance

Leave it to Rick Owens to sum up the newfound elegance we’ve been seeing across the fashion landscape this season. “I think it’s a response to this story of aggression that we’re all witnessing,” he said after his show, referring to the war in Ukraine, which went into its thirteenth month last week. “It makes me feel less frivolous and less carefree. And I think there’s a gravity to it. In a situation that demands gravity, you dress a little bit more formally.” Elevated in every way, Owens’s collection cemented that sensibility in an elegant proposal that formalised the codes of his own brand genetics.

It reflected on the war in Ukraine

Last month, Owens said he had struggled to find the right tone for the statement he wanted to make. “I was telling everybody I don’t feel comfortable doing a runway show during a war without acknowledging it,” he said at the time. “We were all thinking, what do we do? What is tactful? What is virtue signalling? What is in bad taste? It turned into kind of a debate, and we didn’t come up with anything. So, I decided I’d better not do anything. I thought the show would speak for itself. It’s a sombre show.” His women’s presentation was a more ceremonious expression of that sentiment.

It was all about platforms and trains

In Palais de Tokyo, Owens re-erected the podium-style scaffolding runway of his men’s show, raising his models – already elevated on sky-high platform boots – so they towered over guests like hyper-elegant giants, the long trains on their skirts pouring over the edges of the runway as they dragged behind them. “It was a new way of deifying these creatures,” Owens said. He purified his constructions – some left to their abstract, sculptural Owens-core while others took more conventional forms like knitted evening dresses – evoking a certain sobriety. It felt like an observant collection. A sign of respect.

Owens elevated everything

“In light of the new war that’s a very threatening element in all of our worlds, we’re seeing people behaving with such dignity in the face of adversity. I was thinking, what can I do that’s respectful of that? I thought, I need to be more formal. It needs to be more elevated – that’s a good word – and deliberate, and maybe even earnest. It can’t be ironic or nonchalant or careless. It needs to be deliberate. And it needs to be more groomed. More Avedon-worthy. That kind of thing,” Owens said.

It was covered in sequins

As a glimmer of hope – or perhaps a more ambiguous symbol of decadence – Owens embellished his purified constructions in sequins rendered in faded colours. “We’ve been doing sequins for a while now. I thought, I can’t do more sequins. Or: maybe I overdo it! And do a whole sequin-spectacular climax,” he explained. Owens scored his orchestration with a spirited new song by Peaches, marking the electroclash singer’s 20th anniversary tour. “Her scrappy resistance and ferocity is an example more relevant than ever,” he wrote in his show notes.

Balmain’s “Couture Reset” A/W´23 Show

By contrast to Balmain’s dramatic festival showcase last season, Olivier Rousteing scaled back for autumn/winter 2023 – a decision he described as a “reset”. Vogue’s Anders Christian Madsen, who was one of around 200 guests in attendance, delivers five things to know about the collection.

Olivier Rousteing scaled back

When the invitation said Carreau du Temple – the large-scale event space in Les Marais – we thought we were in for a typical Balmain experience. We were wrong. Inside, Olivier Rousteing had lined up just 200 seats for a show that evoked the format of an old-world haute couture presentation. There were no stages, no performances, no gimmicks. Just clothes – or at least as “just” as things get at Balmain. With Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” on the soundtrack, Rousteing’s collection interpreted the “new French style” proposed by Pierre Balmain in 1945 through the amplified lens of his own generational view.

It was all about the clothes

“I think a lot of people misunderstand who I am,” a mellow Rousteing said backstage before the show. “There were a lot of fireworks around my work and people couldn’t see the craft and what I love to do. People see my amount of followers and my friendships with celebrities, and they forget sometimes the amount of hours I spend in my atelier, too, to make collections happen.” The 52 looks he presented to his intimate audience flexed his savoir-faire muscle in highly sculptural tailoring, intricate dress constructions and deluxe sportswear that all revolved around a ’40s silhouette, with hats by Stephen Jones.

It imbued couture with comfort

“We need to remember what 1945 means. It was the year after the Second World War, so Monsieur Balmain couldn’t find fabric, leather, anything to create his own world. And he made it! So, today is an homage to the house: the past, the present, tomorrow,” Rousteing explained. He approached the Balmain archives with a contemporary sense of comfort, adding his own generational values of de-constriction and relaxation to the silhouette without compromising its chicness. The idea was epitomised in couture-y tracksuits, which – alongside bags composed of stacked suitcases – nailed the rich traveller look. “She’s someone who goes and discovers the world. This is Balmain. It’s not just based in Paris. It’s based in the world,” he said.

It was a statement of timelessness

Contemporary fashion’s obsession with an haute couture moment isn’t new, but recently, it has spread to the mainstream in a way that seems to know no bounds. This awards season, the red carpets of America and England have been dominated by extravagant glamour moment that more than border on the theatrical. “When you have so many pictures every two seconds on social media, you start to almost forget what quality means. And we have been obsessed the extravaganza of everything that’s going so fast, but at the end of the day, quality stays forever,” Rousteing said, contemplating the rise of couture. “I think what’s cool today is being timeless.”

Rousteing called it a “reset”

Did this season’s intimate, chilled-out show format mark a new approach to presentations for Rousteing’s Balmain? “I get older. I get more mature. Today is a new chapter for me and I want to make sure that people feel good and appreciate my world,” he said. “I think I will go back to va-va-voom at some point, but in a different way. Today is a reset.”

Paco Rabanne’s Tribute Show For A/W´23

Creative director Julien Dossena paid homage to Paco Rabanne in his first show since the eponymous founder’s death last month. From the notes that lined the benches in the Musée d'Art Moderne, to the five original dresses that closed the show, Anders Christian Madsen brings the key takeaways to know from the designer’s autumn/winter 2023 offering.

It was the first show since Paco Rabanne’s death

On every seat on Julien Dossena’s faux fur-covered benches in the Musée d’Art Moderne was a note for Paco Rabanne, who died a month ago, on 3 February. “Thank you for your utopic creative approach that moved the boundaries of reality,” it read. “You were among those who changed our view of the world.” We may not speak about Rabanne as a designer who changed the rules of dressing, but in a fashion and art context, it doesn’t get more influential than his avant-garde approach to clothes. As far as vision goes, his reached so far into the future that it’s yet to be surpassed by time. It was true for a collection – part its own, part tribute – in which Dossena continued to adapt and evolve the ideas of materialisation at the heart of Rabanne’s vision.

It was “full material on the full body”

While Dossena had already finished most of his collection when Rabanne died, what he had been working on was so in the designer’s spirit that it felt like a tribute in itself. “It’s going back to the roots of Paco Rabanne. It was about exploring materials and searching for new possibilities around that. Which is the context of the brand, let’s say.” The idea was “full material on the full body,” Dossena explained before the show, “and how you apply it and how you see the reaction with the body.” They materialised – quite literally – in highly textural, highly tactile head-to-toe outfits like alpaca jeans with a matching top and belt, or those same elements interpreted in lurex wool, or evening jumpsuits with built-in stoles in brushed wool.

It was pretty extreme

Dossena’s proposals are not for the faint of heart. The hyper-textural premise of his work and the silhouettes he applies it to are super overwhelming, especially in the context of a fully carpeted venue with benches covered in faux fur. It’s like stepping into some kind of surreal, psychotic sci-fi universe, a bit like The Cell. In that sense, he manages to project the spirit of Rabanne – whose metal-based designs must have looked insane to the 1960s eye – into a contemporary environment with similar effect. “He invented the kind of designer createur name as we know it today,” Dossena reflected. “The idea that designers could be avant-garde. Along with Courrèges and Cardin, he was the first to do that.”

It included a collaboration with the Dalí Foundation

Rabanne’s connection to the art world was illustrated in his friendship with fellow Spanish avant-gardist Salvador Dalí. “They did performances together. I’ve seen videos from the beginning that I’ve always wanted to work on. It makes sense because they were really best friends,” Dossena said. In collaboration with the Dalí Foundation, he applied five of the artist’s paintings to dresses, “working it as if we slashed the paintings and built the dresses around them,” he explained. Along with dresses constructed around jewellery pieces inspired by Dalí, it made for a meta exercise: avant-garde within avant-garde.

The show closed with five original Paco Rabanne dresses

As the show transitioned into classic Rabanne territory – dresses made of feather-like metal sequins, beads and crystals that rustled up a storm as they moved down the runway – Dossena paid tribute to the late designer by closing with five of his original dresses. They included pieces from his first collection as well as the one worn by Françoise Hardy in 1968 and the one worn by Donyale Luna in the 1967 Richard Avedon shoot. They looked like they could have been made today. While Dossena never met Rabanne, he knew the legend was watching. “I heard from a friend that he was looking at what we were doing, and that he was happy with it. That’s all I needed to know.”