For SS18, JW Anderson x Uniqlo looked to the Brighton seaside for a flavour of 1950s nostalgia. The results are classic British summer. Nautical t-shirts get a fashion twist courtesy of bias cut detail, linen summer dresses in chalky blues are easy holiday-wear and seagull-print jumpers are a nod to the classic seaside soundtrack. The latest collection brings a fresh, breezy update to the silhouettes and styles offered for JW Anderson x Uniqlo debut collection. There’s also the addition of covetable denim bucket hats (an essential seaside-prop).
Available from April 20th in selected stores and online.
A pioneer of sustainable fashion, Bethany Williams puts a social conscience at the heart of her work; the last collection ‘Breadline’, worked alongside the Vauxhall food bank and Tesco to highlight the poverty crisis hidden in plain sight in the UK. Here the collection was developed around food waste, and Tesco recycled cardboard. The results were not only socially aware and environmentally friendly, but also innovative, avant-garde and sculptural – a hybrid of responsible and covetable which is glaring absent for the most part in the British fashion industry.
Her latest collection ‘Women of Change’ put women’s rehabilitation at the heart of her collection. The designer worked with female prisoners and the San Patrignano drug dependancy program, subverting the gender narrative to bring men into fore of the solution through her designs. Each piece was created from 100% organic or recycled, even down to the buttons which are handmade in the Lake District by Jean Wildish, who plants her own trees for the production of wooden buttons, and handmade in the UK and Italy.
The collection was shown at London Fashion Week Mens through a film, directed by Crack Stevens, along with a live presentation with models from TIH – a new modelling agency that supports young Londoners affected by homelessness.
One of the most exciting designers on the London menswear scene, Bethany Williams is offering a vision for the future which fashion desperately needs. We can’t wait to see what comes next.
Filmed by Inez & Vinoodh, the new Saint Laurent SS18 video shows a heady collection of models dancing endlessly through the night to the fierce soundtrack of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’.
Having created a seriously theatrical show under the glistening lights of the Eiffel Tower in October last year, this new video is the teaser we need to get excited for Saint Laurent SS18 all over again.
Fashion month and Frieze fall within days of each other, highlighting the deeply interconnected nature of these two creative mediums – a relationship that has always been investigated by both artists and designers, spurning glorious collaborations throughout contemporary history. For SS18 designers drew strongly on artists to render new, unexpected collections. Twin looks at some of the best designers working with artists for womenswear this season.
Christopher Kane / John Kacere
Kane’s collection this season took inspiration from Cynthia Payne, the eighties party girl and brothel keeper who was a tabloid favourite in the seventies and eighties. A reference that balanced the clean with the dirty, the pretty with the ugly underbelly of society, Kane’s use of John Kacere imagery continued this harmonious interplay. Kacere’s photo-realistic paintings of women in underwear have littered Tumblr for years but Kane’s repositioning of the silk and satin clad derrieres onto chiffon-bordered t-shirts have finally brought the idea of wearing a woman’s butt on my flank into reality.
A partnership exploring the possibilities of presentation, West London artist of the moment, Faye Wei Wei created a series of three broad, bold boards to stand behind the Shrimps S/S 18 presentation. Working directly with designer Hannah Weiland, Wei Wei’s mythology-inspired canvases clashed against the Shrek-greens and fun furs on show. An illustrator herself, Weiland first saw Wei Wei’s work at a show at the Cob Gallery and loved it. This collection featured fewer of Weiland’s signature doodles, allowing Wei Wei’s canvases to provide a large dose of the whimsy and wonder we associate with Shrimps.
In a move that has swiftly become synonymous with the Gareth Pugh brand, for S/S 18, Pugh rejected the catwalk in favour of a fashion film created by SHOWstudio and Nick Knight. Collaborating with artist Olivier de Sagazan, the film sees de Sagazan and Pugh mould their faces together with clay, tear each other, viscerally, physically apart, and explore the allegories present in Pugh’s clothing; creation, destruction and reproduction.
Undercover / Cindy Sherman
This year, artist Cindy Sherman released her private Instagram to the public and renewed her global capital. As one who consistently taps into smart, zeitgeisty movements, Joon Takahashi of Undercover took this opportunity to whack Sherman’s face on a series of dresses. Drawing inspiration from twins, ‘Shining’-style, these dresses played on the concept of duality, dual natures – reality and Instagram, as explored in Sherman’s oeuvre.
Ambush design / Twitter
Comme des Garçons / Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books. Rei Kawakubo’s S/S18 collection presented imaginative portrait dresses with items including hairbrushes, dollies, trinkets and Hello Kitty ephemera. Dresses plastered with Arcimboldo’s paintings contradicted the scatter of Harajuku and pink and looked as modern on the catwalk as the animé designs that preceded them.
Shot by Steven Miesel, we’re obsessed with the Loewe SS18 campaign…
Consisting of five portraits, the Loewe campaign features Italian model Vittoria Ceretti with various fruits in her mouth. Provocative and sexual, the composition offers a playful take on the tradition of fruit in art, as well as evoking a more visceral, modern and feminist motif.
With make-up by Pat McGrath and styling by Benjamin Bruno, this is another striking series from Jonathan Anderson, and we can’t get enough.
When crocs made their comeback on the London stage they rightly induced scepticism – Crocs! – but it seems they are the shoe that won’t go away.
Christopher Kane got there first, with quite innocuous looking pairs during his AW17 show; they came in marble and camo print and were lightly adorned with gems and glittering rocks. Then for SS18 Kane did it again, this time going further with large Swarovski diamonds and bright yellow hues.
Now in Paris, Balenciaga has taken up the mantle, offering platform pairs in bright, bubblegum pink and strong yellow. So perhaps it’s time to embrace the unthinkable: after all this time in the dark, are Crocs the shoe of the season?
Feminine silhouettes meet boyish looks for Paco Rabanne RS18. Think fitted waists and cutaway tank tops, draped knitwear and slinky shirts; bright colours play against neutral hues while checkerboard patterns add fresh texture to familiar shades. Embrace for a full summer refresh.
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