BEAUTY: Clothing--Harri

London Fashion Week wrapped up yesterday and all in all, it offered some interesting moments. And this must surely be one...

After graduating from the Menswear MA program at the London College of Fashion, Indian-born and London-based artist and designer Harri started showing two years ago. His most recent SS'26 collection showed pieces in his signature rubber latex, but the silhouettes were quite disarming. He entitled the collection "MuseumWear" and was inspired by surrealist art. Aside from the literally inflated proportions of many pieces, what I find interesting is how latex is usually associated with tight-fitting garments that often come from the fetish community, but in Harri's hands, they can take on a casual, draped expression seen in coats and jackets (I love the metallic silver jacket!).

https://harri.store/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Paolo Carzana

Welsh designer Paolo Carzana is still relatively new but has already amassed some clout: he is a recipient of the British Fashion Council NewGen award and has BFC support money to put on shows, and is also an artist in residence at the Sarabande Foundation, the arts foundation supported at the bequest of Lee Alexander McQueen.

His vision is fairly singular, much like McQueen. While promoting his Fall Winter '23 collection entitled "Queer Symphony," he said, "It’s mainly related to this idea that everything I was ashamed of as a kid is now my strength. Up until I was 17, I would literally pray every night to wake up straight, and pray to be normal. And every single day, I was bullied in school, when I didn’t even know who I was."

It is a shared story among many of us in the gay community, one I have heard many times...surviving emotional, psychological, and often physical abuse and attacks to emerge on the other side, despite or probably because of it all, with a hunger and drive to create something beautiful, to express a force that could not be taken from us. I can attest to the truth of this from my own personal experience. So I feel great tenderness toward, kinship with, and interest in the creations of Paolo Carzana.

His sartorial vernacular is made of delicate fabrics tied and stitched together that seem like creations from some dream world, as if those wearing his garments should be lounging around on marble terraces in bright Pre-Raphaelite splendor, or in a lush production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." (In fact, he showed his SS '25 collection in the garden of his own home in Hackney, seen here.) The cuts feel like they are memories of historical clothing, like tattered remnants of a far-away homeland after a shipwreck, and his beautiful sheer, ripped, ruched tops and trousers seem like they belong on wood sprites, elves, fairies. There is a hushed beauty to the silhouettes and construction of the garments that casts a spell.

The cherry on the cake of his brand is his earnest commitment to sustainability. He uses deadstock or recycled fabric, and he uses plant dyes and spices to color his fabrics, including black walnut, Himalayan rhubarb, wild cherry bark, turmeric, tea, hibiscus, and apple wood.

And for this SS '26 collection at London Fashion Week titled "The Last Pangolin On Earth," he set his usual sprites and spirits loose in the Reading Room of the British Library! Apparently he spent hours there this summer immersing himself in historical reference books showing prints and drawings of animals and sea life that humanity has driven to--or near to--extinction...hence the title. After the show, he told Sarah Mower at Vogue, "Really my focus is on the genius of mother Earth, and the monster of humanity and how we are working and treating the planet. It’s always been a big conflict to me to use animals as inspiration in terms of fashion, because I’m vegan. So my obsession with this collection was finding a way to honor nature and its preciousness in a way that was really abstract. I try to question what we call supernatural—usually it’s about being on another planet, or somewhere else. But so much of what is on our Earth is super nature—supernatural colors that you can't believe, and the textures of plants and a world of things that were created." It is precisely this touching earnestness and authentic narrative, as well as the gentle beauty of his creations, that caused several show-goers to shed a tear or two.

Carzana's collections are co-ed, and regular readers know I usually post only men's clothing, but these garments are so magical and ethereal and, really, a-gendered, I am showing looks on both men and women. It is all swirling with charm and beauty...

https://www.paolocarzana.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Yaku

This rather new brand, Yaku by Yaku Stapleton (who graduated from the Central Saint Martins MA program in 2023 and is currently a designer-in-residence at the Paul Smith Foundation), showed a fascinating SS '26 collection at London Fashion Week (only his third time there!) based on RPG video games and Afrofuturism. He created a mythical group of people called the Télavani who exist within a magical, dystopian, past/future world. I appreciate the worn-dirty dye techniques, the layers, and the general feel of the Bedouin-esque silhouettes and cuts.

https://yaku.uk/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Di Petsa

London Fashion Week started this past week and I have been swamped with other things, but found time today to sit down and ogle the offerings so far.

I could have sworn I previously posted something about Dimitra Petsa and her eponymous line Di Petsa but I can't find anything in the archive. So here we go:

Dimitra Petsa is a Greek designer who graduated from Central Saint Martins (the storied London instiution with alums like, oh, Alexander McQueen, Sarah Burton, Stella McCartney, John Galliano, Gareth Pugh, Riccardo Tisci, Grace Wales Bonner, Kim Jones, Simone Rocha, Craig Green, and Richard Quinn to name a few). Ostensibly a womenswear designer, she pioneered the "wet-look" dress worn by loads of celebs...but she inserts a handful of men's looks into her collections as well. Much like how Dolce and Gabbana use the culture and long history of their native Italy as a touchstone and endless source of inspiration, Petsa's hyper-sexy, sometimes breast-bearing shows always refer somehow to Greece and the mythology of that ancient land.

The brand's logo is a cross that resembles Poseidon’s trident and this Spring Summer '26 collection at London Fashion Week referenced the god directly on a tee shirt. The precious few male looks featured pieces evoking ancient Greek warrior-wear, and even one of her signature wet-look dresses for men!

https://dipetsa.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Maison Margiela

Holy s--t, what an incredible, amazing, and frightening SS '26 collection Glenn Martens (previously here) just showed for his debut as creative director at Maison Margiela--what an explosive way to start his tenure (he was previously creative director at Y/Project and Diesel as well as his own eponymous brand)! Some pieces like the opening plastic encasements looked as if they were consuming the models (Martens said they referenced blown glass). Other pieces gave a ghostly appearance, like sepulchral shrouds. The sense of the entire collection was a deft and deep combination of the original DNA of the Margiela brand (the penchant for collage, the laboratory-like experimentation of hybridizing silhouettes, and love of Frankenstein-ing disparate pieces together), the historical corsetry and scavenged trinkets, baubles, and jewels from John Galliano's (previously here) too-short-time at the house, and of course the twisting volumes of Martens' own vernacular.

The collaged, rummaged effect of the materials (plastic, leather, metal, clumps of tulle) is apocalyptic ("When the world is running down/You make the best of what's still around" said Sting) in addition to being arrestingly layered. Fashion journalist Luke Leitch reports: "A great deal of this Glenn Martens for Maison Margiela debut Artisanal collection is… thrifted! Martens and his teams built a lot of the pieces from second-hand knits and other pieces sourced from Guérissol, a chain of six stores around Paris at which pieces generally cost just 5 euros. So Martens wasn’t kidding when he said: 'the preciousness of showing you are extremely rich just doesn’t fit into the Margiela language. So we’re not going to do a $75,000 dress, all hand-embroidered or whatever, because that wouldn’t fit in here. But we are going to find a different form of opulence and richness, and hopefully somebody a little bit more cheeky will engage with it.'"

And the plastic and metal masks and veils obscuring every model's face was a nod to another Margiela motif that has appeared many times over the years. The result is disturbing, a little eerie.

The showspace itself was styled to reflect the decaying aesthetic created by the garments. Martens said the look was "all disheveled and falling into pieces...I’m from Bruges, which has this whole gloomy, Gothic kind of gloominess." Large photocopied pieces of Georgian rooms with enormous panels of boiserie, marbled alcoves of cathedrals, or dark caves of ancient plaster papered the walls, crumpled, ripped, torn, but patched and cobbled together to approximate its origin.

Every garment and the show feels somehow miraculously fresh and new even though, as the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. But what is new is how things under our sun are put together and Martens has shown a commanding, supreme imagination. What he created is truly stunning. Please do watch the video below to see the pieces in motion...or not in motion as it were.

https://www.maisonmargiela.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Misc. Paris Fashion Week

Paris Fashion Week just ended and here are some miscellaneous details from the Spring Summer '26 collections that caught my eye:

Kévin Nompeix and Florentin Glémarec of Egonlab paid tribute to Glémarec’s late grandfather, René, who passed away last November aged 90. He had been a great early supporter of Egonlab, appearing in the brand's creations at every outing. Glémarec’s grandfather and family are from Breton so the duo used motifs of that region, including lace, to pay homage.

3.Paradis, Emeric Tchatchoua's brand, showed a collection inspired by the classic children's book (for grown-ups too!), "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The Little One showed up on a sweater and a camp shirt, but references to other parts of the book surfaced: the plane flown by the pilot, the doodle of a snake swallowing an elephant, the flock of wild birds that carried the Little Prince from his home planet, and more abstractly, pieces in gloriously saturated colors of a desert sunset as well as desert camouflage (models walked a runway heaped with white sand!). The idea of travelling made Tchatchoua reflect on the idea that time seems to slow when one is on an adventure and this manifested in a pattern of analog watches...there was even a wild moment of a trench coat adorned with actual watches!

For the new Issey Miyake branch IM Men (the Issey Miyake brand decided to retire their Homme Plissé runway show from the Paris schedule--although the line still continues to be produced--and replace it with the new IM Men), designers Sen Kawahara, Yuki Itakura and Nobutaka Kobayashi looked to the 60s and 70s pottery pieces of celebrated ceramicist Shoji Kamoda for pattern and shape. The opening of the show is quite dramatic. Take a look.

Wooyoungmi showed a fun Mary Jane sandal with sheer socks and garters...

https://egonlab.com/
https://www.3paradis.com/
https://us.isseymiyake.com/
https://en.wooyoungmi.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Jacquemus

To close Paris Fashion Week, Simon Porte Jacquemus brought his brand to the Orangerie at the Palace of Versailles for his SS '26 collection. Called "Le Paysan" or "The Peasant" in English, the lyrical yet powerfully simple collection was inspired by his birthplace and family roots in Provence in the south of France. He comes from a long line of farmers and growers so his moodboard was covered with pictures of people tending fields or selling their green produce at roadside stands--but one sweet picture was of his grandmother dressed all in black with three large baskets of her harvest.

Jacquemus says that his family were always very supportive of his dream to be a fashion designer even if it meant leaving the land he was born on--and into--to achieve that dream. Fittingly the show opened with a little boy, an obvious stand-in for his own child self, opening a massive door to let the models into the show space. Knowing all this makes the sentiment of the show quite touching. The garments themselves possess an unadorned dignity, and I love that what seems like a skirt is actually a multi-pleated apron. Jackets are divested of lapels, and classic espadrilles lace up the leg like they do in the south of France. But it was the accessories that tied the narrative together: farm boxes full of cherries, strawberries, and tomatoes, all crafted from leather; a string of garlic hanging from a waist, also in leather; and a clutch made to look like a large leek. It is quite moving to see a heartfelt, authentic tribute like this to family, history, and the land.

https://www.jacquemus.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--John Alexander Skelton

I have been a fan of John Alexander Skelton for many seasons now. Regular readers know I love clothing that has an historical sense, which can manifest in the silhouette, the patterns and cuts, and of course in choices of color and materials. It is why I love the work of Westwood, Yamamoto, Anne Demeulemeester when she was head of her own house, the swashbuckling collections of Galliano, even Armani in his refined luxury with hints of the past. But the work of John Alexander Skelton is extraordinary. Skelton (previously here--please do take a look at some incredible past collections), who was awarded the Sarabande scholarship granted by the Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation and graduated from Central Saint Martin’s with an M.A. in fashion men’s wear in 2016, references Dickensian/19th-century/Victorian/Edwardian menswear such as frock coats and high-waisted trousers. Because of my past New Romantic heart (here and here), I am of course wild for the Romantic and historical references in his collections, and a signature detail of his is the plethora of buttons on shirts, waistcoats, and jackets. Skelton says he sees buttons as the simplest form of decoration, as a kind of jewelry, so he applies them liberally to pieces. I feel his love and respect for antique English clothing just like Westwood.

Skelton bounces back and forth between live shows and lookbooks, and for his Spring Summer '26 collection, he gave us a fun lookbook photographed entirely in in Ireland’s County Mayo which inspired the collection. He has family roots in the area and feels a kinship. So much so that he and his photographer William Waterworth simply plucked locals from the area to model the garments. The results are atmospheric, picturesque, and so wonderfully Skelton.

https://www.johnalexanderskelton.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Junya Watanabe

Wow, what an incredible array of coats, jackets (and suits) Junya Watanabe sent out for his SS '26 collection at Paris Fashion Week. They resemble tapestry and jacquard materials from various time-style periods past (Rococo, Baroque, and Romanesque) with one presenting an illuminated Latin manuscript. There were also cut velvet stripes, fleur-de-lis, and large florals. Later in the show, the cut of the jackets became more casual--worker, biker, denim--but sported images of cities like Florence, Venice, and Bruges. Each one is a work of art.

https://junyawt.com/