I miss working on Maiden Name menswear. That all kind of came about because dudes were wearing the pants anyway, SSENSE saw on IG, and they asked if we would sell them menswear. At the time, we really didn’t design any men’s, but my twink body could wear a funky tank top and an Emily trouser in size 10. That grew into a full men’s offering. It’s been long enough that I feel like I can look at menswear more as a consumer.
Prada was the big story this season because the silhouette is now shrunken and tight. The idea, I take it, is to return to a degree zero of design, so we got monochrome looks in a clinical stripped back white light box of a set (shoutout to friend-of-the-stack Andrea who has quietly taken over the scenography; this was not OMA for those of you keeping track). We’ve all been watching the pendulum swing away from sack dressing. Fine. The most interesting part of the collection to me was not the silhouette (catsuits looks good on 21 year old 6’2” models; Raf: when you bare your midriff, I’ll bare mine). Prada is very good at color and print; very few brands are. When its collages engage with that, the looks are distinctly Prada and compelling. The Helmut Lang looks, I don’t think we need, but I like the citation. I do like this kind of collage dressing with knits, leather, and tailoring (the sunglasses made the collage thing very literal). The sweater vest is good.
Also of interest to me: the Duke of Windsor suit and Armani-without-Armani. These are related, voluminous suiting options. The Duke of Windsor silhouette is double-breasted, structured with a snatched waist and then a big pant (bowling pin silhouette); the Armani stuff is bigger and looser all the way through (often still double-breasted but worn open—refined sack dressing, sackissimo). It’s not what current Armani is doing, at least not well.
Soshiotsuki is doing this older Armani in an alarmingly literal way but it looks good. ( Armani: 161 looks—edit yourselves! That many looks is lazy; clarify the offering). Both of these feel like actual compelling versions of a self and life I’d like to inhabit, which is the point of fashion. Taking the mantle of fatherhood on via tailoring, minus the kids: not a bad way to go.
Final note: Michael Rider, doing a great job at Celine, should not be styling it himself. The styling was overwrough. The brand proposition had, to date, been clear: up in Euro WASP geish, Polo minus Ralph (thank God). No one needs kooky kabuki, Acne going-off-the-rails from you. Don’t go chasing waterfalls.
In other news: I went to the opening of Birthright at the MCC Theater last night; the play tracks a group of friends who met on Birthright Israel across three decades. It’s very good. Zoe Winters (from The Drama and Succession) really brings the goods, especially in Act 3, but all of the performances were keyed in. My hot take is that I don’t think the problem of Israel is currently as morally or politically ambiguous as it was when the show first hatched (its timeline stops in 2024). That takes some of the air out of the very well-executed both-sidesism of the show’s engagement with Israel vis-a-vis American Jewry (I promise it’s not pedantic). But it’s a testament to the writing that the play still works so well despite the headlines having changed. I particularly liked how our own decade was defined by the characters’s constant distractions—their phones pull them out of the action in way that’s rendered playfully. And that was maybe the most disturbingly real part of the show. Go see it.
To the listings!
I’m not really drawn to postmodern art furniture but this is lovely. 1980, Dodo production. Italian. In Italy sadly but this week skews Euro because the domestic stuff shuts down for the holiday.
This is big and very beautiful. 2nd C BCE. The ones without faces are less expensive. I wanted to put something like this in a store at one point. Would have been great at Maiden tbh.
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