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Experimental Fashion
Experimental Fashion: Performance Art, Carnival and the Grotesque Body
"Experimental Fashion traces the proliferation of the grotesque and carnivalesque in contemporary fashion and the close relation between fashion and performance art, from Lady Gaga's raw meat dress to Leigh Bowery's performance style. The book examines contemporary designers and performance artists whose work questions established ideas of what represents the fashionable body, posing their challenges through parody, humor, and inversion. The book explores the experimental work of designers such as Georgina Godley, Bernhard Willhelm, and Rei Kawakubo and fashion designer, performance artist, and club figure Leigh Bowery. It also discusses the increasing importance of experimental fashion as manifested by the pop phenomenon Lady Gaga." —Bloomsbury Publishing
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14 designers whose fashion is out of this world, literally
Fifty years ago, on 20 July 1969, Apollo 11 became the first crewed mission to land on Earth’s only permanent satellite—Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong set foot on a surface no human had reached before. It was an epoch-making moment watched by an estimated 600 million people, crowning a decade in which, since the launch of Sputnik 1 by Russia in 1957, the West and the Soviet Union had vied to be the first to reach this most sought-after destination. The Cold War’s space race had far-reaching consequences, not only inspiring fervent conversation and uncertainty about our relationship with the cosmos, but also hugely influencing cultural output.
For fashion designers André Courrèges, Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin, it meant devising a whole new way to dress. These designers and others built a lasting legacy, one that continues today. As we head towards the 50th anniversary of the moon landings, Vogue looks back over half a century of design inspired by constellations, astronauts, aliens and everything else in the great unknown.
André Courrèges
Partly credited with inventing the miniskirt (it’s a two-way tie between him and Mary Quant), designer André Courrèges was at the forefront of fashion’s preoccupation with exploring the solar system. Beginning with his “Space Age” collection in 1964, Courrèges’s lashings of white and silver quickly became part of an era-defining aesthetic. In fact, beyond thigh-skimming hems, he also helped to popularise other items that came to define the “Moon Girl” look, including flat boots, goggles and trouser suits, as well as garments made from wipe-clean PVC. His obsession with comfort, innovation and forward-looking design continued through to the moon landings and beyond—he even made a mirrored all-in-one to commemorate the much-anticipated landings. It was a fashion fixation that found its way into all sorts of high places; Courrèges even received a personal invitation to visit NASA ’s mission control at Cape Canaveral.
Paco Rabanne
In the hands of Spanish designer Paco Rabanne , the Space Race became perfect stimulus for envisioning an avant-garde future. Working with a series of innovative materials—including paper, plastic and, most famously, metal—Rabanne’s designs often resembled very beautiful (and sometimes scanty) armour from a mysterious universe. Playfully claiming to have “travelled to Earth from the planet Altair to organise civilisation on this planet 78,000 years ago”, Rabanne’s art-clothing hybrids allowed for a particularly evocative form of time travel, bringing suggestions of medieval-era chainmail and other historic attire into an uncertain modern age. His daring cutaways and pioneering methods of construction featured in the 1968 sci-fi film Barbarella and have been copied many times over the decades—updated versions of his chainmail dresses have been sported by celebrities including Paris Hilton and Bella Hadid , while a recent reissue of his much-beloved 1969 metal bag was an immediate hit.
Pierre Cardin
In line with his 1960s peers, Pierre Cardin’s output took on the challenge of heading out into the universe, which he translated into brightly coloured clothes fit for only the most galactic of women. With a love of unusual design details (think vinyl, oversized zips, geometric patterns and body stockings) and an architectural approach to proportion, Cardin’s clothes were enchanting and humorous in equal measure. His 1969 show titled “Space Age and Futurism” was heavily influenced by the fervour around the moon landings, featuring shiny capes and dresses with rocket-style flaring at the hem. Like Courrèges, he was also given a tour of NASA—becoming the first civilian in the world to try on Armstrong’s famous spacesuit when he allegedly bribed a security guard into giving him access. The experience left such a deep impression on the designer that he went on to create his own spacesuits for NASA, and in 2000 he said he still dreamed about having a house on the moon.
Thierry Mugler autumn/winter 1979
Thierry Mugler’s dramatic proportioning and human-cyborg fantasies seem like the logical inheritors of the space-age tradition. His models frequently looked like fearsomely alluring beings from another planet (no surprise that his perfume was called Alien), with plenty of Paco Rabanne-style metal armoury and daringly cut dresses. The late 1970s was a particularly outer space-focused time for the designer—from tinfoil-shiny, silver, pleated dresses through to belted, gold spacesuits complete with helmet-style headgear. The latter, found in his AW79 collection, looked simultaneously backwards and forwards, combining classic 1960s futurism with about-to-burgeon 1980s excess.
Issey Miyake , spring/summer 1995
Extraterrestrial life—strange spacecraft, stereotypical green aliens and other fantastical fare—has also offered up inspiration for designers. Issey Miyake’s famous flying saucer dresses provided a startling meeting point between Japanese paper lanterns, biomorphic sculpture and UFOs. Produced in numerous shapes and colourways during the 1990s, the carefully pleated polyester garments saw “saucer” shapes cascading over the body, offering the wearer the look of something extraordinary in motion—a curiously eye-catching object hovering just above the ground.
Givenchy , autumn/winter 1999
Alexander McQueen’ s designs frequently alluded to imagined spaces—not least in his memorably unsettling final show, which featured futuristic visions of Plato’s Atlantis complete with animal-human-oceanic hybrids. However, perhaps his most space age-y moment came during his tenure at Givenchy, with his autumn/winter 1999 collection riffing on technology, androids and an uncertain future on the eve of Y2K (also known as the millennium bug, aka the fear that hitting the year 2000 would cause havoc with computer data worldwide). As with designers of earlier decades, McQueen transformed this potent mix of anxiety and possibility into a series of forward-looking, bold-shouldered garments. Models with severe bobs strode down a metallic runway clad in shiny, sci-fi fabrics, moulded body casts, Blade Runner -esque fur coats, knee-high, go-go boots and circuit boards, some of which were elaborately embroidered. Others, startlingly, were wired up with real, flashing LEDs—a clever merging of clothing with machine, illuminating what might lie ahead in disconcerting style.
Balenciaga , spring/summer 2007
Space has long ignited pop culture’s imagination—from sci-fi books to long-standing film franchises to concept albums—leading to a particularly rich glut of reference points for designers to draw on, too. In the case of Balenciaga ’s SS07 collection, this included Nicolas Ghesquière citing movies The Terminator and Tron as inspiration, but also seemingly making some not-so-subtle nods to expansive space opera Star Wars in a series of gold, armour-style leggings that could have been lifted straight from the legs of protocol droid C-3PO. Shifting through various appearances (and reassembled machine parts), and possessing the ability to speak in over seven million forms of communication, C-3PO has proved to be something of a slow-burn style icon. Rodarte also featured him with R2-D2 on a gown in its AW14 collection, alongside fellow characters Luke Skywalker and Yoda.
Hussein Chalayan, spring/summer 2007
Like the designers of the 1960s, Hussein Chalayan has also found himself preoccupied with futurism—and the implications of what we might wear in a much-changed universe. For SS07, Chalayan not only presented his much-feted bubble dress, but also took show attendees through a rapid sartorial history lesson via six garments that changed in front of watchers’ eyes. His technical wizardry, developed by the same team who worked on the special effects in the Harry Potter films, allowed clothes to bloom and transform on models, changing from Victorian get-ups to short gowns, diaphanous baby-doll dresses to beaded affairs, and in one instance, from a 1950s-housewife-meets-space-ship ensemble (complete with wide-brimmed hat) to a heavily Paco Rabanne-influenced metallic shift and space-age helmet with visor. Each metamorphosis was met with awestruck applause as Chalayan once again pushed the boundaries of form and function via his otherworldly flights of imagination.
Christopher Kane , r esort 2011
Technological advance has provided other possibilities too—not least the ability to both witness and capture the often jaw-dropping evidence of what lies far beyond our small, spinning planet. The early 2010s saw a glut of galaxy prints, the colours of the cosmos scattered across dresses, T-shirts, bags and every other available surface. The explosive popularity of this particular pattern can be traced back to one source: Christopher Kane’s resort 2011 show. Titled “Into the Galaxy” and featuring images of flaring nebulae captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (which was first launched in 1990), Kane’s designs turned these dazzling displays into immediately desirable garments. Black leather detailing played off against chiffon printed with orange flashes, glittering pinks, cool turquoises and deep-sea blues. From a distance the eye might interpret these patterns as anything from marbled ink to roaring fires. Up close the galactic fireworks proved even more mesmerising to observe.
Dior, couture autumn/winter 2014
The question of clothes in space isn’t just centred on abstract inspiration, it’s a very practical one too. After all, anyone who makes it beyond Earth’s atmosphere is entirely reliant on their attire to keep them alive. And in an age of potential space tourism, the next stage of spacesuit development is crucial and full of intricate considerations. These concerns probably weren’t at the forefront of Raf Simons’s Dior couture show for autumn/winter 2014, but his designs certainly showed an awareness of the sartorial implications of space travel. Choosing, like Chalayan, to juxtapose designs delving into centuries worth of history with more futuristic fashions, Simons presented a series of silk-taffeta flight suits, glittering embroidery undercutting their utilitarian shapes. There was an echo of Simons’s forerunner John Galliano in them too—the designer took his bow in a full astronaut suit in 2006.
Versace , m enswear autumn/winter 2016
Plenty of fashion houses trade carefully on the recognisable status of their label, knowing that there’s serious money to be made in a good logo. Sometimes, however, it’s time to look elsewhere—and it’s perhaps no surprise to anyone who ever dreamed of becoming an astronaut as a child to hear that the use of NASA’s distinctive branding has grown rapidly in recent years. Harnessed by designers from Heron Preston to Coach, as well as high-street chains including Urban Outfitters, it was also riffed on for Donatella Versace ’s autumn/winter 2016 menswear show with NASA-style patches and badges scattered among the zodiac prints and shiny bomber jackets. Switching up the space agency’s immediately recognisable red, blue and white designs with Medusa heads, muscled torsos and embroidered constellations (all complete with the word “Versace” of course), the collection made for an enjoyably camp take on the familiar iconography of space travel.
Chanel , autumn/winter 2017
Ever the showman, for Chanel ’s autumn/winter 2017 show Karl Lagerfeld went interstellar with a catwalk featuring a Chanel-branded rocket. Unwittingly coinciding with news from NASA that there might still be life-supporting planets in solar system TRAPPIST-1, Lagerfeld presented a beguiling vision of a rather chic life beyond Earth. The usual tweeds and pearls were given a cosmic twist, with glittery black-toed moon boots, translucent astronaut prints, metallic trench coats, quilted foil capes and several sequined gowns mimicking the starriest of skies. The models’ bouffant semi-beehived hair and exaggerated lashes paid appropriate dues to Lagerfeld’s 1960s predecessors, while the silver backpacks suggested a traveller ready to take off at any minute. At the finale it was the omnipresent rocket that appeared ready to head for the moon though, with an impressive pyrotechnic display accompanied, of course, by Elton John’s Rocket Man .
Louis Vuitton , spring/summer 2019
Louis Vuitton has had something of a love affair with all things galactic in recent years. Following on from its own rocket on the catwalk the previous season, spring/summer 2019 featured many of the hallmarks of classic space-age style, including silver paillettes and architectural white helmets. Alluding to his own long-standing interest in futuristic silhouettes, Ghesquière’s angular tailoring, exaggerated sleeves and peekaboo prints with glimpses of sophisticated spacecraft and imagined planetary landscapes culminated in three floral spacesuits. And it’s not just Ghesquière who’s retained an interest in the solar system at the house. Previous to his tenure, Louis Vuitton navigated the ongoing allure of space travel several times—most notably in its core values campaign of 2009, with ads shot by Annie Leibovitz featuring Aldrin, Sally Ride (the first American woman in space) and Jim Lovell (commander of Apollo 13, and the first person to fly in space four times).
Iris Van Herpen, couture spring/summer 2019
With her distinctive 3D printing techniques and use of materials that push the edge of what can be put on a body, Iris Van Herpen’s technologically advanced designs are the stuff that contemporary space-age dreams are made of. Often described as “hi-tech” and “sci-fi”, Van Herpen’s spring/summer 2019 couture collection took explicit inspiration from outer space—the designs partly based on a 17th-century star atlas titled Harmonia Macrocosmica . A gorgeous collection of celestial cartography attempting to chart what could be seen beyond the naked eye, it’s a pertinent reminder of humanity’s enduring fascination with the cosmos. In the hands of Van Herpen this led to fantastically futuristic organza dresses (designed in collaboration with former NASA engineer turned artist Kim Keever), lots of sinuous, shivering layers and a colour palette that stretched through the sky’s many shades from milky dusk to orange dawn to deepest, bluest midnight.
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12 Emerging Designers to Know From the Fall 2024 Fashion Season
You’ll want to keep a close eye on these burgeoning labels
Another Fashion Month has come and gone, and beyond the viral runway moments and celebrity front-row sightings, there’s a slew of emerging designers to keep us interested, inspired, and constantly guessing. These strong new voices often put the most unconventional and captivating designs out into the world, not infrequently shaking the fashion world to its core. Some even go on to creative director positions at the most established houses all over the world, but wherever they end up, one thing is always certain: They are worth keeping an eye on.
Selected from hundreds of shows across New York, London, Milan, and Paris, here are 12 emerging designers from the Fall 2024 season.
Jacques Agbobly founded Agbobly in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and since then the brand has gained a cult followings for its bold, playful hues and for embracing West African craft. The Fall 2024 collection was full of expressive colors and rainbows of stripes. “As a designer and texture enthusiast, I wanted to push the boundaries of the print,” Agbobly tells us. The prints were a collaboration with painter Harlan Hue, who used oil on linen—a technique the artist often uses in his work. “This involved creating a small-scale painting, which we then scanned and digitally enhanced with certain motifs. It became a blend of traditional craftsmanship and digital manipulation—a reflection of personal identity development, a theme in this collection,” the designer says. Agbobly linked the prints to the cracked paint walls in Togo, where his aunts and cousins used to pose for pictures. “It’s all about embracing a blend of influences,” he says, “and taking up space in the world—a sentiment embodied by this striking coat.”
Caroline Zimbalist
Mixing bioplastics with a wonderland of fantasia-inspired colors and flounces of fabric, Caroline Zimbalist uses natural elements as a focal point to create captivating fashion that combines surreal texture with brilliant hues. The rising star combines the bioplastics with light, ethereal materials for the ultimate contrast and says her Fall 2024 collection is “like a painting coming off the wall and wrapping around a body.” She also likes to use natural fibers. “For many of my couture pieces, I molded traditional fabrics into bioplastic,” she says. “The biomaterial is natural and, interestingly, only adheres to other natural materials like silk, cotton, or wool. It will not stick to polyester or synthetics.”
Founder Henry Zankov brings personality to knitwear through fluid prints, expressive stripes, and overwhelmingly joyful pieces that defy norms. The designer worked under several LVMH-owned brands before striking out on his own to launch Zankov in 2019. In his Fall 2024 collection, the focus is on sensual textures and sumptuous silhouettes. “I moved back to New York City just over a year ago,” says the designer. “Upon my return, what touched me the most was that I felt an immediate embrace. This collection is all about coming into contact with that feeling.” From bold stripes to chunky, textural experiments, the brand is rethinking the concept of knitwear with an injection of personal style.
Chic acid-washed denim and soft-pastel-toned plaid lace come together to form the ultimate juxtapositions in the world of Taottao . Designer Yitao Li founded the brand in 2022 after interning at Monse, Thom Browne, Tibi, and Kim Shui. Her work is unequivocally feminine, with a cool, dark undercurrent. “My goal as a designer is to create visual experiences that evoke joy and empower self-expression,” she tells us. “I believe dressing up can be a powerful tool for embracing confidence and celebrating individuality, allowing wearers to let the clothes speak for them and evoke a sense of excitement in embracing their true selves. Similar to the allure of discovering a hidden gem, I aspire for my creations—like the coverall bodysuits—to be that unexpected delight for those who encounter them.” The brand’s Fall 2024 collection was its first ready-to-wear collection, inspired by vintage cartoons and focused on coolly remixed denim and plaids.
Jack Irving
London Fashion Week has a knack for supporting the most experimental fashion talents, and Jack Irving certainly falls into that category. The rising designer, who could be considered more of an artist, presented his collection of inflatable, wearable sculptures in shades of turquoise and cobalt blue. His work has drawn fans like Lady Gaga, who started wearing his over-the-top creations nearly 10 years ago, when he was still a student. Because of the heavy art influence, Irving flies further under the radar than other, more commercial fashion labels that showed in London, but he is still undoubtedly one to watch.
Paolo Carzana
Since making his London Fashion Week debut in 2022, Paolo Carzana has built a cult following for his unique look and techniques. Carzana often hand-dyes his pieces using natural pigments from plants, and his pieces are designed with rare textures and lots of cool layering, textiles piled one on top of the other to create new silhouettes that feel strikingly different than what anyone else is doing. His Fall 2024 collection was titled “Melanchronic Mountain” and focused on a symbolic journey—his models wore pieces that looked like they had been well-worn or dipped in dust or mud, aged incredibly perplexingly.
Rave Review
Taking the idea of upcycling and making it more real-world, Rave Review works with vintage and deadstock fabrics to create chic mixed-print dresses, cool skirts, and top combinations. Josephine Bergqvist and Livia Schück founded the line in 2017 and are now rightfully getting more attention—having taken their Fall 2024 show to Milan Fashion Week after spending previous seasons closer to their native Sweden, in Copenhagen. The brand also focuses on street casting and using models of different sizes and ages—a practice that, at the present moment, fashion desperately needs more of.
Taking the old and making it new again—or rather, subverting it—is key for Hodakova . The brand was founded by Swedish designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson in 2021 and has cultivated an insider following for its leather bags and repurposed horse-girl tropes. For Fall 2024, the designer doubled down on her brain-bending silhouettes—like dresses made of horse ribbons, leather briefcases deconstructed, or bent silver dining trays. It was all about the everyday, yet done in a refreshingly real and gloriously weird way—which stands out at a time when the runways have never been more homogenous.
Róisín Pierce
Designer Róisín Pierce is bringing her angelic, ultrafeminine new vision of handcrafted luxury to the forefront of fashion. The Irish designer founded her namesake line in 2020, after studying textile design at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. Her Fall 2024 collection was titled “O Lovely One, Fallen From a Star” and was rendered all in white, in glorious diaphanous textures or ruffles and sheer delights. Pierce was looking at imagery of female worshippers to inspire the collection. Her unique, soft aesthetic will keep all of us watching and coming back for more.
Marie Adam-Leenaerdt
Young designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is taking elements of deconstruction and bringing them to the forefront of fashion. The designer graduated from Belgium’s La Cambre National School of Visual Arts in 2020 and launched her namesake brand soon after. She formerly worked for Balenciaga and Givenchy, and it’s easy to see some of those elements in her work—like the oversize campiness or streamlined, slightly futuristic aesthetic. For her Fall 2024 collection, she seemed to interrogate the working woman’s wardrobe with a unique and humorous point of view. Shoulders, puffer coats, and dresses came supersized, while bags were blown up in massive, memelike proportions.
Standing strong with an unapologetically maximalist viewpoint, Germanier was founded by Kevin Germanier in 2018. The Central Saint Martins grad began his journey by creating incredibly stylized, brightly colored beaded dresses with upcycled materials. For Fall 2024, Germanier took guests on a journey of over-the-top creations encompassing feathers, sequins, and unconventional materials usually reserved for floral arrangements. “I’m a storyteller, and I feel like my clothes tell a lot, but sometimes my show—even though I love all the shows I did—lacks that extra dimension that I’m a storyteller,” he tells us. The Ancienne Cécilia Orchestra performed live during the show to add that extra over-the-top feeling. “And this season, it was a full showgirl. I really embrace it. Sometimes people think of my work as costume, drag queen, cabaret … . What’s wrong with that? I really wanted to lean in, and I think I should really embrace my DNA.”
Reverie by Caroline Hu
Few designers are challenging the idea of wearability as interestingly as Caroline Hu . Stepping into one of her presentations, you can expect to see big, bulbous forrefms that present as dramatic visions of dreamlike intricacies. The line was founded in May 2019 by Hu, who splits time between New York and Shanghai. Her Fall 2024 collection tackled the “exploration of the idea of distance and space between people,” or “how perceived distance can feel vastly different depending on the relationships and situation that one finds themselves in regardless of the physical distance,” according to the show notes. That manifested in stunning, otherworldly dresses with puffs of pillowlike appendages and trains of tulle or a sea of ribbons flowing down an off-the-shoulder dress—an inherently feminine point of view that makes you really think. And that’s what great fashion should do, after all.
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