The Designers and Brands That Defined the Season

0:00Imran Amed: I don't know about you, but every spring I find myself wanting clothes that feel lighter, fresher and just easier to wear. So I was very interested to see that Macy's trend forecasters are calling classic coastal this season's mood. It's all about clean stripes, airy linens and subtle nautical details that make getting dressed feel simple but still polished. Think breathable fabrics, timeless shapes and easy pieces that instantly pull a look together. So, if you're looking for a straightforward spring update, Macy's has curated the classic coastal trend in a way that feels really wearable.

0:43Imran Amed: Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BOF podcast. It's Friday, March 13th. After a season shaped less by the anticipation of designer debuts and more by their second and third chapters, Tim Blanks and I sat down as always to take stock of the fashion month that was.

1:04Tim Blanks: I felt that this season, it was kind of one note for me in a funny way. There were a couple of things that, you know, in terms of being surprised, I wasn't surprised by the collection that was my favorite collection because I expected it to be, given everything that's happened up to this point.

1:24Imran Amed: I.e. Chanel.

1:25Tim Blanks: Yeah, Chanel. But there were other collections, one in particular that really surprised me. And it just reminded me that in that golden age that I bleat on about like an incontinent sheep, the 90s, you would go to a day which was just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. You know, that's what I still crave, obviously. that sense of design is just working at a peak.

1:49Imran Amed: But if last season was driven by anticipation, this one was more revealing. In addition to witnessing how their creative ideas are evolving, new designers' visions are now landing in stores, meeting customers, and beginning to show whether they can convert attention into commercial traction. Here's Tim Blanks and I on the designers and brands that define the season here on the BOF podcast. Well, hello, Tim Blanks. How are you? Have you recovered from Fashion Week?

2:22Tim Blanks: Yes, of course I have. I woke up very early this morning. I was still on some kind of different time zone situation. But no, I recovered. I whisked off my last few reviews last night. So that gave me a feeling of accomplishment.

2:40Imran Amed: And as a season, how did it feel to you overall? Before we go into the detail, what are your reflections? Because of course, last season was this like mega season with all of those debuts.

2:53Tim Blanks: And then between that season and this season, we had an incredible couture season.

2:58Imran Amed: Yeah.

2:58Tim Blanks: And maybe it's because couture is a little less pressured than ready to wear. I was really taken by the couture and I was really impressed at how a sort of arena of fashion, which has often been considered to be slightly not as meaningful in a funny way as ready to wear or doesn't have as much to do with people's lives, was so alive and vibrant. And I felt that this season, it was kind of one note for me in a funny way There were a couple of things that, you know, in terms of being surprised I wasn't surprised by the collection that was my favorite collection Because I expected it to be given everything that's happened up to this point I.E.

3:47Tim Blanks: Chanel Yeah, Chanel But there were other collections, one in particular that really surprised me And it just reminded me that in that golden age that I bleat on about like an incontinent sheep, the 90s, you would go to a day which was just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, you know. You know, that's what I still crave, obviously, that sense of surprise and that sense of designers just working at a peak without having to have all these other considerations in their heads, which people have to have in their heads now, which is obviously distracting and slightly numbing in a way. And, you know, it's funny.

4:30Tim Blanks: You watch shows and you like them, but you find yourself making excuses for why they weren't better than they were. And it's not necessarily a position that I'm comfortable being in, and it sounds a bit kind of patronizing anyway when I say it. But nevertheless, let's roll on.

4:49Imran Amed: Well, I think also, in my reflection, because there were a lot of new things last season. But were they? Well, new insofar as they were new combinations, right? Maybe not new insofar as what we saw. So there was the anticipation of something.

5:10Tim Blanks: Yeah, well, there was that slightly sort of misguided sense that because the musical chairs had stopped at different cushions, that it was all going to be Wawawumski.

5:21Imran Amed: Yeah, well, the music had stopped everywhere. There were all of these designers we knew in new seats. So there was an anticipation that something was going to happen. And so for me, last season was like about the anticipation of something new. Because I agree with you, like I didn't leave this season going, wow, that was an amazing season. But I did leave with the impression that for so many of the designers that were onto their second or third shows, like we were starting to see how their vision is kind of setting in or bedding in. And so I was curious from that perspective and then also to have the simultaneous availability of many of these designers' products in the store for the first time and to hear people talking about that.

6:11Imran Amed: And I was doing a lot of store visits to say, well, what does Jack and Lazaro's new version of the Amazon, what does that look like in a Loewe store? What does Mathieu Blasie's Universe of Chanel products, how do those fit into the Peter Marino stores? So I agree with you, it wasn't like a blockbuster season. And there weren't as many debuts or, you know, the anticipation of something new. But it was still interesting just to see how it's all bedding in. It's funny you mention music because it was a season of incredible soundtracks.

6:44Tim Blanks: It was a season of really big soundtracks. I sat there thinking, what is this stuff? It's incredible. I mean, really quite aggressive, fabulous music, which you could take as a sign of confidence. You know, it's not like a designer is attempting to hornswoggle an audience with his soundtrack. But definitely it was a season I would remember for its music. What will you remember the most? Actually, Louis Vuitton. It was like a ceremony and the music was like a ceremonial. I felt it was like a ceremonial march in Babylon or something. It was so big and brassy and quite how it fitted with the set or the clothes was something that teased me.

7:39Tim Blanks: That was one I loved. And there were many more.

7:43Imran Amed: I mean, now you put me on the spot. Well, they'll come to you when we start discussing some of the shows. So should we go to the show that you said you had, even at the beginning of the season, expected was going to be your favorite? And it delivered on that. And that was the Chanel show, which I think, as I was alluding to earlier, coincided with the availability of Mathieu Blasi's first collection of ready-to-wear bags and shoes. I mean, the hysteria was, it was, I haven't seen anything like that since.

8:17Tim Blanks: It was like sort of Filene's basement. I mean, it was incredible. It was just a grab, you know. And that was great to see because, well, I didn't see it.

8:30Imran Amed: I saw it. Did you? Yeah, I went to the store. I didn't go to the store when all of the other fashion people were there. I went to the store on Avenue Montaigne at an unannounced, unplanned, like, random time of day just to kind of get a vibe check. and Chanel stores were always quite busy even you know before his arrival but as I walked up to the first floor of the store on Avenue Montaigne just to start having a look around a woman was just putting on one of those beautiful black wool blazers and it was kind of embellished with feathers at the bottom of the blazer in the most like beautifully random way and she literally gasped when she put it on.

9:17Imran Amed: Wow. And looked in the mirror. And then she saw me looking at her and she's like, oh, I'm so sorry. And I'm like, no, it looks amazing on you. And as you looked around the store, the way customers were engaging with that product, the shoes, the bags, like I haven't seen anything like that since Alessandro Michele at Gucci. I mean, it was... Do you think she was an old Chanel customer or was she a new Chanel customer? She was a new customer. She was a young woman. She was like, she'd probably always admired Chanel. She probably had a 255 bag, but I don't think she was the kind of woman that would have bought ready-to-wear before.

9:56Imran Amed: The number of editors that were buying those Chanel blazers, you know, and like, I always knew the bags would sell, but it was the ready-to-wear that I was like, wow, like people are really like into this. You know, like young people didn't want to wear the ready-to-wear before. You know, this was a big change.

10:13Tim Blanks: But there's a thing that he does that, I mean, I would respond to as a woman and probably as a man if I kind of was into clothes as much as other people are. But, you know, there was a beautiful tweed jacket. I don't remember what the effect of the tweed was because none of the tweeds were what they seemed to be. Every single tweed was treated in some way that was kind of quite awe-inspiring. But this jacket was lined in a print taken from a drawing that one of Chanel's friends, an illustrator called Sam, had made of her. And he kind of depicted her as a black swan, a little bit sort of an abstract version of her, but kind of as a black swan, like there's a swan with Chanel's hair and stuff.

11:00Tim Blanks: And it was such a beautiful kind of caricature of her. and Mathieu had found this, made it into a silk scarf and used it as a lining for a jacket, which was then being worn under one of the overshirts, which he called the new Chanel jacket. Just a very casual introduction to the Chanel vocabulary, which you could really imagine connecting with people. But you would have this jacket on knowing that it was lined in this way. And obviously you'd throw your jacket over a chair so people could see how it was lined. But that lining would be your secret. And, you know, that kind of thing. He says we don't make fashion for Instagram.

11:40Tim Blanks: Yeah. And I think that that kind of thing will be eliciting an incredible response from people.

11:49Imran Amed: Well, you hear about those kinds of gestures in fashion in smaller brands where they'll like, you know, sew something into the lining or, you know, put your initials in the jacket or, you know, whatever it might be. But that kind of gesture at a big brand like Chanel is quite special, right? And so the thing is, he might not be designing for Instagram, but the way, let's talk about the show, because the way the show translates online, you know, unlike a lot of other shows that we see that look good in person, but the way they translate online, he also manages to get the online masses excited too, which is interesting.

12:31Tim Blanks: Although, I would say there's this real strange train of thought which says, what was that set all about? And I'm kind of amazed to read these comments. Like, I didn't understand the set. What was that? I didn't get it at all. From people whose opinion I kind of value.

12:48Imran Amed: But he told you about the set. So why don't you tell us?

12:51Tim Blanks: The set, the idea was a work in progress. And I felt the set was kind of like a Meccano set, like kids used to make. They used to build when kids would build something, like from Meccano. And Mature used Lego and Playmobil as well. I mean, he said he had a straight older brother, so his older brother introduced him to all these constructive toys. But at the same time, there was a sort of Mondrian thing. I thought the set was simple. It was huge. And it was very clear to me that it was cranes and things building. you know the idea of building something and he's building this new world for chanel um so brilliantly i think i mean yeah i loved chanel shows in the past i mean carl's shows that they were fun and they were kind of extravagant there was supermodels doing supermodely things but this is this is a different very different mood this feels very much in keeping with another thing, which I think is very interesting in fashion at the moment.

14:00Tim Blanks: And I think that Mutia Prada nailed it with the Miu Miu show, a sort of humanist streak that fashion is kind of lowering its eyesight to a human level.

14:12Imran Amed: I mean, it's interesting because Carl, the way Carl used to use the Grand Palais, which is an enormous space, the way he would fill that space with a spaceship or an iceberg or a beach or a supermarket. I mean, it was huge. And he could use that whole space and really pack it together. Mathieu tends to make these much more pared back sets that still use the space, but it's not quite as overpowering. And so the focus is much more on the clothes. Whereas in Carl's shows, you couldn't help but be distracted by the spaceship taking off in the center of the Grand Palais. And I think my one wish for his shows is that given the humanist tendency you're talking about and given the level of detail and care that every garment is made with, it feels quite far away.

15:07Imran Amed: You know, the clothes feel quite distant, you know, and I know they have to use that space because that's what Chanel always shows. But like, it'd be nice to be more close up to those clothes. and I guess that's maybe it's not possible given the scale of the show and the scale of the venue and the number of people but there's so much that I think you I mean I didn't I didn't do the preview this time I know you know you spent some time with Mathieu before but I didn't get a chance to see things up close this time which I kind of missed you would never however close you were

15:37Tim Blanks: I don't think you would ever appreciate the depth of detail yeah in the clothing I mean he he the tweed where he stripped out strands and printed those strands on the lining underneath. So it was still the tweed, the density of the tweed, but it was in two levels. And one of the strands was, and this particular jacket, one of the strands was red and it was printed on the lining and you could see the red and it was moving under the top layer. So it had what he called this kinetic effect. The movement is exquisite. I mean, he wanted to recreate a sort of Jackson Pollock painting in a Chanel jacket.

16:20Tim Blanks: You know, the depth of thought, the depth of delivery, it's really, really inspiring. I think you can look at that and you can think of applying that sort of open-mindedness to all sorts of things. I mean, the way he makes clothes is a way you could make music or where you could write books or where you could make movies. And it's exciting to see where it came from so recently. You know, it's not been that long. And you think, when it was so complete at the beginning, you're thinking, how can he expand on this? How can he build, how can he grow this world? How can he evolve this train of thought without becoming repetitive or boring people.

17:07And I really think he's a really, really special designer and a

17:13Tim Blanks: really kind of, it's going to be absolutely fascinating following that career as it evolves. He was even talking about how he's mastering all of these elements of Chanel. He is just so immersed in her. And when he's absorbed all of that, osmosed it, so it's become part of his DNA, he's looking forward to going on moving on from that and doing something else you know and whatever that something else is is so packed with promise you know it's quite exciting to look forward to that he's incredibly thoughtful and i think also the focus that he's able to have if you could

17:53Imran Amed: sign up compare his role at chanel with what jonathan anderson's been tasked to do at dior which is a much broader proposition because it includes men's and it includes, I think, a wider repositioning of Dior as a house. You can kind of see on the one hand, Mathieu's got this incredible focus because he's just focusing on that like top layer of fashion at Chanel. So this was Jonathan's fifth Dior collection. How are you evaluating or making sense of his evolution at that other great storied French couture house?

18:31Tim Blanks: I think it's incredible the way he's managed to insinuate himself into Dior, his own particular idiosyncrasies. I guess you see it most clearly in the accessories, but the lily pad shoes, that they almost could be some of the Surrealist footwear from his Loewe days or from his own collections. I think that he has signatures already he has signatures at Dior and they're challenging as they should be and he has a very kind of broad view of the world I mean his particular interests in say craft for example the way that his fabrics have evolved so I mean I thought the fabrics in the show were interesting They were like couture fabrics for ready to wear.

19:26Tim Blanks: We were lucky that it was a glorious day. And he was showing, I mean, the set. Oh, my God. Yeah. That whole incredible fountain with the lily pads and the 30-degree sunlight fricasseeing the front row.

19:44Imran Amed: Well, it was actually only 18 degrees. But when the light was going through the greenhouse that we were in, all of a sudden it felt like the middle of summer. But you're right that the fabrics, I mean, they were just glistening in the light. It was incredible.

20:02Tim Blanks: It was incredible. And he has a fondness for a few silhouettes that are not easy silhouettes. There's always been a fearlessness about him. And I really like that sense that's coming through in these collections of fearlessness. He's a real risk taker. Yeah. I don't think he even knows it's risk taking. I think that's just the way he is.

20:26Imran Amed: Yeah. And I think what he said to me when we chatted earlier this year was like, he's more of an iterative designer. Like he just tries a lot of stuff and it helps him refine. And even though we're five collections in, it's still only nine months into his role at Dior. I think he took over, he started the men's last March, you know, that's when he started working. Like the amount that he's already brought to that brand in such a short period of time is pretty extraordinary, given where it was just before. and I think the idea is like not everything is successful but I think that's the way he progresses is he tries lots of things so maybe yes some of those silhouettes are challenging but you know he's refining he's a refiner well you imagine like he in his early days he worked with

21:22Tim Blanks: Manuela Pavese who was Mewcha Prada's best friend and you know imagine Mewcha Prada doing Dior and imagine her sensibility applied to a monolith like a Christian Dior and you kind of that's what we're kind of getting with Jonathan I think we're getting we're getting a magpie sensibility applied to a monolith of a brand

21:42Imran Amed: yeah that's a very interesting way of putting it actually I wish in that show like as impressive as I found the set I always find it harder to engage with fashion shows when And I think it was Nicolas Guesquière that did a show like that once, like a Philippe Pereno set. And like it was all around the Cours Carré du Louvre. And you can only see a little section of it. Like everything else, you're seeing everything from really far away. I liked his other show venues better because I felt more of the energy of the show because it was just tighter. I think something was a bit lost in that diffused, as impressive as it was to look at from the sky.

22:25Tim Blanks: Imagine Louis XIV looking at that fashion show set. I mean, Louis XIV would have recognized the kindred spirit there. Reactivating that enormous fountain area, not with an actual fountain, but with water and fake lily pads. It was so...

22:43Imran Amed: It was very cinematic on the live stream and it was very impressive when you looked at it when you walked in. But as a show experience, I felt like something was lost in that bit. We'll be right back with more on the BOF podcast.

23:05Imran Amed: Okay, well, clearly probably the most anticipated moment of the entire season was Demna's Gucci show in Milan. We, of course, had a moment with Demna last September with the La Familia collection and the film that he made, which, you know, I think everyone was quite taken with and had quite a lot of excitement and energy around it, more than people were perhaps expecting from what had been billed to us as a first step, as opposed to like the full vision. This show in Milan this season was supposed to be Demna's first reveal of his new vision for Gucci, which it goes without saying is a brand that has been challenged.

23:53And, you know, as BOF has been reporting, the sales are down more than 40 percent from their peak a few years ago.

24:00Imran Amed: So there is a big task for Demna and his CEO, Francesca Bellatini. you spent a lot of time with Demna before this show and I you know you did an incredible extraordinary interview with him that was so revealing for me in terms of understanding that show which it was a very polarizing show instantly people were still talking about it in the final days of Paris a lot of people did not like that show but with the time you spent with Demna and the additional understanding you have around what he was trying to say you know Tim decode the Demna show at Gucci for us, please. Don't do that to me. I'm just a medium.

24:41Tim Blanks: I'm not an interpreter. What we talked about the day before was not necessarily what we saw. And I said to him, did you change things? And he said, yes, I did make some changes, including changing the music at the end of the show, which set the end of the show at a different register. I think in his mind, he was making a show about Italian fashion. And about Italians, anyway. Like the beauty, for example, he described it as being like a sort of Gina Lolle-Brigida beauty. And I thought about that after seeing the show. And I was looking at the pictures. I thought it came across better in pictures in a way than it actually did while we were watching it.

25:25Tim Blanks: Because this catwalk was so long. And you had so long to watch things going past. and I would say it was a shock. You know, like you were saying, the fashion commentariat hasn't died down. People are still going to town on that show, taking it so personally. Friends, again, these friends whose opinions I value, not the same group of friends I mentioned last time whose opinion I value, this is a different lot. They said Demner is the cleverest man in fashion and he knows exactly what he's doing. so i am really curious to see what happens when that collection hits stores some of it has already

26:08Imran Amed: hit stores tim like they did a see now buy now drop right yeah and what happened you know well we've done some analysis there were like you know visits to the website were up 50 which one would expect when a brand is putting a bunch of money behind a big big event there's probably a lot of discussion about Gucci online that led people to go to the website. What I don't know is how many people went from visiting the website to converting to purchasing something. And I guess we won't get a good readout of that until the next quarterly report from Caring. You know, I do think it was interesting that they had thought in advance about making some of that collection available right away because the C9 Buy Now formula is something that, you know, the industry has experimented with in the past.

26:56Imran Amed: But I think over at Gucci, I think there's a lot of expectation that the vision that Demna has been working on is already going to be able to be translated into something that people can buy because there's no more time to wait. It is such a critical, urgent situation at Gucci at the moment that if they don't find that they're getting some traction, you know, that caring has some really, really big problems to address. So I don't know what the conversion rates were. We heard that there was a good response at the VIP, BIC, you know, Risi opportunity and that, you know, there was a good response there, but we don't know the conversion rate yet, but let's see.

27:38Tim Blanks: Well, I, one of the things we talked about the day before, we were talking about Ryan Murphy's show, The Beauty, and this notebook is Demna, you know, people were calling that the Ozemfek collection because of the bodies. And he's very conscious of the fact that he, I mean, he has, his whole exercise with therapy and with losing weight and so on has been about falling in love with himself, learning to love himself after a lifetime of really not loving himself, actually the exact opposite. And equating a sort of physical appeal with the ability to attract people for sex, basically this correlation between beauty and sex which is the the core of the ryan murphy show when the people catch this virus called the beauty and transform into beautiful creatures obviously a particular standard of beauty it's not everybody's standard it's very la standard of beauty instantly they start having tons and tons of sex and spreading the virus to more people So there's equation of beauty, sex and the sort of lethality, you know, danger.

28:53Tim Blanks: And I thought that I don't know how much he's been watching the beauty, but I did get that from that show that they were beautiful people. Like maybe it's I don't know if it's a conventional idea of beauty, but they were sort of very sexual, beautiful people. And you can imagine a world in which they would be very attractive to other people. and I mean the day before we talked a lot about his belief in community which is something he's always done right from the very beginning with Vetements he was he always had communities in his shows he was making communities of people and that that show was very clear about its communities I thought there were there were skaters there were glamour pusses there were trophy wives there were these strange boys in glitter outfits with bare feet like Toy Boys.

29:41Tim Blanks: There was a sort of very cinematic quality to the show. In the moment, I was a bit taken aback because it wasn't quite what we'd been talking about earlier. And I thought about it afterwards. And there is so much in fashion that I can look at and say, well, it's not for me, but I appreciate that it's for someone. And I think I have to say that that collection is one of those, that I feel there's a world for it. I think that in particular, just as one or two looks that really stayed with me. In the same way that the beauty has these really powerful images, these really sort of quite almost toxic images, but they're super powerful.

30:25Tim Blanks: And you sort of dream about them. I think it's going to be interesting to see what he does in his show in New York, because when he talked about that, He mentioned Gucci core as being the next part of the story.

30:37Imran Amed: Yeah, what I understand is that if La Familia was really about revisiting the archive, and this show was about setting that fashion vision for Gucci.

30:53Tim Blanks: And then there was the pre-fall, which was Gucci generation, which was all about the Tom Ford years.

30:58Imran Amed: Exactly. And then Gucci core is more about the core proposition. So it's happening during the cruise shows, but I think it's going to be the more relatable part of what he's proposing for Gucci.

31:12Tim Blanks: Well, he said Gucci Corp is the women and men in Milan who've been wearing Gucci for 100 years. He said it's those people who go to the shops to buy the pussy bow blouse that they've been buying from Gucci forever. and the suits and and and still quite they're still quite eccentric in the way they dress they're perfectly groomed still quite eccentric and the shops have always sold this but you have to look for it in the store and i think he just wants to give it a little more primacy perhaps

31:44Imran Amed: i guess mike i agree with your view that that is a gucci for someone i just wonder how many of those someones there are. And I wonder if as a fashion vision, it's a bit too narrow for a brand as big as Gucci. To go back to the scale that they have the ambition to grow that brand back to about 10 billion euros or more, I wonder at that price point with that kind of product, how are they going to build this universe around the core proposition and the fashion proposition. Is it going to be enough? But, you know, the thing that I thought was so successful under Alessandro Michele's tenure that saw that business grow to unseen heights was that anybody could walk into the Gucci store and get one of those furry loafer sliders or some of the beautiful, colorful knitwear or the embellished bags.

32:53Imran Amed: You know, there was something for everybody. And I just, I want to see more from Demna's Gucci that's more accessible. I think when Demna was at Balenciaga and he, you know, managed to turn that into a phenomenon unlike the industry has ever seen. Like there was that moment, that first Balenciaga show when I think we all kind of stopped in our tracks. We kind of had a taste of what he did through Vetements, but to see that projected through a high-end luxury brand by Balenciaga, like that was a shifting point in fashion. Like you can remember what fashion was before and after that and how it was so influential in the industry.

33:35Imran Amed: But Balenciaga was a brand doing a few hundred million euros and he managed to scale it to like, you know, around 2 billion euros of revenue. But, you know, Gucci's a 6 billion euro business that wants to be a 10 or 15 billion euro business. So like, how are they going to take this somewhat narrow, specialized and very, very appealing vision to a certain generation of people that maybe I don't fall into? So maybe it doesn't resonate as much with me. How are they going to make that something for a wider group of people? That's what I think remains to be seen. And you're right that we need to see what happens with this Gucci core collection to maybe get the full picture of the strategy they have in mind.

34:17Tim Blanks: Oh, he did bring back those first sliders you were talking about.

34:20Imran Amed: Yeah, I saw those. They were extra long, I think, though, right? Extra long. Yes. Yeah. Well, that kind of covers the three mega brands. There were other debuts this season, Tim, that's worth chatting about quickly. We both attended Meryl Roga's first show for Marnie, and you also had some time with her. As someone who was a follower of Consuelo Castiglione's Marnie, the founder of Marnie, how well do you think she was able to channel the original proposition that the brand was founded upon?

34:55Tim Blanks: Well, I've loved Meryl Roga's work, and I'm so happy she got this gig, because she just deserves every break that fashion can give her. And I also like that she was a fan of Consuelo's for a long... I mean, the first thing she ever bought with her own money was a pair of Marnie's shoes. It did highlight that there was a particular quality about Consuelo's work there, a kind of idiosyncratic sophistication, which I don't think Meryl has yet. But Marnie was often a real head-scratcher in the most fabulous way. Consuelo would use, you know, the most expensive fabrics mixed up with vinyl or something.

35:41Tim Blanks: She just had this really sort of broad perspective on things that I think Meryl will grow into. One thing I liked about the collection is it did feel like it would appeal to a new audience on its own merits. not from people necessarily going into saying, oh, money's, you know, because remember there was that wonderful interregnum with Francesco Rousseau that was so idiosyncratic. But I think that was a cause celebre, perhaps, more than a strong commercial proposition, which I feel that Meryl has more of a capacity to do that. But I think she will evolve in that job, And I think she's a kindred spirit.

36:28Tim Blanks: And it's not going to be one of those transformative experiences for the brand. And nor will it be picking up where Consuelo left off or even bringing in things that Francesco did. It will be something that's true, but new.

36:45Imran Amed: Yeah, and I think it feels unique in the market context. I love the way she puts things together. There were pieces in there. I was quite drawn I was just drawn to it and when I saw the way things were put together and styled on that cast of characters in that show I wanted to dress like that there was something quite appealing to me about the way it was all crafted I think it's an interesting start a really good start Fendi Maria Grazia Curie obviously one of the most successful designers of the last decade having you know really brought commercial success to Dior unlike anything that we've seen ever at that brand she had her first show at Fendi and you know she did an interview with Robert Williams our luxury correspondent saying and the first quote in the story was I am not an entertainment designer you know she's quite defiant in the way you know she's trying to do her work and i think she's have she wants nothing to do with the scene and spectacle of these massive shows like she's really focused on the collections she designs you weren't there um but i'm sure you had a look at it i mean my view for what it's worth was that for all those customers that are missing what maria grazia did at dior there was a lot for them to like at fendi and fendi hasn't been a ready-to-wear brand really It's a leather goods and, I guess, fur business mostly historically.

38:24Imran Amed: But there's an opportunity for Fendi. I think those customers that are looking for lace dresses and a wardrobe, they'll find plenty to like at her Fendi.

38:37Tim Blanks: Well, I think Sylvia Fendi and Kim Jones did take it in a particular direction that was, I thought, quite successful. kind of cinematic and what what instantly comes across with maria grazia is how rigorous it was how monochrome it was looking at the pictures i found it very very strict which is an interesting proposition i i i don't know if that sort of strictness is what people are looking for right now but um you know she it's like it's it's interesting to Watching Maria Grazia and Pier Paolo Pacholi working together at Valentino all those years and seeing their different career paths since they separated.

39:25Tim Blanks: That's been a very interesting thing over the last decade or so. And I found that Fendi was just a little strict.

39:36Imran Amed: Yeah, it wasn't going to get your fashion heart racing. and you know to be you know honest it never got my fashion heart race she never got my fashion heart racing when she was at dior either but i do think she's an excellent designer notwithstanding the strictness like i think there's a really clear proposition there oh absolutely absolutely

40:01Tim Blanks: It's a perfectly clear, absolute clarity.

40:05Imran Amed: Since you mentioned Pierpaolo, it might be a good opportunity to talk about Balenciaga and the Pierpaolo match, because that's, for me, completely unclear. What they are trying to do there. And I have to say, it's like a really huge challenge that Pierpaolo has, because clearly Balenciaga has built the house in the house of Demna. and you know the the brand as so many people around around the world know it is through the lens that demna put onto it and so i think the history of the brand before that which you know i think you've all you've often told me cristobal balenciaga is you know your favorite designer or one of your favorite designers ever like what the house of balenciaga represents and what Demna brought to it, they intersected in an interesting way during Demna's tenure.

40:58Imran Amed: But I think now trying to bring someone else in to cater to that Demna customer, which is, I think, what they're trying to do, while also bringing in, you know, what Pierpaolo is known for, you know, during his time at Valentino, it's a bit confounding that I found that show, I found it all very confusing.

41:21Tim Blanks: Oh, I think a fundamental issue is incompatibility on almost every level. I mean, I guess the fundamental compatibility might be Pia Paolo with Cristobal Balenciaga, but there are so many walls between the two of them.

41:40Imran Amed: But do you think that if there wasn't this need to keep the attention of the Balenciaga customer of the last decade, and he would have been able to start afresh, and he didn't have to do sneakers and screen printed hoodies or coats or be cool, as in like dem not cool. and he could just create beautifully cut dresses and coats, like the things that he's historically done. Do you think that that compatibility could be there?

42:22Tim Blanks: You know, at Valentino, he was always interested in streetwear. Yeah. And he was always very interested in opening couture up. Valentino's trainers were great. But I think there's just something about him at Balenciaga and its current incarnation anyway that just feels really inauthentic to me. Even though he does have this interest in this hybridization of couture and a more sort of streetie, he did it at Valentino. He did it brilliantly at Valentino. I mean, Pierre Paolo has proved how capable he is of that kind of hybrid, more than capable. There's just something that's not gelling there. I mean, I don't know how he ended up with the Euphoria team as his collaborators.

43:22Tim Blanks: That felt to me like a very, very odd reach that didn't quite connect. and it just created the whole thing, the venue, the films that were playing.

43:36Imran Amed: The concrete, the low ceilings, the random mix of things. It's just everything. You know, I feel for him because I think it's kind of an impossible task to step into a house with that kind of history, both short-term and long-term, and try to reconcile all of it when the whole craze around streetwear and that moment has clearly passed for a large portion of, you know, fashion customers.

44:07Tim Blanks: Yeah, so in that show, he has these evening dresses, these, you know, sequined goddess dresses, and then a kind of ruffled denim parka, like bringing the two worlds together in a way that is supposed to be, I don't know what's it supposed to be supposed to be illuminating or supposed to be seductive or or provocative but it doesn't feel any or provocative but it's just not provocative it just isn't it isn't Demner could do provocation with both arms tied behind his back and it's not Pierre Paolo's thing it just isn't

44:47Imran Amed: well no and I think that's why I think if he didn't have to worry about that Demna era, and he could just do what feels right to him without that constraint.

45:00Tim Blanks: I don't even know if he's worried about the Demna era. I think maybe it just is something he wants to do.

45:05Imran Amed: Really? I feel like I get the feeling that there is some kind of brief that he's got, that he, like, if you look at those stores, those Balenciaga stores, like, how would Pierre Paolo's beauty in the way that we know from Pierre Paolo, how does that even fit with the environment that Demna created for those stores? You know, it's just, it's like two different planets. And so I feel like he's got some kind of brief that there's this customer that they already have that they continue to need to cater to. And why would Pierre Paolo, you know, a designer known for his couture at Valentino, his peak moment, which was those beautiful, jewel-colored, massive gowns that, you know, how do those two things sit in the same place?

45:55Tim Blanks: Remember, he showed those beautiful dresses, billowing dresses with tank tops and things. I mean, he did have a very, very good grasp of those two worlds coming together, the sort of sporty world in the couture world, which technically could be appropriate in this environment. It just isn't what we're seeing. That's the problem. Can we talk about Junya Watanabe?

46:19Imran Amed: Let's talk about the Japanese designers for sure, because Junya and Ese were amongst your favorites of the season. Tell us why.

46:30Tim Blanks: I just love the fact that they are always there doing what they do. and then every so often, bang, they're the best thing you see. Satoshi Kondo is, every designer on his deathbed could wish for an acolyte as brilliant as Satoshi Kondo. The way that he, you sit there and you feel Issey Miyake in the room, not in a sort of nostalgic way, but just in a, you know, that man left such an insane blueprint and such an incredible, in a season where, as we said at the very beginning, humanism seemed to be on people's minds, a relationship with nature, human nature, nature and humanism, you know, the whole thing.

47:20Tim Blanks: I think nature becomes a kind of refuge, obviously, in a world gone crazy and also a reminder of what we're about to lose. so there's a sort of poignancy that designers can tap into. I think it was very evident in Issei and then Junior took the opposite tack and used all the wreckage of the industrial world or the world that we have made, the modern world, to build these incredible dresses, literally build them.

47:53Imran Amed: They looked incredible.

47:55Tim Blanks: I mean, if I had looked hard enough, I'm sure I would have seen a kitchen sink. I'm pretty sure that Maggie Maurer was wearing a windshield in her last look.

48:05Imran Amed: I was wondering how they got those dresses over from Japan. Because they were like these masks. They weren't something you could fold up into a case.

48:14Tim Blanks: Well, speaking of Meccano sets, I mean, maybe you can bolt them all together. Maybe there were maps to do it. But it was such a thrilling collection. And also he staged it. There was a performance. Pat Bogoslawski, who did an amazing Galea Magiella. Yeah. Maison Magiella. You know, just it was a chair. It was like we could have been in a tango studio and there was a chair and the models kind of tangoed. I mean, they danced a little bit. They moved a lot. They were, the mascara was running. They were drama queens. It was more than you usually get in a Japanese designer show. There was more theatrics.

48:56Tim Blanks: but it was just a thrilling show in the same way that the Galliano show was and it was fabulous and it was Junior doing it and kind of defiant Essay was soft and sort of dune-like and just beautiful just flat out beautiful whereas Junior was fierce and had a kind of but getting back to that nature thing you know Hermes had this forest floor really like it really smelled like you were deep in the redwoods or something it was incredible Louis Vuitton had had um uh these sort of mountain ranges and valleys and things and Miu Miu had also had a forest floor and these gigantic abstract pillars and and floral walls that was supposed to suggest, again, like a forest, like a wild natural environment.

49:53And in each of those cases,

49:57Tim Blanks: the designers were talking about engaging with nature in a way taming nature, I suppose, which was a little less than, you know, not really about unleashing the wildness in ourselves, but engaging with nature, taming it. Although Mewcha Prada did say that she wanted to convey the sense of how small we are in the midst of all of that. And so the clothes, I thought the clothes were very, very humble, almost Aote Povera style. And, you know, I thought actually maybe in a funny way, her statement at the end of the week with Mew Mew, when she said she wanted to remind us that however small we are. It's enough.

50:44Tim Blanks: It's enough. We're enough. Yeah, we're enough. We're enough. You know, at the end of it all, you think that what she was showing to us with those very, very plain clothes was not a way to dress but a way to be. I thought that was a very powerful message to end the week with. I don't know how many people walked away with that, but I guess I was trying to rationalize how plain the clothes were. And then I thought afterwards, yeah, you know, she's a designer of ideas all the time. She's a designer of ideas. The show in Milan, the Prada show in Milan was a show about ideas, you know, ideas about clothing, your relationship with clothes and so on.

51:22Tim Blanks: Anyway, that's I thought that was quite a nice way to end the week with that thought ringing in my head. And then the engagement with nature is something that, you know, we should never be tired of being reminded of because we don't do it enough.

51:36Imran Amed: Especially at a time like this. I did want to talk about Tom Ford, which, as you know, was one of my favorites of the season. Because, I don't know, it just stopped me in my tracks. Too bad I was having a massive allergic reaction during the show and could barely breathe. But even then, I was like, I'll die for fashion. Because it was just, I love that show so much. You know, I remember those shows that Heider Ackerman used to do on Saturday morning during Paris Fashion Week. and people would come out crying. He was able to create these moments. And I don't know if it's Heider who directs all of the choreography of like how they all walk out, but it seems very, very personal to him the way he does it all.

52:23Imran Amed: Like it just feels like, I don't know how to describe it. But when you saw those shows that he did for his own brand all those years ago and how everything, You just instantly want to be those people. Like whoever he puts on that, you just want to be them. I loved it. It was incredible.

52:42Tim Blanks: I think it's also great, like with the Junior show, that you can get models to do those things, you know, that actually just appealing to everybody's inner ham, you can really get them to do stuff on a catwalk. And in the Tom Ford show, everybody was being so dramatic.

53:03Imran Amed: Well, you know what someone told me was that because Peter Mulea, Eliasha was later that evening, he'd locked up all of the kind of known supers of the day, like the Mona Tugards and all of those amazing girls. So Haider actually got a secondary casting of models, which he wasn't so happy about. And so you didn't recognize a lot of those models. Like some of them in there, of course, were, you know, Kirsten McNenemy and others are like stalwarts. But even though you didn't recognize all those models and they weren't like the seasoned ones, they did such an amazing job. No, he has his repertory company.

53:47Tim Blanks: He has his little rep company. Like Scott Barnhill is his guy. Yes. And, you know, instantly that's just a whole era of fashion is on the catwalk in front of you. And there are a few others like that in the show. It's his memories. It was incredible. And Tom's memories as well, obviously. I loved it.

54:08Imran Amed: And the clothes were kind of fabulous too. I mean, I really want to see those clothes up close. I probably should visit a Tom Ford store because I'm sure Heider's first collection is in there. It's like a moving fashion editorial in real life. It's like stepping into one of those super glamorous, high gloss fashion campaigns. Imran, guess what? My plumber is here. I have to go and let him in. Well, that must be our sign that we need to end this week's podcast. But Tim, thanks for your time. Thanks for our chat as always. Thank you, Imran. And thank you for everything this season. You were absolutely amazing.

54:47Imran Amed: Your writing was inspiring as always. So bye, Tim. Okay, bye. The BOF podcast is edited and produced by Olivia Davies and Eric Bria.

55:23Tim Blanks: With over 30 million pairs sold, there are thousands of men out there more comfortable than you. Don't settle for less. Go to TommyJohn.com today for 30 % off site-wide with code COMFORT. That's TommyJohn.com slash COMFORT. TommyJohn. Comfort perfected. Parles-tu français? Hablas espanol? Parli italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket.

56:01Tim Blanks: Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash acast. Rules and restrictions may apply.