Tim Blanks and Imran Amed Reflect on the Biggest Fashion Month Ever

0:04Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion, or welcome to the BOF podcast. It's Friday, October 10th. We've just returned from what was undoubtedly the biggest fashion month ever. A high-stakes season that saw new creative directors debut their visions at Chanel, Dior, Jill Sander, Loewe, Jean-Paul Gaultier, and many more. So what to make of it all? Much of it was about expectations. For some designers, like Jonathan Anderson at Dior and Pierre Paolo Piccioli at Balenciaga, expectations were running high, making it almost impossible to please the industry as well as online critics.

0:47For others, like Dario Vitale at Versace and Jack McCullough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe, they had been kind of written off by some observers even before they showed, leaving them the opportunity to surprise, delight, and over-deliver. Indeed, only one show seems to have unanimously impressed all around. And that was Mathieu Blazy's big debut at Chanel, the last big show at Paris Fashion Week. It was the one show that incontrovertibly did what it had to do, not just for the brand, but for the business, for the industry. And I think people could leave Paris on the second to last day on an upbeat note, because earlier in the week, some of the most anticipated shows like Jonathan at Dior or Pier Paolo at Palenciaga had been incredibly polarizing.

1:42And I think there seems to be, so far as I can tell, relatively universal agreement on Chanel. This week on the BOF podcast, as always, I sit down with our editor-at-large, Tim Blanks, for a seasonal review of all the shows and what this means for the future of luxury fashion itself. Here's Tim Blanks on the BOF podcast.

2:31But this is an important conversation just because the last few weeks, I think everyone was entering this season with such high expectations for all of the debuts that we were about to see, but also for a fashion industry that's in flux and looking for some new energy. because, you know, things have, you know, honestly felt a bit flat. And I think that's shown up in not just in the kind of editors and buyers response at the collections over the last couple of seasons, but also because the industry is contracting. So I guess my first overall question for you, Tim, is big picture, before we dive into individual shows and designers, did this season live up to your expectations?

3:22But what were my expectations? I mean, it never was like a whole wave of new faces. It was just really familiar faces in new places. And to a very large degree, how I felt about what happened over the last few weeks was really about how I felt about those designers in whatever incarnation they take. and I think looking at the whole notion of change which on the surface at least wasn't as fundamental as the pre-publicity might have led you to expect you know I had a friend from New York call me to say um must have been the most exciting week ever to be a fashion journalist and I said well why I mean there was lots of people whose work I was already very familiar with and the significance of the idea of change the way I see it it was for the designers themselves that they were assuming new roles new challenges and the enthusiasm and energy and activation was for them so some of them really really went for it and used the opportunity and I think that was probably you know where we saw the good stuff in the week.

4:38I think that's right because I guess I remained quite excited about this season because notwithstanding what you just said to see someone like Jonathan Anderson at Dior or Mathieu Blaisier at Chanel like yes we've seen those designers at other houses before I think you and I've both known Jonathan for almost 20 years now since he first started out in London. It was a real big new challenge for both of them. So yes, of course, like they both have their own way of approaching designing a collection. And that certainly played out in what we saw, but it was a really big step up for them. Also for someone like Duran Lentink, who has been running a fledgling label to take over a brand like Jean-Paul Gaultier, you know, it's a big deal or for Jack and Lagerou who like basically left their own brand Proenza Schooler to take on Loewe which is now after Jonathan's tenure like a you know big multi-billion dollar business so all of them were stepping up into like really challenging new roles but I guess you know the biggest debate that I think a lot of the brands have been having is like who comes first?

5:51Is it the designer or is it the brand? And in a lot of the shows we saw, it felt like the designer's own aesthetic, their own point of view, their own handwriting, their own signature, whatever fashion lingo you want to use, was very, very much front and center. But if you look at a house like Lueve, for example, were Jack and Lazaro going to go into Lueve and do Jonathan Anderson? No. They weren't going to. I mean, Duran and Gauthier is slightly different because there's such a fundamental compatibility, I think, in their outlooks on things that you anticipated a symbiosis there, which you wouldn't necessarily, I mean, between, say, Balenciaga and Pier Paolo Pacholi, between Demna's Balenciaga, which is what people know, really, and Pier Paolo, there seemed like a disconnect.

6:47Obviously, Pierre Paolo, as a great couturier, would have more of a connection with Cristobal Balenciaga. But that's why I think you saw the designer's aesthetic in a new context rather than them. You know, think of an actor, I suppose. Think of a, you know, you have a method actor who goes into a role and becomes the character he's playing, or you have a movie star who goes into the role, like Elizabeth Taylor, and is Elizabeth Taylor in the role rather than, you know, the method act of being whatever character they're playing. And I think there was a little bit of that. God, that's a rather tortured analogy, but I think there's a germ of truth in it somewhere.

7:23Yeah. Okay. Well, with that in mind, do you think the season was successful? Like, has fashion got the creative jolt? It needs to be awoken. Like a sleeping princess or something. Yeah. Well, you know what? We had to wait a long time for the prince to come along and kiss her. and that was the uh that was the Chanel show I mean I think that's why partly why everybody is absolutely august with excitement over that show because it was the one show that incontrovertibly did what it had to do not just for the brand but for the business for the industry and and I think people could leave Paris on the second to last day if they didn't stay for Meryl Rogar, who we've got our fingers crossed for for the future, on an upbeat note.

8:16Because earlier in the week, some of the most anticipated shows, like Jonathan at Dior or Pierre Paolo at Palenziaga, had been incredibly polarizing. And I think there seems to be, so far as I can tell, relatively universal agreement on Chanel. And so let's analyze why that is. What was it about that debut that made it incontrovertibly successful? Why did so many people agree that that was successful? Like different people with different perspectives? I think it was because Chanel is the top. I mean, it is a very interesting coincidence that Chanel and Dior, probably the two top fashion labels in the world, were both taken over by 40-year-old male designers in the same season.

9:0941-year-old, actually. Oh, 41. Okay. It was 40 when I made up that analogy, so I'm holding fast to whatever Gregorian calendar or whatever it was I was using. I think everybody saw Chanel as the biggest challenge and I think there was also an enormous amount of respect that has accrued to Mathieu over the years. I mean, from the time I first saw him at Margiela, the work he was doing at Margiela when he was totally behind the scenes, it was so incredible and you just thought, what the hell is going to happen with this? I mean, where will this story end? And in my conversations with him, he did this deep dive into Chanel, the person, because he was just so overwhelmed by the archive and overwhelmed by the weight of legacy there that he just focused on the person and things that maybe people had never known about her before from her very earliest days.

10:09and decided that he was going to tell this love story, which was so intimate and so personal, he personalized Chanel. And in that way, he managed to do a Chanel that reflected her, but also reflected his feelings about what she'd done with his vocabulary, which is very craft-oriented and very experimental. I mean it's interesting that that some a word that has come up a lot talking to people because of what's happening with climate change maybe that's one reason but clothes need to be light and I have never ever felt such light clothes in my life as that they were they were the weight of the coat hanger the clothes that he was doing but but it was also you looked at it and it and it was Chanel.

11:00Yeah. You know, it told a Chanel story. He struck a balance there that I think the balance was the challenge between what Chanel was, what Chanel and what Chanel needs to be. And the balance between Mathieu's craft approach to design and what Chanel has in the the Métis d 'Arc, like all of those incredible things that they have in the Chanel universe that he created for us. I do think that in one way, his challenge wasn't as big as some of the other designers. Now, yes, Chanel is like one of the biggest top three luxury fashion brands in the world. But it was also a brand that was really static.

11:49You know, I mean, after Karl Lagerfeld passed away there was this kind of stage I forget what Bruno Pavlovsky from Chanel called it to you in his um interview with you but he was intermission an intermission between the second act and the third act yeah and when you have an intermission and the brand is kind of creatively on pause as it were, it feels like a bit more palatable to make a big change like what Mathieu brought in. Whereas if you're Dior and you had this like Maria Grazia moment, just like she did her last show in May in Rome. If you go into the stores, if you look at the advertisements right now, like the Maria Grazia product is still in the stores.

12:41And so like all of a sudden Jonathan's, you know, tasked with making these shifts. And I don't know. I think that, you know, having that intermission period is helpful in terms of resetting things. I would also say that because there was such like strongly defined and I would say, you know, you talked about lightness. I'd say some of the codes were really heavy at Chanel. Like I saw Gaia Rapossi after the Chanel show and she was wearing one of the boucle suits. And we were chatting a little bit about the show and she said, all of a sudden this old boucle suit feels really completely out of date now.

13:21But we've been, those boucle suits have been in every Chanel show that I've ever seen, you know? And so in an instant, you know, he was able to make all of that heavy stuff from the past feel kind of outdated. that show was for all of these young people who never really saw themselves in Chanel. Like whenever you saw young women in Chanel, it looked a little bit... Costumey. Yeah, like it just felt like they were putting on this look. Whereas all of those clothes we saw in that show, I love that show. I mean, they looked like if you saw them on the street, you'd know they were Chanel, but they were not the Chanel that you knew.

14:00Although he did acknowledge that as well. Mathieu was extremely gracious about Virginie when he talked about this intermission, as it was called. She grew the business in that time substantially. And also, he said she really did bring back the idea of the wardrobe, which was very, very critical for him. This notion of clothes that were versatile and pragmatic. And so she laid, she did some groundwork for him. Because he was, when we were talking about disruption and he said, sometimes the most disruptive thing is just to make a little click, little click to the left or whatever. It's not about a punk revolution or something like that.

14:46That disruption can be so small, but significant. Yeah, that's that whole thing about balance again, right? In order to have disruption, you don't necessarily need to turn everything upside down. You just need to nudge it forward and make it feel different. And I have to say, part of the reason I think Matthieu's show is so universally appreciated is he also has a ton of goodwill in this industry. He has built, he's just a genuinely nice guy. And I think everyone's really rooting for him. And there was this joy in that show that I have not felt at a fashion show. At the end, when Awar Odiang closed that show and did that little spin in that beautiful closing look with the huge volume.

15:35Were those feathers? Yeah, it was exploding tweed. And, you know, he said pina colada and everybody said, are you sure he didn't mean piñata? No, he meant pina colada. It was just joyful. I have been listening to Rhythm is a Dancer on repeat ever since that show. It was a good remix, yeah. Yeah, the whole thing was just extremely well executed. And a big congratulations to Monsieur, because I can't imagine the amount of pressure that he and some of the other designers were facing this season. The other major debut that people were analyzing, which I agree was a lot more polarizing, was Jonathan Anderson's debut at Dior.

16:21And so when you think about that show, Tim, like now with a bit more time and space, you also know Jonathan very, very well. Like how do you frame that debut with a few days of hindsight? Well, I think the most audacious thing about that show and the thing that really reverberated was the fact that he chose to collaborate with the filmmaker, journalist Adam Curtis on a short film that opened, that screened before the show began. It was sort of as an act of contextualisation for what he intends for the house. I thought it was quite stunning. I mean, I could watch that film over and over again. As Angelo said in his review of the week, if fear is a dominant factor the fear factor in the fashion industry right now is just eating away at people's souls adam curtis just went hell-bent for leather with that i mean he his his blend of fashion and horror intercutting scenes of stately couture models from the 50s with the little blood-spattered child from the beginning of halloween was so wow i mean that was totally in your face.

17:38And because, you know, Jonathan's decisions throughout his career have always been so in his vision, you know, I guess I'd say visionary in a way that, you know, there were no coincidences, there were no accidents. He was adamant that, you know, he needs time, Everybody needs time. And in a situation like this, you need time to make what you want to do happen. Mature came out of the gate like gangbusters. That was pretty astonishing. But all the other designers said, do not tear us to shreds for one season's work. You know, give us time. Well, exactly. And I saw some, I think it was Edward Buchanan that posted this.

18:26I don't know if you saw what he posted. But he posted this message saying like he's seen some pretty heinous commentary from online critics about the shows. And, you know, I think we're in the age of the quick take. Anyone who read BOF's story on dopamine culture and how it's changed the fashion industry knows that, you know, we've gone from like reviews written by Susie Menkes in the Herald Tribune to reviews on Style.com written by you. to quick takes from Hanan and Luke Meagher and all these online critics. And so I think things are moving at a faster pace. But what's certainly true is that I remember...

19:06Do you remember Jonathan's first Loewe show? Yeah. I didn't particularly understand that show. I remember thinking, I'm walking out a little bit confused. And I think what I really learned from that was that, you know, the Loewe that he built was really something that he built over time. It took 10 years. And so I think we should expect the same with him at Dior. I think what he put out was daring and, you know, notwithstanding the film, which was insane. And I really want to get your view on what that film meant in a second. But there were so many ideas. You know, one of the other things Angelo put in his review of the week was that, you know, fashion shows have become this thing where designers kind of throw every idea against the wall.

19:55But I kind of appreciate that approach because I think it feels experimental and it feels exciting. And so while maybe not everything in my view worked in that Dior show, I think that's kind of the point because you kind of learned from that. But isn't that, isn't that what you were talking about, the dopamine culture or the TikTok culture, you know, every song has to hit in its first 15 seconds. There's no, nobody has time for build-up anymore. And that's why this attitude about throwing all this stuff against the wall and just seeing what sticks. I mean, Jonathan did that throughout that show.

20:29And so there was always, although he did cycle back. I mean, the show definitely could have been edited because he did cycle back through certain looks as the show went on. And I think Mature did that as well. I mean, there were three quite distinct passages in what he showed. and everybody else. You look at Sarah Burton at Givenchy, the range of looks in her collection was quite all-encompassing. Do you think the film, the Adam Curtis film, was an homage to those designers? And what did you think it was supposed to mean when all of that stuff was supposed to dissolve in a box that was closed?

21:09Oh, yeah. Because when we were sitting at the show, you were like, the one word you said to me, you said, savage. Like, what did you mean by that? I thought it was savage. I mean, Adam Curtis isn't a fashion buff. And he made a film of a story that he'd been told or researched. He made a film about beauty, about the quest for beauty through all the decades of people who've designed Dior. He told a story about how fashion, he wanted to tell a story about how fashion enchants people, casts a spell over them, but then also leaves them despairing in a way. I mean, it was, he was telling a very dark story, beauty and horror.

21:59I mean, you'd have to go back to Alexander McQueen to find somebody who did it as savagely and as successfully as that. That always there's the balance, you know, the duality in fashion. And also Adam Curtis is an intensely political filmmaker. I don't know if everybody had the opportunity to go back and study that film and contemplate that film in the silence of their own homes, not at the beginning of a fashion show and seeing it just for that moment and not seeing it again. because I don't think they can broadcast it because of rights. I saw it a few times. There's a lot of subliminal imagery in that.

22:40That reminds me a bit of Clockwork Orange, when Alex the Droog is being desensitised and just being bombarded with imagery, which is what Adam Curtis does in his films. You just get this constant torrent of images and you're subliminally registering. And I think what you subliminally register from that film that he made is the beauty, the enchantment of fashion, and the price it exacts from people, the toll it takes, which is so appropriate for right now. For sure. And you saw some of the designers, I forget who it was that, I think maybe it was Brian Boy that just kind of commented on all the dark moments that were kind of very quickly flashed.

23:23Because obviously some of the designers in Dior have had some challenging moments, you know, not least of which was John Galeano in terms of like the pressure and like just like the commercial machine of fashion. Yves Saint Laurent. Yves Saint Laurent at Dior. Yeah. So when you spoke to Jonathan and Adam, did Jonathan have a role to play in the editing of the film or was it a completely Adam Curtis thing? Jonathan kind of received it. It was an Adam Curtis thing, yeah. Wow. Wow. I mean, the way he edits is so particular. I don't know how anybody could, well, you'd probably sit in on an edit, but you wouldn't want to interfere with the flow of the master.

24:04Because, I mean, for anybody, just as a side note, if anybody wants to see his, Adam Curtis's genius in full effect, you need to see a massive attack concert on their current world, if they are. And I don't know if it's a world tour or not, but they are playing around the place. And he contributed all the streaming graphics for it, which are just really one of the most mind-blowing things I've ever seen. But it was interesting to see him distill the enormity of that into the super, super concentrated. I read the whole thing rushing into that shoebox and the floor on the bottom of the film was screened on an inverted pyramid and at the end the film ran backwards and then cascaded into the shoebox at the bottom, at the apex of the pyramid.

24:50And I read that as Pandora's box, you know, that you would open that box again in the future and all that stuff would come pouring out again all that beauty and horror so he was just putting it all away and saying like this is like jonathan was saying yeah there was one passage in there like towards the end where i don't know who it was but they were saying like i'm the designer of this house and i will decide where it's gonna go kind of thing it was from state i think it was from it was from the movie stage fright with Marlena Dietrich because, you know, she was dressed by Dior. And in a strange way, another very, very famous victim of her industry.

25:26It was that sort of stuff. Yeah, you saw flashes of things and there was a sort of current of victimhood. And, yeah, it was very, very powerful. Well, I think he did an amazing job. And, you know, the thing that really, really moved me was the Loic Prigent video of Jonathan watching the show backstage. And there was like a humanity. I think sometimes when people are like in the comments, usually commenting from anonymous profiles and being really vicious about things, we lose the humanity of the individuals that are being tasked with these like mammoth challenges. And there was Jonathan backstage kind of watching and you were just crying, you know, and at the end he takes this like massive deep breath, like, oh my God, it's, and you could really feel it.

26:24Like I saw it in his face and I, I just felt a lot of empathy for him and all the designers who've had to do this. Yeah. Empathy. Empathy. A good, a good, a good word. And everybody needs to know that everybody from the CEOs on down needs to... It's that whole thing. They are only human beings. They get built up into these superstars, but at the end of the day, they're human beings. We'll be right back with more on the BOF podcast.

27:01Okay, well, those were the two major debuts, Chanel and Dior. What else stood out to you, Tim, in terms of like really having made some kind of impact this season? I didn't see Versace, but it is still the show that people are talking about. Really? So what are people saying to you? Oh, I think people were just absolutely blown away by it. Funny thing is, I looked at it on photo and film, in photo and on film, and I didn't get it. You know, how often is it one of those you had to be there situations? I have a funny feeling Jill Sander, which was a show I absolutely loved, was another one of those.

27:41When you were in the room, it was actually a very different experience. And the other thing I thought was interesting about Versace is, a few people did say this to me, the few people who didn't like it as much as the people who did like it, liked it, said that it really seemed to me the people who were a bit dubious were the people who'd been there in the 80s and lived that kind of new wave-ish. I saw it as this kind of new wave energy. I mean, the sort of pleated peg, coloured trousers, they reminded me of a... I think Madonna used to play the drums in a band called The Breakfast Club, nothing to do with the movie, but the band was called.

28:19I think I sort of was getting... Is that the way The Breakfast Club used to dress? I was just trying to remember. It looked very new wavy to me. It reminded me of a store that I used to... that I kind of shocked at in various moments when I was living in Toronto called Le Chateau. But I think if you were there, you would have had a completely different reaction. I know you did. I was there and I, oh my God, I just wanted to be those kids. They came out, they had this like insouciance and like cool factor. And I was like, wow, I would love to go hang out where they're going to hang out. I'd like to go listen to music that they listen to.

29:04I want to dress the way they dress. I mean, it was this amazing thing. And it took place in this like very, very special museum that belonged to like some great collector. So it was like filled with all of these things. And I think the reason it didn't translate so well online, because when you look at the photos or you look at the videos online, is because that show, unlike Chanel and unlike Dior, that show was not designed as a cinematic show to play out on the internet. That show was designed for the experience of the people in the room or in the multiple rooms, as it were. And like, even where I was sitting, like I had to get a good video.

29:44Like I had to like move, like it wasn't created so that you could capture beautiful content that would spread all of the internet, which is what happened with Chanel. I mean, that show, like it was so, the set and everything was so cinematic that it's just made for the internet in a way and like that Versace show was it didn't translate well online but there was something in that show and I think the last time I felt something like that was when Alessandro Michele did his two debut shows at Gucci that men's show and then that women's show and like although the ideas weren't like super well developed or crystallized at that stage we you know what Alessandro managed to do with it?

30:26Like there was a starting point of something really, really interesting. Of course, there were all these rumors in Milan that, you know, his tenure at Versace is in question, Dario Vitale, because obviously the product group is taking over and there's a new regime in a way that's going to be making decisions there. But I hope they really give him the chance to continue because I thought that was, it was amazing. It was like one of the best fashion moments I've ever had. It was so good. So good. And it's like you said about mature. There's so much goodwill for Dario Vitale. And I also think it's just such a bizarre coincidence that there's a new DV at Versace.

31:10It just seems it's almost too good to be true. Yeah. I mean, how did you feel about Jill Sander? I love Jill Sander. I mean, I think the Jill Sander that we got to know under Luke and Lucy Meyer was really Luke and Lucy Meyer. And I loved it. And I thought it was very alluring and desirable. I thought it was way too expensive. So I've never really bought any of it. But I really liked their Jill Sander. But I think what we saw with Simone Bellotti's Jill Sander was like a really return to the original. I mean, I was never at those shows, so you should be the one to comment on this. But at least from my perspective, it looked like a return to the real quiet minimalism of a Jill Sander show, which again, doesn't necessarily create online frenzy, but in the room, it was really impactful.

32:04Well, taking it back to that space, the original space, a showing there definitely was a huge help because that room really encourages this sort of cerebral state of mind. Yeah, I think he did an incredible job. And, you know, I've never sat, apart from Prada shows way back in the day, sat through shows and thinking, God, I really want those clothes. It's never, ever, it's not ever been a part of the way that I approach thinking or writing about fashion. And there were so many clothes in that collection that I just thought were very, very desirable. And I, you know, the whole thing about Jill is it's less about minimalism and more about this sort of very intense purity.

32:48Purity, yeah. Quite emotional. I think Simone just did that. He just nailed that. it was so um so thoughtful but so it very peculiar kind of um you know that the word I love to bring out when I'm talking about these things sort of eroticism in a way this sort of touch because everything felt to me very much about touch in that collection did you see any link between what Simone did at Bali yeah and what he did what did you see as the link between the two well Well, he, I think the story he told in Bali was, Bali, Bali. He created a compatibility, I think, with the notion of the Swiss shoe brand and other things in the culture, like, you know, the fact that Dada came from Switzerland originally, Hugo Ball.

33:48And he managed to make these really strange, create these really strange connections that gave the clothes this whole other level of meaning in a way. And I think that in this collection he was doing something, obviously not using Dada or surrealism, but he was equally, even what you saw seemed quite pure and simple maybe. There were layers of thinking that went into what he did. He'd done another very deep dive, I think, into like mature Chanel, a very deep dive into Jill. Jill, the designer, who she was rather than what she did. And I think it's so subtle that it's going to be incredibly interesting seeing what happens because that's going to be a very slow but powerful burn because of the way he is, I think.

34:46He doesn't feel like any other fashion designer when you talk to him. He really feels like he's from literally another world. I didn't see a connection. What I saw was maybe one of the rare designers who just really immerses themselves in the codes of the house and he's not about putting himself into it. It's not about a Jonathan Anderson Dior or a Pierre Palo Piccioli Valencia. Yeah, it's like really about that house. And so when you see the purity of what he did for Jill Sander, it just felt really Jill Sander, right? That's what I didn't see the link between the two. So he's the method actor more than the movie star?

35:30I think so. I think he's the one who like immerses himself into the brand and makes it about the brand. Except that at Bali, he created that aesthetic. I mean, he built that aesthetic out of this incredible mix of quite perverse ingredients to create something that was subtle and straightforward seeming until he kind of looked at it again and thought, oh, my God, that's a cowbell. Or that's a, you know, and you're right, at Jill Sanders, obviously, that sort of the extraneous storytelling was muted. but maybe jill sanders closer to the way he feels about designing which i kind of get the feeling probably is yeah it feels like a natural fit for him right i think that's why we'll see a slow i think we'll see a wonderful slow burn in that house because he is he is not like other designers he he when you talk to him he is just not like anybody else that you get to talk to and it's going to be very very interesting to see how he develops that idea i hope everybody's really happy.

36:36We'll be right back with more on the BOF podcast.

36:44Let's talk about some of the more divisive shows. Probably the most divisive show, I think, this season was the Jean-Paul Gaultier show by Duran Lantic. Maybe divisive is not even the right word, but he certainly provoked a reaction. And I'm curious, because you also spent quite a bit of time with Duran and you did that big story. What's your take on what he managed to deliver in the end? Well, I was very excited when he got that appointment because it was so, like I said, the compatibility was just so, you know, it wasn't a head scratcher at all. It was Like, yes, I totally get that. His attitude to everything is so similar to Gauthier's attitude.

37:32The sort of provocation, the kind of the sex games, and not even gender games, I say sex games. And it just felt so right. So I have to say that I wanted so much more from that show. And in the end, I didn't feel that there was enough Gauthier or enough Duran. You know, it sort of felt kind of skimpy to me. See, I felt differently. I felt like basically it could have been a Duran show. You know, I felt like it was, you know, if you think about the shapes, the extraordinary, unusual shapes that he added to the body on his shows around the hips, like those shapes just moved to other places in this show you know i felt like the only real references to jean-paul gautier were like the sailor cap you know and the mariniere like the stripes yeah but gautier reordered the silhouette too you know like that durian did his version of the cone bra but gautier did that cone he opened with that look right yeah and his his cons were just going round and out to the side.

38:45And he realized that was the elephant in the room. He had to address the cone bra. So we got it out of the way first. If you looked at, you know, Gauthier would print naked bodies on things and Duran did that. I thought that that naked man bodysuit, anatomically correct. I thought, oh God, that's going to be the picture everybody runs from his debut at Gautier. And my brothers wrote to me, one brother wrote to me from New Zealand and the other one wrote to me from Australia, sent me that picture. God knows how they found it, but obviously they've run in their local media or something. That this is what, you know, look at what Paris fashion is proposing to us now.

39:26And by the way, that was the look that got a lot of people really riled up online because, you know, big people thought it was one critic online critic I was watching this morning. It was very disrespectful to women. And other people thought it was gimmicky, right? So it's like one of those things that was designed to get that kind of viral attention. But it takes all the attention away from everything I see achieved in that collection, which was a lot. I mean, I found there was so much to love in that collection and also a lot that felt like, you know, maybe there was a new audience for this, for that kind of, for designers like him, that he is actually the face of the future, that out of all the people we saw over the past few weeks, he is one person who's pointed in a direction where he's, you know, he is breaking new ground.

40:22Absolutely. And that kind of risk-taking means that sometimes it's not always going to work the way you want. And I think, you know, I was lucky to sit down with her for a podcast earlier this summer. It was the first time I properly met him. And he's, that designer is a very special designer, right? So although the first show wasn't everything that people might have hoped for, I think it's going to be really interesting to watch how he develops that. And he's a learning person. Like he'll listen and he'll, I think he'll respond. So I think it's going to be interesting. And he is so engaged with the real world and all of the initiatives that he does outside fashion.

41:05He's just so, his work in fashion is part of this incredible continuum of stuff that, yeah, I mean, maybe he's the future. Another show that was polarizing, Tim, was the Alaya show. You know, I think Peter Moulier, that was a big challenge to take on the house of Alaya and try to turn it into something. He was talking backstage about tension, right? He was talking about the release of tension. What did you make of that show? I think he's done an amazing job at Elias for a house that had such fanatical fans and a designer who created his own world. And to enter that, he also created a world which was so codified that there wasn't like a million, you know, I remember what Debnza said about going into Balenciaga, that the codes were so defined that there wasn't a lot of room to move maybe.

42:09And I think Peter's really moved that collection out in all different directions. Are you talking about the misogyny being the accusations of misogyny? Well, yeah, it came up in some of our internal conversations around in the way some people felt about women being put into dresses where they couldn't move their hands. But it was a cocoon from the front and it was backless, so you just moved your hands around the cocoon. Your hands were at your side, but they weren't. It didn't look like that to me, but I guess some people really perceived it. If they didn't see the back of it, it would look like there was no way you could move your arms, but all you had to do was move your arms were just hanging.

42:53And the fabric was quite light too. It wasn't like this like super. Yeah, and it was stretched. Exactly. It moved with you. And from the back, I don't know if everybody saw it from the back, but from the back it was backless with jeans. Yeah. And under that front thing of your body, you could have your arms in front of you. You could have them, you know, inside the cocoon or outside the cocoon. That wasn't exactly, that wasn't necessarily my, the thing that I took away from that collection. I thought there were, I loved the volumes. I loved the stretchy thing with a, I did love the tension, the tense element in that, the idea of restraint and release.

43:34I've never seen that before. I feel like sometimes at a live shows, we genuinely see things that we just haven't seen it anywhere. So it's like so interesting. Did you notice that Duran did that as well? That he had bodysuits, but they were bodysuits that had been paired back to almost nothing, but they connected to the ankles like Peter's things did and to the hands and stuff. So you had this tense kind of thing up and down your whole body, like connected with belts and so on. Nobody really picked up on that, which was a very goji thing, the harnessing. No, I love those dresses at the end of Elia, the kind of infanta dresses.

44:19I think the motion of those clothes is very, very appealing. You kind of feel like you're seeing something new when you're looking at them, which is always a good feeling. I was thinking, you know, the restraint and release situation, the tension at the beginning of the season. You know, people were saying fashion is completely, seems to be completely oblivious to anything other than its own problems, its own, you know, the collapse of the luxury market or whatever. Meanwhile, the world has been in such a parlous state, and there was a time when fashion did seem to make more of a comment. You know, you had McQueen, you had Rei Kawakubo, you had people acknowledging things that were happening.

45:03Even, I think, Valentino did a peace dress during the Gulf War in Couture, for goodness sake, but original Valentino, Valentino Garavani. But in this collection, in this new collection, Alessandro Michele did make a very explicit statement about fascism. And that text, which was, I think, read out by Pamela Anderson. That's what I read. Yeah. Such a powerful text, The Fireflies. And then Alessandro sent you that sweet note saying we are the fireflies. You know, that was really, I mean, I thought that was very, you're right, no one's really commenting on the powerless state of just like global order.

45:47It's just everything seems to be breaking down. And you're right that it felt like there was a bit of a disconnect. In a way, we're like sitting at these like shows and, you know, quite literally while we're there, you know, the latest French prime minister, I think the third one in how many months has resigned. and Greta Thunberg is being dragged around the floor of his cell. I mean, it's just astonishing. It just feels harder and harder to kind of – we started off talking about balance. It feels harder and harder to kind of rationalize that. I would say Alessandro's finale where the models came out and looked at the lighting and tended to suggest fireflies in the sky, you know, flying in the air above it, and the models all just stood there looking upwards.

46:29It was a very, very simple, but a very, very poignant moment. I thought that was so beautiful. I'll never forget. Simple effect, but a very poignant moment. I'll never forget how that looked. It's like really, really striking. There was another show, Tim, that I didn't actually manage to get to because I had another commitment that evening, but the Balenciaga show by Pierre Paolo. You touched on it briefly earlier, but I'd love to hear your take on it. or like I said some people loved it some people just really really didn't I felt he was when he did those incredible couture shows for Valentino that really really you know moved the dial for couture for haute couture this felt very much drawn from that like but this was couture for the everyday um so you'd you'd get a sack of you know sack dress with flip-flops or whatever I don't know.

47:27I feel he also was one of those designers who was in a situation where he had to do a collection very, very quickly. Demna at Gucci and Mature at Chanel very wisely held off. Demna still hasn't done his first collection. Yeah, maybe he should have taken some more time. It felt a bit rushed to me and it felt a bit messy. Yeah, there's so much pressure and expectation to move quickly. But I think the designers who say, no, I won't be ready, that's smart. You know, it strikes me, Tim, that we've talked about all of these debuts and not one of them is designed by a woman. So we should talk about Sarah Burton's Givenchy.

48:15It was her second collection. You always have something to say about Mew Chia Prada, Mew Mew. And then, of course, there was Louise Trotter making her debut at Bottega. I mean, what's your take? I know you're a real fan of Sarah Burton's Givenchy and where it's going. I was a real fan of this show and this collection. I loved everything about this. Sarah is, you know, still waters run deep. Sarah is, she's really got the imp of the perverse in her, I think. I just love how she did that show, which was, I thought, extremely elegant. I thought I could see women wanting those clothes, the way she'd loosen things and elongated things.

49:02It just was so flattering and just so simple. And her inspiration I just love because the book that inspired her, I found years ago and I was equally inspired by it. when I walked in and saw it on her mood board, I was, I love this. I love this story. I love this, the, the, these photos that a Swiss photographer called Rene Grobley took of his wife on their honeymoon in 1954. The book's called The Eye of Love. And there's just, there's love in the photo. And there's, there's a sort of fabulous, just a natural kind of eroticism. I'll use the word again, just two people in love and taking photos of his wife either getting dressed or lying on a bed or just putting on a white shirt or something so Sarah really really understands all those funny Balenciaga comes up Balenciaga always comes up with me but he always used to cut things back from the nape of the neck because he felt that would elongate his jacket you know his jacket stood out at the back of the nape but he felt that elongated a woman's neck Sarah was doing this she has she has got all those little couture tricks.

50:09I can't wait to see what happens when she finally does a couture collection. But I really loved her collection. I loved the music I thought was fantastic, starting off with the clash of all people and having such an incredible mix of things. And then this is why I talk about being the emperor of the perverse, because she reminded me, she actually reminded me about the fetish element in her clothing with those fishnet gowns that I didn't like in her first collection and I still didn't like them in this collection but I could really understand why she was doing them. She's such a quiet force and I really really would love to see that collection take off I mean with her at the helm I think she has a lot to do there.

50:57And Miu Miu? I just loved it. why did you love it what can you say it just evoked so many crazy um it was sort of like you know a stasi fashion parade or or like um you know the the stasi informers and and a little bit of that a little and then and then work where rosie the river sir you know a time when women all the men were at war so women were in the factories in their in their aprons in their and their leather arm guards and stuff. It was such a... Meechus said she was keen to paying homage to the power of women who don't often get recognised, who hardly ever get recognised, actually. The people who...

51:46The women who are, you know, mothers and tea ladies and nursery school attendants and the sort of soul of their communities. and some people thought that was incredibly patronizing that yeah i mean we spoke to we spoke to one person saying i don't think we should be talking about a domestic help that way just pay them properly instead of making a fashion show about them yeah yeah i know i know it's it's it's but but what what it did what that show did for me was it took me back to old mu mu shows which was so just perverse that you'd see characters from john water's movie he's kind of you'd see Chickland and Consetta from Female Trouble walking down a catwalk.

52:29And it always worked. It was always like, okay, everybody's doing kind of elegance and couture, whatever, influence, and the big buzzes, Chanel and Dior and Balenciaga and so on. I'm going to do my Miu Miu in this sort of, when she's in full cry, she just has the most fabulous fuck you attitude about fashion. and I find it as kind of thrilling now as I ever did then. And she's just a law unto herself. And, I mean, those clothes are a challenge. I don't know what's going to – you know, every Miu Miu show, everybody's dressed in the Miu Miu clothes from last time. Yeah, it felt really different.

53:15Yeah, it felt really different from the last few. Yeah, completely. Which is why we used to love Prada. It was always so different. and are people going to be showing up next season in these sort of like Eastern European aprons and headscarves and these kind of house coats? Well, if you worship at the house of Muccia, and I think a lot of people do, certainly I think we'll see it editorially and some people will make it work. They're very defiant. I think they're very defiant clothes and that's one thing that you, that's something that you do miss in fashion is a little more defiant. Yeah, and she is the queen of defiance.

53:59And then there was Louise Trotter's Bottega Veneta debut in Milan. She clearly immersed herself deeply into the craft of Bottega. I was expecting more of a strong ready-to-wear focus in that collection, given she's a really strong ready-to-wear designer with all of this experience. I remember we first came across her at Joseph, and then she went to Carvin and Lacoste. So I guess I didn't see it as much as a collection that people could incorporate into their everyday life. So I'm kind of curious to see where she takes it. Well, everything looked, looking at it in pictures, everything looked huge to me.

54:42It was huge. But remember Mathieu used to do those oversized shapes? It was like cartoonish in a way. It was like done in like a comical way. But this was the same shapes with that, but without the humor and kind of wink of an eye, you know. So I don't know. I think, let's see. Well, it's so funny. I mean, for anyone Canadian who is listening to this, but if I saw Le Chateau and Versace, I saw this Toronto label called Clotheslines in Bottega Veneta who were famous for their trench coats, huge trench coats. And yeah, I thought, yeah, clotheslines. Shelley and Bernard, Wickerbroad. Lots of Canadian fashion trivia.

55:25I had my Le Chateau days too, Tim, you know. Did you shop at Le Chateau? No, I shopped at Parachute. At Parachute. I shopped at Parachute, yeah. Okay. I went into Le Chateau every now and again because it was right down on Yonge Street there. Well, I guess that brings us to the close. new faces new places new places so it's more like old faces and new places but we're gonna see how this all all develops but you know we ended on such a high I think everybody could feel so good that there is still that opportunity there's still that possibility to create that kind of moment like in a house in a house like Chanel in a house which has had what now four designers in over a years and that and still come across as so inspiringly right I think we needed a little joy too so maybe as we were saying some of the collections weren't like a commentary on what's happening in the world but part of the reason I think people responded so well to that show it's just made you feel happy in a dark time you know it just I was buzzing after that I felt so good and not just because of rhythm is a dancer and maybe we should close out with a little sample of that song although eric sung by you and me yeah no there's a dance we'll have to finish this podcast with that as the outro and you know the other fabulous thing mitch's favorite movie is wall-e you know the cartoon about the robot the lonely robot yeah yeah yeah and that film is also also plucks joy from hard times you know post-apocalyptic environment and and um when we walked in there and it was all the planets kind of all around us i thought oh my god could this be wally for us you know mind you his second favorite movie is deliverance so that's quite a quite a span there well we'll hang on to that moment of joy for some time yeah i will i will never forget that show.

57:37That was quite a moment. And congrats to all the designers for all the hard work that they put into their shows this season. Everyone deserves a big applause. I mean, in fact, one of the things I just wanted to conclude by saying is like fashion week doesn't have to be a zero sum game. Everyone can be successful. I really believe that. And I feel like the more designers and houses that bring creativity and innovation and excitement to what they do the better like it and that's what we need so it doesn't have to be that i win and you lose or you lose and therefore i win i think it's all about hopefully we can all win and empathy and give people a break you know yes yeah give them time empathetic and give people a break that that that Bruno Pavlovsky at Chanel was talking about five-year plans and things, you know, like this doesn't have to be bang, you know, not five, not a five-year plan, but you know.

58:41A long-term plan. A long-term. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be now. Thank you, Tim. I hope you get some rest and that you feel a bit better. Yeah, me too. Thank you, Imran. Thank you, world. And thank you, fashion, for a great season. It was really interesting. so much. We're still here.