Models turning into frogs and on-screen snogs: the AW21 fashion Oscars
And the Oscar for best kiss goes to … Saul Nash
Twist, the two-minute-22-secondlong video made by the London-born dancer turned designer Saul Nash for his autumn 2021 menswear collection has a plot twist. No spoilers because you should go and watch the film – but it involves the finest on-screen snogging we’ve seen since Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones lit up lockdown one with Normal People. A fashion season without audiences feels lacking in many ways, but it has a very significant upside of democratising how the collections are seen. At a live fashion week, wealthier brands have grand venues and starry front rows, while independent designers play host in leaky car parks, but at an all-digital season every brand is viewed on the same laptop screen. The levelling of a playing field allows for a film like Twist, made in collaboration with Nash’s reallife film-maker partner FX Goby, to get the attention it deserves. Roll out the red carpet: Saul Nash is the next superstar of sportswear.JCM
And the Oscar for most psychedelic film goes to … Collina Strada
Rare would be the season when New York-based Collina Strada wouldn’t win the award for most trippy “show”, but for autumn/winter 2021, the label has outdone itself. In a year in which seemingly unending mundanity has made many a brain hanker after the out-of-the-ordinary designer Hillary Taymour and her team have upped the surrealist ante with models morphing into raccoons, snails, treefrogs and praying mantids. The effect may be funny, but the message strikes a more serious note: ever environmentally conscious, Taymour’s collection has been made from vintage pieces, previous seasons’ leftovers and T-shirts repurposed from Ghana’s overloaded secondhand clothes market. EVB
And the Oscar for best set goes to … Prada
There was something of the AMSR about the Prada show. That was thanks to a set that made fun fur its centre. The fuzzy, strokable fabric more usually found at Build-A-Bear and combined with, say, a candyfloss scent was given a high fashion moment. It featured on the floor and round the doorways of the set the models walked through. Endearing, nostalgic and a bit pop, it was also used on coats in a very nice collection by Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada. A Prada x Build-A-Bear is only a matter of time, surely. LC
And the Oscar for ‘most 2021’ goes to … Eckhaus Latta
A cold, dark void may not be the most glamorous setting for a fashion show, but it is perhaps apt for this bleak year. For Eckhaus Latta’s autumn/ winter 2021 show, models stomped around a car park in Bushwick. There is no music to muffle their steps, leaving only the sound of boots on bare ground and the rustle of slashed and deconstructed clothes. “We were in a really bad mood,” one half of the design duo, Zoe Latta, recently told i-D of the vibe around the collection. What could be more 2021 than that? EVB
And the Oscar for engagement goes to … Ahluwalia
The wounds and the healing of black trauma has been something we’ve been thinking about during lockdown. Whether that’s as a consequence of the death of George Floyd, reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, watching Steve McQueen’s Small Axe or seeing the monarchy and media unravel following Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah. But in Priya Ahluwalia’s film Traces, we are being offered to think not about black trauma but black beauty instead. Taking inspiration from the painting of Kerry James Marshall and Jacob Lawrence traces meditated on the circularity of the generations, youth and family. Clothing wise, Priya Ahluwalia weaved in her trademark motifs: stripes, joggers and football shirts with a renewed luxury feel and items, such as football shorts, neck ties and corduroy suits. It was a beautiful clip on those transitory moments that have become all the more precious during lockdown. PE