It's finally the spring season- an important one in the fashion calendar! The Big Fours are here to drop the latest trends. And how could we miss it? Here's all you need to know about the Fashion Week 2021.
1. London Fashion Week
London is synonymous with youth, color, vibrancy, and innovation in the fashion realm. That energy continues even in the midst of a lockdown—and we have to give a nod to that creative resilience. The British Fashion Council announced that its upcoming London Fashion Week for the Spring 2021 season was entirely digital. Here's the best looks from the LFW'21.
-JW Anderson
By sitting apparel alongside ceramic alongside performance art, the designer showed fall as something more than fashion—it's "artistic output broadly." The dresses, coats, and tops were all voluminous—silhouettes before garments—and evoked the "totemic structures" he was musing on. Form is arguably what informs all disciplines of art, and Anderson reminded us that fashion is no different.
-Erdem
Erdem seems to be reconsidering how we'll address dressing up post-lockdown; per his signature dark romance, his woman will do so elegantly—but with some edge. The designer looked at all sides of the art form, inspired by those in dance history that broke with convention.
-Simone Rocha
Simone Rocha's show notes are always up for interpretation. They're a poem of sorts, a collection of thoughts—and she allows us to experience the season's looks through their lens rather than as a creed to understanding her inspiration. This season, the notes read: "The Winter Roses...Precise, stronger, signature. Thinking of clothes in a protective and practical way, fragile rebels." Rocha's work is always a contrast of hard and soft, masculine and feminine, drama without being too delicate.
-Emilia Wickstead
Finding out Emilia Wickstead drew inspiration from classic cinema is hardly a shock. The Brit designer has a way with the classic and ladylike. This is a collection for women who are, at heart, utterly allergic to sweatpants.
2. New York Fashion Week
The days of racing between shows in Tribeca and Brooklyn—in a snowstorm, no less!—are temporarily over. As New York remains partially locked-down in response to COVID-19, New York Fashion Week is forging ahead with an entirely digital fall 2021 lineup. Editors, buyers, and fashion fans will stream most of the collections from the comfort of their homes this season. See what the city's designers have to offer for Spring 2021.
-Brandon Maxwell
Brandon Maxwell accompanied his sporty-meets-posh Spring 21 collection with a note to his customer. "While this year has been challenging, it has also been cleansing and clarifying. The collection reflects the emotional and creative journey my team and I have been on during this time. It’s a representation of our path from dark to light. We are grateful to be joining you now with a renewed purpose and reality. I truly hope you can feel that in our final product and show.", the designer explains.
-Michael Kors' Collection
At their best, Kors’ collections are filled with classic American sportswear, the sort of sort of pragmatic yet elegant pieces that are so very New York. And spring 2021 had that in spades, from refined takes on pajama dressing such as crepe de chine bathrobe dresses and pajama pants to breezy linen gauze pareos and crushed satin charmeuse maxis paired with luxe cashmere and cashgora knits.
-Tom Ford
In a candid letter to accompany his Spring 2021 collection, Tom Ford explains his mindset while designing this collection, saying, “fashion itself just seemed like an extravagance. It was hard to focus, to concentrate, and to be inspired.” The result is a mix of what the CFDA president calls, “classic relaxed clothes but clothes that make me smile. Clothes to have a bit of fun in. Chill but not staid. This is still Tom Ford, after all.”
3. Milan Fashion Week
Milan is the center of luxury fabrics, refined tailoring, and all things elegant. Even during this wild period, when in-person events are mostly on pause, designers made sure to get this point across, utilizing films, livestreams, look books, and more. Ahead, we curate all the best looks from the fall 2021 season.
-Salvatore Ferragamo
The Ferragamo blueprints are about uniforms with military-inspired tailoring or sporty energy (and true-blue sports, like scuba or cycling or motorbiking, not the more leisurely lifestyle associated with American sportswear); the bolder or more feminine moments are constrained enough that they could be uniforms too. It should also be noted that Andrew's future is sustainable: Up- and recycling were part of the process, as were other choices that resulted in a lower environmental impact.
-Emporio Armani
Trends are cyclical, yes, yet some decades are less forgiving than others. The '80s can be the hardest for designers to make palatable what with all of that era's insistence on things that fall so far from classical aesthetic principles, yet Emporio Armani's reincarnation feels more than palatable.
-Fendi
Kim Jones is the designer of the moment, and his latest livestreamed show at Milan Fashion Week proved once again that Fendi made the perfect choice in naming him artistic director of womenswear. For the fall 2021 season, a swift follow-up to his debut couture show in January, the British designer presented a collection that paid homage to the Roman label’s storied history, while also adding his signature sleek, streetwise edge.
4. Paris Fashion Week
Paris is widely considered to be the capital of the fashion industry. Thus, our final stop on the Fashion Month circuit is home to some of the biggest luxury labels, from Christian Dior to Louis Vuitton, and bright young talents too.
-Saint Laurent
Creative director Anthony Vaccarello began the season dreaming of the desert, wanting ease, a cool factor, and some fluffy marabout fringes, of course. The results are mini dresses, languid sheer dresses, menswear-inspired separates, and overall the kind of chic, wearable pieces we can just picture hanging out at our Midcentury modern desert home in.
-Dior
Fashion and intellectual culture often meet at Dior, and Maria Grazia Chiuri’s spring 2021 collection, conceived during a time of vast societal transformation, was no exception. The designer, who lives in Rome, drew inspiration from “To Cut Is to Think,” a 1997 essay written by the late Italian art critic and curator Germano Celant, who passed away from COVID-19 earlier this year.
-Alexandre Vauthier
Alexandre Vauthier has been having a love affair with bold, often bright, sometimes bedazzled ’80s-influenced collections for seasons. Going into spring, the designer took a trip even further back to the ’70s, with metallic tiered dresses, simple maxi silhouettes, a denim look paired with a simple white cotton blouse, and more Studio 54–worthy looks.
-Chanel
The collection was joyful and decidedly youthful, with T-shirts printed with the letters of Chanel like neon lights, Old Hollywood–worthy black-and-white gowns, languid denim, leather shorts and pink Capri pants, and easy tweed suiting. Perhaps what an actress might need for an entire press junket, or every part of a woman’s life—if we’re looking forward with the kind of optimism that only Hollywood can champion.
-Louis Vuitton
You can always count on Louis Vuitton to close out Paris Fashion Week with a bang. Fall featured a 200-person choir clothed in historical garb dating from the 15th century to 1950, and for spring, the maison’s creative director, Nicolas Ghesquière, made a powerful statement about fashion’s genderless future.
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