Brace yourselves. After a whirlwind of debuts, step-downs and fashion firsts, the industry looks set for another year of bombshells. With a landscape akin to the Premier League, our next trip around the sun promises creative director transfers aplenty, behemoth exhibitions and a tectonic shift into new geographic and digital realms. If you thought Fashion Week at Frieze, catwalks in the desert and scandals salacious enough for Nigel Farage were fashion’s cultural climax, think again. At your beck and call for the next 12 months, we present our annual itinerary, guiding you from New Burberry to the Met and Metaverse Fashion Week.
The New Guard
With more departure announcements than Heathrow, the past few months have left every stiff-lipped editor reaching for the tissues. The end of Raf Simons’ eponymous label hit especially hard, however excitement for his next steps is rife. Armchair theories of smaller capsule collections were bandied around (first denial, then bargaining), while more grounded pundits predict a sharpened focus on his work at Prada. Perhaps, the Belgian design legend will channel his extra hours into side hustles – be it his Kvadrat furniture collaboration or growing art collection.
Another surprise for the year ahead came hot on the heels of Riccardo Tisci’s final show for Burberry, when Daniel Lee was appointed creative director of the British house. Showing his first collection in London this February, Daniel has big boots to fill. Indeed, Riccardo re-envisioned British luxury with a slick, streetwear skew, introducing a new graphic language to the brand. But worried, we are not. In only three years, Daniel elevated Bottega Veneta’s high-fashion status, turning the intrecciato weave and sweetshop green into two industry emblems. Next up? New Burberry.
In Milan, the end of last year saw the man behind Gucci’s buffet of seventies kitsch, yellow-tinted sunnies and kinky twists on equestrian fare end his tenure after eight years. A key protagonist in the introduction of a gender-fluid sensibility that came to define fashion in the late 2010s, Alessandro Michele leaves an indelible mark on Gucci. However, new codes will inevitably follow in his wake. After all, Alessandro’s weird and wonderful vision was a complete pivot from Frida Giannini’s understated glamour and Tom Ford’s slick sleaze. While we don’t yet know who will be leading the charge, the house’s next chapter could also be worlds apart.
As for Tom’s namesake maison, the Estée Lauder acquisition makes 2023 his last year as creative director, giving us ample time for speculation. More pressing is the gaping hole left at Louis Vuitton, which despite whispers of a new creative director – Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner and Telfar Clemens are favourites – remains unfilled. Here, it’s less about replacing Virgil Abloh (an impossible feat) than finding the right individual to carry forward his mission, one marked by a commitment to uplifting Black voices in the creative industries.
More broadly, though, change is afoot. In February, British-Trinidadian designer Maximilian Davis will share his sophomore collection for Ferragamo as he redefines the Italian house. Speaking of fresh blood, Ludovic de Saint Sernin has just been granted the helm at Ann Demeulemeester, making him the label’s first and only creative director besides Ann herself. Akin to his predecessor, Ludovic has a penchant for leather, sensual cuts and Robert Mapplethorpe, making this a promising fit.
Fashion or Art?
With a glut of institutional shows and fashion-art crossovers waiting in the wings, now is the perfect time to drop this tired question. Indeed, if Nike and VA Securities Virgil Abloh: The Codes c/o Architecture exhibition and workshops during Art Basel Miami Beach taught us anything, it’s that harshly delineating art and fashion is a moot endeavour.
For further proof, look to the V&A’s upcoming programme. Leading the procession with Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto, the museum will unpack Coco’s nuanced understanding of women across six decades and 180 looks. But before you even think ahead to September (eek!), you’ll want to tick off the current Africa Fashion exhibition, a comprehensive study of the continent’s sartorial output from the twentieth century to now.
Across the Channel, Le Musée des Arts Decoratifs will open its Iris Van Herpen retrospective, spotlighting the Dutch avant-gardist’s fusion of couture and modern technology in all its laser-cut glory. And across the pond, the Met will present Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, a survey of 65 years of the legendary designer’s work with garments and drawings, each a testament to the meticulous silhouettes he brought to Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi, Chanel and his own label. Oh, and if Lagerfeld’s restrained lines leave you wanting a little extra, the recently opened Gianni Versace retrospective at Groninger Museum should provide some baroque balm, not to mention supermodel gold. Nineties Naomi? Sashay this way.
Location, Location, Location
To think that journos, PRs and buyers would only congregate in three or (budget permitting) four locations a year to see what’s hot on planet Mode is almost laughable. Nowadays, you’d be hard-pressed to escape a season without crossing off at least one of the world’s seven wonders from your bucket list. Chiming with the art-fashion merger, this search for increasingly international and opulent settings is more than an exercise in prestige, but also an opportunity to broaden fashion’s reach. “In a post-Covid landscape as wider cultural and economic shifts encourage diversity and a vital re-engagement with the rest of the world, brands are following suit with activations outside Western capitals as they seek alternative ways to inspire existing audiences and connect with new ones,” says Calum Sutton, CEO of art PR firm Sutton. “One recent example was Kim Jones’ AW23 presentation in Cairo, Egypt, for Dior at the Giza Pyramids – collaborating with Art D’Egypte, a Cairo-based contemporary art platform – as well as [the] Dior Tears capsule collection that gave the world a glimpse of the soon-to-be opened Grand Egyptian Museum.”
Calum’s right. Unlike your gap year, this is a moment of genuine cultural exchange, exemplified to great success in Chanel’s Pre-Fall 2023 show in Dakar. The world’s first runway collection by a major European brand in Sub-Saharan Africa, the watershed event also marks the beginning of an ongoing dialogue between Chanel’s le19M and Dakar’s IFAN Museum of African Arts. One of the aims? To give Senegalese craft as much prestige as Chanel’s ateliers – and quite, right, too.
Next year, though, all eyes will turn eastwards as Francesco Risso takes the Marni mob out to Tokyo for the brand’s next show, and Gucci heads to Seoul to present its Cruise 2024 collection, marking 25 years since the brand opened its first stores in South Korea. After the slew of blockbuster shows to hit the South Korean metropolis in the past few years (Louis Vuitton Men’s AW21 and Dior Women’s AW23 warrant special mention) we’re expecting a real performance from the Kering-owned mega-house, and with any luck, a K-pop collab.
It’s all very Meta
Brogrammers have been trumpeting NFTs’ game-changing credentials for quite some time, and yet, for most of us, the blockchain remains terra incognita. Don’t resign your minted Balmain Barbie to the digital graveyard of MiniDiscs and hoverboards just yet, though, for 2023 is the year that all things decentralised finally win fashion over.
After its inaugural outing, where brands like Etro and Casablanca showed up to a Decentraland-hosted festival, Metaverse Fashion Week returns this year. While the line-up is still TBC, the virtual Selfridges store, pop-ups and fashion parties that punctuated last year’s proceedings suggest big things to come. According to Leanne Elliott Young, CEO and co-founder of the Institute of Digital Fashion, this meta-shift will only continue. “As the term metaverse becomes more mainstream and less clickbait, we’ll see energy [move] from marketing and PR to legacy and C-suite conversations on digital transformation,” she explains. “Brands will need to start partnering with more Web3 centric companies to hold value in the digital arena.”
To her point, Nick Knight, the image-maker who pioneered live-streams, fashion film and 3D scanning when few would touch them, just took over Flannels’ basement space, W1 Curates, with an immersive exhibition showcasing his NFT renders of model Jazzelle Zanaughtti in a truly ‘phygital’ fashion moment. With plans to mine further into the metaverse, Nick wishes to imbue every digital design with beauty and physicality as he puts paid to critiques that NFTs are inevitably tacky and a little removed. While details are still hush-hush, the maverick has only begun his journey. This year, we’re ditching new-year-new-me mantras, and instead, investing in virtual avatars – it’s cheaper than therapy.