1. Beautiful Clothes, No Gimmicks
Kate Lanphear, women’s style director: Real clothes matter again.
Nick Haramis, editor at large: For a long time, it felt as if we were in an era of clown clothes, or high-concept designs with deliberately exaggerated, oversize proportions. Jonathan Anderson is an example of somebody who did it better than anyone. Since going to Dior, he’s had to reconcile being innovative and making beautiful clothes the Dior customer would want to wear. Kate’s been referring to Dior and Chanel as a clash of the titans; Anderson and Matthieu Blazy have been tasked with ushering fashion into a new era. Their designs felt stripped back, and the focus was on the actual garments rather than on showmanship.
All of the season’s most exciting designers — Simone Bellotti at Jil Sander, Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford and Michael Rider at Celine — showed clothes that were meant to be worn, which sounds kind of obvious and silly to say. But they weren’t gimmicky or overly conceptual: They were actual garments for real women.
Patrick Li, creative director: Part of it might be that many of these designers are just a bit more mature and they’re making a different kind of statement.