The spring 2023 season is (mostly) a wrap, so hopefully you’ve had a chance to read our reviews, absorb the tweets, scroll the scrolls, and form your own opinions. As Demna put it in his show notes for Balenciaga, “Fashion is a visual art and all we need is for it to be seen through someone’s eyes.” True enough, but it’s interesting nonetheless to hear what designers have to say about the state of their work—and the world. We’ve compiled quotes from a month’s worth of shows that seem to take the temperature of the times.
“That’s where the collection kind of started from—‘Smell the fucking roses.’ People should be able to get their flowers. Everyone’s special and important and should be protected.”
— Jason Rembert, Aliétte
“The world feels so alien and scary. I’ve been interested in how people in the past have made sense of things. Finding tangible reasons for why things are happening is what people would do, and that’s what I’ve been expressing through the collections.”
— Joseph Altuzarra, Altuzarra
“It isn’t wrong today to be a little more delicate and sensitive, even if this isn’t often considered ‘cool.’ But who cares? We live in a world full of diktats—the only thing that can make you truly happy is to follow your own beat.”
— Arthur Arbesser
“Naturally I’m an optimist, but I cannot be very optimistic right now. I think this show actually expresses that very much—the music, the set, it spoke about the moment in which we live.”
— Demna, Balenciaga
“We all saw climate change this summer. We all saw fires around the world. And coming back with a show in September, thinking about whether our pants are going to be high-waisted or low-waisted—it seems a bit futile to me.”
— Olivier Rousteing, Balmain
“It’s this kind of casual comfort and we put it to an extreme and we call it perverse banality.”
— Mathieu Blazy, Bottega Veneta
[For spring, Jeffrey explored the notion of queer wellness.] “It’s the opposite of what we’re known for, but it’s important to have conversations about safe spaces within the queer community that doesn’t just involve nightclubs. I’ve had my crazy, roaring 20s and now I want to exercise, sleep well, and feel healthy—it’s a different kind of awareness of the body that’s worth appreciating.”
— Charles Jeffrey, Loverboy
“The idea was to play with this reference [Catherine de Medici] and how much fashion and power are in dialogue.”
— Maria Grazia Chiuri, Christian Dior
“A lamentation for the sorrow in the world today/ And a feeling of wanting to stand together.”
— Rei Kawakubo, Comme des Garçons
“All of the pieces are ‘imperfect’ through treatment and design. This is something I like, but it also goes back to that democratic instinct. We know Diesel is a brand for anyone who wants to relate, whoever they are, however they feel; everyone is individual and no two people are the same. Plus the piece is supposed to look ‘broken’ so that you can live with it forever—it is unbreakable.”
— Glenn Martens, Diesel
[There was a lot of stylized sexuality—a lot of skin.] “To me this comes from that feeling of being trapped. I want to take my burdens off: I feel strangled with modesty, I hate modesty, I want to destroy it.”
— Dilara Findikoglu
“Yes, I have this futuristic alien Barbie personality, which I like. But in my soul I feel very sensual Italian mob wife at the same time. I don’t know if that’s appropriate to say.”
— Kim Kardashian, Dolce
Gabbana
[So, to recap, what was that theme again, Dries?] “Optimism. Because life can be really beautiful. You have the colors, you have the flowers…” So let’s smell them? “Absolutely!”
— Dries Van Noten
“I think this season we felt rather optimistic and wanted that to be expressed within the clothing,” Mike Eckhaus said. “I feel like there’s been this general sense of apathy that we, our community, or just our friends have been feeling,” Zoe Latta added. “This is kind of an attempt to be like, ‘It is still chaos. The world still feels a little fucked, but let’s have fun.’”
— Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, Eckhaus Latta
“Beauty. I always think that’s the best way to protest. Make something beautiful that expresses your sentiment. That’s the way to win people around to show them what you believe, in the most beautiful way possible.”
— Edward Crutchley
“Clothes are not enough. When we are many, we are much stronger.”
— Alessandro Michele, Gucci
“We asked ourselves what feels modern,” Lucie said. “We looked at clashing glamour into very simple workwear, our fundamental very simple pattern cutting and then doing things that are more eccentric,” Luke said.
— Luke and Lucie Meier, Jil Sander
“I like this idea of a transient moment in time. I’ve been exploring this for several collections. Are we falling into our screens, becoming our phones? I think it’s really like an alternate universe, and there are layers and layers and layers to it. I think it’s probably about realism. I don’t think it’s about futurism. It’s more about a reflection of ourselves somehow.”
— Jonathan Anderson, JW Anderson
“‘Pretty tough,’ that was something we were talking about, and ‘threatening beauty.’ The idea was to look at something pretty, something sweet, and to see in those elements what strength they have.”
— Nicolas Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton
“The bold shoulder was actually an expression of myself. When I was sitting on the sofa [in my parent’s home], you know, you have the uncle with a camcorder, and because I was super-flamboyant, I would tuck myself away. I wanted to kind of give ’80s and ’90s with the show, but the [silhouette] was me expressing how I had the weight of the world on my shoulders being just like, a really super-fun, high-pitch, gay boy hiding in the closet.”
— Raul Lopez, Luar
“If I can inspire the current generation, or older or younger generations, to just listen to their hearts and be trusting that they can be unique—this is literally my mission.”
— Ludovic de Saint Sernin
“It’s about being present. Putting down your phone. Being with your friends and people you love. Seeing the sun go down and feeling the wind and having a party. Not just a 10-minute show. With all these people coming, I just wanted to give them a good time and to feel like a community—and honestly I think that was really here. So this is what State of Soul means.”
— Marine Serre
“It’s not the ’90s anymore when brands spoke in very defined ways. Now you have to talk universally.”
— Francesco Risso, Marni
“I feel like there’s a fusion of the domestic element of my life [as a working mother], but then there’s sort of a tension between that and being free.”
— Maryam Nassir Zadeh
“There’s a lot going on. I’ve been through quite a dark time in my personal life. I was in this kind of eye of the storm, and obviously creativity is my savior. The idea was harnessing chaos, harnessing this surrealist magic eye.”
— Matty Bovan, supported by Dolce
Gabbana
“Everybody’s talking about inflation. The cost of everything’s going up: housing, food, life. So I took inflation into the collection.”
— Jeremy Scott, Moschino
[For some time now, Obana’s focus has been on “borderless design,” which he defines as] “being unconstrained by body fit, preconceived notions of design, gender, environment, etc. It can be worn in any era, any generation, without feeling out of place. In conclusion, this is an outfit that you can wear without thinking about anything and one that also makes you feel good and comfortable.”
— Daisuke Obana, N. Hoolywood
“There’s no controlling the world situation, the wars, the government decisions that are being made that we don’t agree with. All of that takes a toll. I never thought I would say this in my entire life, that clothes are the answer, but I think we’re at that point, where there’s very little we can do, but we can get dressed.”
— Norma Kamali
“It’s about this feeling that there’s going to be a fight, and it’s going to be a long one. So, it’s about expressing that passion and giving clothes for the moment to prepare to fight, because that’s what it’s about: no apologies.”
— Julien Dossena, Paco Rabanne
“We’re just talking about the idea of energy, of joy, of sensuality; these things that sometimes we feel are lost in our lives, to be honest, and we’re trying to find a way to get them back.”
— Jack McCollough, Proenza Schouler
“It was a real labor of love, I suppose. It was almost cathartic for us to put all of our emotions of mourning into it. We wanted it to have that kind of real craftsmanship, the beauty of royalty, and to try to turn all of the shapes and embroidery that we do into that kind of that idea of uniform dressing up they did when her father [King George VI] died.”
— Richard Quinn
“When you’re proposing more options aesthetically people open their minds in other ways too. They become more empathetic.”
— Rick Owens
“We started off by being very inspired by music and the theatricality of performing on stage. We were really wanting to feel something that was really vibrant and alive and about lighting and connectivity.”
— Laura Mulleavy, Rodarte
“I think clothes are sometimes an escape and a release. And then I think I think they’re the reality. What can they be in that reality? For me, it was about making something protective, and healing, and an urgent sense of wanting to go forward.”
— Simone Rocha
“It’s 87 percent sustainable, this collection, which is my most sustainable yet. I’m so chuffed. I hope nothing was compromised. You shouldn’t see any of the sustainability. It should just look like the most glamorous show.”
— Stella McCartney
“I started thinking about when I first moved to New York in the ’90s. Even then, women didn’t want to be restricted, so we spent a lot of time developing fabrics that had all kinds of stretch and pieces that you could wear in different ways. I wanted it to be really focused.”
— Tory Burch
“I think fashion is so beautiful because we embody the clothes we wear with the experience and the memories. If people can feel joy or sadness that encourages them to be a better version of themselves—I think that’s what I’m after.”
— Jason Wiederhoeft
