Marc Jacobs has never been more relatable than the time he once said, “I just worry that the people I look up to will say, ‘That’s not good.’” We Vogue Runway reviewers experience the same kind self-doubt that grips designers in the lead-up to their shows, only ours comes after those shows, often the wee-est hours of the night as a production manager back home taps her foot waiting ever so patiently for our copy. On the occasion of Runway’s 10th anniversary, our critics past and present reflect on our own finest reviews, the ones that made us think, that’s not just good, it’s great.
JW Anderson, spring 2021 ready-to-wear
The phenomenon of big-brand spectaculars blew up in the last decade—360- degree “experiential” mega-content shows, hand in hand with the mobile phone and ballooning social media. We’ve documented it all at Vogue Runway.
Then shows came to a dead halt during COVID. The industry was initially panic-struck, with no idea how to respond. Except, that is, for Jonathan Anderson. My favorite memory is the knock on my door from a masked delivery person that came on the morning of September 28, 2020. There on my mat was his JW Anderson Show in a Box.
It was a set of miniature paper-doll models wearing his spring ’21 collection. I raced to my computer, fired up Zoom—and there was Jonathan, isolated in his studio, giving me instructions about how to prop them up against the funny photoshopped cardboard backdrop he’d sent.
It was a lo-fi, analog, interactive delight. A brilliantly innovative idea which showed Anderson’s talent for creating solutions, even with very little—and making it fun. “I think we will remember these times”, he remarked amongst the conversation I relayed in my review.
He’d completely understood the psychological importance of human connection, stirring up delight and playfulness in the face of the fear and the boredom the world was living through. (He came up with more devices for Loewe as well). Being excellent in a crisis proved the mettle of Anderson’s agile intelligence as one of the great fashion communicators of our age. I count his Show in a Box is a tiny but historic treasure; a souvenir from a talent on his way to the very top. —Sarah Mower
Rick Owens, spring 2019 ready-to-wear
Why is reviewing a Rick Owens show such a kick year after year? I don’t think I’ve ever put it plainer than I did in September 2018: Because “he has an eerily awesome way of interpreting and underscoring the issues of our times.” —Nicole Phelps
Elena Velez, fall 2023 ready-to-wear
This was an extreme show that elicited a passionate—and hopefully balanced—response. —Laird Borrelli-Persson
Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood, fall 2019 ready-to-wear
This one stands out for me thanks to how entertainingly it broke the fourth wall of the fashion review experience: to be berated by arguably one of fashion’s greatest ever designers during a show presented in her name was great fun. Reviewing Westwood’s shows was always a privilege, and I loved her fashion: her delivery, however, was sometimes self-contradictory—and as with with all reviews, Vogue Runway is never reluctant to run critical takes when merited. —Luke Leitch
Willy Chavarria, fall 2023 menswear
It was hard to imagine how Willy Chavarria would top the beautiful show at a church in Chelsea that preceded this one, but the designer really rose to the occasion, which made the writing experience even more pleasurable. This was the second Willy show I reviewed, so I also felt more comfortable expanding on his language and signifiers. Also, I am a stickler for a good last sentence and I think I stuck the landing. —Laia Garcia-Furtado
Kiko Kostadinov, spring 2023 menswear and Chopova Lowena, spring 2022 ready-to-wear
I started working at Vogue Runway when I was 24 years old, and all I dreamed about was one day writing a review of The Greats, like Sally’s reviews of Miuccia Prada or Nicole’s of Nicolas Ghesquière. I am lucky to have reviewed some designers whose work is cemented in the textbooks of fashion history, but what I learned is that it’s far more valuable to be a critic of your generation than to be another voice in an extant chorus of greatness. I left Vogue Runway at age 32 and if I’m any smarter now than I was at the beginning it’s because twice a year I would sit for hours in the studio with Kiko Kostadinov and Chopova Lowena and figure out what fashion looks like for a contemporary audience, for ourselves. That’s the gist of this Raf Simons review too—better to do it for yourself than try to stand in someone else’s boots. —Steff Yotka
Jacquemus, fall 2023 ready-to-wear
This was Simon Porte Jacquemus’s first show at Versailles. He returned to the palace this year and presented one of his best collections to date, but this show from June 2023 I believe will go down in fashion history. It was the peak of his ambitions. On a personal side, this review epitomizes, in a way too, my own ambition. It was the biggest review I had been assigned up to that point. It remains one of my favorite reviews I’ve written. I remember the moment it was published I received a text from a friend who said she loved it. I revisit it often. —Jose Criales-Unzueta
Gucci, resort 2023
Writing a review feels like walking a semantic tightrope. You’re on the wire (often in heels). No net. One wobble and you tumble—into swamps of smug self-congratulation, pomposity, ornamental intel or wording fluff. Every step demands that your inner sonar stays alert and fine-tuned, catching the smallest shifts of artistry, the sly details, the hidden quirks and detours a designer weaves into his work. Too kind and you gush, sounding like a starstruck groupie with better vocabulary; too harsh and you slash, like a hatchet-swinger with delusions of wit. It’s a demanding, perversely thrilling, and rather addictive discipline. On good days, it feels like you’ve miraculously survived a nerve-racking acrobatic act.
Of the countless reviews I’ve churned out over the years, there was one occasion when scalpels or axes could be set aside. Alessandro Michele’s Gucci Resort 2022, staged at the brooding Castel del Monte in Puglia, needed no critical bloodletting. The setting was magnificent, the show ravishing, and Michele—at the dazzling peak of his magical thinking—was erudite, audacious, and utterly transporting. It was one of those rare celestial alignments when fashion, theatre, and sheer madness conspired to silence my feral inner cynic. For once, all I could do was marvel. Hope my words captured even a glimmer of that wonder, before it vanished like fairy dust. —Tiziana Cardini
Viktor Rolf, spring 2019 couture
Leave it to Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, the Dutch design duo who subversively toggle between high-concept and camp, to come up with “fashion statements” for their Spring 2019 Haute Couture collection. Dresses boasted Give a Damn, Leave Me Alone, No Photos Please—as layered with cultural commentary as with frothy constructions of tulle. How to parse historical silhouettes in rainbow, neon and pastel that transformed the models into punk princesses, the messages ranging from sardonic to arrogant, and the way the wording appeared in all variety of graphic treatment? It was so obvious these 18 looks were conceived with social media virality in mind. A Warhol-inspired experiment? Twenty-first century irony by way of Elizabethan volumes? At one point in my review, given their insistence that the collection was open to interpretation, I imagined the statements like answers to life’s pressing questions. After all, Viktor Rolf are such natural provocateurs that you can never be certain their message. —Amy Verner
Victoria Beckham, spring 2021 ready-to-wear
This was my first Victoria Beckham review for Vogue Runway. It means something to me because it reflects both what we were all going through during COVID but also what Victoria had been going through professionally, fighting so hard to save the business that is her life’s work. And she made it!—Anders Christian Madsen