Summed up: What you need to know about fashion this week (03/2021)

This week in fashion brought to you by Gentle. 

A Magazine Curated by Maison Margiela is being reprinted and you can pre-order now! In case you aren’t familiar with the format: Each issue of ‘A Magazine’ is curated by a fashion designer, group or house and ” celebrates this designer’s ethos: their people, their passion, their stories, emotions, fascinations, spontaneity and authenticity.” The last publication was curated by Lucy and Luke Meier, the current design duo of Jil Sander.

The issue with Margiela that was published in 2004 was sold out in most parts of the world and only available for very (too) high resale prices. So? The year 2021 starts (at least in some regards) with good news. Get your copy here. 

 

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The whole internet is talking about Ella Emhoff and her look on the inauguration of Joe Biden – and so are we. Let’s dive into the specifics. First, Ella is the stepdaughter of Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States. One day before the Inauguration, Ella, who is a student at the Parson Design School in New York, wore a stunning outfit by Thom Browne with a white button up shirt and a tie that suited her curled up hair in a way that amazed all of us.

But the outfit she wore ON the inauguration is the one that the internet is talking about. Her checkered coat is by Miu Miu (for the few of you who didn’t know yet) and the dress she is wearing underneath is by Batsheva. But the Parson student also works on her own knitwear designs, as you can look up on her Instagram.

 

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A post shared by Kerstin Emhoff (@kemhoff)

 

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So let’s stay at the Inauguration for another moment, a historic one. In five minutes and fiftysix seconds, the Youth Poet Laureate of 2017, Amanda Gorman, a name we should all remember, delivered hopes and dreams in her poem ‘The Hill we climb.’ If you haven’t seen it yet, you should. 

Amanda wore  a red headband with a matching glittering mask as well as a yellow coat by Prada. Her golden earrings and the ring she wore were given to her by Oprah Winfrey, who already gifted Maya Angelou a Chanel coat and a pair of gloves for her speech at the Inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

 

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Miuccia Prada and Raf Simsons presented their first menswear collection together and  – keeping up the tradition – answered questions by fashion students from all over the world through a gigantic screen after their display. Only hours after the presentation Bliss Foster, THE YouTuber when it comes to putting fashion events into a meaningful context, offered an analysis on design references, little details that you might have overseen (or did you recognise the reinterpretation of the Prada Logo stitched into the back of the sweaters the model wore? because we haven’t) and an analysis of the show’s setting which was very much in line with the current times defined by isolation that often comes with confusion. Foster described it with the following words:

“It feels spacious but claustrophobic somehow it feels like you are trapped here.”

You may have realized that we’re in the midst of fashion season now. Another collection that made it into this summary is the Fall/Winter Collection 2021 by Virgil Abloh’s Louis Vuitton. For this pre-recorded presentation, the artistic director dived into the brand’s DNA and something that we can only dream about these days: travelling. Together with the rapper and poet Saul Williams, the ‘show’ explores what it means to be Black in a white space. The scenes were recorded in the mountains of Switzerland, referencing James Baldnwin’s essay Stranger In the Village, written in a  a Swiss village, in which Baldwin reflected upon his life as an African-American man. As the notes from the show tell us, the presentation strives to explore “the presumptions we make about people based on the way they dress: their cultural background, gender, and sexuality.”

There is truly a lot to be examined and unfold. Maybe we should ask Bliss to make a video about it?