Renzo Piano’s GES-2 is a site of wonder

The GES-2’s building site in Moscow is so glorious the half-constructed structure has already got the design world talking

Good vodka! That was the beginning,’ says Renzo Piano. The 82-year-old Italian architect is dressed in a dapper suit under a high-vis jacket. We are in the atrium of what was once the GES-2 power station, built in 1907 and used to keep government officials warm as they ran the Soviet Union from the nearby Kremlin. Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) is converting the 20,000 sq m plant into a leading art venue for Russian billionaire Leonid Mikhelson’s V-A-C Foundation (named after his daughter, Victoria, a graduate of London’s Courtauld Institute).

Mikhelson approached Piano in 2015 with the idea of transforming the derelict power station into a world-class space for contemporary art in the heart of Moscow. When the project was first announced, many voices in the architectural world suggested the building was unusable, and that Piano would be better off starting from scratch. But to do so would have erased a sizeable slice of Moscow’s history: the plant was once used to power Moscow’s first tram system, and the site also encompasses a former vodka warehouse.

Renovating the space, Piano admits, has been painstaking: ‘Architecture of this kind is a dangerous job; you can make big mistakes,’ he says. ‘But I believe a well-crafted public building is a serious gesture of civic pride.’ And Piano is already proving his doubters wrong: ‘When we started this job, people were saying to me: “Are you really doing this?”. Now they understand. It is a building built by lucid madness.’ As Piano shows us where the Soviet generators once stood, the grey Russian sky breaks and light streams into the construction site. The sudden presence of the sun delights him. ‘This is Moscow,’ he exclaims. ‘Cloud and then suddenly sun. The building will constantly be like this – vibrant light, vibrant shadow. And the Moscow light will be the poetry of this building. It will hold everything together. A great cathedral of light.’ He leads us through the building and into what will be a new public park. Around 90 birch trees are already planted here, but there are hundreds more on the blueprints. ‘It will be a real forest,’ Piano says. ‘Birch trees are beautiful when full in the summer, and beautiful when naked in the winter.’ 

‘When we started this job, people were saying to me: “Are you really doing this?”. Now they understand. It is a building built by lucid madness’

The V-A-C Foundation has an ambitious programme planned for GES-2, including a new exhibition by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. It will also be a key stop on Moscow’s new Museum Mile, which will link the gallery to Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, the State Tretyakov Gallery, and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

Mikhelson was inspired to build the gallery after visiting Piano’s iconic Centre Pompidou in Paris, as well as the Tate Modern in London (itself a former power plant). ‘I wished to have such a public space for Moscow,’ he says. ‘I wanted to create a unique place, right in the centre of the city, in a historic building.’

The gallery is due to open in September 2020, but this depends on the Russian winter, and how fast it will allow works to progress on site. Not that delays, or the project’s spiralling costs, it seems, dampen Piano’s idealism and his belief in the ability of architecture to bring people together. ‘This will be a free space,’ he says. ’A place to meet people under the sky.’ §

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Longchamp A/W 2020 New York Fashion Week Women’s

ood board: The brand’s fourth show in New York was a highly polished and robust outing. Right on cue, the sun came out to backlight the 360-degree view of the city skyline, the show’s backdrop atop a midtown glass skyscraper. The seventies rang loud and clear: there were suede dungarees and tunics worn belted over thin cashmere polo necks, silk scarf prints, jumbo corduroy blazers and an artist’s paint-splattered jeans with an Aran knit jumper.

Best in show: Creative director Sophie Delafontaine has a gifted touch for updating the house classics without moving too far from their heritage. The ubiquitous Le Pliage (rumoured to sell one every 11 minutes) came in new micro-mini versions and oversized weekender styles in patent and metallic leather. She also updated the house’s newly named Longchamp 1980 bag (originally called the Cartouchière and worn by Delafontaine as a girl). Long boots with silver baubles on the toes were fun and desirable.

Sound bite: ‘I like to play with proportion, mixing a long dress with a small bag,’ Delafontaine said backstage after the show. ‘Shorter lengths with big bags’. And why the Seventies influence now? ‘It’s my culture, the Parisian woman from the Seventies. From Romy Schneider to Catherine Deneuve and Carole Bouquet, they are all so inspiring. I like the idea of bringing this Parisian spirit to New York.’ §

Longchamp A/W 2020

Longchamp A/W 2020

Longchamp A/W 2020

Longchamp A/W 2020

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The high energy highlights from Nike’s 2020 Future Forum

With the Tokyo 2020 Olympics on the horizon, Nike unveiled its latest product innovations, poised to catapult its athletes to success, in an inspiring showcase staged at The Shed in New York City earlier this week. Centered around creating a better future for sport, the comprehensive presentation unveiled new goods at both the performance and lifestyle levels, ranging from the competition apparel athletes will wear during the 2020 Olympics to new spike, basketball and football shoe designs, boasting new technologies that upend traditional standards.

At the core of everything lies Nike’s mission to unite performance results with a sustainability slant. More so now than ever, athletes are having to train and compete in new conditions due to climate change. Tokyo 2020 is set to be the hottest Olympic Games on record and the new product innovations have been designed with this in mind on variety of levels. For one, the new track and field kits feature Nike Dri-FIT Aeroswift material, which wicks away sweat and disperses it evenly throughout garments for better management of heat and moisture in hotter conditions.

Sustainable materials also feature heavily in Team USA’s medal stand collection, which includes a 100 per-cent recycled polyester jacket cut in a kimono-inspired design that reduces waste, track pants constructed from 100 per-cent recycled nylon and trimmings made from Nike Grind recycled rubber. The uniform is complemented by Nike’s lowest impact trainer, the Vapormax, that is made using 75 per-cent recycled manufacturing waste.

‘We are always looking to make athletes better and make the world a better place,’ says Nike’s Seana Hannah, Vice President for Sustainable Innovation. ‘Nike does a great job of bringing innovation to scale. We’re really looking at our entire carbon footprint and where we can have the most impact. You’ll see that we have used as much recycled material as possible and we have designed out waste in every opportunity. And then we’ve also used waste as a new resource in our new Space Hippie shoes.’

As the brand’s lowest carbon footprint shoe ever, the Space Hippie footwear collection is composed of Nike’s own ‘space junk’ – a myriad of scrap materials found on the factory floor that have been reincorporated in a circular way. In addition to championing a new aesthetic in footwear, Space Hippie’s knitted body also utilizes yarn made from recycled water bottles, T-shirts and yarn scarps. It’s eye-catching foam sole is made from a layer of recycled factory foam offcuts and another layer of ‘crater foam’ made from a blend of standard Nike foams and 15 per-cent Nike Grind recycled rubber.

‘Nike does a great job of bringing innovation to scale. We’re really looking at our entire carbon footprint and where we can have the most impact.’ — Seana Hannah, vice president at Nike

‘Space Hippie product presents itself as an artifact from the future. It’s avant-garde; it’s rebelliously optimistic,’ says John Hoke, Nike Chief Design Officer. ‘Space Hippie is also an idea. It is about figuring out how to make the most with the least material, the least energy and the least carbon. It’s changed the way we look at materials, it’s changed the way that we look at the aesthetics of our product. It’s changed how we approach putting product together.’ §

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Sies Marjan A/W 2020 New York Fashion Week Women’s

Scene setting: The vacant 54th floor of One Manhattan West, a recently completed skyscraper designed by SOM, located just shy of Hudson Yards, offered up incredible 360 degree views of New York City as the setting for Sies Marjan A/W 2020 collection. It was an appropriate, juxtapository lens to view designer Sander Lak’s 10th runway collection, especially since Lak drew inspiration from Rem Koolhaas’ upcoming exhibition Countryside, The Future, which opens at the Guggenheim Museum next week.

Mood board: The Koolhaas/AMO exhibition, which explores the urgent environmental, political and socioeconomic issues faced by remote, wild and rural areas known collectively as the countryside, prompted Lak to focus on traditional craftsmanship this season. Ranging from Guernsey knits that have been hand-finished by a family-owned factory to using authentic Donegal yarn spun by a mill dating back to the 1920s, several artisans were roped into creating the fabrics on display.

Team work: The heirloom quality of the label’s new offerings reached especially great heights with one particular collaboration with the visual artist Diana Scherer. Scherer, who has developed a biological technique to control the growth of plant roots to turn a natural root system into textiles, created custom textiles for the label, which resemble felted wool rippled with thread-like roots. Complemented by prints created by contact dyeing locally found foliage, made in collaboration with Cornell University, and applied to oversized workwear and utilitarian silhouettes, the result was a collection equally rooted in the past and future — making it Lak’s most sophisticated effort yet. §

Sies Marjan A/W 2020

Sies Marjan A/W 2020

Sies Marjan A/W 2020

Sies Marjan A/W 2020

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New York Fashion Week A/W 2020 Editor’s Picks

As the first stage of fashion month kicks off in America’s capital, we round up the standout moments from A/W 2020’s shows and presentations, from Zankov’s kaleidoscopic knitwear, to Ulla Johnson’s handcraft-focused collection, inspired by Charlotte Perriand

Zankov: Knitwear specialist Henry Zankov has been designing sweaters for many of the industry’s big names for years. Now, he’s branching out under his own name. ‘Each piece is made to last and cherish,’ says the designer. Mixing technical know-how with an intuitive feel-good factor, Zankov showed a wardrobe of crewneck sweaters, sporty knit hoodies, ‘jumpergans’, oversized blankets and even a pair of mohair basketball shorts. Checkerboard and stripes are established a brand motif. Using specialty yarns such as high twist viscose crepe and super soft brushed alpaca-blend mohair - so light its ‘air-spun’ - Zankov creates sculptural pieces that are extremely light. The set was impressive: chairs were custom-made by Brendan Timmins, graphic walls created from off-cast cardboard by architect Gabriel Feld, and metal frames by architect Samuele Brianza.

Tibi: Designer Amy Smilovic opted out of a runway show this season, and decided to invite showgoers to an convivial presentation held at her brand’s Soho boutique instead. ‘This season, I wanted someone thing new. I was craving something a little more permanent,’ she says. ‘I think the idea that after this show, [the shop] will still be here - it feels really me.’ Inspired by travel, the label’s versatile new collection, which teams classic, evergreen silhouettes with an array of cleverly tweaked details, was also accompanied by cozy footwear, embellished travel pillows and the brand’s riff on an airport shop, stocked with travel essentials and souvenirs all specially branded with its logo.

Sandy Liang: Showing in Stuyvesant High School, the school Sandy Liang graduated from 10 years ago, models with barely a scrap of make-up walked the breadth of the atrium to a live string ensemble overlooked by two NYPD attendants manning the reception desk. A decade on, Laing has graduated into a new confidence. Her brand of New York femininity meets sportswear that was once born from coloured shearlings has now evolved into more understated, grown up and easy-going mood. A bib front white cotton blouse, a black leather pencil skirt, and knee-high boots with a sensible run-around-town heel set the tone. The looks that tried the least - a smocked black blouse and perfectly cut high waisted jeans - were the most successful and felt the most fresh. Laing has shown she has another string to her bow with great every day city pieces. A handful of men’s looks that involved sporty fleece and tracksuits felt like a fitting accompaniment.

Self-portrait: In a credible evolution of his line, Han Chong showed a compelling offering of elegant daywear and sophisticated partywear where wearability and beauty was paid equal consideration. In recent seasons, he’s moved away from decorative flounces and frills, streamlining the silhouette for a more grown up woman. It’s paying dividends. Bobbin lace peeked out from below a tuxedo jacket; a black waisted PVC jacket had a new strictness; tailoring was impressively sharp and robust, well executed in a lilac overcoat. Svelte party dresses came in figure-skimming velvet speckled with diamente crystals. Footwear was a surprising highlight with Edwardian-esque satin mules and patent heels with Perspex block heels.

Christopher John Rogers: The biggest crowds this week have been drawn by Christopher John Rogers, emerging talent and recipient of the CFDA 2019 Fashion Fund Award, known for flamboyant silhouettes and unapologetic colours. Only a year ago he was showing with a self-funded presentation on the Lower East Side. Today, international top editors, stylists, buyers and New York’s creatives jostled to take their place at this Spring Studios show, six rows deep. The mood was high drama and subversive nightlife. The set was concepted to recreate a Parisian salon show. Executed by Barcelona-based studio Sauras + Garriga - run by architect Sergi Sauras and designer Mery Garriga, a swath of velvet and contemporary chandelier outfitted the space. This is a rare designer that manages to span red carpets and magazine covers, with a gender-fluid club culture appeal. Needless to say, the crowds were riveted.

Ulla Johnson: Charlotte Perriand’s ’L’art de Vivre’ served as a touchstone for Ulla Johnson’s latest collection, which displayed an artful sensibility. Packed with vibrant patchwork, tie dye and ikat prints, a rich colour palette inspired by East Africa and Francis Bacon, and plenty of handcrafted touches, the label’s feminine silhouettes took on a bold flavour and a heightened confidence. Knee-high boots, sculptural jewellery, oversized sunglasses and large slouchy handbags effortlessly complemented signature staples such as leather overalls, diaphanous dresses and denim boiler suits. 

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Virgil Abloh is on the hunt for the next big thing in sustainable design

Virgil Abloh and Evian raise a glass to the next generation, announcing €50,000 grant for sustainable design initiatives, open to 18–35 year olds. Here, discover what the creative polymath hopes to see from the entries

nnounced today at New York Fashion Week, Virgil Abloh and Evian’s new Activate Movement initiative comprises a €50,000 grant for sustainability-focused design and innovation projects, open to 18–35 year olds, alongside the launch of an exclusive 750ml glass bottle and two refillable SOMA bottles. Both facets of the initaitve centralise circularity and look to a positive design future.

‘We hope to inspire curious minds and support young people who want to enact change for a more sustainable future,’ says Shweta Harit, Evian’s global vice president of marketing. ‘The launch of the sustainability-focused contest is to prompt the youth of today to consider purpose-led sustainable innovation. We invite anyone to apply that hopes to activate change through sustainable design thinking.’

750ml glass bottle and two refillable SOMA bottles, pictured alongside Activate Movement design sketches

Supporting the work of emerging talent has long preoccupied Abloh. His London-based design studio Alaska Alaska is staffed by young, multi-disciplinary creators, handpicked by the designer himself. ‘I chose people that reminded of me, in the early years of my career,’ he explains. ‘I started out as an architect but had like much bigger ambitions than just architecture, so what I now try to look out for young talent, find it, and give it impact. That’s the exact opportunity that I had when I was young.’

‘I’m looking for something that is open-minded and modern. Lead us to better solutions for the future’ – Virgil Abloh

Abloh’s meteoric rise to global success started with an internship in Fendi’s Milan headquarters. Here, he was scouted for his ability to connect so naturally with the pop-culture ideas and aesthetics of ‘now’. Abloh has often celebrated his internship start, and looks to provide even better, more creative, and more diverse opportunities for those just starting out in the industry.

Virgil Abloh pictured in 2019, on the Pont Neuf in Paris, airing his Mies Van Der Rohe-inspired metal mesh ‘Color Gradient Chair’ (2018), part of his furtniure project for Carpenters Workshop Gallery, which debuted at the Venice Biennale 2019. Read more here. Photography: Marvin Leuvrey

Abloh’s advise: work hard – and use digital

According to Abloh, there’s never been a better moment to jump into the design world – and make a splash. ‘The barriers are the lowest that they’ve been in quite some time,’ he says. ‘I think it’s obvious that there a lot of undiscovered talent out there – that’s why I enjoy this project so much. I’m giving a people a chance to let their work come to the top.’

‘Hard work, good ideas and persistence will undoubtedly lead to success,’ he continues. ‘Whether it be opportunities like Activate Movement, or even just putting your work out there, and letting it be seen and resonate online – it will lead to an initial practice.’

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Virgil Abloh takes to the streets with a new furniture collection for Galerie Kreo

Abloh with judge the entries himself, alongside a representative from Evian, and an expert panel. The judges hope to be taken aback by the entries’ creativity – and grant guidelines have been left deliberately sparse to support this. ‘The upside of a project like this is not having too many prescribed details,’ Abloh explains. ‘I want to be surprised. That’s the benefit of having an open-source angle to this. I don’t want to have a pre-described notion of what comes in. I’m looking for something that is open-minded and modern. Lead us to better solutions for the future.’

Glass half full

There’s a tug of war industry-wide between the impetus to create more objects, and the necessity to be sustainable. ‘I think our generation has learned that more stuff isn’t necessarily necessary, its how we use and how we attach ourselves to the thing in the world that are important,’ says Abloh.

This circular ‘less but better’ approach has influenced Evian’s new limited edition Activate Movement collection, designed to make you want to hold onto your water bottle for longer, ultimately reducing reliance on less single-use, virgin plastic. Designed in collaboration with Abloh and Alaska Alaska studio, the bottle features an infinite loop of droplets. The logo represents ‘the power and potential of every small action to create positive change’, Abloh explains. QR codes on the Activate Movement glass bottles will direct people to the online contest, ‘merging the physical product with the digital space’.

’Scan to activate movement’: detail view of Evian and Virgil Abloh’s new glass bottle design

A natural fit

The designer has held the title of creative advisor for sustainable design at the water bottle company since December 2018. In this position, he has launched glass bottles and accessories through much-hyped ‘Drip Drop’ events in New York City. Evian’s Shweta Harit makes no secret of the brand’s ambition to ‘drive scale’ and reach more people through Abloh’s large audience. ‘By having a series of ongoing creative projects and discussions, Virgil has been able to gain a deep understanding of our long-term commitment towards sustainability and demonstrate how he will be able to bring his unique touch into making this happen,’ she explains. 

The collaboration with Evian feels is a natural fit for Abloh, too. ‘For me, it’s always exciting to collaborate with what I perceive to be the best in class,’ he explains. ‘It’s important that I have the ability to design products that can affect change or feel like a good contribution to the world at large. Obviously freshwater is a vital source of life so it became synergistic for Evian and I to create a lineage of products that give us the ability to add colour around water.’ §

Behind the scenes, designing the Activate Movement initiative

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Scene-stealing runway sets from the A/W 2020 menswear shows

We round-up the most sensational set design from the A/W 2020 menswear shows, from brands including Prada, Loewe, Gucci and Dior

Prada: As usual, AMO were behind the transformation of the grand hall at the Deposito, the multifunctional venue for performances that is part of the Fondazione Prada complex in Milan. Centred around whimsical piazzas, guests were gathered on platforms, viewing the collection from above. Below, models were weaving in and out of symmetrical portals lining the fabricated squares – Dramatically lit to cast long, afternoon-like shadows. 

Dior: The specially constructed space on Place de La Concorde in Paris was according to men’s artistic director, Kim Jones, ‘an ode to all those who have been with us and passed on, from Christian Dior to Judy Blame’. The atmospheric space, centred on glass-boxes filled with smoke and lit up in hues of orange and blue, perfectly framed the collection with a subtle nod to the Buffalo Boy inspiration. 

Feng Chen Wang: Following a recent trip to the Wuyi Mountains in the Fujian province of China, Feng Chen Wang took inspiration from the mist at dawn when creating the eponymous brand’s show set this season. Using icy hues of blues and reds reflected on smoke, the space was set up as a gallery instead of a traditional runway – leaving the audience with a single perspective decided by Feng Chen Wang. Emulating the sunrise, the audience was left immersed in darkness, with the colours shifting from orange, red and blue. Photography: Haydon Perrior

Y/Project: Inspired by artists Charles Pétillon and Olafur Eliasson, known for their playful aesthetic, set-designer Dennis Vanderbroeck collaborated with creative director Glenn Martens in creating a tongue-in-cheek Paris setting to accompany Y/Project’s latest collection. With whimsical wit, Vanderbroeck took the guests on a trip down memory lane. Bringing us back to our school days, the runway was constructed in a traditional gym circling a balloon-filled ball pit we were desperate to dive in to headfirst. 

MSGM: Legendary film director and master of Italian Horror, Dario Argento, served as inspiration and collaborator for MSGM’s show in Milan. Saturated colours, killer aesthetics and a playfully sinister tone painted the perfect background for the collection, which featured prints of flesh-eating plants and a colour scheme lifted straight from Argento’s frightening classics. Inspired by Argento’s 1975 film Deep Red, the light sculpture in the centre was casting long reflections on the polished concrete floors bathing the runway in blood red. 

A-Cold-Wall*: Centred around sea-green see-through boxes with metal wiring, the London brand’s Milan show set married the manmade with the natural. Originally an ice rink, Palazzo del Ghiaccio’s delicate interiors from 1923 was put in juxtaposition with massive blocks of glass. Research for the collection looked to one of the fundamentals of life, water, using the element’s flowing shapes as a foundation for the design. This was then married with structured hoods supported by wireframes and utilitarian designs, perfectly mirroring in the duality of the show space.

Raf Simons: It felt as if we were starring in an early episode of Star Trek when we entered Raf Simon’s show space this season. In a brilliant retro-futuristic mix, Studio Kremlin in Paris had been transformed into what looked like an alien planet form the 1960s. A low set sun framed the aptly named collection, ‘Solar Youth’, with folds of fabric lining the walls and columns. And when we thought it couldn’t get any better, an instrumental version of David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ played during the big finale. 

Gucci: Set in Piazza VI Febbraio in Milan, the house’s collection space was built in the style of an amphitheatre. As the space filled with shamanic singing and the noise of beetles at night, guests entered the moody stadium and filed into roughly textured bleachers. Built around the concept of time, the Gucci show set featured an oversized mechanised pendulum, which swung 360 degrees around its own axis, leaving tracks in the black sand, which took centre stage. 

Ermenegildo Zegna: This season, Ermenegildo Zegna took the idea of recycling one step further. Not only implementing this mind-set in the design of the collection, but also the show set. Under the creative direction of Alessandro Sartori, American multi-media artist Anne Patterson created an installation using thousands of ribbons derived from surplus Ermenegildo Zegna textiles. Hosted in a former Milanese foundry, the strips of fabric created a geometric forest in shades of blue where models marched aimlessly to techno beats.

Louis Vuitton: Virgil Abloh invited us into an outlandish world for the Louis Vuitton A/W 2020 show. Inspirations came from Belgian 20th-century artist René Magritte’s surrealist paintings, with the set constructed inside a giant box inside the Tuileries Gardens. The heavenly space featured blown-up artisanal tools in the form of cartoonish cotton reels, rulers, scissors and paintbrushes, all symbolising the brand’s deep-rooted tradition in craftsmanship.

Giorgio Armani: The Italian luxury house had, as per usual, their Teatro in Milan obscured by darkness. Making us shiver, we were transported to a cold winter’s night by giant screens covering the walls with a slow and silent fall of snow. Ice sculptures made out of recycled plexiglass– previously featured in the brand’s window displays – took centre stage in creating frozen tundra. We completely embrace Giorgio Armani for ski season, having caught a chill at the show! 

Marni: Marni invited us to fall down the rabbit hole straight into a euphoric rave with their A/W 2020 collection - where nothing seemed to be as it should. A vast empty space, filled by swaying, spinning models who entered the derelict mega venue through a fluoro-lit tunnel of corrugated metal set the scene. The open space hosted Michele Rizzo’s choreography, famed to work at the intersection of performance and art, who gave us a taste of escapism with his psychedelically choreographed performance. 

Sacai: Pallets of cement blocks neatly kept together by colourful straps, met the guests at Grand Palais for Sacai’s show this season. Recreating a building site, the set symbolised the action of construction and deconstruction in the curved venue, a 2013 addition to the historic building. Weaving through the building materials, models were walking down the runway in utilitarian clothes of the co-ed collection – reflecting the urban setting. Photography: Stéphanie Aït Ouarab

Acne Studios: At La Carrousel Du Louvre in Paris, Acne Studios welcomed its guests with muted Scandinavian minimalism. The stripped-back set featured a white wall separating the women’s and men’s shows, which were taking place simultaneously in the same vast hangar-like space. The reflective floor helped showcase the looks from every angle, as the models passed the guests in esoterically patterned clothes with deconstructed details. 

Hermès: Returning to an old favourite, the Parisian luxury brand hosted its A/W 2020 runway in a furniture storehouse in the heart of the Mobilier National. The Mobilier has been providing furnishings for royal residences since 1870, and the various chairs lining the catwalk, in particular, had us enthralled. Part of the Mobilier’s collections from the 20th and 21st centuries, these beauties were designed by design heavyweights such as Philippe Starck, Mario Botta, and Jean-Michel Wilmotte - to name a few.

Loewe: With Loewe drawing inspiration from scorching and stripped back opulence, the main feature of its A/W 2020 runway made a lot of sense. Held at Maison de l’UNESCO in Paris, the runway set up’s blackened wood, made out to look like a weathered dock, was lined by plexiglass chairs and lights made to resemble ecclesiastic stained-glass windows. This created a starch contrast between light and darkness, and the perfect backdrop to creative director, Jonathan Anderson’s, youthful wardrobe. 

Givenchy: The intimate setting for Givenchy this season was their own Paris Haute Couture salon in Paris, with herringbone hardwood floors and stucco walls framing the collection inspired by Les Arts Décoratif’s exhibition on the Maharaja of Indore. The select guests were perched on mirrored cubes, as the models made their entrance down the grand staircase and through the doorways decorated with grey flowers - Looking as universally travelled, and incredibly chic, as the Maharaja himself.

Jil Sander: Taking to the majestic show space at Santa Maria Novella, Jil Sander transformed the Florence Basilica with marigolds piled high. Drawing inspiration from the dessert of South-West America, and the famed Santa Maria Novella Pharmacy, creative directors Luke and Lucie Meier perfectly married the minimal with the maximal. The muted lighting set the tone, as the models took to the catwalk lined with supportive pillars to Bjork’s Hidden Place. The scene was definitely soothing for the soul! §

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