I think the hats were a nod to Galliano's time at Dior, tbh this was one of the things that irked me the wrong way about the show. Not interested in the rehabilitation of JG, Dior fired him with good cause at the time, you can appreciate his tenure but the weird campaign around his reputation has always puzzled me (mostly as it doesn't seem to stem from him).
Fashionpalooza seems at an end now (I think), caught a bit of the 'new' Chanel live last night and it wasn't all that earth shattering but the more I looked at it, I could appreciate it a bit more. Model casting was a good change, no more of this ingenue looking women in their grandmum's clothes. It's still very Chanel though, as framed by Karl Lagerfeld. The difference seemed to be more on material innovation and I did quite enjoy the take on tweed and lightening it up a bit. Unlikely to make me a customer, doubt that's the aim, it'll certainly please the existing clientele. Though, I was tepid about his first show for Bottega as well and then he really evolved it to something more special and did make me a BV customer so I'll reserve judgement.
I'm torn on the new Loewe. It's a good continuation, I feel, I'll be curious how it trickles down to what they sell in stores (JW's wilder stuff never made it there). But it felt very New York somehow, can't pinpoint it exactly but it just didn't feel of the place where it's from or showing at, a bit too much of a carefully branded brand iykwim.
From pouring over images and videos of a few shows of interest, I did feel there was a sort of split, some seem to be very much chugging on in this well worn commercial path (kind of what I felt at Loewe and Dior) and others seem to want to reinvent the idea of fashion (Bottega and Chanel), but visually it wasn't all that overt but it did feel striking how women were portrayed in both.
There's a nice long read with Yohji Yamamoto on BOF (archive link to bypass paywall here, the opening lines very much appeal to my state of mind around fashion atm,
“Fashion has become a joke,” he says. “It’s all about money. The major companies of fashion, they’re like kids playing soccer, just running after the ball. They’re not thinking about their customers."
And today there's one with MB of Chanel (but not archived yet so can only pull a quote) that sort of sits in the same vein.
“I think fashion is in a funny state,” said Blazy. “It grew very, very fast over the last years, post pandemic, and it kind of hit a ceiling. I think now what fashion needs to do is to rethink its own model, but not just when it comes to design. We’ve seen some houses exploding, we’ve seen some houses collapsing. What needs to be done is a deep work on what fashion stands for. I think we are at a stage where fashion needs to re-imagine its own narrative. Luxury is not enough anymore. It’s expensive and it’s rare, so it’s good? That’s not enough.”
And while that all has me nodding along, I'm also a bit suspicious as if this is what has been precisely test group focused on what consumers want to hear from a fashion brand...