From opulent essentials to ostentatious, giddy glamour, the AW23 catwalks were a rollercoaster. Join us for the ride as we introduce the essential guide to the looks of the season
ON THE FINAL DAY OF PARIS FASHION Week – the conclusion of a month of many, many shows – there was a moment of synergy between how the guests, plenty of whom had been on the road for a while, felt and how the models looked. The show was Miu Miu, where Miuccia Prada presented a frazzled vision that in a lesser designer’s hands would have been incoherent. Models were dressed or, more accurately, half dressed, in big pants and masculine coats, tights pulled up over prim little twinsets, and sheer skirts that might usually demand a petticoat. Hair was unbrushed, keys were clutched in hands, as if the models were running late before their days had even started. The looks felt real, but curiously – crucially – they also felt desirable.
That push and pull between the aspirational and the identifiable echoed throughout the AW23 shows, where designers presented mixed-message collections for the woman with a busy life. ‘Quiet luxury’ has been a fashion buzz phrase of late, but, beyond the boardroom of Waystar Royco, that’s not what we’ve really seen. What the season served up was more nuanced than that. It was rooted in authenticity and, within it – go on, admit it! – an understanding that we want it all.
If you were to find the whispers of quiet luxury anywhere, it would be in the off-key reinterpretations of classics, but their swish of strangeness takes them somewhere different to that; look at the sophomore outing for Bottega Veneta’s luxe leather ‘jeans’, the unexpected cut of a Dior trench, Fendi’s is-it-a-waistcoat-ora-shirt layers, the quarterback shoulders of Saint Laurent’s power blazers, or, yes, Loewe’s ludicrously capacious bags. Black and white – starkly straightforward – was transformed into a colourful proposition, courtesy of Chanel’s Virginie Viard. And the black tie – surely the most
