Dion Lee F/W23 at
New York Fashion Week.

Second Skin.

By Billy de Luca

There were many things the New York-based Australian designer Dion Lee proposed last week at New York Fashion Week.  With a baseline emphasis on technical applications to sensuality, Lee’s innovative constructions have led him to build a brand that has a richness in texture and pattern.  In a space teeming with excitement and wrapped in steel scaffolding, the thrumming techno music wasn’t the only thing variegated for Dion Lee’s 2023 winter collection. Lee exposed reptilian skin and the folds, creases and cuts to match.  The show, titled ‘Second Skin’, had a tight grasp on nightlife practicality, spreading seduction and a reduced palette to emphasise sinuous patterns and serpentine textures.  Lee’s playful deliberation was conveyed with a formality of construction that allowed him to focus on the tactility of the garments (and possibly their nostalgic value) over the eye of observation.  Fabric combinations and bold skins wrapped and unravelled over the models with relaxed layering that expressed emotional reaction rather than aesthetic innovation.  The result? An exfoliation of the unnecessary and a focus on feeling.  A feeling with the lightness of a sheer dress no longer blocked by the opaqueness of black leather.

The tight postures, ballooning blazers, and tall, scaled boots played an intricate game between exposure and closure.  Flowing creams and swelling greys and big black leather belts flapped behind a model’s back like a stand-in ribcage.  And then? A lot of bright baby pink dresses.  One minute, a classic monochromatic leather pant, netted top, and black blazer would walk past, and then suddenly, there is an inflatable puffer jacket with the size and comfort level of a liferaft.

Although, the looks were not as bombastic and full of air as the practically floating puffers.  Lee shared his conception of a ‘second skin’ insofar as snake-scaled leather twisted and trailed one dress while a horizontally pleated top and skirt unravelled from shedding cuissardes.  The workwear and biker aesthetic from previous seasons seeped in slightly, with the odd baseball cap,  shearling cuffs and panels on lambskin jackets seeming more bygone than ‘buy now’.  The three fuschia-pink looks led the eye astray.  However, the collection rippled back with heavy black trenches that were raw, distressed and reptilian.  Following the burst of leather came snake-dyed shibori skirts, pants and tops, a creased sky-blue dress gathering and interlinked by rubber, and a pair of umber brown ensembles. In the umber, Australian Cat McNeil closed the show in powerful grace, her gathered wraparound dress held by a serpentine coiled tube.  

The garments hatched from thick lines and steel-studded leathers to robes that clothed but at the same time remind one of nakedness.  With a shifting harmony shaped by chests girded in leather and sheers with pellicle thinness, Lee peeled the skin back with a practical collection that tapered feeling to the narrowest seam.  An instinct that unravels.  Perhaps the compositions proposed less of a narrative than an attitude: the pulsations of contemporary life require adaptation with the sharpness of a raised chin and the anti-glamour of shedding skin.  There’s no time to change, so walk it off.

View more of the collection here.

Words by Billy de Luca

Images courtesy of Vogue.