Spring 2023

Words by Rachel Weinberg

Chopova Lowena

There has been for almost half a decade a peculiar and affecting duality in the fashion zeitgeist: sustainability and craft, the esteemed barony that designers yearn to enact cum their seasonal collections. This dichotomy was upheld in Chopova Lowena’s Spring 2023 show, which accentuated the conditional relationship that exists between ethics and innovation. For the house’s seventh collection, their anthropological design approach was again defined by the modernisation of textiles and techniques. Antiquarian and contemporary tropes collided with hoods and hats mimicking bonnets, floor length tartan frocks elevated with speed-racer sunglasses and kilts complimented with tinselled sweater vests. The collection, as Sarah Mower explained, paid homage to the Rose Festival, a pageant which takes place in Kazanluk, the village in central Bulgaria where Emma Chopova’s ancestry derives. Flowers—from tulips, to posies, lotuses, and zinnias – adorned the dress shirts, corsets, shorts, and skirts each model wore and worked down the runway. These better-known motifs were paired with images of cartoon faces and figures—hand-drawn by the designers themselves. Throughout the collection, these codes and symbols were coherently styled with metal jewellery, fluffy boots, and punk hairdos, ultimately buttressing Chopova Lowena’s fanciful yet sadistic essence.

Dion Lee

To cut out is to leave behind. Unless you are Australian designer Dion Lee, who cuts out to celebrate and sensualise the human form. For Spring 2023, silhouettes were slit and sliced to accentuate the physicality of the body and its structural anatomy. Tank tops and t-shirts were left sheer, bodices and dresses were split, and suit pants were uplifted with hollows of fabric. Each silhouette offered a solution to both day and night dressing. Whilst slinky leather mini-dresses and floor length slips spoke to the evening’s seductive antics, scuba suits, leggings, and loose-fitting cargo pants attracted comfort and ease for the day’s unprecedented events. Those who walked exuded fierceness, sex, and power. Those who peered longed for their moment to allure and attract. Amongst the latter was a line of models, influencers, and actors, each dressed in full looks from the brand. Each embodying the tantalising sultry that is Dion Lee.

Eckhaus Latta

Joy and chaos rule. In Eckhaus Latta’s Spring 2023 collection, the joy of colour and the chaos of textures mastered our understanding of conceptual and technical dressing. The ecstasy and spontaneity elicited by Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta’s seasonal silhouettes, and the models who walked them down New York City’s secret garden, reimagined notions of idyllic optimism and pure fun. Ripped orange cargo shorts styled with a blue jersey vest and tie-dye hiker boots was a notable highlight. Others included a body-con pleated green, yellow, and black mid-dress which elegantly hugged the model’s body; a sculptural lime green embroidered tank top which bloomed down the runway like jasmine in springtime; and a floor length evening dress netted and tasselled just the right amount to dance the night away. In all the looks, textiles begged to be touched and played with, traditional silhouettes were flipped and reversed, and symbols and signs in each garment beseeched to be discovered. With an intuitive dynamism and careful attention to detail, the brand’s 2023 Spring collection ultimately reaffirmed that joy and chaos can not only coexist but conquer.

Marni

In Italy the sun rises and sets with the same intensity each day. Even if clouds blanket the sky, the intensity that comes with gaining or losing light brings new energy to the country’s streets, vistas, balconies, beaches, and meadows, arguably felt nowhere else in the world. Drawing on Italy’s maximal light and energy, Marni’s Francesco Risso celebrated the formal and energetic aspects of the sun in his 2023 Spring runway. Most garments in the collection were structured around a central circle, which activated in us all the star’s force and heat. Perhaps the circle also symbolised the cycle of life, universality, or the turning of new corners—which Marni had already achieved by showcasing their first North American collection under New York City’s Manhattan bridge. Although noticeably paired back, the collection was bound with the classical and experimental designs that have drawn us to Marni’s stores for almost ten years. In all the fifty-eight looks featured, the body was the central protagonist. A synergetic relation existed between the clothes and the bodies that wore them. As Risso noted himself, “Everything is built in jerseys, knitwear, things that actually go with the body rather than against it.” The kaleidoscopic garments, each tinted with tones of neon green, electric blue, lilac, mauve, crimson, turquoise and beige, illuminated and comforted the human figure—just like the rising and setting sun does each day.

Nensi Dojaka

Exploring the relationship between strength and vulnerability, Nensi Dojaka’s eponymous womenswear line encapsulates the striking feminine force. The designer’s ethos of sophisticated sexiness still reverberates after five years in the game. Her invisible-boned lingerie, Paltrow-esque silk dresses, and slick tailoring presented for Spring 2023, spotlight the designer’s sensitive approach to construction and fit. Opaque black garments were juxtaposed with mesh and lace fabrics, each expertly crafted to accentuate formal elements of texture, volume, shadow, and depth. Whilst halter-neck dresses with cut-outs across the torso and bust exposed the human figure, delicate draped silhouettes in chiffon, sequin and cotton-silk veiled the body, illuminating only the fierce essence of the model underneath. The designer’s other pieces—namely her lingerie-inspired bike shorts, coral cigarette pants, multi-toned denim jeans, and cropped jackets—established the clothes’ ability to transcend from day to night. All in all, the collection tantalised principles of balance and proportion and spoke to the raw intensity of dressing today.