2022: The Year of Fashion Mash-Ups, Logo Mania, and Art Overlaps

It was a dizzying 12 months on the earth of vogue collaborations. The snake consuming its tail of name on model team-ups dominated the dialog: Fendace. Adidas Gucci. Adidas for Prada. Balenciaga/Adidas. Settle down, Adidas! The corporate did pull the plug on its Yeezy partnership—and everyone knows how Yeezy Hole Engineered by Balenciaga fared, regardless of its catchy title. Balmain x Barbie was simply step one. We’ll quickly be firmly ensconced in an epoch of Barbie this, Barbie that cross-promotions for the 2023 film. Hope you want fuchsia!

Fendace and Harry Types HA HA HA for Gucci. Courtesy of Fendace and Gucci.

Effectively, every part is subjective, however many of those company Voltrons appeared Frankensteined along with logos as a substitute of neck bolts—fortunately, this pattern appears to have crested, or I’m off to Duane Reade by Walgreens for aspirin or a chunk at Pizza Hut/ Taco Bell.

However, the boundary between present store and museum was additional blurred. Designers from Mugler to Dior to Schiaparelli to Virgil Abloh had high-traffic museum exhibition  hits. Louis Vuitton staged “200 Trunks, 200 Visionaries” in Los Angeles and New York; one left (carrying a sackful of merch) with the sensation of getting been to a well-curated present as a substitute of a model activation —there have been some cool and intelligent trunks! Trend dominated at artwork areas—however artwork wasn’t paramount within the 12 months’s vogue collaborations.

If it wasn’t sizzling brand-on-brand motion, it was well-known faces injecting their superstar into capsule collections. Harry Types’s Gucci HA HA HA was a world hit for Allesandro Michele’s swan track. Calvin Klein’s Palace partnership gave us some strong fundamentals and killer messaging with their Alasdair McLellan film and marketing campaign. You’ll be able to’t go flawed with Joan Collins and puppets. Per typical, The North Face and Supreme teamed up with everybody to make them extra mountaineer and streetwear, respectively (whomever has the best price ticket all the time wins that facet of the model meld, although). Supreme’s Burberry pairing was a clean tartan transfer earlier than inventive director Riccardo Tisci’s departure. It’s nonetheless arduous to get well from their notorious Skittles collab of 2021, nevertheless, the nerdiest nadir in Supreme’s drop historical past. Always remember!

It’s giving mud and metaphor: Balenciaga’s dystopian runway by artist Santiago Sierra. Courtesy of Balenciaga.

The stage was actually set in 2022 for for artwork’s revenge in 2023, with artists designing the runways of heavy-hitters like Celine, Dior, Hermès, and Balenciaga. However artists’ enter on the collections themselves wasn’t as widespread as years’ prior.

However don’t inform that to Daniel Arsham, who was certain a busy bee, pumping out every part from jewellery to motels to rest room sinks to a smartphone, plus his personal brand of apparel. Arsham has really made an artwork out of the model collaboration. (I’d recommend he team-up up with Adidas, however he’s totes already done it.)

Here’s a smattering of some artwork/vogue moments of 2022 we didn’t cowl however are nonetheless resonating. On to 2023!

Fashions rock Duncan Grant-inspired knitwear in Dior Males’s summer season 2023 present. Courtesy of Dior.

DIOR MEN

For the summer 2023 assortment, inventive director Kim Jones took inspiration from the Bloomsbury Group multi-hyphenate Duncan Grant. Primarily a painter, Grant was additionally a textile designer, potter, and scenographer, in addition to a clandestine illustrator of gay erotica and a passionate gardener.

Jones recreated Grant’s nation property, Charleston, and its gardens for the runway and delivered a bucolic romp by way of Grant’s oeuvre and predilections in all their sumptuousness and contradictions. It was a refreshing and intelligent swerve from streetwear go-to’s like prior collaborators KAWS and Raymond Pettibon. However along with his tackle Grant, Jones wasn’t faking the funk however trying inward and following his muse: He’s been a a hardcore Bloomsbury aficionado since he was 14.   

Duncan Grant, element from an untitled drawing (c. 1946–59). Picture courtesy of the Charleston Belief, © The Property of Duncan Grant, licensed by DACS 2020.

Supreme x Stone Island

If Leonardo da Vinci discovered in regards to the seventh capsule collection between the Italian luxurious model and skate behemoth, he’d roll in his grave and say, “Lastly!” The Mona Lisa smiles as a result of she’s on a water-resistant tech anorak.

Stone Island x Supreme. Courtesy of Stone Island.

Cass x Prada

Individuals are quickly going to begin referring to Damien Hirst as “Cass Hirst’s dad” as a result of his son’s shoe designs are so dope. The junior Hirst (who goes by the mononym Cass) has produced four styles of Prada’s iconic America’s Cup sneaker in 22 variables.

Kicks have all the time been Cass’s canvas; he began adorning Nike Air Drive Ones at age 14. His spray-painted first iterations have been snapped up by the likes of A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, Offset, Rihanna, AJ Tracey, and the late Virgil Abloh.

Cass x Prada America’s Cup “Rel3ase” sneakers (about $1,890). Courtesy of Prada.

Perhaps that is projection (or simply studying an excessive amount of into the emblem of a strawberry nuzzling with the moon), however a way of tranquility oozes from multimedia artist Dan Colen‘s Sky High Farm. The precise working farm and its new clothes offshoot are swiftly changing into a cultural juggernaut. And it reeks of excellent vibes, because of 100% of earnings from this Comme des Garcons SHIRT collaboration going to profit the nonprofit’s mission to “make nutritious meals grown with regenerative farming strategies accessible to communities in want.”

Do-goodery by no means appeared so good. The collection of button-ups and Ts are a unusual, sustainable melding of each manufacturers. They don’t skimp on tie-dye, which surprisingly doesn’t come off as retro, however all of the extra trendy. Somebody’s received to be optimistic lately. You may by no means have thought it might be Rei Kawakubo and Dan Colen spreading the cheer—nevertheless it’s fab.

You’ll be able to’t actually be refined to struggle the great struggle, now are you able to? Courtesy of Sky Excessive Farms Work Put on.

Celine

Celine is such part of the menswear vernacular, it’s bizarre to assume that Celine Homme has solely existed since 2019. Inventive director Hedi Slimane is impressed, besotted, and obsessed by artwork: It components into each assortment, and he ropes in massive names and unknowns he sources from Instagram to contribute to broad and small strokes to clothes and runway and soundtrack design. For every outing, he tends to assemble a motley however transitory group. For his “Dysfunctional Bauhaus” summer season ’23 present, he labored with the property of Swiss artist David Weiss, of the duo Fischli/Weiss, together with Peter Fischli to splash ocean-wave drawings and watercolors throughout equipment like skateboards and totes.

The refreshing splash of Hedi Slimane’s David Weiss-inspired equipment. Courtesy of Celine.

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