Review of Ann Demeulemeester Fall 2023 Fashion Show
Archive Fever
By Mark Wittmer
The announcement of Ludovic de Saint Sernin‘s appointment as creative director of Ann Demeulemeester was met with an understandable blend of high hopes and hesitancy. While the young designer has built an impressively well-known and distinct brand for himself in a short period of time and is often brought up as a major name in the conversation around gender fluidity in fashion, longtime fans of the brand have been wondering whether his narrow idea of sexuality and penchant for an Instagram-friendly Y2K aesthetic would work for the brand. It’s no secret the brand has been struggling since Demeulemeester herself left the label a decade ago, and we still haven’t quite gotten a worthy sequel to the languid, romantic, intellectual aesthetic of her 90s heyday. It didn’t entirely help that the announcement of Saint Sernin replaced the brand’s Instagram presence with photos of the designer himself wearing archival designs, his sculpted face smoldering into the camera – which seemed rather at odds with Demeulemeester’s eschewing of the spotlight in order to let the collections speak for themselves. Is this reboot about building on a beloved brand’s heritage, or is it about pimping out a beloved name while capitalizing on a new era of social media-fueled hype?
Today’s show falls somewhere in between these poles, playing it safe with a competent but uninspired revisiting of the archives.
The collection mostly reads like a summary of Ann D’s most iconic runway moments, with a smattering of LdSS and plays to current tailoring trends thrown into the mix.
Many of the looks directly revisit archive moments: the opening look features a feather bandeau that reconsiders the one worn by Kristen Owen for Spring 1992; the famous Spring 1995 moment where models wore only sheer bolero tops and covered their breasts with their hands is dropped straight in. Staples like ribbon waist ties, sheer black fabric, sheath dresses and straight skirts, and a play between body-hugging and flowy run throughout. Some of these pieces seem like the very same ones Ludovic wore in those Instagram posts.
The opulent fur mantles that come later in the collection, while still archive-inspired, feel more ostentatiously luxurious than we would have expected to see from Demeulemeester herself, a potentially interesting direction, though it’s hard to pin down who exactly they’re for – is older wealthy Italian woman a new target demographic for the brand? Meanwhile, the skinny, open-chested sweaters and knit briefs feel like a move right out of Saint Sernin’s own twinkwear playbook. We also can’t help but notice that almost all of the male models, and many of the female ones, have pretty much Ludovic’s exact hair, face, and body type…?
The problem with navel gazing is that you don’t see the world is passing you by. The collection is cohesive, well-executed, and has a clear point of view, but this point of view has now pretty much been exhausted; Saint Sernin doesn’t have many iconic archival pieces to which he can turn next time, and we’ve already heard pretty much everything he had to tell us.
Luckily of course this is just a debut collection, and it could very much be a survey of the archive to get his bearings before he moves excitingly forward with the next collection. We hope that’s the case.