The big story from the International Winter Collections for 2033 the clothes you can order now and wear next week is the roaring success of Lila Mosss collection. Instant audience feedback via Google Glasses measuring pulse rate, brainwaves and pupil dilation registered a massive 89% like rate. According to i-Watch, sponsor of the Monthly International Collections, the shows global online audience peaked at 25 million further proof of the supremacy of Teen-A-Porter, the multi-platform teen-luxe conglomerate that now owns Moss. T-A-P, best known for its growing stable of supermodels offspring, is at the heart of the global luxury youthquake, the market tapping nine- to 19-year-olds.
The concept to stage her show, old-school style, on an actual catwalk, with actual models fronted by her mother, Kate, no less in the Grand Palais in Paris, recalled the dawn of the social-media era, when the now defunct Twitter and Instagram were at their zenith. The backdrop and catwalk featured projections of the designers old Instagram pictures, giving the feeling that we were inside a quaint family album. These images were then repeated on cool utility jumpsuits and space-flight jackets. Naïve text messages, from the days of SMS, such as Wot u duin lata? and I luv u xxx, gave an angsty teenage vibe to her nostalgic urban collection, particularly when worn with old-style baseball caps bearing the slogan #nohashtag. Was this a sly use of the retro meta-dating symbol, once used to great ironic effect on Twitter? It felt like a two-fingered salute aimed squarely at her critics: Dont stereotype me! I am more than my famous genetics! she seemed to be saying.
As usual, only 100 fashion professionals had been physically invited, pre-selected by their world ranking, via G-vote. Post show, we lucky 100 were ushered backstage to meet the designer. Yes, there was even a backstage area! Where the models, including an excessively youthful-looking Kate Moss, were positioned at tables and pouting into mirrors while having their hair and make-up done old-school-style, for real, with brushes and palettes. This turned out to be an after show in the form of a Beauty Masterclass, staged by none other than the legendary Pat McGrath (McGrathBeauty joined Forbes billionaire listings last year) and Guido Paulo (the long-retired hair stylist sold GUIDOHAIR to Wella for an undisclosed sum in 2020). Enlisting talent like this wasnt merely proof of 30-year-old Lila Mosss supreme pulling power, it signalled the launch of her new cosmetics line, Lila Gloss on which the superpowers of hair and make-up had, naturally, collaborated available to buy tomorrow, on TAP.fash, along with exclusive how to Masterclass footage.
After all these years, I just wanted to pay homage to my mum, said Ms Moss junior. And, yeah, its really exciting to be launching my first cosmetics line at the same time, she concluded. Interestingly, personal orders for Lila Gloss, logged at the show by the 100 fashion professionals, revealed the top buy was Gloss Moss, a lip enhancer from the Chameleon range that changes pigment according to skin tone.
Elsewhere in Paris, LVMH, the heritage luxury goods conglomerate, has had to stop showing its brands collections every week and go for monthly shows. Instead, the LVMH-owned BioCouture the company at the forefront of eco-sustainable fabrics grown in vats of liquid in the laboratory is now showing its collections weekly, to meet demand. BioCouture products have proved a hit particularly the boxy pseudo-leather BioBags, as seen on the arms of everyone from Coco Delevingne to Henrietta Styles and Lula Ciccone. Frontier markets Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria and the newly unified Korea are responsible for the sudden upsurge in BioCoutures fortunes, with 51% of global Bio sales coming from those regions. As for its heritage labels, LVMH is still on the lookout for a new Creative Director at its number-one brand, . Since Marc Jacobs, Phoebe Philo and Riccardo Tisci dramatically joined forces to launch the Analogue Movement (of which more later), LVMH boss Hugo-Emile-Henri Pinault has struggled to find the creatives to replace some of them. Most, such as Romeo Beckham, whose tenure at Louis Vuitton lasted only 12 months there were rumours of creative burnout, caused by the new 52-fashion-collections-a-year strategy. (Not a problem for his sister Harper Seven, mind you, whose Dior line goes from strength to strength under the guidance of her mother, Dior CEO, Dame Victoria.)
Romeo Beckham, whose father is UK Premier David Beckham, left Vuitton in 2030 to join the first luxury fashion business to trial @homehologram. Indeed, Beckham was at the forefront of Burberrys Holo Revolution, which brought the catwalk into every fashion lovers living room. His new take on the trench coat, still the labels heartland, can be viewed, glitch-free, in his latest trench presentation @Burberry.fash from 8pm tonight.
And so to StreetStyleoSphere.fash, the worlds best-loved street-style forum. What are you all wearing this week? Whats peaking? Whats in the gutter? I asked SSSs creative leader, Miroslava Duma, about this weeks global metadata and she revealed to me, ahead of tonights usual 10pm announcement, the most liked street-style look of the week. The winner, @Mimi_Wang, is a 24-year-old space-hostess from Nanjing, China, whose winning look a pair of Marc Jacobs night-glowing megachunk shoes and a vintage Savile Row charcoal pinstripe trouser suit with a voluptuously oversized jacket and cropped, childlike trousers is, of course, available to buy. Since copyright laws were relaxed in the mid 2020s, designer archive creations have almost always topped the charts. (The new holographic try-before-you-buy app might help with your purchasing decision.)
I asked SSSs Duma why she thought this look had won: You need to understand, its all about Centralised Saint Martins right now, she declared of the prestigious global fashion college, still headquartered in London with outposts in Moscow, Beijing, Los Angeles and Jakarta. The students at this college are a daily walking fashion show, posting images of themselves, inspiring a whole generation with their new mélange of vintage-cum-futurist style. I think this girl Wang, from Nanjing, must have been copying the CSM look. Why not? Everyone else is! Duma declared. CSM is, of course, now run by the inspirational Susie Lau, whose traditional Style Bubble blog continues to provide much inspiration, along with her annual coffee-table book, Susie Says. As for StreetStyleoSphere trends that are in the gutter, anything overtly feminine such as ruffles, organza, pink or peplums is actively disliked. Meanwhile, brights and embellishment currently rate particularly well in the southern hemisphere; northern hemisphere is still trending highly with black and all things dark and overtly conceptual.
On that note, I am proud to take you inside the Analogue Movement. Since its inception in 2018, the 250-strong designer community, founded by the greats Alaïa, Prada, Kane, Philo, Jacobs, Tisci, Slimane, Kawakubo, Simons, Giannini, Ford and McCartney is still regarded as the highlight of World Fashion, despite the fact that it is entirely unavailable online. It is only available at Elite Luxury Retail Stores, owned by Kering-PPR the former luxury goods group that became an elite retailer to help the Analogue Movement succeed. Only its 5,000 global stores are deemed worthy enough to sell these collections. And, as anyone who has been security-cleared to enter their hallowed portals will tell you, they are an extreme luxury experience: your own fashion curators, traditional changing rooms with doors, where only a mercury American Express will do.
As always, the Analogue shows take place in London, Milan, Paris and New York each city taking it in turns to show the Elite 250 (as some call these designers), who only show four to six collections a year. They take place unrated by Google Glasses, unseen by i-Watch although, thankfully, most of these designers now allow G-rated top-100 fashion professionals in to their highly securitised, underground presentations G-Glasses, i-Watches, all metadata image and audio paraphernalia must be deposited and logged at the door.
At the foot of the catwalk for, yes, there are real catwalks and real models is a gaggle of photographers documenting proceedings for each house and for the highly collectable daily editions of the worlds only five newspapers.
This evening, I was invited to Hedi Slimanes show in Paris, held right after Lila Mosss show. And, boy, it was hard not to be swept away by the real deal. While I cant tell you where the show was held, I can reveal what I saw there. Inside the blackened hall, a single front row of wooden benches flanked the catwalk just a bare black floor. Rubbernecking to see who had been invited, I spotted only half the top-ranked fashion people the rest were bohemians, bands and artists. I may or may not have spotted Daft Punk, Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love, but essentially it was too dark and smoky to see, so the audience remained veiled in mystery. Then came the music. Actually, I have no idea what or who it was there was no data but I can tell you that it boomed through my body and made me shake; the hairs on my head stood erect. (All this without so much as a single mood enhancer. When I came out of the show and re-registered with my BodyData bracelet, I was still measuring heart palpitations and was instructed to lie down immediately and/or seek medical help.)
Out came girls and women of all ages slightly bedraggled-looking, but no less beautiful for it. Their faces were un-made-up. Their hair, long and matted, falling down the back of black leather real leather, from cows! that looked as if it had been made with cardinals and priests in mind, it was so long, dour and churchly in shape. As they stomped out faster and faster, their clothes changed from pitch black to red fierce blood red and then came the white robes, all high-necked, long and serene. They appeared to float smoothly along (to the strains of a cathedral choir), until one solitary voice, high-pitched, shrill a scream, almost signalled the final outfit, a streamlined gown apparently hewn from glowing gold then bang! The lights went out. And everyone had to find the exit in the dark.
While these creations may sound removed from daily life, you can bet they will spawn a million online imitations. Except those already earmarked for members of the G-star1000, who will have preordered their looks for their films, concerts and public appearances some time ago.
As ever, the month closed with Karl Lagerfeld showing his latest collection on board Chanel Explorer 5. The legendary designer has been showing on the spaceship since 2028, when he first left for his mission to Mars. Weightlessness was again the key theme.