Dear readers,
For our second Style Issue of the year, our fashion and creative director Jason Hughes and fashion features editor Jack Moss have chosen to explore the sensual delights of tactility, texture and touch. It’s a theme that runs throughout the A/W 2024 collections, where the clothes implore you to reach out and stroke them, and Hughes and Moss were determined to capture this form of sensory pleasure in words and pictures. The results are starkly alluring. Photographed for our main womenswear fashion story by Nicole Maria Winkler, this month’s cover star, seminal American model Kelly Mittendorf, is styled by Hughes in leathers, shearling and faux furs, all touchpoints for the new, sensual approach to dressing. Meanwhile, photographer Matthieu Delbreuve and stylist David St John James highlight the fundamental appeal of menswear fabrics and silhouettes in a series of intimate portraits entitled ‘Quiet on set’. In Paris, Moss talks to Kim Jones about his first dedicated couture collection for Dior Men (shown as 20 looks at the end of the runway show) and interviews Nadège Vanhée, artistic director of Hermès womenswear, whose A/W 2024 collection encapsulates what the designer describes as ‘a preservation of quality’. The same mood of enlightened permanence can be found in Simon Chilvers’ exploration of seasonal menswear trends for The Glossary – a surge of energy in contemporary tailoring that sees the likes of Martine Rose, Giorgio Armani and Luca Magliano reinterpreting the suit in imaginative new ways. (Magliano also shares his insider’s guide to his native Bologna for this month’s Navigator.) Elsewhere, Hannah Tindle explores the sensory pleasures of solid soaps, Daniel Scheffler takes a trip to Arc’teryx’s new ‘creation centre’ in Tokyo, and Orla Brennan meets up with Studio Boum, the London-based events and production agency behind some of fashion’s most memorable runway shows and experiences. We also take an exclusive tourof Karl Lagerfeld’s bookshop and library 7L, which is being revitalised with a programme of cultural events, and get a first look at Celine’s latest Bijoux d’Artistes Project, which sees Hedi Slimane design jewellery pieces inspired by artist and sculptor Jean Arp. All in all, an issue for the ages, and the senses. Enjoy the issue.
Bill Prince Editor-in-Chief |