Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
Phoebe Philo just released images of her latest collection, which will go on sale in June and continue into November. Although Philo had long planned to show her collection in mid-March, the timing is nonetheless interesting. It comes a week after an extravagant ready-to-wear season, with feathers and fur, and only days after a schmaltzy Oscars. It also lands amid the staggering news that John Galliano, a former artistic director of Dior, will design for Zara. I couldn’t help but see Philo’s new work in this context — and that’s not to take anything away from her greatness. On the contrary, it often seems that Philo gets her authority from being outside the system, or at least at a slant to it.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe PhiloPhoto: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
From top: Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe PhiloPhoto: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
I turned off the Oscars midway through Barbra Streisand’s droning homage to Robert Redford. As for the fashion, I thought Jessie Buckley looked lovely in her red-and-pink Chanel, and that Delroy Lindo knows how to wear an ascot without looking goofy. Timothée Chalamet’s ice-cream suit seemed almost a riff on Redford’s beauty as Jay Gatsby. But no one at the Oscars really looked modern, much less cool. Most of the choices revealed the pressure that women are still under to conform, a pressure from stylists, brands, the internet. The results were actually conventional — cleavage-popping sheaths, trains, and glam makeup — and few women, even the most self-confident with fashion, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, managed to look completely themselves.
And like many of the fall runway shows, the Oscars red carpet revealed a snobbery, a preference for wealth and status over personality and cool. Or competence. One of the things I liked most about the collections was how some designers tackled the idea of expensive day clothes in a real and serious way — and didn’t just do more fancy suits. Matthieu Blazy reinvented the Chanel suit as a two-piece ribbed knit with a zipper and added in sportswear separates like tweed blousons and polo necks. A lot of women can relate to that thinking, since it recognizes that they want a contemporary look that reflects their lives and which they don’t need to question. For a similar reason, I found I really missed the spirit of Dario Vitale’s Versace. Though he did only one collection for the brand before he was let go in the deal with Prada, which hired the better known Pieter Mulier of Alaïa, his show last fall avoided all the Versace mythology and instead cut deeply into notions of luxury and class with its hitched-up pants, tank tops, and quietly charismatic models. It was daring, sexy, new, and totally honest.
Philo’s new collection has been on my mind since I first saw much of it during a preview in mid-January. Maybe the precision of her ideas is easier to see because she has put off doing a runway show (and, who knows, may never do one), but that tension is what comes through, how she hits the right note between opposites — masculine and feminine, soft and hard, the everyday and the sensational, emotional piece.
She managed this tango of precision throughout the concise and inspiring collection — for example, with a lush navy-blue and cream shearling robe coat (think of a man’s bathrobe) over a relaxed “twinset,” as she calls it, of a tan cotton shirt with matching pants. Or a cropped tea cozy of a jacket in brown-and-apricot-hued shearling over a men’s black shirt, with trousers with a dropped crotch. Or a sweet shrunken bomber in recycled light-pink nylon shown with a subtly contrasting men’s shirt in pink-striped cotton.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe PhiloPhoto: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
From top: Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe PhiloPhoto: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
In keeping with Philo’s original wardrobe concept, some styles were carry-overs from previous collections, updated or sharpened, like her stretch-satin turtleneck but now done in wide bands of ivory and black silk; her stand-collar utility jacket (now as a crisp black jumpsuit); and her tailored trouser suit, now in a very lightweight greenish bronze-brown wool. Her popular leather jackets and bombers returned with either a high knitted collar or, for the boyish bomber, with a hood lined in shaved dark-cherry shearling. The hood can split open with a zipper.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe PhiloPhoto: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
From top: Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe PhiloPhoto: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
Philo’s handling of shearling and leather is truly impressive. I had the feeling when I saw them in January that she had really thought of how to differentiate her work in a season of these materials. One way was in the plush, slightly 1940s feel of some of her shearling coats. Another way was in dyeing the fur in one tone (say, black) and then bleaching it and overdyeing it in a color like red, resulting in a hazy glow.
Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
Another way was to use both a glossy structured leather and a superb softer glove leather. She has a fantastically soft black leather car coat that simply wraps with a belt, absolutely free of details, and, as well, a pair of black highly pressed overalls she’s proposing for evening. There’s also a long, fluid coat in black leather with the novelty of a long white scarf suspended from a neck cord.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe PhiloPhoto: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
From top: Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe PhiloPhoto: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
Philo’s going-out clothes may be the most exciting thing about this collection. And they got me wondering: How much cooler would it have been had an actress worn a T-shirt of crinkled cream fabric stitched to a fishnet base — think of a pile of crushed carnations — with a slouchy pair of cream silk pajama pants? Philo also included a gorgeous hoodie in shaved blue shearling — yeah, for evening — with velvety red shearling track pants, and a long T-shirt dress of stacked bands of silk satin and sheer georgette, worn over a pale-pink bralette and underpants. My guess is the dress was her salvo to Blazy’s transparency in Chanel’s January couture show.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe PhiloPhoto: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
From top: Photo: Courtesy of Phoebe PhiloPhoto: Courtesy of Phoebe Philo
But knowing Philo, she wouldn’t care to see a celebrity in that dress on the carpet. To her, it wouldn’t reflect the dignity of the occasion, to honor artists’ work. She’d prefer a suit — and use the near-naked column as an unexpected swimsuit cover-up. Philo is ever the contrarian, as slow and deliberate as a tortoise, and the industry can’t quite catch her.
Maybe now, Galliano, whom LVMH had a chance to hire — and apparently let it lapse — will cause a disruption of his own on the mass side. The luxury-goods industry really has to ask which way the wind is blowing.