As the season comes to a close, the Dazed Fashion team rounds up the collections they couldn’t get enough of
From Rick Owens’ enormous flaming balls and Rei Kawakubo’s uncanny clowns, to Mowalola’s kinky bondage moment and J-Dubs’ motomami models, the SS23 menswear shows were rammed full of brilliant concepts and the goods to back them up. In the tiny gap between men’s and couture, the Dazed Fashion team has rounded up their fave moments from the season, with Craig Green, Martine Rose, Y/Project, and Virgil Abloh’s LV swansong among them.
MIRKO PEDONE, JUNIOR FASHION EDITOR
Sunday in Milan was the day for me. After watching my first Prada show, I thought my heart couldn’t be more filled with joy and excitement until the JW Anderson show happened later that afternoon. It completely blew my mind – the details, the colours, the shapes, the music, the casting… all on point. Jordanluca was also a breath of fresh air. The inclusive casting, which brought together street cast models from around the world, and the beautiful clothes made it one of the most relevant shows in Milan. In Paris, Glenn Martens’ Y/Project show was a great kick start to the week, with all his signature elements at their best and the most beautiful soundtrack accompanied by the models’ heels crunching down the gravel catwalk. Rick Owens’ show was fire in every sense, and there wasn’t one piece in the collection that I wouldn’t wear or shoot next season. I couldn’t stop photographing every look, despite the sun burning my neck. Last but not least, my first [Comme] Homme Plus show got me emotional – although it could have been beads of sweat as opposed to tears, given how hot the venue was. It was a magical and surreal experience – in my mind that’s how I imagine their shows back in the 90s and I felt like I was being transported back in time. It’s definitely a memory I will treasure forever.
EMMA DAVIDSON, FASHION FEATURES DIRECTOR
For me, the standouts this season were the three Ms: Mowalola, Martine Rose, and Glenn Martens (okay, kind of) at Y/Project. But if I were to really narrow it down to just one, it would have to be Martine. Given how sporadic her shows are, it’s always exciting to see her name pop up on the schedule, and her SS23 collection was probably my favourite of hers ever. For a good few years now, the runways have been putting out this very sanitised ‘look, but don’t touch’ version of sexiness – all Swarovski-crystal encrusted spaghetti-strap slips worn by mega slender models – which ended up feeling anything but, but for the first time in a while, it felt as if real, dirty, sweaty sex was back on the agenda. Along with Mowa, who leaned hard into BDSM with standout collection Burglar Wear, Martine’s show epitomised this vibe shift, as she sent her usual rag-tag cast of characters storming through former gay sauna Chariots in London’s Vauxhall – a place where sweat once literally dripped from the ceiling, and all manner of trysts happened in its darkened corners. Each was in a state of undress, with shirt buttons unfastened, crotches creased and pulled tight, and t-shirts and dresses appearing half-on, half-off in the haste to either undress or cover up to avoid getting caught after a quickie. Add to this the fact LV CEO Michael Burke was sitting on the FROW, and there’s some very large shoes at the French house just waiting to be filled, and it made for a very exciting show indeed.
TED STANSFIELD, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR (DAZED & ANOTHER)
It always feels like a privilege to be at a Comme des Garçons show. Despite being packed in like cattle, and waiting in pure darkness and sweltering heat for the best part of half an hour (or sometimes longer) for it to begin, when it does you feel like you’re in the presence of something truly special. That’s what it was like this season. After several very big-budget shows with highly elaborate sets, there was something very pure about seeing models walk down a simple, slightly elevated runway. It allowed the clothes to speak for themselves. And what they did say was profound. In the show notes, Rei Kawakubo said the collection – titled Another Kind of Punk – was about court jesters: “The court jesters of the Middle Ages were not only involved in healing,” she said. “Often they would be close advisors of the king. Coming from a different world with original ways of thinking, they would have the right to speak freely and give honest insights and advice… I imagined that these jesters probably had punk spirit.” I loved that.
DANIEL RODGERS, WRITER
My stand-out collection from SS23 was probably Mowalola’s Burglar Wear. It may not have been the prettiest offering and there were times when concept ran away from construction, but it felt disobedient and genuinely transgressive. I think taboo is a really interesting way to approach fashion and it’s something that has been absent from the runway for ages. Tormented and impassioned, the models’ limbs were twisted into gruesome shapes, their pubes exposed, faces slashed with pseudo-religious crucifixes. The whole thing obviously leaned on references to Alexander McQueen but that’s hardly a bad thing IMO. Mowalola usually produces the kind of clothing seen on the internet’s alt-girls and there were pieces which will still satiate that audience – shrunken baby tees, embossed denim skirts, and peekaboo vest tops – but I’m excited to see a designer push fashion into the shadows of the psyche. It’s time we all felt something.
MARIOS MYSTIDIS, SENIOR SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR
Prada or nada. For those who know me it comes as no surprise, but Mrs. P and Raf were simply not fucking faffing around this season. Stripped-back Prada staples and with a stellar front row, not a single look missed – I never thought I would be panic-buying gingham!
KACION MAYERS, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR (DAZED)
I was most excited by what Mowalola had to offer this past season. The clothes were an extension of her desire to defy and antagonise, which resonates. Things were kinky as opposed to sexy (thanks to Lotta Volkova's touch on the styling, no doubt, which I found to be an exciting pairing). But beyond the bum-grazing denim, NSFW cut-outs and tiniest of mini skirts, I think the community she has formed is the most exciting for me. I'm sure this punk, West African, alté moment is reinvigorating for a tonne of young people in the diaspora.
VANESSA HSIEH, CONTENT EDITOR
Has to be Jacquemus, hasn’t it? I’m obviously biased because it’s the only show I attended in person but I guess it speaks to the difference of actually being immersed in a physical show and the larger world-building at play beyond the clothes themselves. It was so good to feel the transportive power he has first hand, experience the magic of Provence in an unexpected, fresh way (and see Posh Spice in the flesh!) The creation of Planet Jacquemus in salt marshes for Le Papier achieved the fine balance of post-pandemic fashion’s return to nature while being future-facing, and also providing one of the most out-of-this-world venues for a fashion after party I’ve ever experienced. Despite an extremely salt-exfoliated ass, I’m ready to be beamed up for this sci-fi epic!
Revisit the SS23 shows in the gallery below.
