Kelly Wearstler wears Christian Dior
Inspiration exists everywhere. Music, technology, art, nature, and certainly fashion all serve as points of departure for my studio’s work. I found plenty of inspiration in February when I attended the Fall 2024 fashion shows in London, Milan, and Paris.
Viewing the collections in person gives me a 360-degree view of the silhouettes, colors, textures, and material concepts designers put forth. It also affords me access to the shows’ immersive sets and experiences, in which design plays a central role. When I attend the shows, I contemplate our upcoming collections of lighting, furniture, accessories, textiles, and our interior projects—and I’m thinking about my own wardrobe, of course.
At the Burberry show in London, Daniel Lee’s lush earth-toned collection played with rich variations in color, heightened by a striking mix of materials. I love designing tonal interior pieces that play up the materiality and texture. In both fashion and design, I like to mix slick and shiny materials with soft, matte ones and work in contrasting patterns and shapes in unified, tonal hues. Opposing materials play off one another beautifully, and each element possesses its own importance. Burberry’s collection was a vivid reminder of that.
In Milan, Prada took traditional wardrobe staples, such as tailored suits, and subverted them. Shocks of chartreuse, gold, magenta, bubble-gum pink, electric red, and sky blue jolted the otherwise restrained palette to life. Research and history are crucial to my practice—a well-informed beginning provides a foundation for new ideas. Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ collection epitomized that. I’d like to see more historic pieces brought into interiors in unconventional contexts. Let’s be subversive.
I'm always fascinated by designers who create environments that set the tone for their shows and suggest a concept or provenance without being too literal. Core to my own design philosophy, it's about striking an emotional connection and conveying subtext. At Prada, OMA (the house’s longtime collaborator for anything architecture- or design-related) realized a show space that alluded to a relationship between nature and technology, a recurring theme this season. The models walked across a glass floor that, supported by a rigorous black grid, floated above an organic, free-flowing installation that resembled a forest floor. This contrast lent an ethereal softness to a quite serious collection and helped us understand the clothes all the more.
Kelly Wearstler wears Bottega Veneta
Eseniia Araslanova
At Bottega Veneta, creative director Matthieu Blazy’s runway also played a pivotal storytelling role. His considered set channeled the American Southwest with scorched plywood flooring that conjured the organic spirit of desert sands. Giant Saguaro cacti, all rendered in handblown Murano glass, and rows of Le Corbusier’s LC14 Cabanon stools with the same treatment as the flooring punctuated the show. The craftsmanship of Blazy’s leather garments, some exquisitely tailored, some garnished with lively fringe, felt perfectly at home in this setting. And the space’s rusticity offered an intriguing contrast with the dramatic silhouettes and feminine fluidity of some of Blazy’s more extravagant looks.
While Bottega transported us to the American Southwest, Dior’s Paris show sent us to an Eastern-inspired world. Creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri enlisted Indian artist Shakuntala Kulkarni to create sculptures of archival garments to anchor the runway. They evoked warriors and provided the context for the restrained yet powerful fall collection. Chiuri wanted you to know that these clothes were armor, even if, like the intricately beaded, fringe-bottom party dresses, they might seem delicate at first glance.
The strength that Chiuri’s collection projected was the inspiration I’d been looking for. I also appreciated the sharp trenches, asymmetric suiting, Mod-ish gridded overcoats, and swinging-sixties mini skirts. Sharp, classic staples are all the more effective—and can be thrust into modernity—when imbued with intention and styled to make a point. Whether getting dressed for the day, designing spaces, or conceptualizing products, I intend to spark contemplation and emotion. And, like these designers, I like to leave room for interpretation, so I won’t necessarily spell it out for you.