Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 49 - Spring Woman 2025 i L'OFFICIEL USA

Genieve Figgis’s revisionist take on Art History 101 has made her a muse to both Marc Jacobs and Bridgerton. The Irish painter’s candy-colored canvases offer funhouse mirror–inversions of canonical portraits from Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s “The Swing” to Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” with their female subjects’ faces melting into swirling pools of paint. After seeing an exhibition of Figgis’s work at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, London-based Irish designer Simone Rocha recognized a kindred spirit in the fellow National College of Art and Design alum. “I was immediately drawn to this idea of the paintings referencing period, but twisted and manipulated, disturbed and displaced,” Rocha says. Rocha drove to meet the artist at her studio on the picturesque Irish Sea coast south of Dublin, and invited her to collaborate on the…

Marrying the dazzlingly bold colors of vintage Art Deco design with a clean millennial sensibility, Viltier brings together the best of French savoir-faire and sustainability. The buzzy Left Bank jeweler traces its origins—as many things do these days—to Instagram. While artistic director of Stone Paris in 2018, Iris de La Villardière, now 32, clocked that her semi–long-lost childhood friend Thomas Montier Leboucher, now 31, was also working in jewelry as the head of marketing and retail for the London-based designer Fernando Jorge; she sent him a DM suggesting they catch up. The two arranged to meet for coffee the next time Montier Leboucher was in town, and he describes what comes next as “professional love at first sight.” Recognizing their shared passion for beauty and craft, they took a leap…

If you thought we were leaving the Western craze of 2024 behind—Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter and Pharrell Williams’s turquoise bolo ties—not so: that was only the beginning. In 2025, the cowgirl renaissance continues, blending seamlessly with the flourishing boho-chic revival spearheaded by Chemena Kamali’s reimagined vision for Chloé. The newest spin? A bold, free-spirited aesthetic that fuses rodeos and line dancing with aughts-festival fashion, and a dash of grunge and flou. Although the Western-boho blend has been steadily gaining traction via floral lace blouses, cascading ruffles, and sleek riding boots, the Spring/Summer 2025 runways unveiled a new frontier of country-chic bags. From hardware-accented suede at Isabel Marant to exposed stitching at Michael Kors, and intricate embroidery at Bottega Veneta, designers offered a rich array of Americana elements for the sunny season.…

With more than 100 exhibitors from 20 countries, Frieze Los Angeles, returning for its sixth edition, focuses on the interplay of the city as an art center and its global influence. Held at LA’s Santa Monica Airport February 20 through 23, the fair is set in a structure designed by Kulapat Yantrasast’s architectural studio WHY. “Frieze Week is one of the most exciting weeks in Los Angeles. It galvanizes art audiences and energizes the entire city,” Christine Messineo, Frieze director of Americas, tells L’OFFICIEL. For Messineo, Frieze Los Angeles is a touchstone for the broader art world; an opportunity to come together and a moment to create the future. “Community-building and greater access are so important for the next generation of art audiences,” she says. “That’s something I feel particularly…

“I’m praying for a revolution,” says Lauren Amos. The founder of the Atlanta, Georgia, boutique ANT/DOTE—a mecca for outré, out-of-the-box fashion—Amos is lamenting the state of fashion fads, specifically the light-speed cycle of micro-trends and “core” aesthetics that has, in recent years, proliferated on TikTok and Instagram, and in the cultural conversation. “I pray that people are going to get tired of all doing the same thing,” Amos adds. A devotee of brands such as Comme des Garçons, Melitta Baumeister, and Rick Owens, she views personal style as the ultimate form of self-expression. Core style, she says, has “dumbed down” the art of dressing. “People have a herd mindset, and they’re more comfortable in [looks] that have been approved by somebody else.” The widespread infatuation with core trends takes the…

“American beauty means freedom, of body and of spirit,” says Alaïa Creative Director Pieter Mulier, who sent a tribute to American fashion greats Adrian, Charles James, Claire McCardell, and Halston down the Guggenheim Museum’s sweeping circular rotunda during New York Fashion Week in September of last year. The show was a homecoming, both for Mulier, a Belgian who spent three formative years in New York working with Raf Simons at Calvin Klein in the 2010s, and for the French maison itself, which held its debut show at Bergdorf Goodman in 1982. The house’s late Tunisian-born founder Azzedine Alaïa was one of the world’s foremost collectors of American sportswear, and Mulier, also a vintage aficionado, took cues from some of their shared obsessions. Taffeta balloon separates recalled Halston designs from the…

Featuring evocative watercolors by Marta Spendowska, Vivienne Westwood: The Illustrated World of a Fashion Visionary (Smith Street Books) by Tom Rasmussen celebrates the colorful life of the woman behind the Orb. Like all things Brunello Cucinelli, the BC Duo bag, designed by the Italian designer’s daughters, Carolina and Camilla, exudes timeless design and impeccable craftsmanship. Available in a range of textures including calfskin, suede, wool, and denim, the convertible tote also has bold stitching to emphasize its squared, minimal lines, while two monili embroideries offer the subtlest of logos.…

Swimsuits for spring may sound about as groundbreaking as florals. For the past century, swimwear to pack for holidays has been a staple of spring fashion shows ever since Gabrielle Chanel started a craze for knitted bouclé maillots with her costume designs for the 1925 Ballet Russes production Le Train Bleu, about Parisian vacationers on the Côte d’Azur. In more recent times, we’ve come to expect itty-bitty bikinis worn without much else on catwalks, save perhaps a pair of thong sandals and a loosely knotted pareo. But at Tory Burch’s swimsuit-anchored Spring/Summer 2025 New York Fashion Week show in September, held just a few weeks after the close of the Paris Olympics, the vibe wasn’t beachy so much as it was sporty and sumptuous. Models strutted down a nearly Olympic…

In the 2010s, fashion insiders grappled with the seemingly endless spin of creating four collections a year, exclusive drops, and collaborations. Since 2021, the trend whirlwind has devolved into pervasive aesthetics with a three-week shelf-life, driven by the omnipresent algorithm. As we navigate this relentless cycle of consumerism, a question emerges: Are we finally ready to abandon the chaotic churn and embrace individual creativity? This season’s runways reflected this tension between chaos and creativity. At Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons responded to our scroll-saturated culture by championing intentional discord in dress. In “The Art of Opposition,” we explore a dark romantic take on seemingly dichotomous fashion ideas, on page 82. At Marni, runway shows tend to be deliciously chaotic—models are always seemingly coming out of every corner of a…

Individuality is in. Three designers from the world’s fashion capitals are bringing singular style, nerve, and storytelling back to the world’s runways. In NEW YORK CITY, Daniella Kallmeyer honors women in positions of power with her emphasis on comfort with an edge. Over in MILAN, Marni Creative Director Francesco Risso maintains the brand’s playful legacy in collaborations with global artists. And in PARIS, the high-spirited brand Zomer is the happy result of a long friendship between two like-minded visionary creative directors. When Daniella Kallmeyer was first launching her brand, the then–25-year-old put a word to paper: Wit. Over a decade later, the designer is in her lower Manhattan studio talking through her Pre-Fall 2025 collection, and the sentiment remains. “Not everything has to be so serious,” she explains. Out of…

First worn by OG prima ballerina Marie Taglioni in the 1832 debut of La Sylphide at the Paris Opéra, tutus have been accentuating dancers’ legs for nearly two centuries. The Spring/Summer 2025 collection offered enough spins on the original to outfit an entire three-act ballet, from Simone Rochas’s net pancakes that stick straight out at the hips and Torishéju’s tailored mini-crinis sewn from balled clusters of studio offcuts, to All-In’s crystal-embellished powder puffs and Vaquera’s silk taffeta saucers. Jonathan Anderson was so enamored of the elongating silhouette that he created a series of pert leather tutus at his eponymous JW Anderson label and proposed a pair of twill bells at Loewe, right.…

Everything old is new again at the storied Parisian jewelry maison Mellerio, one of Place Vendôme’s best-kept secrets. While less well known outside France than its neighbors Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, Mellerio is the oldest by more than two centuries and the last to remain family-owned: the house located at 9 rue de la Paix has been dressing royals in its signature colorful gemstones since Marie de' Medici granted privileges to the Mellerios—a family of jewelers who hailed from northern Italy—in 1613. Now, via an exclusive partnership with Bergdorf Goodman, it’s available for the first time in the U.S. Artistic Director Laure-Isabelle Mellerio, 54, the 14th generation to lead the maison, believes Mellerio’s rich archives hold treasures for a new generation of women who crave the extraordinary. “If…

CARTIER pieces are DAZZLING, the DESIGNS SUBLIME, and the MIX of STONES UNIQUE. This love for jewelery is reflected in Brandolini’s relationship with Cartier, a maison she describes as “the ultimate expression of a particular moment… A dream that becomes reality.” Her first meeting with the brand was for the inauguration of Cartier in New York, “when I had the opportunity to wear the crocodile that the house had created for the Mexican actress María Félix in 1975.” The piece carries the story of a great actress and a bygone era. Through it, Brandolini was able to touch the enduring beauty that distinguishes Cartier: to revive the past by illuminating the present. For Brandolini, wearing a Cartier jewel is much more than a gesture. Her first Cartier piece, the Pasha…

French interior designer Rodolphe Parente is a free spirit, continuously seeking inspiration from the past and his own experiences. Before founding his own studio in 2009, Parente worked with Andree Putman, the famed French interior and product designer who designed the Morgans Hotel in New York and was known for her use of black and white tiles. Parente’s design ethos is characterized by tension: a dark, intense painting in an otherwise light room, or a unique blend of textures. His furniture continues this idea by reworking classics with an artistic twist: the Hunk lounge chair, for example, combines a sleek, futuristic silhouette with écume splash and classic textured upholstery. Parente’s inspirations are unlimited—from 1930s glamour to ‘80s maximalism—but ultimately, it’s his experience working with Putnam that continues to influence his…

Vincent van Gogh, Marcel Duchamp, and Andy Warhol—three figures who changed the rules of art—have long fascinated Francesco Risso. Since 2016, Risso has been the creative director of Marni, following ten years at Prada. Founded in Milan in 1994 by Swiss designer Consuelo Castiglioni, Marni is vibrant, wearable, and aspirational. After replacing Castiglioni, Risso—who studied at FIT—has continued Marni’s unique aesthetic while incorporating the work of artists. Risso’s approach to runway shows is avant-garde. At Marni’s Spring/Summer 2025 show, guests were greeted with a poem printed on origami, a nod to the collection’s theme of transformation, and a pianist performed live on the the runway as models showed off the ephemeral and romantic looks. Risso has an essential, emotional relationship with art: he collects it, frequents it, breathes it, and…

Like many of fashion’s greatest minds—Karl Lagerfeld, Tom Ford, and Daniel Roseberry—Trino Verkade is a Virgo, which she learned while working with Roseberry at Thom Browne. “The first day of work we went out for breakfast, and the first thing he asked me was my birth sign,” she says. “It had never come up before in my whole life.” The Virgo work ethic and perfectionism has shaped Verkade’s career, as the first employee for Lee McQueen and then in stints at Thom Browne and Mary Katrantzou. Her connections to the fashion industry run deep, and she has the closet to prove it. Now, she heads up the Sarabande Foundation, the nonprofit McQueen set up in 2006 to support young creatives. Since its founding, Sarabande has supported fashion designers like Craig…