They say reading is fundamental! In the past few years books have increasingly played a starring role in the fashion discourse as designers seek inspiration in literature, sometimes sharing the books they’re reading with guests as invitations, or leaving them on their seats as gifts. In London, Erdem Moralioglu looked to The Well of Loneliness, a lesbian novel published in 1928 and swiftly banned in England for the next two decades, and to its author, Radclyffe Hall, “who was born Marguerite and went by John later in life,” as the designer explained to Sarah Mower at his show. His clothes were a reflection of impeccable masculine tailoring of the 1920s, and Moralioglu combined them with his signature effervescent high femme dresses.
At JW Anderson , meanwhile, Jonathan Anderson cited Clive Bell, a British art critic who formed part of the Bloomsbury Group, an informal coterie of writers and artists (and interestingly, an economist) who shared the value that one’s main purpose in life was love, creativity, beauty, and “the pursuit of knowledge.” Anderson printed an excerpt from an essay on art and design by Bell across dresses and shredded knits. He didn’t go into detail about the inspiration but rather told Mower that it was a reflection of his thoughts on the fashion industry.
“It’s more like this idea of starting from a blank page. Where is the next decade going, and how do we work with it?” Previously, Anderson cited Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpre.